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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.
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.
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.
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?
but it was mostly peaceful, so it’s OK.
They took tanks away from Marines. Marines don’t dork around with tanks. (they may dork around personally though. hah)
Another female tank commander?