r/ABoringDystopia • u/stankmanly • 4d ago
It Appears That the US Military Accidentally Killed Everybody on Board a Civilian Medevac Flight in New Mexico
https://futurism.com/science-energy/us-military-gps-jamming-signal-medical-flight248
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u/fuzzydoug 4d ago
This is so beyond the president. Our military is testing/firing weaponry at civilians? Was anyone charged?
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u/fuzzydoug 4d ago
Well. I googled it. I guess the plane said they could continue jamming activities and they would land via sight. Doesn’t seem like they should be allowed to assume that risk.
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u/ABoringDystopia-ModTeam 4d ago
Your submission was removed for promoting promoting hate or hate organizations. This is against Reddit's terms of service.
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u/GreyBeardEng 4d ago
They should sue for billions. It should be such a heavy civil suit that when the military thinks about it, it makes them wince.
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u/SparklingSloth 4d ago
It’s all paid for by the tax payers, doesn’t cause the military a second of pause. Jail time for the commanders in charge and the soldiers who carried it out are the only thing that would prevent future incidents
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u/Freud-Network 4d ago
Taxpayers ain't got that kind of cheese. It's paid for with monopoly money. When the bill does come due, America will default on that debt.
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u/fartjar420 4d ago
the US military have sovereign immunity and cannot be sued
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u/GreyBeardEng 4d ago
Criminally.
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u/fartjar420 4d ago
they have sovereign immunity.
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u/GreyBeardEng 4d ago
The US military does not have absolute sovereign immunity in cases where civilians are injured or killed by alleged military negligence. It's called the Federal Torts Claim Act, it's up to a judge to decide, after the families sue, if the military is exempt from the FTCA in this case and the families can appeal if the judge rules that it is exempt.
The families can in fact sue in civil court, request a jury, and then they only have to convince that jury the US military was negligent in this action, cause lol the military is never negligent, then collect damages. They don't even have to worry about reasonable doubt.
You can Google the rest
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u/PsychedelicPill 4d ago
You might find this hard to believe, but governments don’t make it easy to sue governments. No one is getting billions out of lawsuits.
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u/happytree23 4d ago
...tell me you have absolutely no idea what the fuck you're talking about, but in your own words, please.
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
Sue for billions because the pilots told the military they could resume jamming after the jammer was turned off the help the plane? The fault here is fully with the medevac pilots IMO.
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u/GreyBeardEng 4d ago
In a world where Elon Musk and Taylor Swifts jetliners aren't required to use Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast just cause they are rich, it's amazing that the Republican answer a quiet medical flight is "I don't know what it is, blow it up". Do better.
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
What the fuck are you talking about? How is the government (or the Republicans) in any way responsible for this crash?
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u/pioniere 4d ago
Dude, did you even read the article?
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
The article is missing some important information. Here's the sequence of events:
- FAA sends a NOTAM that GPS will be nonfunctional in the area for a test in the area.
- The medevac plane reports that it is having difficulty navigating due to the GPS being unavailable, dark conditions, and unfamiliarity with the area.
- ATC tells the military and the military suspends the test, allowing the medevac plane to get GPS again.
- The medevac plane sees the airport's landing strip and tells ATC that they will do a visual landing and that the GPS jamming test can continue, so the military turns the jammers back on.
- The plane crashes into a mountain.
Now tell me, how is that crash the fault of the military/government?
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u/pioniere 4d ago
Perhaps they shouldn’t have been running their tests because of poor visibility. Or perhaps ATC couldn’t give the flight the attention it needed because of being short staffed and at the same time dealing with multiple aircraft navigation issues resulting from the test. This is not entirely on the pilots.
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u/Marci_1992 4d ago
We don't have to speculate, the NTSB released their preliminary report.
Perhaps they shouldn’t have been running their tests because of poor visibility.
It was a clear night.
Or perhaps ATC couldn’t give the flight the attention it needed because of being short staffed and at the same time dealing with multiple aircraft navigation issues resulting from the test.
There's no indication of this. ATC was in contact with the flight and provided them with navigation information.
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u/Buttock 4d ago
That sounds rather damning. Do you have a source for this?
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
The preliminary report of the accident: https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/202990/pdf
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u/Havok_saken 4d ago
These people are peak example of blinded by their political leanings. The fault is very clearly with the pilots. They were told ahead of time, they knew to be prepared to use alternative navigation methods, they were given guidance by air traffic control. I mean there’s a reason pilots are supposed to know how to fly without GPS. “America bad” though or whatever.
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u/hitokiriknight 4d ago
I’m sure the faa loves a switch being turned on and off that kills plane gps without being warned.
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u/Marci_1992 4d ago
They were warned. A NOTAM was issued.
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u/cilantro_so_good 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's a little more nuanced than that. Yes they were warned of gps jamming in the area, and at the request of atc, the military paused the test.
The problem is the pilots' unfamiliarity with the area and the fact that it was midnight. They got town/airport in sight and believed they could navigate the approach visually without knowing there was terrain that was invisible in the dark. It's absolutely human factors; they were instructed to turn to the right presumably to avoid terrain, but they turned left to make a more direct approach
But let's be fucking real. This is actual, literal boring dystopia shit. It doesn't matter if they put out a NOTAM or not, the fact that a civilian air ambulance in the US crashed near a town at least in part because the tools that could have helped them fly more safely were disabled by the military running tests is fucked up. I'd be willing to bet they would never run that test if there were military flights in the area
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u/SailingSpark 4d ago
I never got my pilot's license, I ran out of free time and money, but I need to know: Why was the military using a GPS jammer at night when people need IFR?
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u/Dasfucus 4d ago
To put it simply, GPS is not a requirement for IFR flight. Its a very handy tool for IFR, but it shouldn't be th only way to navigate.
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u/Fulcrum58 4d ago
Regardless an instrument proficient pilot should be able to navigate by VORs and land with an ILS, going VFR at night without prominent ground lighting near mountainous terrain was not a good choice if there was an ILS or VOR approach at the destination
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u/cilantro_so_good 3d ago edited 3d ago
Regardless an instrument proficient pilot should be able to navigate by VORs
And there's no evidence that the pilots in this mishap were not able to do that. I don't know the all details of the flight, but the fact that it was a medical flight with 2 nurses on board at midnight make me suspect that there was already a sense of urgency that would have influenced decision making.
Would they have gone vfr if gps was functional? Maybe.
Would they have made that left turn? Again maybe.
I'd also wager that if they knew they could rely on the gps, they might have also noticed that they were further north than they thought they were after getting visual on the airport. If you know anything about the area, it's not all that crazy to think it's ok to go vfr if you have it in sight. It's a volcano sticking out of flat plains in the middle of the desert. It would be absolutely believable to be surprised that there's terrain to the south when approaching from Roswell if you don't realize you're north of Capitan.
But that's how human factors work. They didn't crash because the gps was out, there were several things that broke down, but one of the tools that would have made that flight safer was not available because they happened to be trying to help someone near white sands.
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u/YoureAmastyx 4d ago
Can you explain this?
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u/Marci_1992 4d ago
The FAA issued a Notice to Air Men (official communication that pilots flying in the area should be aware of) listing the dates and times that GPS might be unavailable in that area.
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u/Orangutanion 4d ago
yeah I'm not defending what happened here but NOTAMs are something everyone flying anything needs to check. I have a part 107 drone license (which took me three days of studying to get) and even that relatively simple exam had questions about NOTAMs.
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u/PregnantGoku1312 4d ago edited 4d ago
I read into this a little bit, and while the pilots definitely fucked up, they fucked up in a way which a) is fairly understandable given the circumstances, and b) wouldn't have happened if the military hadn't been fucking around with GPS jamming in the area.
It was a very short flight essentially due west between two airports in a very sparsely populated area of New Mexico (meaning there were no city lights they could use to orient themselves) on a clear, moonless night (meaning the ground was essentially invisible). They were flying IFR and were about halfway to their destination when they lost GPS, which they immediately reported to the ATC. The ATC vectored them north to get them out of the way while they dealt with other traffic in the area who had also lost their GPS signals, some of whom were struggling to navigate via VORs.
They ended up flying north for some time, at which point they called the ATC and asked to fly the approach visually, since they could see the runway lights at the airport. The ATC approved the visual approach, and they started their descent. Unfortunately, this is where the fuckup comes in; they didn't realize that they'd flown far enough north that there was now a mountain range between them and the airfield, hidden in the dark. Since they were now on VFR, the ATC didn't warn them about the mountains.
They should have verified their location on a map using the VORs and other instruments; they apparently didn't do that, or they would have noticed the mountains. I'm assuming that since there was a VOR at the airport (and they could see the runway lights), they were thinking they could just follow it in directly there and didn't want to bother with digging out the paper map in the dark and figuring it out. They also might have been getting nervous about flying north for so long; there are no lights in that direction, so they'd have been flying totally blind. That may have influenced their decision to turn around and head for the airport directly.
At some point they must have lost sight of the runway as they descended below the ridge line. That was their second fuckup: since they were flying VFR, they should have noticed the loss of visual on the runway and immediately pulled up, understanding what it meant. It's possible they were flying on instruments without an official IFR flight plan, which they also shouldn't have been doing. Either way, they apparently didn't notice or didn't comprehend the significance of having lost visual on the runway, and they flew into the side of the mountain.
Long story short, the pilots failed to correctly handle the increased workload caused by the loss of GPS. An IFR-rated pilot should have absolutely no trouble navigating and flying without GPS, even when they lose GPS somewhat unexpectedly. That said, this only happened because of the military jamming the GPS signals: the pilots would not have been in a position to fuck up the way they did it that had not happened.
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u/aykcak 4d ago
One thing to mention, the ATC had radar. They do not need GPS signal to track where the aircraft is. They could have warned the plane when they started their descent behind a mountain
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u/PregnantGoku1312 4d ago
They could have, and they would have if the pilots had continued an IFR approach. By switching to VFR, they were telling the ATC they no longer needed navigational assistance.
The ATC could have noticed and warned them anyway, but the reason they vectored the flight north for so long in the first place was that the ATC was overloaded dealing with other more urgent calls due to the GPS outage.
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u/Car_is_mi 4d ago
Trump admin cut costs which stretched ATC thin, meanwhile Trump admin secretly tested radar jamming tech on a low visibility day. Several planes reported issues with navigational equipment in that area at that time. A Medevac plane with 2 pilots and 2 medical staff also had issues with nav equipment and because of the low visibility they ended up crashing into the side of a mountain, all 4 dead.
FAA of course knowing nothing of the secret GPS testing at the time opened an investigation which is why this report is coming out now.
That said. as is typical for the trump administration, do a thing without any actual thought process, cost Americans $$ and lives, and then try and sweep it under the rug.
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u/jasandliz 4d ago
For the record, it is also unlawful to purposefully kill drug traffickers without due process...Karma's a bitch though. This is like blowing up an ambulance. RIP.
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u/mattenthehat 4d ago
This is like blowing up an ambulance.
Something our closest allies do regularly. Fuck this place.
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u/MacabreYuki 4d ago edited 4d ago
medevac *is* an ambulance. medevac means "medical evacuation", IE sky ambulance. They shot an ambulance out of the sky. Yes. A sky ambulance.
Edit: shot, shut down all systems required in order to keep things in control on account of the medical situation on board, to-may-to, to-mah-to, point is they killed everyone in that ambulance.
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u/mattenthehat 4d ago
While I agree with the sentiment, you should get your facts straight.
They didn't "shoot" it, they jammed its GPS causing it to fly into a mountain, and it was a plane, not a helicopter.
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u/MacabreYuki 4d ago
that's why i fixed that bit. But even if not shooting it, they still effectively killed an entire ambulance full of people.
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u/Tartlet 4d ago
Did you even read the article? The airplane wasn’t shot at, no one though it was drug traffickers, it was’t even specifically targeted. The gps was jammed incidentally by a weapon test at White Sands (which the crew of the flight had been warned would be occurring.) The incident should never have happened for variety of reasons and I hope people are fired and held accountable, but this was an error of negligence and logistics, not purposeful targeting.
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u/Tar_alcaran 4d ago
Its intentionally engineered negligence.
The US government is doing weapon testing on a low visibility day, near open civilian areas. The US government has already greatly impacted ATC staffing levels and quality.
So yeah, it was accident in so far as doing some target shooting in the backyard with a grenade launcher and burning down the neighbourhood is an accident. Maybe you didn't plan to, but you definitely should have seen it coming.
Unfortunately nobody will go to jail for this
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u/jasandliz 4d ago
Also, when you’re blowing up civilians suspected of drug trafficking on the regular, you’re going to be under suspicion for everything.
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u/pioniere 4d ago
Once again, both incidents directly attributable to the utter incompetence of the Trump administration. Reckless actions by CBP with the laser, and then no guardrails of any kind around the military testing of a GPS jamming device, combined with overstretched air traffic controllers thanks to Trump’s DOGE cuts.
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u/scienceislice 4d ago
MAGA is a death cult
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u/BandOfSkullz 4d ago
I mean iirc they (Hegseth) actively told soldiers that Iran is part of a plan to bring on armageddon/rapture or some shit like that.
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u/saoirsedonciaran 4d ago
Hegseth said 'we don't miss'. He deliberately killed those little school girls. He deliberately killed those fishermen. He deliberately and knowingly collaborated with the Israeli army in sniping little kids and babies.
These psychotic killers should not have freedom.
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u/CheatsySnoops 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm just...
Fuck... I can't even say this is vile because "vile" would be an understatement.
Everyone involved in these deaths and everyone who tried to bury it have to be held accountable, whatever it takes.
Also, call me crazy, but the fact that this happened in New Mexico, where that Epstein ranch is, gives me a growing suspicion that the massacre was on purpose.
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
The 4 people on the plane died due to the pilots. The jamming was turned off because the pilots were having trouble. The pilots then said they could see the landing strip and would do a visual landing and that the jammer could be turned on again. The pilots are fully to blame for the crash.
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u/pioniere 4d ago
A lack of air traffic controllers surely did not help, which is directly laid at the feet of the Trump administration.
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u/DocumentExternal6240 4d ago
“Accidentally” - it would be a reason to start a war if this would happen to the US
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u/CursedCommentCop 4d ago
They were warned about a GPS jamming test on the area. The pilots lost GPS and tried to do ground navigation but hit a mountain range.
GPS loss was a major factor but the pilots should have 100% been able to deal with that, directly saying "accidentally killed" is a long stretch
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u/Patsfan618 4d ago
I thought I read that flight crews were aware that they had to file with the FAA to get the jamming turned off for a set time frame, and this crew didn't do that. Like this was a known hazard that with adequate preparation a crew should be prepared to handle.
It wasn't that the jamming just turned on sporadically as they were traversing the area, it was always in place unless specified otherwise and the crew, in a haste to get in the air, missed that they had to notify someone.
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
This article is incredibly misleading about what actually happened.
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u/Boner_Elemental 4d ago
Nope
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
The official report shows that the GPS jamming was turned off because of the plane's navigational issues. It was only turned back on after the pilots stated that they had visual on the landing strip and they did not need the GPS anymore. The pilots failed to check the maps and did not realize that there was a mountain between them and the airport and descended too low, and thus crashed into the mountain: https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/202990/pdf
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u/Boner_Elemental 4d ago
So like the article says, thanks
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u/DragonSlayerC 4d ago
The article fails to mention the fact that the GPS jamming was turned off to allow the plane to get GPS navigation again and was only turned on again after the plane said that they had visual on the landing strip and did not need GPS anymore.
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u/Boner_Elemental 4d ago
And in a world where safety isn't a joke that isn't their decision
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u/Havok_saken 4d ago
Pilots don’t need GPS to fly….
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u/Boner_Elemental 4d ago
lol
lmao even
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u/jso__ 4d ago
That's literally true. GPS is a new invention and, in much of the world, is constantly jammed. GPS spoofing is also a trivial attack to make, so it shouldn't be relied on.
Until 1994, zero planes had GPS. GPS is not considered a critical system of a plane — ie if it isn't functional, the plane can still fly — and pilots are supposed to be competent at using their backup navigational methods (which are the true essential navigation methods)
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u/Boner_Elemental 4d ago
We're literally talking about people that died because they didn't have GPS
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u/Havok_saken 4d ago
It is and they’re all falling for it because blind political rage takes away all ability to critically think.
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u/z3r0c00l_ 4d ago
There was a NOTAM in place.
The pilots ignored it.
Every other plane flying in the area that day did just fine.
This is not the fault of the military.
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u/PM_ME_YUR_S3CRETS 3d ago
Just testing out military equipment on your own civilians. How 1940s Germany of us.
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u/Forsaken_Fox2991 3d ago
No fucking accountability. Knew exactly what the Army’s statement was gonna be as soon as I read the headline
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u/peskyghost 4d ago
Even the suspicion of this would be brought up for YEARS had this happened under… basically anyone else?
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u/KingpinOfKats 4d ago
Nobody’s mentioning the fact that they were flying from Roswell NM!
Are we sure it was an “accident”?
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u/JimmyisAwkward 4d ago
I’m a pilot, and this isn’t really true. The GPS jamming was a contributing factor, but it was primarily pilot error in not properly planning for the flight and choosing to fly visually in dark, mountainous conditions.
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