Risk Management Magazine

It was another routine daytime mission in Afghanistan: two CH-47 Chinook aircraft loaded with key personnel would conduct an air movement to a landing zone (LZ) that the crew had landed at dozens of times. The crew consisted of a seasoned pilot in command (PC) with about 3,500 hours, an experienced pilot (PI) with 500 hours and two nonrated crewmembers — a crew chief (CE) and a flight engineer (FE) — with unknown flight hours. The crew had recency of flight together, as well as recency in landing at this specific LZ.

Our SP and commander decided the best place for me was on one of our night shifts at a time of day when the enemy was less active, allowing me to get more experience before throwing me into the fray. It was on one of these early morning flights that I nearly killed us.

As an aviation safety officer at Kandahar Air Base assigned to Task Force Out Front, I was a pilot in command (PC) and air mission commander (AMC) and flew more than 150 combat missions responding to numerous troops-in-contact calls in Kandahar province. During my deployment, we had a mid-air collision with an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) because communication and tracking of UASs between ground units within the same brigade was ineffective. Here’s what happened.