Apparently a South Korean patrol airplane accidentally dropped its load into the Sea of Japan.
A South Korean maritime patrol airplane lost its entire loadout of live weapons when a crew member accidentally hit the wrong button. Nearly $5 million dollars' worth of weapons tumbled into the Sea of Japan. The South Korean military is attempting to recover the weapons, which it says were not armed when lost.
The incident was reported on January 1 by the Yonhap News Agency. The U.S.-made P-3CK Orion maritime patrol aircraft was flying a routine mission over the Sea of Japan when a crew member on board "mistakenly touched the emergency weapons release switch."
[...] The South Korean military has sent a minesweeper and a salvage ship to the area to fetch the weapons and pledged it won't drop $5 millions worth of missiles in the future.
I wonder if they'll take it out of his paycheck?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:06PM
We dumped stuff overboard from time to time. But, no crewmember ever dumped anything accidentally. It's fine to dump millions of dollars worth of stuff, if there's a reason. The order might even come from a lowly petty officer, and still be good, if there's a reason. But to drop millions accidentally? I sure wouldn't want to be the man responsible.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:15PM
If it was a Nintendo-style controller, perhaps he could complain that the button malfunctioned. I sure have heard that story a time or two and it's always a plausible one.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:40PM
The order might even come from a lowly petty officer, and still be good
So just to be clear, you're a fucking Nazi.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:53PM
To be perfectly clear - your ignorance prevents you making an intelligible post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:57PM
It's fine to dump millions of dollars worth of stuff, if there's a reason. The order might even come from a lowly petty officer, and still be good, if there's a reason.
And they did not toss Runaway overboard? Amazing! (If he actually served in the Navy in the first place.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @09:04PM
They didn't dare throw Runaway overboard because even the bottom feeders would rush to the surface in search of the source of the shit and sink the fucking ship.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 08 2017, @08:57PM
Yeah, but could you imagine if they jettisoned their loadout over shore rather than sea? Especially around a crowded military airport?
They were lucky that they dumped their loadout into the sea and not onshore or even onto a ship, enemy or not. Even not electronically armed those munitions are goddamn heavy.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Sunday January 08 2017, @09:34PM
There's some language choice stuff where the korean translation was "mistaken" but when American clickbait sites report its "accidental"
There are solid procedural reason to hit the "eject external stores" button like engine failure, incoming missile or similar maneuvering challenge, fire report, declaring an emergency landing, probably some navy specific stuff (debug code 0x02F4 means accidental arming of warhead advise immediate eject, who knows).
The original korean translation specifically listed no mechanical failure so we can rule out a false fire warning, however it could have been a procedural drill gone out of control, the story I like about a CFI on the ride along trying to give the copilot a check ride to qual him after hours in the simulator and the poor bastard says something in korean like "and the next step in the engine failure procedure is hitting the eject external stores button and (clunking sound as $5M just flushed down toilet) whoops-a-daisy forgot we're not in the simulator on the ground".