The Bunker: Crash Course

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This week in The Bunker: a spike in U.S. military accidents sets off a hunt for their elusive cause; defense contractors fight to maintain their maintenance monopoly; Army humans launch Army robots to feed Army humans; and more.

CRASH CAUSES

Why the spike in military aircraft accidents?

Serious accidents involving U.S. military aircraft soared 55% between 2020 and 2024, according to newly released Pentagon numbers. “These accident rates are incredibly troubling and demand action,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a member of the armed services committee, said November 19 after the Defense Department provided her with the data. Such Class A mishaps (those that destroy aircraft or cause more than $2.5 million in damage, and/or those that kill or permanently disable personnel), killed 90 people, destroyed 89 aircraft, and cost the military $9.4 billion. Warren said her push for more Pentagon transparency into its crash probes is “desperately needed…to save service member lives.”

Good luck with that, senator. The Bunker has tracked military-aviation accidents for nearly 50 years. They frustratingly rise and fall like unscheduled tides. Searching for a common cause is like trying to nail napalm to the wall. Among other elements, crashes can be rooted in wholesale dereliction of duty by the military-industrial complex, retail (i.e., smaller-scale) dereliction of duty, jet-jockey jerks, trying to do too much, or inadequate training. Sometimes, the cause remains unknown.

Every deadly accident is a tragedy for the family, the service, and the nation. These aviators, among the best in the world, often must make split-second decisions while going very fast. There are safeguards and redundancies built into warplanes, which help pilots avoid danger. But a U.S. military aircraft accident usually is triggered by a “perfect storm,” where several things have to go wrong at the same time, or in a cascading chain, for disaster to strike. Therefore there are, alas, an infinite number of causes.

Yet there is a relationship between crashes and training, flying hours, and spare parts — they tend to rise when those three items fall. As The Bunker recently noted, for example, the average number of hours flown each month by Air Force fighter pilots has dropped from 16 in the 1990s, to 10 in the mid-2010s, to about five today. Rusty pilots crash more.

The Pentagon often tends to blame pilots, especially if they are no longer around to defend themselves, for accidents. Beyond that, more money — for better training, and more flying hours and spare parts — is the Pentagon’s familiar refrain following crashes. But military aviation is incredibly complex, and money can only do so much. “The emergencies you train for almost never happen,” World War II pilot Ernest Gunn famously said. “It’s the one you can’t train for that kills you.”

REPAIRS ‘R’ US

Why contractors want to keep fixing their weapons

Blueprints are valuable. Blueprints for weapons — including the intellectual property associated with their repair and maintenance — are Fort Knox for defense contractors. For example, while the Pentagon plans to pay $485 billion for 2,470 Lockheed-built F-35 fighters, it’s also projecting that it will spend $1.58 trillion (PDF) more to keep them flying. In other words, the sticker shock associated with actually buying the plane is less than a quarter of the total cost of owning it. It’s the armed and supersonic variant of safety-razor inventor King Camp Gillette’s adage to “give ’em the razor; sell ’em the blades.”

That’s why defense contractors are fighting a Senate proposal in next year’s defense authorization bill that would pick the “vendor lock” they’ve long enjoyed. The provision would force them to hand over to the Defense Department the data that would let the Pentagon, instead of the contractors, fix what taxpayers have bought.

But that, the military’s sky-is-falling suppliers maintain, will imperil national security. “America’s military advantage depends on cutting-edge technology and a strong, resilient industrial base,” argues Eric Fanning, head of the Aerospace Industries Association (and ex-Army secretary). “If we want to keep America safe, we need policies that protect and empower our innovators, not put them in jeopardy.” AIA endorses the “data as a service” model contained in the House version of the defense bill. That would maintain the status quo unless the Pentagon negotiated — paid for, in taxpayer terms — the information it wants for each contract.

Virginia Burger, a Marine veteran and The Bunker’s colleague here at the Project On Government Oversight, is leery of such a deal. “‘Data-as-a-service’ too often demands Internet links likely to be MIA on the battlefield,” she says. “If that’s adopted, I foresee printouts of screenshots stuffed in binders being a checklist item in a maintainer’s deployer bag.” Not a way to wage war.

Both the Defense Department and White House have voiced support for giving the Pentagon more access to contractors’ intellectual property. Members from both houses are expected to resolve the difference next month in the final version of the bill. It could end up being a holiday gift for taxpayers, and a lump of coal for contractors.

Or the other way ’round.

ROBOCHOW

Drones hit the mess hall

Last week, the Pentagon whittled down its list of key technologies from 14 to six. The half-dozen survivors are “applied AI, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technology, quantum battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy, and scaled hypersonics,” the Defense Department said.

But 48 hours later and half-a-world away, the Army unveiled what many grunts would say is a far more critical technology: how they chow down. That’s because the service has established its first “autonomous dining facility,” in South Korea, to see if machines can feed more soldiers more quickly than humans alone.

“An army marches on its stomach,” Napoleon reportedly said. If the U.S. military can develop drones and uncrewed tanks to wage war without risking American lives on and above the battlefield, shouldn’t it be able to build robots to flip burgers and operate Frialators to make freedom fries safely behind enemy lines?

“The autonomous kitchen uses robotic cooking modules programmed to prepare meals from fresh ingredients following standard Army recipes,” explains Chief Warrant Officer River Mitchell, an Army “food adviser.” Hungry troops simply tap a touchscreen menu “and the system automatically portions, cooks and plates each meal,” says an Army press release, sounding like something out of Drone Appétit magazine.

Just like on the battlefield — where the U.S. military insists humans will always be “in the loop” when it comes to launching weapons — humans will always be “in the food” when it comes to launching lunch. “Human oversight remains critical,” Mitchell said. “Our culinary specialists still handle food safety, ingredient prep and quality control.”

This new robo-cooking is rooted in the possibility of war with China. But the Army is too polite to say that out loud. It prefers to describe it as a pilot program ordered up by its Pacific Multi-Domain Training and Experimentation Capability program (love that snappy Army nomenclature!). The goal is to develop “new technologies to enhance sustainment and readiness across the Indo-Pacific region.”

In other words, to make General Tso’s troops chicken.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ The terrorism-industrial complex

The Trump administration has branded more groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” in 2025 than the U.S. did over the prior decade, Patty Nieberg and Jeff Schogol reported November 18 at Task & Purpose.

→ On orders and oaths…

Marine veteran Virginia Burger here at the Project On Government Oversight waded into the hurricane triggered by six Democratic lawmakers telling U.S. troops they don’t have to obey unlawful military orders, and President Trump’s resulting bonkerish call for them to be tried for treason (“Aye-aye sir,” Defense Secretary Pete “Hands-Off” Hegseth salivated), November 21 on POGO’s website.

→ Overruled

The key military lawyer overseeing the U.S. attacks on suspected drug-smuggling boats from Venezuela concluded the strikes were illegal, but higher-ups in the U.S. chain-of-command dismissed his concerns, NBC’s Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, and Dan De Luce reported November 19.

Thanks for not overruling The Bunker this week, which is thankful for our readers and lots of other things, too. Happy Thanksgiving! Consider forwarding this on to friends and/or foes so they can subscribe here.