Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures

Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures PDF Author: Kenneth Werrell
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1648431305
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
While successful developments in aviation receive considerable attention, the projects that failed or otherwise did not live up to expectations receive far less, if any, scrutiny. Typically, unsuccessful efforts are briefer in duration and have a less visible paper trail. Thus, while the literature is rich in success stories, we tend to “forget” or simply bury our failures. And, as one observer has suggested, “that there were failures, mistakes, and wrong turns reminds us that progress is not inevitable, that acknowledged error can be as instructive as success, and that roads not taken impose a price all their own.” Here, author Kenneth P. Werrell tells of a race to overcome obstacles—politics, resources, competing technologies, timing—in the quest to deliver quality, if not war-winning machinery. The focus of Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures: 1940–1990 is on aircraft (e.g., bombers, fighters, transports) and missiles (e.g., cruise missiles, standoff missiles, ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles). An intelligence system is also evaluated. These case studies give the context and details of the development, testing, and, as appropriate, operational service. Highlighting the problems and criticisms of these systems then provides an opportunity to determine what went wrong. The reasons for the failures of these systems vary from the obvious (money, delays, technical problems) to more complex reasons, such as the foe’s reaction, politics, new technologies, and timing. The tale of these disappointments is a heretofore untold story. These projects, in which the US Air Force stumbled, are outliers within the overall success of the service, and, fortunately, its successes outnumber the failures.

Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures

Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures PDF Author: Kenneth Werrell
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1648431305
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Get Book Here

Book Description
While successful developments in aviation receive considerable attention, the projects that failed or otherwise did not live up to expectations receive far less, if any, scrutiny. Typically, unsuccessful efforts are briefer in duration and have a less visible paper trail. Thus, while the literature is rich in success stories, we tend to “forget” or simply bury our failures. And, as one observer has suggested, “that there were failures, mistakes, and wrong turns reminds us that progress is not inevitable, that acknowledged error can be as instructive as success, and that roads not taken impose a price all their own.” Here, author Kenneth P. Werrell tells of a race to overcome obstacles—politics, resources, competing technologies, timing—in the quest to deliver quality, if not war-winning machinery. The focus of Air Force Disappointments, Mistakes, and Failures: 1940–1990 is on aircraft (e.g., bombers, fighters, transports) and missiles (e.g., cruise missiles, standoff missiles, ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles). An intelligence system is also evaluated. These case studies give the context and details of the development, testing, and, as appropriate, operational service. Highlighting the problems and criticisms of these systems then provides an opportunity to determine what went wrong. The reasons for the failures of these systems vary from the obvious (money, delays, technical problems) to more complex reasons, such as the foe’s reaction, politics, new technologies, and timing. The tale of these disappointments is a heretofore untold story. These projects, in which the US Air Force stumbled, are outliers within the overall success of the service, and, fortunately, its successes outnumber the failures.

Ten Questions About Human Error

Ten Questions About Human Error PDF Author: Sidney Dekker
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1410612066
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Ten Questions About Human Error asks the type of questions frequently posed in incident and accident investigations, people's own practice, managerial and organizational settings, policymaking, classrooms, Crew Resource Management Training, and error research. It is one installment in a larger transformation that has begun to identify both deep-rooted constraints and new leverage points of views of human factors and system safety. The ten questions about human error are not just questions about human error as a phenomenon, but also about human factors and system safety as disciplines, and where they stand today. In asking these questions and sketching the answers to them, this book attempts to show where current thinking is limited--where vocabulary, models, ideas, and notions are constraining progress. This volume looks critically at the answers human factors would typically provide and compares/contrasts them with current research insights. Each chapter provides directions for new ideas and models that could perhaps better cope with the complexity of the problems facing human error today. As such, this book can be used as a supplement for a variety of human factors courses.

Why Air Forces Fail

Why Air Forces Fail PDF Author: Robin Higham
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813167612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Includes two new chapters! “One of the more interesting and better books on military aviation to appear in the last few years.”—Journal of Military History Since the publication of the first edition of Why Air Forces Fail, the debate over airpower’s role in military operations has only intensified. Here, eminent historians Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris assemble a team of experts to add essential new details to their cautionary tale for current practitioners of aerial warfare. Together, the contributors examine the complex, often deep-seated, reasons for the catastrophic failures of the Russian, Polish, French, British, Italian, German, Argentine, and American air services. Complemented by reading lists and suggestions for further research, this seminal study with two new chapters provides an essential and detailed analysis of defeat. “Contains many interesting insights and interpretations . . . an excellent introduction to the study of military failure in general and air forces in particular.”—Journal of America’s Military Past “I recommend this book to those who are interested in air forces and air power, whether amateur or professional, past, present and future.”—Richard Cobbold, Bryanston: The Yearbook “Provides an excellent analysis of the root causes of failure; this engaging study goes far beyond the aerial battlefield to examine the circumstances leading to defeat.”—Dennis Drew, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)

Sharing Success - Owning Failure: Preparing to Command in the Twenty-First Century Air Force

Sharing Success - Owning Failure: Preparing to Command in the Twenty-First Century Air Force PDF Author: Colonel Usaf David L Goldfein
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781479145065
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Command is the ultimate service. It is a time when we have the singular responsibility to create and lead strong Air Force units. A time when our passion for our Air Force and our vision for its future must be overwhelmingly clear. Early in the "Developing Aerospace Leaders" initiative, we began to focus on the way in which the institution teaches leadership and prepares airmen for command. What we found was a wide range of practices and a wide range of expectations - a complicating factor in today's Expeditionary Aerospace Force. We realize that preparing our officers to command effective, mission-oriented units must be a deliberate process. It must develop our unique airman perspective, creating commanders who are able to communicate the vision, have credibility in the mission area, and can lead our people with inspiration and heart. The foundation of our institution's effectiveness has always been its leaders. Colonel Goldfein's work provides valuable lessons learned and serves as a worthwhile tool to optimize your effectiveness as a squadron commander. This book is a must-read, not only for those selected to command a squadron but for all our young officers, helping them understand what the requirements of squadron command will be. Remember, command is a unique privilege - a demanding and crucial position in our Air Force. "Sharing Success - Owning Failure" takes you a step closer to successfully meeting that challenge.

Drift into Failure

Drift into Failure PDF Author: Sidney Dekker
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1351942921
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner’s tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale. We have trouble grasping the complexity and normality that gives rise to such large events. We hunt for broken parts, fixable properties, people we can hold accountable. Our analyses of complex system breakdowns remain depressingly linear, depressingly componential - imprisoned in the space of ideas once defined by Newton and Descartes. The growth of complexity in society has outpaced our understanding of how complex systems work and fail. Our technologies have gotten ahead of our theories. We are able to build things - deep-sea oil rigs, jackscrews, collateralized debt obligations - whose properties we understand in isolation. But in competitive, regulated societies, their connections proliferate, their interactions and interdependencies multiply, their complexities mushroom. This book explores complexity theory and systems thinking to understand better how complex systems drift into failure. It studies sensitive dependence on initial conditions, unruly technology, tipping points, diversity - and finds that failure emerges opportunistically, non-randomly, from the very webs of relationships that breed success and that are supposed to protect organizations from disaster. It develops a vocabulary that allows us to harness complexity and find new ways of managing drift.

Air Force Magazine

Air Force Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aeronautics
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Book Description


Every Patient Tells a Story

Every Patient Tells a Story PDF Author: Lisa Sanders
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0767931416
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, ‘What is wrong with me?’ They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it—on some level—restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer." A healthy young man suddenly loses his memory—making him unable to remember the events of each passing hour. Two patients diagnosed with Lyme disease improve after antibiotic treatment—only to have their symptoms mysteriously return. A young woman lies dying in the ICU—bleeding, jaundiced, incoherent—and none of her doctors know what is killing her. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving these and other diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in human history have doctors had the knowledge, the tools, and the skills that they have today to diagnose illness and disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows us that knowledge, while essential, is not sufficient to unravel the complexities of illness. She presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness—the diagnosis—revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders portrays the absolute necessity and surprising difficulties of getting the patient’s story, the challenges of the physical exam, the pitfalls of doctor-to-doctor communication, the vagaries of tests, and the near calamity of diagnostic errors. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Sanders chronicles the real-life drama of doctors solving these difficult medical mysteries that not only illustrate the art and science of diagnosis, but often save the patients’ lives.

Army-Navy-Air Force Register and Defense Times

Army-Navy-Air Force Register and Defense Times PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 844

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Book Description


Just Culture

Just Culture PDF Author: Sidney Dekker
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409440605
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
While many organizations see the value of creating a just culture they struggle when it comes to developing it. In this Second Edition, Dekker expands his views, additionally tackling the key issue of how justice is created inside organizations. Dekker also introduces new material on ethics and on caring for the' second victim' (the professional at the centre of the incident). Consequently, we have a natural evolution of the author's ideas.

Disappointment, Doubt and Other Spiritual Gifts

Disappointment, Doubt and Other Spiritual Gifts PDF Author: Mark Yaconelli
Publisher: SPCK
ISBN: 0281076510
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
A honest, heartfelt and ultimately deeply hopeful collection of stories and reflections on the author's own woeful inability to be the perfect Christian. Acclaimed Christian writer and speaker Mark Yaconelli talks of his own failures and disappointments in Christian life and ministry, in order to offer others hope for the future. From the preface: 'We fall in holes. Plans fall apart. Dreams die. Faith disappers. Suffering is real. We need help to recalibrate our lives back to our compassionate, God-trusting selves. Often we need safe, creative space and trusted companions in order to move through painful and disorienting experiences. My hope is that the chapters in this book might provide that same creative compasionship ... What I'm offering are stories, personal experiences, honest reflections and practices that might help you move out of the hurt and disappointment for a moment and remember your deeper capacities for love and generosity. These are the same stories and practices that have helped me to receive my own failings and sufferings as spiritual gifts.'