Three Humvees were utterly annihilated during a botched airdrop at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany.
Three vehicles fell out of the back of C-130’s during a training exercise for the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade on April 11, 2017 where they dropped more than 150 items.
Sgt. John Skipper of 1st Battalion, 91st Cavalry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy, was charged in May for playing a part in the destruction of the three Humvees.
The charges indicate that a military equipment malfunction was not the reason the Humvees slipped from their harnesses.
Humvees fall during botched airdrop (YouTube)
Brig. Gen. Tony Aguto, commander of the 7th Army Training Command, decided to court-martial Skipper, on charges of destroying government property and making a false official statement.
According to Article 108 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, destruction of property is an offense.
Negligent destruction has a maximum punishment of a year in prison, a bad-conduct discharge and forfeiture of all pay and allowances. The maximum charges for destruction of government property are dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and 10 years in prison.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft dropped roughly 150 supply bundles, vehicles, communications equipment and weapons systems during the Saber Junction 16 exercise.
Keep an eye out at approximately 20 seconds, 59 seconds, and 1:32 into the video to see the carnage
Humvees fall during botched airdrop (YouTube)
In the video, a sergeant first class can be heard laughing and swearing as the vehicles fall out of the sky and plummet to the ground.
According to Stars and Stripes, the sergeant first class is an “observer trainer coach” assigned to the 7th ATC’s Joint Multinational Readiness Center. He received an administrative letter of reprimand for his role in the video.
“The reprimand addressed the unprofessional comments the soldier made during the video, and the fact that he shared the video with others, which resulted in it being posted to social media by an unknown individual,” Christian Marquardt, a 7th ATC spokesman, told Stars and Stripes.
The video was later posted to the U.S. Army W.T.F. Moment’s Facebook page where it received more than one million views.
According to the United States Army Europe website, “Exercise Saber Junction 17 is a U.S. Army Europe-directed exercise designed to assess the readiness of the U.S. Army’s Stryker-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment to conduct unified land operations, with a particular emphasis on rehearsing the transition from garrison to combat operations, and exercising operational and tactical decision-making and skills.”
