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Soldier hits Apache with live ammo in Fort Irwin training mishap

A soldier who should've been firing blanks hit an Apache helicopter with live rounds last week during training at Fort Irwin, California, an Army spokesman confirmed on Tuesday. The soldier, with 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, was augmenting the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment for the exercise, Fort Irwin spokesman Ken…

A soldier who should've been firing blanks hit an Apache helicopter with live rounds last week during training at Fort Irwin, California, an Army spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.

The soldier, with 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, was augmenting the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment for the exercise, Fort Irwin spokesman Ken Drylie said. The cavalry regiment provides opposing-force personnel for rotations at the National Training Center.

via www.armytimes.com

This story surfaced yesterday, but I sat on it until I could get a wee bit more information.

There's two phases to each rotation at Ft. Irwin, the force-on-force that uses blanks, then the large scale live fire exercise.

This incident took place during the force-on-force, and no one should have had any live ammunition at all. Where the ammo came from is going to be a focus of the AR15-6 investigation.

We're first and foremost glad that no one was injured in the incident. But we're also rather troubled that it happened in the first place. Obviously, the brunt of the blame falls on the soldier who shot at the Apache. But it also means we have to ask what was going on in the unit that the first line supervisors didn't catch on to live ammo floating around, and the company level leadership that let first line supervisors get away with not knowing there was ammo floating around.

I'm not calling for everyone to be relieved, but I am saying that this unit needs to take a long, hard look at the standards, and what is actually going on in the unit.

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Responses to “Soldier hits Apache with live ammo in Fort Irwin training mishap”

  1. Esli

    Not knowing anything else but what you put here, I am going to wildly speculate. It says the Soldier was augmenting 11th AAR, so he was there to play OPFOR. Therefore, he would not have been participating in the live fire exercise with the rotational unit. (It tends to be awkward when you have real live OPFOR during a live fire exercise….). I’m going to bet that, as is often the case, there was a mixup in turn-in of live and blank ammo, or at the installation level,resulting in the repackaging of ball ammo with blank, and then it was issued out that way. How someone manages to load it in magazines without realizing that there is a problem is a different story. I’ve had my guys issued live ammo before but they noticed it immediately. Others, that haven’t noticed, have validated the blank firing adapter works as advertised.

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  2. KenWats

    Somewhere there’s a support platoon leader crapping his pants.

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  3. SFC Dunlap 173d RVN

    Oh I’m betting there’s a bunch of involuntary bowel movements going on at the NCO ranks and above. One of those rare moments when s&$t goes uphill.

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  4. timactual

    “The inspection found one live round remaining in the soldier’s weapon,”
    I’ll bet it was in the chamber, too. I have seen a few dumb things done with weapons & ammo., but I thought the new, improved, volunteer Army was supposed to keep the dumbasses out.

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  5. DaveP.

    “Nothing is foolproof in the face of a sufficiently talented fool.”

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  6. JoshO

    So the troop hit the bird with rifle fire? How do you mix up live and blank rounds? They really don’t look much alike. Otherwise good shot I suppose…

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  7. McThag

    Does anyone else remember the blanks-only red magazines with the filler in them to keep you from loading live ammo?
    You know, the ones the DoD decided were too expensive and weren’t needed anyways?
    I have to wonder how many of those magazines we could have bought for the cost of fixing that AH-64.

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  8. Krag

    RE: Does anyone else remember the blanks-only red magazines with the filler in them to keep you from loading live ammo?
    I’ve never heard of such a thing. Was it Army-only? I was USMC in the 80s and 90s and we just used regular mags regardless of what we were shooting.
    I’m guessing the soldier that fired the live rounds was quite the idiot – according to the article he kept firing even after blowing off the BFA with his first round. That’s a special kind of stupid right there.

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  9. Quartermaster

    How do you fire live ammo with a blank adapter attached? I would think the damage to the weapon would be rather spectacular.

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  10. Esli

    I’ve never seen a red magazine as described with the army, but the UK Army does use a yellow one that is only used with blanks. I haven’t actually looked at the inside of it.
    The BFA is designed to “fail” in order to not damage the weapon. It is incumbent on the operator to realize that this has happened…

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