This does look like a “turnaround hire”. His age is about 6 years older than the corporate average for Fortune 500 industrial corp CEO, and those 6 years correspond to his tenure at Rockwell Collins, so it appears he may be positioning to save Boeing and then turn the reins over to someone younger.
Recall the previous Boeing CEO was a “turnaround hire”. Boeing seems uncommonly hard to turn around.
Calhoun? That guy was an insider the whole time, as a Boeing board member.
He wasn’t going to turn around the problems. He was part of the problems. If someone claimed he’d be a “turnaround CEO”, they were lying (or, at least, wildly and unjustifiably optimistic).
One of Augustine’s Laws states:
Executives who do not produce successful results hold on to their jobs only about five years. Those who produce effective results hang on about half a decade.
That’s why they have those guys on the tarmac with the lighted wands.
I get this image in my head of the aircraft martial suddenly being menaced by a wasp.
Someone could ask the marshal where the forklift is
Full report:
Very interesting to hear about the chip burn system. I’d heard of metal chip detectors before. But this one zaps them electrically! Of course, if the gearbox is slowly disintegrating, the burn system can only help so much. Incredible that the pilot failed to land after six chip burn warnings in a day.
Scott Manley posted a few additional details on the system:
I don’t know anything about the Osprey, but I’d put a few bucks on the burn warning system throwing a lot of false positives. Get in the habit of ignoring those kinds of warnings and in you’re in for a bad day when the system detects a real one.
One of the bizjets I’ve flown had chip detectors installed in the early models that were notorious for false positives. The airplane proved to be robust enough that later models didn’t have the detectors. When I asked about this in training the instructors told me with obvious amusement, “The chip detectors kept detecting chips, so they got rid of them.”
I was wondering about this: was this a case of alert fatigue?
The boy who cried “Chip!”
Yes but the Osprey has a history of transmission issues.
Either they lower the TBO on the failing parts or come up with a whole new system.
I feel like this has been asked before but a cursory search didn’t turn it up:
Why do you never, ever, leave your wingman?
If you do, then neither of you has any tail cover. Note what happens when someone does? They all get shot down.
As @silenus said. In more detail …
Two things:
Historically, like in WW-II, a single airplane (particularly a fighter-type) stood almost no chance of survival if spotted by an enemy. A pair has a vastly greater likelihood of getting home in the same circumstance.
A corollary to that is a single-engine airplane, fighter or otherwise, has very little redundancy. Either of equipment or of crew = pilot bandwidth. If anything goes wrong, you’re going down and may not have time or bandwidth to tell anyone where you are. If you even know where you are. Having a mate alongside who can alert rescue forces, remain on-scene for awhile at least, etc., it real valuable. It’s about mutual support.
The second major factor is psychological. The Army vows to leave no soldier behind. Which is comforting shit as you’re running into a firefight with your buddies nearby. Relatively speaking, airplane-based warfare is a very lonely business. Promising your mate to stick together until it’s impossible or obviously futile means a lot. Band of Brothers and all that.
[History lesson]
The paired wingman idea originated at the end of WW-I and was perfected in the interwar years. The lessons of early WW-II reinforced the idea. Which has held up until the present day. Largely based on the realities of short-range, forward-firing, dumb to semi-smart weapons. And eyeball-based target acquisition and eyeball-based acquisition of incoming threats.
The nature of modern sensor-fused network-centric computerized air warfare and modern 360 degree spherical coverage dogfight missiles and defensive sensors may, may, be changing that significantly. The mutual tail cover feature is in the process of being obsoleted, and the two airplanes might well be able to fight more effectively (or at least prosecute more targets, ideally without being targeted themselves) if spread out miles apart and operating autonomously vs the other. Coordination now occurs via network, rather than mutual sight and voice radio.
Or at least that’s the theory. I remain mostly skeptical but my experience predates all this push button warfare and talk of wonder weapons. Damned if I see the wonder in it. 
Everything else remains as valid as it ever was. The tools change. Warfare is as eternal as the human spirit.
Example from history:
ISTM if you stick to your wingman and a plane is behind you then that plane has two targets.
Clearly having a wingman is better but I still don’t see it. Seems like two kills rather than one.
This is my ignorance…pilots know a lot more about this than I ever will.
- Maverick flies up to the sun, blinding Hangman, who is after him]
** Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin: Shit! Phoenix, I can’t see him. How close am I? Phoenix?*
** Lt. Natasha ‘Phoenix’ Trace: I’m dead, dickhead!*
** Lt. Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd: See you in the afterlife, Bagman.*
** Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin: Where is he? Where is he?*
** [Maverick soars from behind Hangman and paints him killed]*
** Maverick: That’s a kill.*
Extra eyes are always handy.