All dwell weapon coaching for the Army’s Special Forces models, and many of the parts that assist them, might be shut down for a lot of this week attributable to a security stand-down — after a soldier was unintentionally shot throughout a coaching occasion, the service confirmed to Army.com.
A seventh Infantry Division soldier at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state was unintentionally shot April 25 by a 1st Special Forces Group soldier with an M249 Squad Computerized Weapon, or SAW, gentle machine gun, in line with one supply with direct data of the scenario. The injured soldier was in steady situation and recovering at Madigan Army Medical Middle.
Beginning Tuesday, all Special Forces, civil affairs and psychological operations models could have a three-day security stand-down. The pause consists of all scheduled dwell weapons coaching being canceled, in line with Maj. Russell Gordon, a spokesperson for 1st Special Forces Command.
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The incident occurred throughout force-on-force coaching when dwell ammunition was unintentionally blended in with blanks. Clean ammo is often utilized in coaching and acts in all the identical methods as dwell ammunition does in actual weapons, besides there isn’t any projectile.
The Army usually takes nice care to maintain clean and dwell ammunition separate, and contaminating one set of the ammunition with the opposite is taken into account among the many most damning security mishaps doable.
“It’s prudent of us to take speedy actions now to do an inside evaluation as a part of a security stand-down,” Gordon stated in an announcement to Army.com.
It is unclear how dwell ammunition made its manner into clean fireplace coaching. Service officers are nonetheless investigating the incident.
The 2 varieties of ammunition are visually very distinct. It is unclear whether or not the SAW was loaded with a belt of dwell ammunition. That weapon, which makes use of 5.56mm rounds, may also be fired utilizing a rifle journal, through which a small variety of dwell rounds might have been extra simply blended in, although that may nonetheless be an egregious error.
All models have been ordered to conduct a listing of all of their arms rooms and make sure that the ammunition storage is in compliance with Army laws. Crew rooms, the place Special Forces troopers usually retailer gear, might be inspected by senior management. Units will even have an amnesty interval for troopers to show in ammunition that will not be presently saved correctly.
Noncommissioned officers will even obtain further coaching associated to ammunition dealing with and conducting protected firearms coaching.
This Special Forces security stand-down follows an unrelated stand-down in February, when the Army Nationwide Guard grounded its helicopters after back-to-back AH-64 Apache crashes. Two Mississippi Guardsmen died in a single incident, and two Utah Guardsmen have been injured in a separate crash.
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