How I Cost The Marine Corps $2.4 Million In One Day
This is one maybe I should not confess to but it was like 23 years ago so, there's probably a statute of limitations or something. We were having a missile shoot out of Kanehoe, Hi. The idea was to shott a AIM-9 Sidewinder missile at a target drone over the ocean without destroying the drone. Since the drones cost $800,000.00 each at that time, they were intended to be used over and over. This is how it worked in theory:
In the theory, the Ordanceman (me) removes the safe/arm device from the the missile and stencils on the warhead "S/A REMOVED." This way, the missile does not actually explode and the only way to destroy the frone eith it is to shoot it straight up the tail pipe of the drone. A monitoring station then records how close the missile actually comes to the drone, which runs, out fuel, parachutes to the surface, and is re-used.
This is how worked in real life: So Im removing all these S/A Devices from these Sidewinders and half of them already have "S/A REMOVED" stenciled on the warheads. So after checking about 6 or 7 of em to ensure that the S/A has in fact been removed, I said fuck it and didn't check any more of the ones that had already been stenciled. As it turned out, several of them still contained S/A Devices, which allowed for the spectacular destruction of three $800,000.00 frones that day. Now remember that, with no S/A Device, the only way for the missile to destroy the drone is to go straight up it's ass.
So, after the shoot, the CO calls me into his office and says, "Cpl King, we shot down three drones today, how do you explain that?" I assumed the postition of attention, looked the Captain dead in the eyes, and said, "Damned good shooting, Sir!" And I thought this was the end of me for sure. The Capt looks back at me, grunts, and says, "Get the hell outta my office."
Lesson: When dealing with explosives, complacency breeds disaster.
