Risk Management Magazine

There are good reasons emergency procedures (EPs) are developed, committed to memory and rehearsed before conducting training or combat operations. The moment an emergency occurs is not the time to become creative or develop a better way to handle the situation. As a Type A personality, I made the mistake of modifying a procedure while in the middle of an emergency, and it could have cost me dearly.

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.