Ain’t nothin but jackrabbits and ‘yotes out there, so probably didn’t hit anything important...and destroying Eloy or Arizona City would probably be considered urban renewal
“I meant to do that!”
Shouldn’t that be difficult to do? That is, requiring more than one step?
There’s a Martha McSally joke in here somewhere ;-)
I’ve been in that lovely desert. Sure hope the cacti weren’t damaged
Musta been quite a show! Wasteful, though...
Was it one of the areas held by Mexican Invaders?
The M156 Smoke (White Phosphorus) warhead is used primarily for target marking purposes. The total weight of the loaded, unfuzed warhead is 8.9 lbs. of which approximately 2 lbs. is white phosphorus (WP) and 2 ounces of Composition B high explosive. Upon detonation, the high explosive ruptures the warhead and disperses the WP to generate a white smoke cloud. http://www.solidpartners.com.my/product/armament/crv7-rocket-weapon-system-rws/warhead-various-type-usage/m156-smoke-white
They missed you.
The Arizona desert shrugged it off, and was not disturbed over the incident.
The guy with the office across from me is a retired A-10 pilot and trainer who worked out of DM. I asked him about this today and his response was, essentially, “It happens all the time and it happens worse. I’m amazed this one made the news”. Some hilarious stories followed and then we all went back to work.
We need a pic of this to pass around south of the border as Trump’s new anti-caravan missile.
“Okay so the button works...”
Air Force jets fly themselves or what?
I remember when some brass came to see an MLRS live fire - somehow the limit switch broke and the rocket pod pointed all 12 rockets at the Command M113 full of Colonels. It sure was fun to see everyone pile out and run for cover! Nothing went off, though.
In 2004, an Air National Guard F-16 accidentally fired its M61 Vulcan cannon during a test of its airborne laser; eight rounds hit the Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School on Long Island’s south shore.
No students or teachers were present in the building when the incident occurred, and there were no injuries.
unintentionally release
I think of base ball
In the mid 1980s, the F-18 was new and cute. They were light years more capable than the preceding aircraft.
I was on a mortar shoot at Camp Pendleton. We were sharing airspace with some F-18s (We would fire our mortars for a period and the F-18s would drop some bombs). They were using practice bombs (bombs filled with concrete and a little smoke to give a tell where it hit). We were having as much fun watching the F-18s lob bombs as we were shooting our mortars. When I say lobbing, it means that the planes would execute a roll and as they were upside down they would release their bombs. It is the aerial equivalent of throwing a hand grenade. Well, one plane lobbed one very short. It landed about a hundred feet in front of us. We were sprinting to avoid the damned thing. Our first thoughts were to take it home as a souvenir.
One of the pilots must have felt the need to report the error; which would have ruined the guilty party's career. So we got a radio transmission for range safety asking for the distance of the bombs impact. Without missing a beat, my radios operator said it hit about a 1000 meters in-front of us and could they do it again, because it was "so cool." About a minute later, the F-18s flew over and waved their wings at us and the lobbed the rest of their ordnance in-front of us (at about a 1000 meters away). We all wished we had beer to make the experience perfect.