Posted on 07/30/2020 12:11:42 AM PDT by L.A.Justice
EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14) — KFOX14 has learned a Ft. Bliss soldier was seriously injured during a training session last week when his tank was accidentally shot by another tank.
Now witnesses say the Army needs to be held accountable for the accident.
“The life of a soldier, potentially two soldiers, was put at risk,” said a witness to the accident.
Around 3 a.m. on Monday, July 20, a witness said he was watching a training session on Ft. Bliss where tanks were shooting live rounds at wooden targets.
“There was a live fire exercise going on, in which these tanks were basically simulating fighting against an enemy,” said the witness.
But during the exercise, the witness said one of the tanks accidentally identified another tank as a target, turning the simulated war game into the real thing.
(Excerpt) Read more at kfoxtv.com ...
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The TV station is not naming the "witness"...
Would the army try to find out who went to the TV station?
One Abrahams tank attacked another Abrahams tank...
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a33435681/us-army-abrams-tank/
Is there any chance that the tank commander could be court-martialed for shooting at the friendly tank?
I would never make light of a situation like this so this is a serious observation.
I really thought that maybe these tanks were AI or something because it kept saying the tank shot him.
I did right that a person did the shooting.
But would that kind of mistake be written twice in an article?
It would be like saying a gun shot at a person.
Either way, prayers all over and the negligence needs to be addressed.
Very much so. Only two people in the tank could be responsible for this mistake - the track commander and the gunner (or if cross-training, the people in those positions at the time). Those are the only two crew positions that have the responsibility of identifying and prosecuting a target. And unless the track commander had left the gunner to prosecute the engagement on his own, he would have had to authorized the gunner to engage each target.
This is basically the current way US tank crews engage targets, borrowed from elsewhere:
If the commander sees the target he would say, “Gunner, Sabot, Tank” this notifies the crew but especially the gunner, tells the loader and gunner what round to use and what the target is. The gunner would reply, “identified” if he has it in his sights, the loader would say, “up” meaning the breech is up and the round is loaded, the commander would say, “fire” and before the gunner shoots he says, “on the way”. The commander will reply, “target” for the kill or “doubtful”, or “low”, “right”, “over” etc...
It would sound like this:
TC “gunner, sabot, tank”
GNR “identified
LDR “up”
TC “fire”
GNR “on the way”
TC “target cease fire”, “driver back up”.
Basic Training Aug. 1966...54 yrs ago.
He may have to have the cost of the damaged tank deducted from his pay.
Makes one wonder what the other tank was doing in the impact/zone.
“Makes one wonder what the other tank was doing in the impact/zone.”
And if they were indeed shooting wooden practice targets you’d think that they were using training rounds rather than Sabot.
And no IR identifiers in use to prevent this?
I didn’t read the article yet, but maybe this was the coax and not the main gun, or the tank commander’s 7.62. Dunno.
If the crews were buttoned up inside their M1A2s, there’s little chance of a crew member being injured by a training round.
Maybe the TC was sitting up in the hatch and was hit by shrapnel or a small arms round.
I will read the article now ...
OK, I have no doubt there WAS a friendly fire incident, but the witness they quoted is frigging clueless about the M1A1.
“They fired the round, and the round was a training round, it wasn’t an explosive one,” said the witness. “Otherwise the whole crew would be dead, most likely.””
No. The crew would not most likely be dead. Period. The M1A1 provides extraordinary crew protection. Even a HEAT round would only rung their bells if they were buttoned up.
And this witness is glad someone with “first aid training” responded to a partial amputation/de-gloving??? Idiot. Medics, not first aid.
Who IS this person who spoke to the media?
Again, no doubt the tanker was injured and prayers for the best possible recovery, but this witness doesn’t even sound like an Army wife.
Article says training rounds were used or everyone in the impacted tank would be dead. Rounds weren’t explosive.
The tank doing the shooting was being commanded by a woman. She shot her own platoon leader.
I prevented something similar at Fort Hood in the early seventies. While observing a practice run for a firepower demonstration, I noticed something that just didn’t look right, there was a hump in a brush pile. When I tried to point this out to the range control tower, they first brushed me off but I finally got them to at least look at the pile. Using their binoculars, they saw that a tank had wandered into the range and was parked in the brush. They held the practice until the tank ‘un-assed’ the area.
Clearly there was a screw up, but it isn’t clear at all who screwed up. Could be either tank crew, or the people in charge of the range at the time.
And yeah, tanks don’t shoot anything, people in tanks shoot things.
Dern love triangles...
I heard the same through the grapevine, but unconfirmed. Also heard they were operating hatch open, not buttoned up.
I was an Abrams platoon leader almost (gulp) 30 years ago, so some of what I'm saying may be a little dated. The 120mm in the Abrams has two primary rounds, HEAT (High explosive anti-tank) and sabot. HEAT is a much heavier round that inflicts damage by explosive force. SABOT is essentially a dart that damages by penetration at extreme high velocity. A HEAT training round is inert, but is essentially a flying cinder block. The service (war time) sabot is made of depleted uranium (and prior versions, tungsten) and are fin stabilized (the 120mm on the Abrams is a smoothbore). The target practice sabot is cone stabilized and made of machined aluminum. The use of a cone structure to stabilize as well as the use of a lighter metal allows the target practice sabot round to closely replicate the velocity and trajectory of a service sabot round out to normal engagement ranges (2-3 km), after which velocity and trajectory drop off much more quickly than a service round.
Out at NTC at Fort Irwin one very basic technique was used to provide accidents of the type described. The thermal sights of the Abrams have both a black hot and white hot setting, depending on how the gunner wants hot targets to appear. In White Hot, objects hotter than the background appear lighter ("whiter") and "Black Hot" is basically a negative image in which hotter objects appear darker. At NTC, they put cooling blankets on the target (basically blankets of gel similar to the blue icepacks people put in their coolers) to supercool the targets. A gunner would set his thermals on Black Hot and the target panels would glow white against the background, while the real vehicles in his unit would go dark/black. Not sure why something similar wasn't being used at Bliss.
The only incident I saw at NTC during several rotations out there was an overzealous observer/controller got his M113 out in front of the firing line and it was struck by a petal from a discarding sabot training round that went over his head. Could have been lethal, and put a dent in the 113.
"Out at NTC at Fort Irwin one very basic technique was used to provide PREVENT accidents of the type described."
More coffee...
I served at Ft Bliss/McGregor Range from 79 to 81. I liked it there.
It’s interesting to see others that were in the same area.
This happened at Bliss before in the mid 90s....Bradley’s on a live fire range traversed to see another Bradley on another range and shot into it killing 1-2 soldiers. Thermal sight training IIRC. Maybe it was Hood?
Where did you see/hear that?
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