The House Armed Services Committee voted on Wednesday in favor of creating a national commission to investigate a spike in deadly aviation mishaps in the military.
The voice vote means the new commission proposed by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., was added to the annual National Defense Authorization Act during a marathon markup session. The legislation tasks the commission with reviewing crashes over the past five years and making safety recommendations to Congress, even as the Pentagon has denied any systemic problems.
The Armed Services committee also approved a companion NDAA amendment by chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, that directs the safety commission to look at instances of hypoxia that have plagued military aircraft and led to numerous groundings.
Smith and Thornberry have both argued that caps on defense funding in recent years has fueled deadly mishaps such as the fiery crash of an Air National Guard C-130 Hercules cargo plane in Georgia last week that killed nine Guardsmen.
“The money is certainly part of it. I want to figure out the entire picture, get every answer we can to ensure that we are creating the safest possible environment for the men and women in our armed services,” Smith said.
On Tuesday, the Air Force announced a mandatory safety review for all of its aviation units following crashes that have killed 18 airmen since last fall.
But the service and the Pentagon have said they do not believe a crisis exists and the incidents do not appear to be connected.
“It is disturbing to me that there are some people in the Pentagon who even today say well it’s not really a crisis, each of these have individual underlying causes. My point is, we still have work to do,” Thornberry said.
