Complex systems fail. Fighter jets are put under a lot more stress (even in non-combat flying) than airliners. Even flying straight, level, and slow, they would be less reliable since there are tradeoffs in design and the fighters tilt more to performance and less to safety and reliability (which is not to say that the later are ignored, they get a lot of attention but you can't avoid tradeoffs even when your spending as much as a modern fighter costs).
Also a lot of American fighters are old. Not as old as B-52s or many of our tanker planes, but fighters are stressed more than the larger planes. With proper maintenance they should still work, but older planes are still more likely to crash than new planes (except maybe brand new planes, and esp. brand new designs).
We could try to make sure that none of our fighter planes are over 20 years old, but that would be expensive, we simply are not going to spend that much more on fighter acquisition.
Also this is one crash. Its hardly surprising. We had mechanical failures leading to crashes in every war since aircraft where introduced to the military in WWI. This (depending on how you define the term) might not be called a war, or at least is a very small one at this point, but many small applications of force also had cases of mechanical failure leading to aircraft crashes. Its normal. It would not surprise me if it happens to another US or allied aircraft or more than one, before this is over, unless its somehow wrapped up very soon. Its sort of a "dog bites man" story.
Which is not to say that there is definitely no story here, I don't know the details of this particular case. Its possible there was some cutting corners that went beyond the norm, or something else that could be an issue. Without a lot more information I just can't know for sure. Similarly when a dog bites someone, it might be part of some larger story involving some sort of malfeasance. But if all you know is that a dog bit someone, you wouldn't naturally assume there is some big crime behind it. Similarly, I wouldn't assume there is something horribly wrong in this case. |
