NEWS: F-16 Jet Fires on NJ School

Looks like this plane came out of Andrews Airforce base. Any connection with the ATS Holloween Hoax that was played out this
past weekend. Same Base used in the Hoax...

Only if CNN is in on it too!! heh

Misfit

"It's war".........war is not in New Jersey"


Have you been to New Jersey?

I think we should strafe NJ more often....


[edit on 5-11-2004 by skippytjc]

wow.... at least it was a night time when no students, teachers etc. were there... could have been very bad...

I first read this article at home last night, made me think about something...

I live about 5-7 miles from an Air National Guard base here in NW Ohio.... I see F-16s fly over just about every day... this could've happened right here were I live... wow...

Have you been to New Jersey?

I think we should strafe NJ more often....

I agree, or at least whomever designed the roads should be strafed!

Perhaps the school was actually part of the exercise?

*watches as the paranoids put on their tin foil hats*

easy... felllas.... my companies HQ is in NJ...

well on second thought.... yeah take'em out

I was watching the news last night and they claimed that the ammo were duds or something to that effect. They worded it quite strangely, but any object that is going fast enough to go through a roof is no dud that I would ever want to be hit by.

I'm not going any further with the remarks of ignorancy that have been posted - seems many here are actually defending a major fu*k-up that will be swept like all the rest of them.

HI, I have your remark of ignorance right here. No one is defending the accident, but they happen. That is why they are called accidents. There are a million reasons why this could have happened, and I am sure that the pilot will not walk away unscathed. I do not think he should lose his flight status, but he should maybe have some more time in a simulator.

What other major screw ups have there been that we ignorant people seem to be defending? How many people in the last 20 years, civilians, have died in milatary training accidents?

I am still waiting for one of you to try to blame this on Bush...

but any object that is going fast enough to go through a roof is no dud that I would ever want to be hit by.

Amen to that!

Hey these things happen (seriously..they do). Thank goodness no one was hurt. After working out in White Sands in the Army's ADA programs I can tell you that worse things have happened and some very very bad things have been averted. No conspiracies, just stupidity or bad luck.

Let�s just say I get nervous when I take a commercial flight over Nevada eh?

Or..
Maybe he was ordered to fire on the school, a test to see if he was willing to fire on his own people in preparation for the coming revolution?

Originally posted by esdad71
I am still waiting for one of you to try to blame this on Bush...

Bush ordered the attack!!!, the school was full of liberals, the conservatives have been firing warning shots!!! And if that school's teachers or student's parents vote for any liberal again, B-52's will come next!!! J/K I doubt that there was any conspiricy, probably somebody switched the bases coffee to decaffe just before the mission planning or something. More likely the error occured during the planning of the exercise instead of the pilot switching targets. What we don't know is whether or not the pilot hesitated or questioned the orders. I wonder who's going to be court marshalled.

[edit on 11/5/2004 by cyberdude78]

Ladies and Gentlemen,


Can I point out a couple of possibilities.

Why do you think they probably scheduled this, and no doubt thousands of past training sorties like it after school hours....to minimise the risks of a stuff up perhaps...planning around community concerns? I assume military personnel and thier families are part of the communities in the area too? Or are they treated as unwanted aliens in the USA today?

So the target on the range is 3 1/2 miles from the school? So did a USAF officer state this, or did a journalist interpret it as this? Could it be that the school was 3 1/2 miles from the boundary of the range, and if so how many miles inside the range was the actual target.

You dont fire 20mm rounds out of a vulcan cannon at a range target from 7,000 feet up for a strafing run. Its way outside the effective parameters of the gun itself, and a greater distance than the range of some of the missiles these aircraft are designed to fire. There are safeties on the gun including (at least in my references) a honking big guard cover that has to be flicked off before you can press the fire button.

There was no reason for the pilot to want to fire that gun at that time at that altitude.The only way to fire that gun other than deliberately, is if it was a malfunction that set it off (if it was the pilot then he deserves to be made latrine officer for the sort remainder of his ANG career) then it is unfair to cruxify the pilot. He might even deserve a commendation. Only 25 rounds fired. What if it was his swift actions dealing with the malfunction that stopped a hundred more rounds being fired?

I was talking to some mates who are former RAN. One fellow used to maintain skyhawks on our carrier when we had one. They had an older form of 20mm gun and while it never happened to us he said it was possible. Another remembered being on a visit to Pearl ten or so years ago when a USN warship's 20mm Phalanx defense gun fired a brief burst across the port into Pearl city, a result of a malfunction during a test drill. Another remembered a .50cal MG on his ship firing during a safety check of all things due to a faulty safety. I myself had several experiences of witnessing what are called runaway guns. They all involved elderly M-60s which continued to fire after the trigger was released. The drill was to twist the belt feed of ammo until it broke off or jammed the gun.

My guess is its a bit harder with a 20mm chain gun at 7,000 feet.

Give the guy the benefit of the doubt and await the hearings findings (because folks, the USAF doesnt want screw ups either....why do you think they didnt give Bush a hard time for bailing? ) for the facts.

Unless of course all your about is beating up on military folks for kicks.

[edit on 6-11-2004 by craigandrew]

As far as I am aware USAF is not known for the accuracy of its shooting... My cousin was in Royal Artillery in GW1 and he said his greatest fear was blue on blue...

Originally posted by craigandrew
Only 25 rounds fired. What if it was his swift actions dealing with the malfunction that stopped a hundred more rounds being fired?

That is a very good thought and observation.

Bottom line tho, no matter WHAT we (normal people) are told, we will never know what really happened. We never do.

Misfit

One more point occurred to me. When I was in the Reserves in Perth (Western Australia) there were several ranges we were able to use to the North including at least one then controlled by the RAAF for gunnery and bombing practice.

On the Army survey map it looked massive (although in a country this size there are bigger). Then you look at the boundaries and notations. There are ranges within ranges (we were using a rifle range on the outer boundary) and buffer zones (one between us and the bombing/aerial gunnery range, and another between the rifle range and state/public land).

Its miles from the nearest town but theres the odd farm around it.

Urban/rural sprawl is amazing.

A place called Warnbro south of Perth is one of the biggest residential housing areas in Perth's southern coastal suburbs now. A lot of Navy families live there. In WW2 it was isolated bushland and a designated gunnery training range for all three services, for units working up for the SWPA. The must have fired off tens of thousands of rounds. In the 1960s and 70's they did a thorough UXB clearance before the land was sold off.

Yet occassionally every few years, Army Bomb disposal Engineers still get called out to dispose of a mortar round or shell that gets dug up in someones garden or road works.

Here is an up date from someone that is familiar with the range and its use. The first thing I have to say is the school is in the wrong direction from the areas that are used by jet aircraft. And what I mean by this is any jets using the range would be going in the other direction when dropping or using any weapons that would be on the range. This is something that was never reported by the media in any reports. I feel that this was a malfunction of the jets gun going off and hitting the school.

In a press release from the press of Atlantic City [11-9-04] �the pilot was flying parallel at 7,000 feet, with the jets nose slightly higher, putting the plane at 110 degrees to set up a high angle strafe when the 25 rounds were released.� This supports the idea that this f-16 must have had a malfunction of its gun.