Marines in fatal assault had no ammo

CNN ^

[Bill Davis FR]

When U.S. Marines were fired on by two Kuwaiti nationals during a training exercise Tuesday, they had no way of defending themselves, U.S. officials said.

The Marines were practicing urban warfare tactics on Failaka Island in the Persian Gulf and were carrying no ammunition for their weapons, U.S. officials said.

[fogarty]

Yep. Blanks just plain sucked. I'd rather go to a KD course twice rather than go on combat patrol exercises with blanks. At least KD course you lubricated regularly. On patrols, you also had to contend with mud, dust, and rust, all in addition to carbon inside the weapon. We smelled like CLP for days. I remember more than once snarfing down chow like pizza and wondering how much CLP I was ingesting.

[Prodigal Son]

Am I to understand that if given a clip of ammo, told to put it in their pocket, for use only in emergency, that our marines are so untrustworthy that they would shoot each other????

The thing with that is, let's say they were using blanks. That means that they would've had a blank adaptor screwed onto the end of their weapons. You can't just take that thing off in a couple of seconds. Often, the weapon won't fire the blanks properly because of gas leakage and you have to take a stick or something and really torque that blank adaptor down to fix it. In that situation, having a magazine in the pocket would not have helped. And I doubt the commanders would have consented to Marines practicing a drill with both live mags and blank mags- too easy to make a mistake and slap that "real" magazine in the weapon in the excitement.

If the area was secure, why did the MPs have ammo???? Who did they not trust, the marines?????

I've never seen an MP who was on duty without ammo- even in Germany.

[MP5]

I have trained in Saudi Arabia before, and we had magazines with red tape for the live rounds, but that was in preperation for Desert Storm.

You have to understand that you want to make the possibility of an accidental shooting 0%, so you don't give a magazine with live rounds that could be mixed up with blank rounds.

It's not a point of being untrustworthy, it's that accidents can happen when you are firing weapons and simulating battle scenarios.

[XJarhead]

If the marines are so well trained, why is it hazardous, or perhaps they are not well trained. One or the other.

I was a tactics/weapons instructor for newly commissioned Marine Lts. I worked with plenty of very sharp enlisted Marines, and, contrary to the popular myth, most of those new Lts. were pretty sharp too. All I can say about your comment is that it is the product of ignorance. You do not hand 18-20 year olds live ammo and blank ammo, send them into a training environment that has reduced visibility, where they may be wearing MOPP gear or something else that further limits their visibility or tactile skill, and hope they pull the right magazine out of their pouch when they begin shooting.

Troops are humans, and humans make mistakes, no matter how well trained they are. It's the law of statistics that if you have 1000 Marines on a training exercise, some of them are going to do something stupid at some point. The job of a commander is to reduce the risk of something horrible happening if one of those mistakes are made.

Troops are killed every year in training exercises, and the article that started this is the first I've ever heard of troops on a non-live fire exercise being killed by terrorists. So that's one dead Marine. But I can tell you that the body bag count would be much higher if you gave live rounds to all Marines on non-live fire exercises. You can bank on that.

[Chairman_December_19th_Society]

Typical knee jerk reaction from non military people.

I'm sorry, but excuse me - I am former military.

The story is inconsistent. There is discussion of an attack by Kuwati (now certified by intel as being Al Qa'eda), a firefight, a chase by MPs, and the eventual destruction of the original attackers by the MPs.

Now, I am not criticizing your version of events, but the outline provided in the posted story is, however you want to view it, inconsistent. If the marines didn't have bullets, then there was no firefight. If there was a skirmish when the MPs took matters into their own hands, then what occurred there might be a firefight, but one can hardly tell with the article as posted, now can they?

We are making a bunch of assumptions here based upon our view of the world (through either active or former military prisms, so to speak), and they are probably accurate - I'm not in question with these.

I was speaking to the article. (Which was, quite probably, not written by a military-literate person.)

[cynicom]

cent...

Read the entire story...The shooters shot the two marines in one group, got no return fire, so moved on to the second group where there were MPs. Check it out...

Also for what it is worth, the military is "reconsidering" the ammo question in such instances. Just perhaps I am not the only one that thinks the military lockstep thinking is not appropriate in every scenario. I am disappointed that our marines cannot be trusted with ammo for such use, as it has been attested to here over and over.

[MP5]

Couldn't agree with you more. Unless you've been in the military training environment, it's hard to second guess what happened.

[pawdoggie]

This reminds me of the "Slapton Sands" incident, in which some German torpedo boats managed to slip into a pre D-day training exercise off the English coast. If memory serves, hundreds of American GIs were killed, and several landing craft were sunk. There's probably no clear-cut evidence of Iraqi involvement in this (unfortunately), but I would be interested to learn where these Kuwaitis got their AKs (although they might have been "war trophies" from '91).

[lodwick]

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[Redleg Duke]

Oh, get real. If you are conducting a dry-fire training exercise in and training area and some towelheads decide to shoot, what the hell is the difference between that and two Marines off duty being gunned-down in a bazaar? To blame the SecDef or President for this is specious and rediculous!

Shit happens all over the world. Heck, there might even be snipers running around the Maryland and DC area sometime...ya gonna blame SecDef for that too?

[flyer182]

Being in the air force does not really count for being in the military, more like going to junior college.

[Sonar5]

You said:

"Also for what it is worth, the military is "reconsidering" the ammo question in such instances."

Give me a break, please. My marine Corps is not going to issue live ammo ever in an excersise such as this. It won't happen. Your contention that they are reconsidering is nothing more than hyperbole, and conjecture, not based on any official facts.

The only solution IMHO, is to place perimeter guards such as those used on any military base who always use live ammo.

It is still unknown in what capacity these Marines were acting. Some questions:

1) Were they on Guard Duty.. probably not, since anyone on guard duty in the fleet has live ammo.
2) Were they part of the excersise force and went outside the perimeter.
3) Who was responsible for perimeter security to allow this access

Again, we still do not know the whole story here, but I would never want to be on an excersise with live ammo. There is never a reason for it, and the risks outweigh the benefits. All one needs to do is look at the accident ratio on a live fire controlled range, and that is why you will never see live ammo on these excersises.

Marine safety is first in all of these excersises, and the poor Marine in charge of security has some answering to do.

Regards,
Joe

[Terriergal]

They were doing exercises people... when you pretend to be shooting at each other you don't use live ammo.

But there should have been guards posted with live ammo. Apparently some were nearby because they were able to chase them down and dole out some justice. I'm sure these people knew this would be the best opportunity to take one or two big bad Americans out, when they were training without live ammo.

[Terriergal]

The only solution IMHO, is to place perimeter guards such as those used on any military base who always use live ammo.

Bingo.

[Cboldt]

Some of the sailors guarding the Cole at Aden, Yemen had arms w/o ammo as well -- and the rules of engagement were to not fire unless fired upon first. My Senator Snowe thinks this is excusable, i.e. she accepts the excuse given by Navy command.

[Terriergal]

I'm sure they have live ammo. Just those participating in the exercise weren't loaded with live ammo. Get it? Like Sonar said, you can't be pretending to shoot each other as an exercise, with live ammo. (Then we'll be crying 'stupid military' because of that.) And, like Sonar said, you would have to post a perimeter guard, locked and loaded, around the area where they intend to carry out the exercise.

[Poohbah]

Am I to understand that if given a clip of ammo, told to put it in their pocket, for use only in emergency, that our marines are so untrustworthy that they would shoot each other????

And then someone will, in the excitement generated by an exercise, yank out the live ammo.

Maybe you've never made a mistake in your life. Most people have.

[MP5]

snarfing down chow like pizza and wondering how much CLP I was ingesting.

Actually helped MRE's taste a little better! Well we're still both here, so CLP must not be toxic.

I loved the KD course. Semper Fi

[Drango]

Being in the air force does not really count for being in the military, more like going to junior college.

OUCH...

[stuartcr]

Yeah, the security team had ammunition, and they did their job. Do you think the bad guys were going to attack someone that could shoot back if they didn't have too?