Big Army starts its hunt for scalps in the "non-airborne" Humvee incident.

via Army Times.

On April 11, the Army conducted a heavy drop and personnel airborne operation as part of exercise Saber Junction 16 at Hohenfels training area in Germany. About 150 supply bundles, vehicles, communications equipment and indirect weapons systems were dropped, according to Army spokesman Maj. Juan Martinez. But three Humvees slipped from their rigging as their parachutes deployed. plummeting hundreds of feet to the earth. Martinez said no one was hurt.
"The specific malfunctions that occurred on this day are under investigation," Martinez said in an email to Army Times. "There were multiple rehearsals and inspections of the equipment prior to mission execution. We cannot speculate on what went wrong until the investigation is complete."
Martinez also hinted at the severity of the issue, writing in a subsequent email that "this investigation will receive the highest priority."
The video, viewed more than 1 million times since U.S. Army W.T.F! moments posted it to Facebook, shows a couple of planes pass and drop their cargo without incident. The third plane's first item, one of the ill-fated vehicles, has it's parachute deploy initially. But a few seconds after it leaves the aircraft, it slips free and falls off its platform.
Someone standing near the camera seems to instantly recognize what is happening, yelling "Ooo, Yeah! Yes!" as it slips. The person in the video laughs as the free-falling Humvee crashes into the ground and kicks up a cloud of smoke. About 30 seconds after the first impact, the second vehicle slips free of its platform and rigging and plummets as well.
After more laughing, the voice says "called it!" around the time that the third vehicle slips free off camera, which moves to capture the descent and crash. Eventually a person in the group watching notes of one of the crashed vehicles "it's on fire" and asks, "Do we need to call that up?" just before the video ends.

I don't know who those troops are that can be heard on the video but they are about to fucked beyond description.  First, saying "called it" will have investigators wonder whether he caused the incident by monkeying with the rigging or if he had knowledge of misapplied techniques that would result in a mishap.  Second, the question of "do we need to call that up"?  How crazy is that!  Of course they needed to do so.  If they didn't  then they're in a shit storm of trouble.  If they delayed then the storm still hits.

Want more bad news?  The CO of the Riggers is probably already working on his resume.  Ditto the Staff NCOs.

I predicted that we saw careers crash along with the humvees.  I didn't consider that we might be looking at loss of pay, reduction in rank and possible brig time too.

If you have someone in uniform tell them to take as many photos and videos as they like....but to keep them in house.  The minute it gets out in the wild then the ramifications can be unpredictable.  What should be a simple training mishap is suddenly going to morph into a witch hunt.

 Marines/Soldiers can fight and defeat any enemy on the planet....but they can't beat HQ.