Fisherman nets Live Missile

Fisherman nets Live Missile

technology.iafrica.com

He thought he'd netted a big one, but after reeling it in a Florida fisherman found he really did have a live catch on his hands — a very unstable air-to-air guided missile, police said on Tuesday.

Commercial fisherman Rodney Salomon never panicked, and kept long-line fishing aboard his "Bold Venture" boat in the Gulf of Mexico for another 10 days before returning to port

(visit the link for the full news article)

This could have ended very tragically - the fisherman had it strapped to the top of his boat for 10 days while fishing before returning to port.
He also encountered rough seas and lightning storms during that period.

He even netted another one days after, that happened to be beeping so he wisely let it go.

Is this related to recent cases of airline pilots seeing missiles flying past their aircraft?

technology.iafrica.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by deltaalphanovember


This was on our local news last night, but it is fairly common. Two weekends ago I helped pick up 3 large bombs from the beach at Alligator Point, FL. There is a very large bombing and munitions range in the Gulf of Mexico. There are several military bases that use it. They used to use a small island in the Caribbean, but eventually the locals moved us out of there. Now we use a large area directly West of Tampa Bay and to the North.

I don't think it has anything the things pilots have been seeing.

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
Is this related to recent cases of airline pilots seeing missiles flying past their aircraft?

Possibly, and it may be something to do with AUTEC, see this thread:

AUTEC

Apparently it's on the cusp of the Bermuda Triangle near Florida...

It's like a messed up version of Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea'!

Why did he strap it to his roof? I would of dropped that bad boy back in the water for some one else to find.

reply to post by purehughness

It's like a messed up version of Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea'!

Hemingway was probably sitting right there at the corner when he wrote that! A lot of his writing was done in the Florida Keys!

reply to post by Now_Then


He is probably on a Terrorist Watch List for bring live ordnance into the US ... poor guy, he really has created problems for himself.

reply to post by getreadyalready


No doubt! Though I can't imagine this fisherman being hounded by sharks after his catch!

UPDATE


Missle was inert, was fired from an F-15 in 2004. Military was there not to disarm it, but to remove "sensitive technology" still attached to the missle.

LINK

reply to post by MajesticJax


What about the one that was "ticking" according to the fisherman. A ticking timebomb comes to mind. I have no experience or knowledge in missile technology, but surely this indicates a bomb that is not inert?

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
reply to post by MajesticJax

 

What about the one that was "ticking" according to the fisherman. A ticking timebomb comes to mind. I have no experience or knowledge in missile technology, but surely this indicates a bomb that is not inert?

Was probably an ELT type tracker. The Air and Naval bases almost never use live rounds in their training over the Gulf. They go live at White Sands and other desert ranges sometimes. They even go live above Eglin Air Force base a lot of times. I used to have a great vantage point from my pool deck to watch the C-130's train. Really cool to watch, but a little worrisome in case one got away from them!

Anyway, the ticking one probably still had reserve power for the tracking they use when playing their games. I am sure that is the technology they wanted to recover from the other one.

reply to post by getreadyalready


When I was in Anti-Aircraft, we used to fire live over the ocean into False Bay - those shells had an altitude sensor. I never imagined what would happen if a fisherman brought up an exploded shell from the sea bed and what that would do to the altitude sensor. Scary.

You do state - "almost never" .. which is the same as a "near miss".

ps. what is an ELT tracker?

[edit on 10/6/2009 by deltaalphanovember]

reply to post by deltaalphanovember


sua.faa.gov...

I can't find the link I want, but here is a map of the military airspace around Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

ELT = Emergency Locator Transmitter. For military hardware it would be different than the ones used for downed aircraft, lost hikers, etc. But, I am sure the ordinance they are practicing with has something similar for tracking, so they can "score" the bomb runs, and the war games.

After a certain amount of time at the bottom of the Gulf, I am sure the batteries run out. That is why the one from 2004 wasn't 'ticking' like the one he threw back. Just a guess on my part.

I do know that ordinance washes up on the beaches along the panhandle almost daily! It is normally harmless (at least that is what we are always told).

The reason I stated "almost" never use live ammo on the Gulf. It is extremely difficult to restrict boaters from the areas they use. It is much easier to restrict access over their land-based ranges. Therefore, they use the Ocean based sites for targeting, tracking, high-altitude drops, air to air combat, etc. Don't want to be bombing fishermen or Cuban refugees!

Once in a while they use live ordinance on uninhabited islands within the ranges, but I think they have quit almost all of this also.

[edit on 10-6-2009 by getreadyalready]

This has happened several times in the past few years in FLorida. What they are really having a problem with is finding old munitions around schools and housing developments. The military used Central FLorida including part of now-metro Orlando area as a bombing/training range during WW2 and they did not clean it up prior to the land being sold for development. They have evacuated neighborhoods and schools in the past two years working to clean up one stretch in particular.

There also is a bomb range in the Ocala National Forest where they tested the bunker busters that were deployed in Baghdad, they send pr releases to the media outlets so people won't deluge 9-11 when exercises are under way.

Yea if were seeing this over here, just imagine how many innocents sh#t like this has killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The military can't even control their own weapons.

reply to post by secretagent woooman


Wow, I can imagine the lawsuits if one of those suckers killed or injured an innocent person.

We are having a similar problem here, where land is being claimed because ancestors were moved off the ground by the apartheid government and it became a military testing range.
The government is saying rightly it is too dangerous for them too move back now.

Sigweje community was dispossessed of their ancestral land under the apartheid regime.In this process they lost most of their material belongings, access to natural resourcesand more importantly their dignity and identity as a tribe. While land restoration was thepreferred option of the Sigweje people, the state (SANDF) was unwilling to relinquishthe land. The SANDF had cited two key reasons for this, namely that Boschoek is ofkey strategic importance to them as a training base in the province, which will not be replaceable in terms of geographical features; and the farm has unexploded ordinanceson it which would be too expensive to clear and unsafe for settlement purposes.

Link