US military accountability stops one boss downhill from the one who should get the axe — consider the B1B bomber crash

© 2024 Peter Free

 

06 August 2024

 

 

Crash a half billion dollar B-1B bomber . . .

 

. . . and whose fault does it turn out to be?

 

 

The Air Force has fired an operations group commander at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, following the release of a scathing report into a B-1B Lancer bomber’s January crash.

 

Col. Mark Kimball, commander of the 28th Operations Group, was removed “due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command,” Air Force Global Strike Command said Friday.

 

Kimball was relieved by 28th Bomb Wing commander Col. Derek Oakley based on the findings of the accident investigation board report on the Jan. 4 B-1 crash.

 

That report, which Global Strike released July 25, blasted “an organizational culture that tolerated decaying airmanship skills” as one of the factors that led to the loss of the $451 million bomber.

 

“Many failures leading to this mishap were not a one-time occurrence or an aberration,” the report said. “The mishap occurred due to numerous factors, including a culture of noncompliance, widespread deviation from established policy and procedure, and several organizational influences and preconditions.”

 

© 2024 Stephen Losey, Air Force fires ops group commander after scathing B-1 crash report, Air Force Times (05 August 2024)

 

 

So, tell me

 

Whose job was it to ensure that Colonel Kimball was not trashing his command?

 

The deterioration described takes a significant amount of time to crumble down to the claimed degree that it did.

 

Was Colonel Kimball's supervisor too busy cultivating the upstream yes-man, group-think, ass-kissing persona that is so absolutely necessary to receiving a shoulder star in the United States?

 

Or was he (she or it) polishing his, her, or its 'woke' skills — while the fighting Air Force went to perdition — due to a systemic lack of attention to what actually mission-matters in military discipline?

 

 

The moral? — Maybe the United States should stop instigating wars that it cannot win . . .

 

. . . given the levels of blazing professional incompetence that it blanketly displays among its top leadership ranks.