National Guard identifies service members killed in cargo plane crash

Commanders from the Puerto Rico National Guard have released the identities of the nine U.S. service members killed Wednesday in a fiery plane crash near Savannah, Georgia.

Air National Guard Majors José Román Rosado, Carlos Pérez Serra and 1st Lt. David Albandoz, the pilot, navigator and co-pilot of the Lockheed Martin-built WC-130 Hercules cargo aircraft that careened into Georgia Highway 21 near Savannah, were killed along with six other senior enlisted officers in the incident.

Senior Master Sgt. Jan Paravisini, Master Sgts. Jean Audriffred, Mario Braña, Víctor Colón, Eric Circuns and Senior Airman Roberto Espada all died instantly upon impact.

“Taking care of our fallen airmen’s families and loved ones is our top priority. We are fully supporting them and providing all the assistance and resources of the Puerto Rico National Guard during this difficult moment,” Brig. Gen. Isabelo Rivera, adjutant general of Puerto Rico, said in a statement Thursday.

The crew aboard the aging cargo aircraft was taking it on its final flight before retiring the almost 40-year-old plane. The fixed-wing aircraft in the island’s Air National Guard wing are often the oldest and most shopworn aircraft in the entire National Guard, Gen. Rivera told the Associated Press.

Prior to Wednesday’s fatal crash, the WC-130 had been in Savannah for routine maintenance before being sent to the Air Force’s airplane graveyard in Arizona, Georgia Air National Guard Col. Pete Boone said during a press briefing Wednesday.

Federal lawmakers in March pumped a total of $130 million into the services’ operations, maintenance and training accounts — an investment that comes after a slew of training accidents that left numbers of U.S. service members dead — into the Omnibus spending bill.

But the lack of those federal dollars over the past several years, as a result of massive, across-the-board military spending cuts under the Obama-era Budget Control Act, has contributed to the recent spate of deadly incidents, said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.

“We lost a lot of time, being on [continuing resolutions] for several years,” she told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon. “And you can’t buy the time back. You can’t buy the training hours back. You can’t buy the maintenance time back. You can’t do that.”

Overworked ships pressed into service in the Pacific, due to maintenance shortfalls and a high operational tempo in the region, was a key contributor a slew of accidents and fatal at-sea collisions ending with the deaths of nearly 20 U.S. sailors with Seventh Fleet last summer.

That said, Ms. White pushed back against calls from Capitol Hill to have the Pentagon take over service-led investigations and subsequent reviews on the slew of disastrous incidents during routine missions.

“Each of these incidents, each service takes very seriously. Each one is unique, and the services are the lead,” she said.

Defense Secretary James Mattis “has the utmost confidence in service leadership to ensure that whatever steps are taken, and that they have thorough investigations, because one incident is too much and we have to ensure that we learn from them,” she added.