US Marine Corps misses target, finds and bombs Nemo A mishandled exercise is being blamed for four bombs – two inert, and two explosive but unarmed – being ditched On Australia's World-Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef. Two American Harrier fighter-bombers lifted off from the USS Bonhomme Richard as part of Exercise Talisman Sabre, carrying 500-pound bombs. Their target was a …
An aircraft designed by the UK, built under licence by the US. UK aircraft then scrapped and sold off to the US by our Government as a cost cutting exercise. The tragedy is not the bombs but the tech we give away for others to exploit.
Just like the jet engine the UK gave to USSR which found its way into the MIG15.
Politicians have a lot to answer for and they never learn because they seem to do a lot of it.
"Just like the jet engine the UK gave to USSR which found its way into the MIG15."
As I understand it (i.e. probably not very well), the story goes like this:
The MiG-15 designers needed an engine, and the Rolls-Royce Nene looked like an ideal candidate for the job they wanted to do. So they asked Stalin for permission to approach the British for it. He didn't think that they'd be successful ("only a fool sells his secrets to the enemy"), but gave the go-ahead anyway. The relevant British minister of the time was pro-Soviet, and gave the green light to the build-under-license transaction, although Rolls-Royce never managed to collect the license fees.
So it didn't just "find its way into the MiG-15". They approached the British with the explicit intent of incorporating the engine into the plane. Curiously, a version of this engine was license-built in the US for the F9F Panther, so it served on both sides of the Cold War...
Wasn't there a great story about how one of the Soviet delegation wore boots with special sticky soles? Walking around the factory, he was able to collect a goodly selection of dust and filings, which were analyzed back in Russia and gave insights into the alloys used.
It's remarkable what can be achieved by the human brain, if used.
Many similar stories (and even worse) in "Empire of the Clouds": http://www.amazon.co.uk/Empire-Clouds-Britains-Aircraft-Ruled/dp/0571247954/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374590679&sr=1-1&keywords=empire+of+the+clouds
Read it and weep.
"Politicians have a lot to answer for and they never learn..."
Why would they? They never suffer any consequences, and indeed are often richly rewarded. It's other people who get it in the neck.
The area the bombs were jettisoned in was one of the areas that is always designated for such in the vicinity of the Townsend Island Bombing Range
This has been substantiated by Defence's existing Environmental Impact Assessment plans, by the GBRMPA, by existing and previous notices to mariners and by subsequent clarification by both Defence and the USN.
In other words, a compelete non-story as soon as the facts have been checked. You may wish to try this in future.
"In other words, a compelete non-story as soon as the facts have been checked. You may wish to try this in future."
Err, if they jettisoned the bombs then by definition, they _did_ miss their target and therefore this is a story .. Unless of course, you wish to assert that they were practicing 'What to do with bombs when you can't drop them where you want' ..
Dropped where emergency jettison bombs have always been dropped since the inception of the Townsend Island Bombing Range. The place where they were dropped is just one of a number of such zones nearby the bombing range. Not in the slightest bit unusual.
If they'd dropped them outside of such areas, then you may have cause for concern.
This on the other hand is just an example of people who aren't aware of the full story gettting excited over something unexciting. It also reeks of the "churnalism" that the Register was crowing about not doing only a few weeks ago. From el' Reg I expect something other than a repost of the press release.
The Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage site. There are no zone to drop bombs there.
The US even offered to retrieve the bombs.
U.S. 7th Fleet spokesman Lt. David Levy said Monday the Navy was currently reviewing the possibility of retrieving the ordnances in consultation with Australian authorities.
I guess the RAAF must have imagined the bombing range they've been using for over 50 years.
The RAAF and Australian army have been dropping stuff and blowing stuff up "within" the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park for years, especially off Townsville.
Like I said, a mere 2 minutes of fact checking could have found this out.
Well thank goodness the RAF never missed any targets.
"The majority of the bombs dropped by British forces during the Kosovo conflict missed their targets, an investigation by the BBC and industry magazine Flight International has revealed.
A classified Ministry of Defence report revealed the accuracy rate of missiles fired by the Royal Air Force was just 40% - and in the case of some bombs, as low as 2%."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/879560.stm
'"The majority of the bombs dropped by British forces during the Kosovo conflict missed their targets, an investigation by the BBC and industry magazine Flight International has revealed.'
Virtually all bombs miss their target; otherwise they wouldn't need to be nearly so powerful. Most bombs miss their target by a very considerable distance, and have always done so. In the Allies' "precision" bombing of France, Germany, etc. in WW2, bombs often missed their intended targets by well over a mile. (Hardly surprising, when they were dropped from a height of several miles, often in windy conditions or in darkness, under attack by fighters and flak. See, for example, "Catch-22", passim).
Ever since the 1910s, advocates of air power have grossly exaggerated the accuracy of bombing. They get away with it because:
1. It's rotten and unpatriotic (and letting the side down) to criticize Our Brave Lads when they are doing their best to protect us from The Evil Hordes.
2. There's a lot of money at stake, and the commercial interests behind aircraft and bomb manufacturers want to keep the profits coming in.
3. There's usually no one left alive where the bombs actually fell.
4. The politicians and brass who launch the attacks are hardly likely to admit they failed pathetically.
Remember the dozens of clever "surgical strikes" that were going to snuff out Saddam Hussain before the invasion of Iraq had even begun? They killed a lot of people, but not Saddam. (Although that was probably due more to pathetically bad "intelligence" than inaccurate targetting).
@Gray Ham - >"Aborting a mission in case you bomb civilians ... this is a new procedure, right?"
"Civilians"? We Americans aren't familiar with this term. Are you referring to "non-combatant enemy personnel"?
Please TRY to use the correct terminology - I know it's difficult for Brits. However, we DO need to describe them accurately in our "collateral damage" reports.
>Assuming they hadn't run the thing aground on the reef, couldn't they have ditched the bombs near the >carrier? Unless there is a policy of dumping them somewhere shallow to allow their recovery.
In case you missed it, they had to jettison the ordinance in order to make it back to the amphibious assault ship (not a "carrier") in the first place because they ran low on fuel and needed to loose the 'dead weight' to make it safely back.
People's definitions of "carrier" vary. To my mind, if it's a ship and you can land an aircraft on it then it's a type of aircraft carrier. It might be specifically a helicopter cruiser, amphibious warfare ship, assault ship, "through-deck cruiser", helicopter carrier, or even a seaplane carrier but an aircraft carrier all the same.
However, if you are going to pull people up on definitions, check your own spelling first. It should be "ordnance", not "ordinance" - the latter being a law, instruction, regulation etc.
"and needed to loose the 'dead weight' to make it safely back."
Presumably pulling the 'Eject' handle would have been similarly effective at disposing of some dead weight.
I note that they had been trying to bomb a rather large target without success multiple times.
The USA is notable for having one of the worst trained armies in the first world. Just for reference British troops and special forces are far better trained....
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"...Just for reference British troops and special forces are far better trained...."
Really? That must be why by and large you get rolling eyes when us well trained Brits find out that it's the RAF flying close air support in dusty places. The RAF are shit at CAS.
"Completely incompetent and utterly, utterly useless in protecting ground troops in Afghanistan"
"The RAF have been utterly utterly useless. In contrast USAF have been fantastic"
Leaked emails of MAJ James Loden 3 PARA, Herrick IV 2006
They always have been. The reputation of the RAF for blue on blue is historically among the best/worst.
The record of the RAF in WW2 for getting things totally wrong is absolutely abysmal. Typhoon pilots were a law unto themselves. Ask both the RN and Army,. Bomber Command was probably worse considering they sometimes killed hundreds of Toms at a time. Fighter Command doesn't get off either. First RAF aircraft shot down in WW2? Hurricanes on Spitfires, Douglas bader? shot down by a Spitfire. Guy Gibson VC? Mosquito shot down by another Spitfire. Can you see a picture forming here?
We never shoot our own, or anyone from an allied country. Our tanks never engage each other. Our SF never screw up dropping gear in the wrong place or engaging each other 'cos they didn't even know they were there. The RN never shoot down Army helos, kill civvies or park ships on rocks at great cost to taxpayers. And we never do any of these things 'cos we are so much better trained.
Another pointless, jingoistic, dick measuring contest from the historically uninformed and never been uniformed.
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The AV-8B Harrier can't land vertically with a bomb load, one of the restrictions of this type of aircraft. The Bonhomme Richard is an amphibious assault ship, not an aircraft carrier as such, no arresting gear. The park covers 345,400 square kilometers. It is quite likely that the aircraft could not reach a safe drop point outside the park and return to their carrier with sufficient fuel to land. So, your choices become 1) Bomb the civilians that are parked in your bombing range, 2) drop your ordinance in the safest place you can reach and still have enough gas to land, or 3) drop the whole aircraft with the ordinance in the drink. They found a deep water location and dropped 4 chunks of metal in it, with plans already underway to recover them. No bang. No large hole in the Coral Reef, which would have happened if they chose shallower (and easier to retrieve from) water. Pilots safe. Coral safe. Passing ships safe. Idiots in boats in a bombing range safe. Ideally it would never have happened, but is it really worth headline news across the entire planet ?
Never let the facts get in the way of bashing the Murricans.
Hot-dogging - no, following assigned mission profile.
Cut ski lift cable - yes
People killed - yes (unfortunately)
Burned cockpit evidence? No way, most of the "evidence" isn't in the airplane anyway. The US never denied responsibility for this accident. There was no cover-up.
Tell you what, the next time someone in your neighborhood decides they are in need of some Liebensraum, call and press one for American English, two for Spanish, three for British English, then leave a message, your phone call is important to us. The NSA will be recording your call, so we don't have to.
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Saturday. Nice to see the A380 and the Arrows, and a fabulously quiet climb out for such a beast (Respect to Rolls Royce). And as somebody usually being rude about BAE, I'll tip my hat and say that they sponsor an excellent show, and their display stand was excellent and the staff great at explaining the tech they were using.
Of course, there was a reason the A380 was going back for more training - they didn't put the wheels on the runway at Fairford simply because they had not yet covered "Landings" in the manual. Hope they'd read it by the time they got back, but we'd have heard if not...
But I have to say that amongst all the hot shot afterburner jockeys, and new shiney kit, the stand out moments were those fabulous loons of the Italian AIr Force doing a full 360 roll in a reasonably large transport aircraft, and the Meteor doing its stuff - so ungainly and primitive looking when you see it on the ground, and truly graceful when flying.
Here's to next year!
This http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/350498.stm might explain why some people are a bit nervous. It would appear that, where they are not just pure lumps of metal, these things might not be totally safe if you bump into one. I'm sure the naval recovery bods are OK with this and have procedures and equipment to suit, but they're not the only users of the sea, or around there, underneath it*.
I'm not saying it would be safer to go piling into a ship chock full of munitions, fuel etc with something dangling from an extremity that might well be armed and dangerous, but given the fragility of the reef (in a number of ways) it is a bit of an unfortunate place to do it, from a PR point of view if nothing else.
*I had a nice trip in a yellow submersible vessel of some kind around there. Other tourists missed their slot. I wondered aloud if in the case of the Germans they'd been looking for something greyer with U and a three digit number on the side. Not every appreciated this for some reason.
Usually training bombs are filled with cement to make them the same weight as the live variety. The link you posted was from 1999 so probably a similar situation happened during one of the many Balkans conflicts.
The Harrier sucks in hot weather enviroments as it just does not have the power to land loaded. This is relevant when you consider future F-35's will have the exact same problem and will end up having to drop expensive weaponry if not used. I assume they are ok landing with a pair of sidewinders else stand carrier CAP is going to be really costly!
"This is relevant when you consider future F-35's will have the exact same problem ..."
Only for the Yanks. The British government will have sold or scrapped its QE class carriers before it is able to afford the aircraft, as part of the continuing glidepath to a single ship Navy. And the RAF & Army needn't feel too smug, because they're on a similar trip to the one aircraft air force and the one tank army. In Britain we call this slow trudge to disarmament a "strategic defence review".
Experience of previous long-lead defence procurement decisions involves mothballing things you ordered and then forget what you wanted to do with them, and after a few years of expensive storage selling them to somebody you hope won't use them against you, for a fraction of the money actually paid.
"Experience of previous long-lead defence procurement decisions involves mothballing things you ordered and then forget what you wanted to do with them, and after a few years of expensive storage selling them to somebody you hope won't use them against you, for a fraction of the money actually paid."
Running costs for having the stuff sitting around ready to use is easily 100 times the purchase price when you factor everything in. If it's been sitting in a warehouse at least it's not costing much.
Also: what makes you think something hasn't been sneaked into the avionics on such sales to ensure it CAN'T be used against you?
"Also: what makes you think something hasn't been sneaked into the avionics on such sales to ensure it CAN'T be used against you?"
You have a point there sir. Although the conspiracy theory is a bit much. Given the pigs ear made over Chinook software and more than a few other avionic software problemettes, it seems surprising that our kit can be used against anybody, even when its in our hands.
So, to recap...
1: American fighter pilots fly out on a routine training sortie to bomb the living shite out of a pre-determined, established target practice zone. They're flying aircraft that cannot land with external ordnance aboard without probably killing everyone.
2: Upon arrival, a bunch of idiots in boats are on the site which has been designated to have the living shite bombed out of it.
3: After repeated attempts to drop the ordnance on target, presumably with some loud sailor on the radio back on their ship screaming for said idiots afloat to vacate the bombing range with the swiftness (and being studiously ignored,) the jets are low on fuel and have to return NOW.
4: The pilots were left with several unsavory choices.
4.1: Bomb the living shite out of the target range with seaborne idiots in the drop zone, potentially killing them, injuring them, causing them severe property damage, or all of the above.
4.2: Attempt to land with ordnance aboard, potentially causing said ordnance to explode, killing the pilot, any deck crew in the vicinity, and potentially damaging or even destroying the whole craft.
4.3: Ditch their entire fighter jets into the ocean and eject, getting very wet and cold while the SAR helicopters scramble to pick them up.
4.4: Drop the bombs on a designated disposal site which is noted primarily for its relative geographic closeness to a natural wonder of the world, but well away enough from the site to be sure that even if the bombs detonated, the site would be undamaged, as would anyone diving or sailing at the site.
5: Having chosen to go with option 4.4, the option that causes no loss of life, damage or destruction of property save the loss of property which was already written off (the bombs,) nor damage to any persons or places of significant natural impact, the pilots and their entire military and nationality are heavily criticized by people who cherry-pick the story for the words "bomb" and "Great Barrier Reef" and conclude that Americans are recklessly bombing a priceless natural wonder, who then proceed to rip them a new one.
Thanks for that.
The Great Barrier Reef is one of the natural wonders of the world, and the more so of Australia. So of course it tends to have quite a few people boating and swimming around it - especially in summer.
I wonder why the US Navy and Marines can't find somewhere else to drop their bombs. The Florida Keys, perhaps, or New Orleans - or Hawaii.
I probably would have opted for 4.1 on the basis that after a few idiots die because of failure to heed the appropriate warnings, we'd have fewer of these types of incidents.
Good thing for the idiots they don't let me make those recommendations.
Continents aren't islands. Plus it needs to be uninhabited by humans. Plus a million other details. Once used as a training site, they're also pretty hard to put back into general purpose use. So if it was designated before the Reef was made a world heritage park, it pretty much stays a training range.
It's not a question of easy or hard (although actual training sites tend not to be easy even if twits think they ought to be), it's a matter of duplicating the conditions for the flight and bomb run: temperature, actual water content in the air, wind patterns, etc.
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