Risk Management Magazine

I could feel my SUV pulling to the right as the road noise grew louder. Because my vehicle was less than a year old, my supervisor gave it only a quick inspection before I took off. That’s not to say we pencil-whipped it, but we definitely didn’t look all that hard for problems.

Under night vision goggles (NVGs), none of us could tell the area I picked was going to be soft, deep sand that grabbed us by the wheels the second we touched down. As the aircraft abruptly stopped, all of us were thrown forward and caught by our harnesses, except one crew chief.

The 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team “Dagger,” 1st Infantry Division, executed a successful and safer-than-average large-scale combat operations (LSCO) National Training Center (NTC) rotation recently, primarily due to a deliberate approach to risk management and engaged leadership at echelon.