quote:

Originally posted by MattW:
As others have mentioned, it sounded as if those filming knew what was coming.

The guy taking the video or someone right next to him used the specific phrase "CALLED IT." He suspected something was going to happen.

quote:

Originally posted by steve495:

quote:

Originally posted by MattW:
As others have mentioned, it sounded as if those filming knew what was coming.

The guy taking the video or someone right next to him used the specific phrase "CALLED IT." He suspected something was going to happen.

At 0:20 of the video as a vehicle emerges under parachute he says: "Burn it...... damn it"

Then at 0:23 of the video the vehicle breaks free and he screams: "Yes Yes Yes" and laughs as it plummets to the ground. He also knew it was a Humvee. At 1:30 he says "called it"

I would think given a loose vehicle in an uncontrolled descent the normal response would be "it's free.... look out... damn... holy shit"

The first four words out of his mouth would have made me suspicious. It seemed he expected it, and it didn't happen, then moments later it did.

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Originally posted by tanksoldier:

quote:

It did bother me how gleeful they seemed to be at the destruction of property the rest of us sweat and sacrifice to pay for.

Willing to bet he's sweated more than you have. Missed more holidays than you have. Maybe even bled more than you have.

Gallows humor is how you get thru it and whatever commander filed those charges, against the guy making the video, is a dickhead.

So by your principle and if we are equal if my sacrifice is greater than his I can display irreverence for his sacrifices? I can chuckle at his loss? My sacrifices may not be the same as his, but trust me, they are painful and enduring and made more so when other citizens dismiss them in some knuckleheaded sense of entitled relativity. I didn't say the chuckleheads needed to suffer some kind of consequence. I didn't dismiss the value of their contribution to the defense of this nation. I simply said it bothered me to have my sacrifices giggled at. The same way it would bother you if I snickered at your loss while in service. That is....if you think our value as human beings is equal.

quote:

Originally posted by steve495:

quote:

Originally posted by MattW:
As others have mentioned, it sounded as if those filming knew what was coming.

The guy taking the video or someone right next to him used the specific phrase "CALLED IT." He suspected something was going to happen.

Yeah, that stood out to me as well.

Have not served, so I am perhaps missing something fundamental. That said, I see multiple failures here, independent of whether the bad rig job was sabotage or incompetence.

1) untrained personnel doing critical work
2) unsuccessful inspection of said work
3) attitude/morale/judgment problems - videographer and spectators both - as recorded on the video
4) blameshifting/coverup in the investigation, pretending #1 and #3 are the only issues
5) (hypothesizing here) maybe the rigging is overly complex and worth trying to simplify?

RE: #3 I salute every one of our service folks, and know they are working at ridiculously low pay and accepting as their duty getting into dangerous situations that the rest of us will never see - and I get gallows humor. Really, truly, I get that. Schadenfreude etc.

But this seemed delight in failure (and a reason to suspect some inside information - the 'called it' phrase, e.g.) and sharing it - other than to whoever would be checking the reasons for the failed drops - could be a security issue and definitely shows poor judgment.

As to whether #3 justifies permanent reprimands being put in records - on that I will defer to our folks here with service experience.

I was a C-130 instructor pilot years ago, logged about 500 airdrops. This is a highly unusual event. There are many people checking the load weights, parachutes and extraction system. From the loaders to the JAI guys (a separate chain of command to provide complete objectivity) to even the crew themselves, many layers of redundancy exist.

Speculation: the charges filed, the video comments, and the fact that three aircraft all had the same malfunction lead me to entertain the possibility this was a deliberate act of sabatoge.

Appearances alone this seems like a deliberate act. If it is and they can prove it, fuck those guys and hang them out for everything you can. Plenty of us have served and sacrificed and nothing sounds stupider than suggesting that a deliberate treasonous, dangerous, irresponsible, illegal act is somehow ok because we are wearing a uniform. That gets people killed.

I don't think/hope any of you are suggesting that.

I think sabotage also,having seen first hand of a ship mate toss a mess hall coffee cup over the side when general quarters was called.
O D saw it from bridge,he got 14 days of pis and punk in the brig.
Destruction of goverment property was dealt with harshly in the old Navy

That was not "gallows humor." That was a celebration. Jesus. That was gross, unprofessional behavior.

The guy observing says "Burn it....damn it!" when it appears the drop is going to be successful, until the HUMVEE begins to fall, at which point he is very excited.

He had prior knowledge this was potentially going to happen, I'd bet money on it. A lot of it.

I would take it a different direction. I bet they felt they had crappy supervision, and because of that they knew that whatever idiot had packaged the Humvee had screwed up. It was probably well known, and yet the lower ranks were unable to do anything about the shity organizational leadership. I would guess their celebration and foreshadowing was because they knew some fucking moron was about to get his, after being ignored.

I base that observation on my experience with the government. I get to work with bumbling fucking idiots on a daily basis that have no business doing their jobs. I fully expect them to spectacularly fuck up every shift. It would give me great satisfaction to watch them Crash and Burn, however not at the expense of any citizen and perferably not at the financial expense of any tax dollars. And everybody that works with them, above below or beside, knows it. So I can relate to that version.

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Yep. That seems like the best explanation to me.

It doesn't make any real difference as far as the discussion goes, but he was likely saying "burn in" not "burn it". Common vernacular among skydivers/base jumpers when a failure causes an uncontrolled plummet to earth.

So not only did he "know" it was going to happen, but he also knew the terminology.

Chongosurte knows.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
I would take it a different direction. I bet they felt they had crappy supervision, and because of that they knew that whatever idiot had packaged the Humvee had screwed up. It was probably well known, and yet the lower ranks were unable to do anything about the shity organizational leadership. I would guess their celebration and foreshadowing was because they knew some fucking moron was about to get his, after being ignored.

I base that observation on my experience with the government. I get to work with bumbling fucking idiots on a daily basis that have no business doing their jobs. I fully expect them to spectacularly fuck up every shift. It would give me great satisfaction to watch them Crash and Burn, however not at the expense of any citizen and perferably not at the financial expense of any tax dollars. And everybody that works with them, above below or beside, knows it. So I can relate to that version.

So I don't know anything about this incident, but your theory seems unlikely. An army guy on the ground is a long ways, organizationally, from the AF guys rigging pallets. Or they were when I did this years ago.

Watching the video again, I'm inclined to think these guys are unprofessional clowns. I get having fun, and I get laughing at things going wrong (provided its unavoidable and no one is getting hurt), and I get the idea of young guys losing their composure. But after the second one, why is no one calling a no drop on the radio? I don't act like that on missions and I'd have feedback for anyone who does. Grow up. If one of these guys sabotaged the loads and then laughed while filming equipment break.... throw his ass in jail.

I strongly suspect sabotage also.

The fact that there were THREE vehicles to burn in and the soldier commenting seemed to be aware of the scenario leads me to believe he (they) had foreknowledge.

ONE - shit happens from time two time.

TWO would be highly unusual. THREE in one Op to me means intentional sabotage of the rigging. Which interestingly - it's not the parachutes. The parachutes deploy as they are designed. The HMMWVs separate from their rigging after the parachutes open.

Also - the guy filming is watchfully waiting for the malfunction and in fact stated 'Burn in' before the HMMWV actually separates - so he knew what was going to happen.

These things get checked and re-checked. I am guessing someone went by after final inspection at the rigging site and the departure airfield and made some cuts to the webbing in key locations.

Hope they get punished harshly. They purposefully destroyed several hundred thousand dollars of GOV equipment (taxpayer funded) and degraded unit readiness.

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I find absolutely nothing that was funny about it. The laughing dude is an asshole and should receive more than a LOR

As for the others involved in failing to get the job done properly.... off with their heads

oh hell might as well chop off hyena boy's head

Whole lot of wild speculation going on here, so I'll throw my own in:

They were lower enlisted watching an air drop and hoping something would go wrong, because it often does, but didn't know for sure it would(but Chongo nailed it, maybe they did "know" because of a clusterfuck higher up the CoC). They got excited when it did because FTXs can be fucking boring. Then two more did and it was "awesome" to a guy on the ground with nothing better to do than watch shit that he/they had no control over and laugh(until he got put on the clean-up crew).

quote:

Originally posted by ArtieS:
I've been in that drop zone, and if those had been my units, this matter would have been my case. From what I am seeing here, that command is spectacularly fucked up.

Tank pretty much nails it. It's a serial, cascading failure and they are blaming one, unqualified guy for it? That alone is a command failure, and no one in that unit will trust that command after this.

Somewhere there is an O5 or 06, (or both), trying to figure out how to keep their career from ending. I have no experience with airborne operations, but I have been part of railhead to seaport movements, and more than one large vehicle moment by air. The point I'm making is the level of redundant safety checks on airborne operations is excessive, to say the least. I find it almost impossible to believe that one NCO managed to sabotage three different pallets the same way without someone finding something wrong.

Except what you are saying relies on the idea that it wasn't intentional sabotage. Under normal Ops, multiple redundant checks should, should catch most fuckups. There is no QA program in the world that will catch somebody fucking shit up intentionally. They know the system, they know the checks. They are bypassing them.

If, if, this was intentional they need to hang. It is treason. (Not a lawyer but it is to me)

If you know how the system works normal safeguards are almost meaningless because they aren't designed to catch criminal activity that was intentionally made hard if not impossible to find.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
Except what you are saying relies on the idea that it wasn't intentional sabotage. Under normal Ops, multiple redundant checks should, should catch most fuckups. There is no QA program in the world that will catch somebody fucking shit up intentionally. They know the system, they know the checks. They are bypassing them.

If, if, this was intentional they need to hang. It is treason. (Not a lawyer but it is to me)

If you know how the system works normal safeguards are almost meaningless because they aren't designed to catch criminal activity that was intentionally made hard if not impossible to find.

Exactly. If this was sabatoge and it does look suspicious, wreck them all. If it wasn't, I'll concur that hanging so much fail on an NCO is unsat. I'm curious what happened on the AF side of the house, they'll have a bad bomb board independent of the Army investigation and they have no qualms about crushing officers.

3 sequential heavy equipment failures is unheard of; this isn't something that happens regularly. Or ever to my knowledge.