MAA rips Defense Ministry over lack of ACAS on aircraft

The UK Military Aviation Authority has called a decision to not put an automatic collision avoidance system on the Typhoon "unsustainable", and said it needs to be pursued with "great haste". The comments come after the release of an accident report in which two Tornado aircraft collided in July 2012, killing three crew members. The Tornado is finally receiving an ACAS system, although it's being retired within four years. In the course of its life, 40 crew members died in mid air collisions.

The report is also critical of the F-35 not having a system on board as well.

LONDON – Military air safety officials have described as "unsustainable" a decision not to install an airborne collision avoidance system (ACAS) on the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) fleet of Eurofighter Typhoons.

In its annual safety report from last August – made public on Jan. 13, the director general of the U.K. Military Aviation Authority (MAA), Air Marshal Richard Garwood, said that an airborne collision warning system for the Typhoon needed to be pursued with "great haste," particularly in light of the MAA’s findings in the midair collision of two Panavia Tornado GR4s in Scotland in July 2012. Three airmen were killed.

The MAA’s report on the crash criticized the U.K. defense ministry for "consistently deferring, reprogramming and reprioritizing the introduction of a collision warning system for the aircraft."

aviationweek.com...

Well now how does that make an airman feel?...............expendable I guess.....40 dead to save some bucks...sounds mighty like another "war crime".......................