I thought Humvees could fly.

... already wins the thread!

it may be my favorite line from any TV show ever.

good one!

My eyes leak with joy

I'm sure it's already stripped down to its broken bones already.

They don't care what happens to their product as long as we the people keep paying them.

If I sell you a laptop which you then put in the dishwasher, you don't get to chide me for selling it to you.

Why should I care about your fuck up? I'll gladly sell you another, but again, it's on you to not do something dumb with it.


(Preemptive post)

God, the MIC is going to pay me so much for this shill post!

"product must be able to withstand a fall from at least 10,000 feet".

The MIC is strong, they have people spout propaganda for them for FREE all day long! Now that is power!

Did he call in to Command HQ and say "Yes sir. They all landed
right side up. And they all hit the ground in record time."

Last edited Fri Apr 22, 2016, 06:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Is that really cost effective? Seems like even if all the chutes opened properly, there's still considerable risk of damage.

I guess that's a detail of waging war that I never thought about before.

... they'll tell you that those bedsheets don't always work!

though also most expensive, thing to happen to those damned things.

God damned army jeeps.

Any piece of equipment can be airdropped at least once.

In any airdrop of vehicles and heavy equipment, you can expect to lose 5-10%. Usually the chute get tangles up and doesn't deploy properly. In this case, there appears to be some rigging error as the pallets separated from the chutes.

Remember that the Army definition of an "airhead" is the space between a paratroopers ears.

than for one paratrooper.

hopefully doesn't panic and properly deploys his reserve chute which gives him a second chance.

when jumping from ~1200 feet.

he has a much batter chance than the equipment on a pallet.

I watched an M56 SPAT "candle" into a DZ.

Most of the parachute operations envisioned losing two of a thousand men to parachute malfunctions.

That would run about three of a thousand chute failures with 99 of each hundred successfully deploying their reserve chute.

You could sing a few verses of "blood on the risers"

Who gives a shit?

I fear the worst for them.

I bet you the vehicle crew is picking up the pieces of the vehicle and their junior lieutenant getting stuck doing a bunch of paperwork for his commander.

USAF loadmasters only secure them as a package to the cargo floor and push them out when the time comes

Jeeps, supplies , and even a tank.

Shits happens when you drop/slide shit out of a Cargo plane---C130.

He believes it was deliberate, possibly by a rigger with a grudge against the Man. All three had good canopies, and then all three had the exact same tether failure. An investigation is ongoing. The observer who uploaded the video will also be in a world of shit, and will have to explain his "I knew it!" exclamation.

Fucking Black Hats!

Remember the videos of the UPS drivers who threw the packages that were supposed to be delivered? Maybe one of those drivers was in charge?

in TV ads. The ad worked against Ford when people who had mechanical problems were saying the pick up they got was the one dropped from the airplane. This was back in the 1960's

...chute's open and then wham!

Oh, well. Better a Humvee than a human.

As for anyone losing their job: I bet there'll be a couple promotions and personal citations for those involved.

First: here's a full-length video of the operation:

The military uses the G-11 parachute to drop heavy loads like HMMWVs. This canopy is 100 feet in diameter - and as you'll see in the video, each load got two parachutes. If they stayed attached to the load after it landed, they would drag your load across the drop zone. (And if the bad guys have any brains at all, when they find out you're going to make a drop they'll just stake out the downwind side of the DZ and grab all the gear they can when it gets blown over to them.)

A person can clearly see the optimal condition - besides not going to war in the first place - is to have a parachute that breaks away from the load the second it lands. Enter the Release Mechanism. There are three: the M-1 Parachute Release, which is good for loads up to 15,000 pounds; the M-2 Parachute Release, which is good for loads up to 45,000 pounds; and the new Talon Advanced Cargo Parachute Release, which replaces both the M-1 and M-2. These work pretty simply: when the angle between the load and the parachute goes past a known point - IIRC it's a 45-degree angle, which you see when the chute falls down after the load lands - the parachute breaks free of the load. Now here's the trick: When you throw something out the back of an airplane under a parachute, it swings back and forth for a little bit...far enough to pass the release mechanism's break-free angle. To prevent what you see in the video above from happening on EVERY load, the release mechanism has a timer. When the parachute opens it starts the timer, and 10 to 15 seconds later the timer allows the parachute to release when it falls down after landing.

On these three loads, the release mechanism jettisoned the parachutes almost immediately after the canopies opened.

There are two possibilities:
(Least likely) The release mechanisms on these three loads were extremely faulty. I doubt this because riggers inspect each release mechanism before they use it, they're regularly load tested, and there's a "destroy on" date on each one.
(Highly likely) Some PFC working in the 173rd Airborne's rigger shed got pissed off and decided to retaliate against the Army by overriding the timers on three of these devices. A rigger (person who maintains parachutes) will NEVER screw with a personnel parachute because the Army has a fail-safe device to prevent it: at random intervals, they will call you into the office, hand you a chute you packed, and make you jump with it.

This happened on April 11. They should soon know who did it and why.

disappointed right before the first one detaches, as if something expected didn't happen (and then it does). Unless these guys just sit around every drop and hope for something to go wrong...

At least the loads all seemed to land in the intended area, so that part went right!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-21-38/ch6.htm

And...the observers were GIs - which is Latin for "assholes." If you want to make a GI's whole day, let something go drastically wrong.

That is a prerequisite for success in the military

As we used to say in Vietnam when we were bending the rules and regulations and someone said we would get in trouble, "what are they going to do to me, send me to Vietnam?"

expendable!

Army Strong -3!