April 11th, 2024
6minute read
My second of five careers I was an Army aviator.
About a tenth of that time was spent flying OH-58 aeroscout helicopters single pilot.
Strip the doors off of that bad boy and you are riding a three-dimensional motorcycle.
What can military pilots teach us about protecting our families? Coordination in the cockpit is remarkably applicable to the skills needed in home-defense scenarios. Image: Cpl. Kyle Chan/U.S. Marine Corps
Just thinking about those heady days brings an involuntary grin to my face.
However, everything else involved flying as part of a crew.
Sometimes thats pretty condensed.
Working with a team to fly a complex aircraft like the Chinook can inform us on how to respond in a tense situation, employing the mental tools necessary for success. Image: Spc. Mary L. Gonzalez/U.S. Army
The cockpit of aCobra attack helicopteris about the size of your dinner table.
That means quite a lot of enforced intimacy.
And then there were Chinooks.
Family emergencies can include fires and other unexpected events. Learning to fight together can make you better at working together under all kinds of stress. Image:Sylvain Pedneault(CC BY-SA 3.0)
We never flew aCH-47D Chinookoperationally without two pilots, a flight engineer, and a crew chief.
That thing is 98 feet long from rotor tip to rotor tip.
It weighs 25 tons and flies at nearly two hundred miles per hour.
Natural disasters are also something to prepare for, in addition to home invaders. A single tornado can endanger your entire family. Image: NOAA
Fortunately, Uncle Sam thought of that before they ever gave me the keys.
When I was in flight school, we had extensive training on cockpit crew coordination.
This was also known as Crew Resource Management (CRM).
At the time I thought it was kind of stupid.
And then I actually went out into the real world.
I obviously didnt die, but it did make for a terribly exciting afternoon.
Standardization Helps Minimize Stupid
You have the controls.
I have the controls.
Every Army aviator on the planet performs this simple cockpit task exactly the same way.
As a result, it is nearly impossible to look up and realize nobody is flying the airplane.
That sounds stupid, only it isnt.
Do something long enough, and bad things invariably happen.
Standardized procedures and communication in the cockpit minimize the possibility of mistakes under stress.
The same basic concept applies to your family in a crisis situation as well.
Closer to Home
Apparently criminals are all insomniacs or vampires.
They seem to do their best work at night.
By contrast, we normal folk are most often just asleep.
Thats not the best time to take a stab at codify your immediate action drills.
Start when theyre young, and your kids will think its a game.
Get the whole family in on it and be careful not to scare them.
Wargame possible scenarios with your spouse and then scheme out various courses of action.
The same criteria apply to waking up to the smell of smoke or the sound of storm sirens.
How about if your bedroom is upstairs?
Get out of the house now!
can mean run screaming off into the darkness in four different directions.
Or, it could automatically direct everybody to meet at the utility shed for a quick headcount.
Store the batteries separately in a Ziploc bag so they cant corrode and ruin your light.
Ask me how I know this.
If you have some reliable neighbors, you might want to fold them into the plan.
No less a luminary thanGeorge S. Patton Jr.opined, He who sweats more in training bleeds less in battle.
A small investment in time and effort can pay great dividends in a crisis.
Ruminations
We prattle on incessantly about home defense firearms and accessories.
[Be sure to read Paul Carlsons article to answerWill 5.56 go through walls?]
