The Jakarta Post | Sat, 05/23/2009 11:54 AM | Opinion
The whole nation is mourning the Wednesday morning crash of the Indonesian Air Force’s C-130 Hercules in Magetan, East Java, upon observing its fatal impact: 98 of the 112 passengers and crews on board and three residents have died.
We send our condolences and express our deep sympathy to the victims’ families. But we strongly regret and question how the fatal crash could have happened. It was the third accident involving military aircraft and the 10th flight accident since January this year.
The air force, which is investigating the Hercules crash, has yet to announce the results of the investigation. But, military and aeronautical experts as well as members of the House of Representatives and the government, i.e. Vice President Jusuf Kalla, have concurrently blamed the limited military defense budget – in specific the budget for military aircraft maintenance – as the root cause of Wednesday’s crash.
The possible causes of the Hercules accident could be more than poor maintenance of our military aircraft as they could also involve human error and unfriendly bad weather, as reported Wednesday.
However, one thing is certain – there must be a concerted effort by all stakeholders to bring an end to, or at least greatly reduce, such aircraft accidents.
One measure could be in the form of providing an adequate budget for military or defense affairs as it could be used for the procurement of new and modern military equipments, which are more sensitive to bad weather, to replace the aging and obsolete ones, such as the C-130 Hercules. An appropriate military and defense budget is also needed to provide our military pilots with the necessary skills and knowledge to prepare themselves for the worst possible flight environment and conditions.
Adequate budget provisions could also be understood as proper budget distribution among the three forces in the Indonesian military (TNI) – the army, the navy and the air force. While it is currently the air force and the navy that badly need funds to modernize and upgrade their personnel and equipments, it should then be a priority that both be allocated greater budget this year and possibly for the next few years. According to Defense Ministry data, of the Rp 36.39 trillion (US$3.5 billion) budget allocated for the TNI in 2008, the Army received Rp 16.1 trillion, while the Air Force and the Navy subsequently received Rp 3.99 trillion and Rp 5.5 trillion. The other Rp 6.3 trillion and Rp 4.5 trillon went to the Defense Ministry and the TNI headquarters, respectively.
Eventually, once all those budget problems are settled, it is highly expected there will not be, or at least the minimum tolerated, such aircraft accidents in the future anymore. Learning from past mistakes should become habit for the TNI and for all of us.
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