Hacker News Reader

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de... indicates that the U.S. have had 224 deaths and lost 186 aircraft over seven years, so roughly thirty airmen a year sounds about right.

I suppose one could be pedantic about pilots rather than aircrew at large, since those 186 aircraft would have had one pilot each, but the larger point still stands. Someone probably just saw the 224 number and thought each indicated a plane manned by a single pilot.

Hm that would attribute all accidents to orientation issues, which I guess is possible? It also state the cost as over 11.6B between 2013 and 2020, which would make the cost more like 1.5B per year?

Either way though, 224 deaths from accidents in 8ish years is way higher than I had expected. Hopefully with the withdrawal from Afghanistan we will see this number decline.

Not to mention that it is perfectly possible to lose an aircraft without losing the pilot.

I read this as 30 pilots over all time, $300 million a year.

I thought the same thing. I wondered if perhaps they meant $300 Million per year annualized and also a total of 30 pilots over some number of years.