En este trabajo de RUSI (Royal United Service Institute), se postula que el crecimiento de un r\u00e9gimen de seguridad e higiene demasiado estricto, aplicado al adiestramiento del Ej\u00e9rcito Brit\u00e1nico, est\u00e1 restringiendo las oportunidades de esa fuerza de entrenar a gran escala y de manera m\u00e1s realista.\u00a0Esto plantea riesgos futuros de un mayor n\u00famero de bajas y una capacidad reducida, si eventualmente resulta necesario enfrentar una guerra. Complementariamente, la aversi\u00f3n al riesgo y un enfoque burocr\u00e1tico de la seguridad, puede tambi\u00e9n afectar el desempe\u00f1o de las organizaciones, al socavar la confianza de los soldados para enfrentar situaciones extremas, como las que pueden darse habitualmente en combate.<\/p>\n
In recent years, a number of fatal accidents involving UK service personnel have been reported, each a tragedy in its own right. At the same time, since the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the armed forces have become a significantly safer environment than the wider civilian world; service personnel are\u00a056% less likely<\/a>\u00a0to die each year than their civilian peers. While statistics are no comfort to a grieving family, this provides some perspective for the evaluation of Defence\u2019s approach to safety.<\/p>\n Two years ago, a brave syndicate of young officers published an article on the\u00a0extreme shortage of collective military training<\/a>\u00a0in the British Army. While levels have significantly improved in spite of severe resourcing issues, this article will argue that the present rules-driven, top-down approach to safety is holding training back \u2013 and may be less safe than a more balanced approach. Safety bureaucracy is also arguably hampering innovation and the development of resilience against the unexpected dangers inevitable in war.<\/p>\n The armed forces are subject to the same health and safety legislation as business, except where the Secretary of State explicitly waives it, but Defence cannot be prosecuted except \u2013 in extremis \u2013 for corporate manslaughter under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, something which\u00a0may be tested for the first time shortly<\/a>.<\/p>\n Defence\u2019s approach to safety is grounded in\u00a0Lord Justice Haddon-Cave\u2019s report<\/a>\u00a0on the Nimrod accident in 2006, in which 14 RAF aircrew died in a fireball. His report is recognised as a landmark document. He unearthed a range of institutional and individual shortcomings, and showed moral courage in, for example, dismissing the findings and comments of his fellow judge, the coroner on the case.<\/p>\n Haddon-Cave\u2019s proposals were rooted in four principles:<\/p>\n These were prescribed for all three services, but this short article focuses on the Army.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Military training requires an approach that prepares people to assess and take risks when tired, cold and frightened \u2013 circumstances where accidents are inevitably more likely<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For supervision of airworthiness, the Military Aviation Authority (MAA) \u2013 paralleling the civilian Civil Aviation Authority, has been set up in line with Haddon-Cave\u2019s recommendations and Defence has also established a separate Defence Safety Authority (DSA), including its Defence Accident Investigation Branch. Both the MAA and DSA have grown in numbers, while the size of the armed forces has declined. Safety in the Army is administered by the Defence Land Safety Regulator, also part of the DSA. Each commanding officer is accountable as Duty Holder for their unit, but SO2 Equipment Support \u2013 in brigade headquarters \u2013 rules which vehicles are safe to use. Meanwhile the risk for each vehicle type<\/em>\u00a0is held by a designated senior officer.<\/p>\n It is it is hard to see how Haddon-Cave\u2019s third principle \u2013 shifting the focus more towards people rather than processes and paper \u2013 has been followed. For example, SO2 Equipment Support regularly vetoes use of vehicles, overriding commanding officers, yet the assessments as to whether inspections are up to date are based on a software system (JAMES) without any direct oversight of the checks it records. As most vehicles no longer \u2018belong\u2019 to units and are instead held centrally in the Training Uplift Fleet, their state while not in use is no longer the responsibility of the commanding officer. Many vehicles are old, without a single owner and in poor shape, so a unit taking them over (and often finding there are too few of them available) may face a choice between keeping the checks it logs fairly superficial or risking being simply unable to exercise.<\/p>\n In 2021, a soldier was\u00a0crushed to death<\/a>\u00a0while sitting on the turret ring of a Scimitar when the driver struck a tree with his gun barrel. More recently, a young officer was crushed under the tracks of a Warrior when it reversed over him. A people-based approach to \u2018lessons learned\u2019 from these tragedies would surely emphasise the importance of ensuring that people are trained on individual vehicles properly and that their commanders \u2013 the people who know them best \u2013 appraise when they are ready to take on the much greater challenges of operating these vehicles in the excitement and stress of collective training.<\/p>\n Instead, both accident reports tabulate long lists of process shortcomings (some of which are actually admitted to be wholly irrelevant) and a large number of recommendations which, while sometimes making individual sense, could collectively only lead to less training, especially when resources are so limited. One extreme example was a recommendation to introduce a\u00a0new formal qualification<\/a>\u00a0for being a competent Warrior passenger as a condition for participating.<\/p>\n\n