matt_a

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289551,00.html

Mystery Military Troops Parachute Into Prison by Accident

CANON CITY, Colo. — No, they weren't coming to the rescue.

Military officials said 25 heavily armed parachutists who landed in a cornfield on the grounds of a Colorado prison last week were on a training mission but landed about 3 miles off target.

"Those were Special Operations Command forces conducting routine training," Army Col. Hans Bush, a spokesman for the command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., said Monday. He declined to identify the units that landed at Fremont Correctional Facility but said the target was Fremont County Airport.

The special operations troops, which could include Navy Seals or Green Berets, began dropping from the sky at about 4:50 a.m. Thursday. Guards on duty, who are trained to watch the skies following a helicopter escape in 1989 from a prison near Ordway, Colo., held their fire after noticing the parachutists were soldiers.

Guards who stopped the men and asked for identification were presented with documents that identified them only as Defense Department employees, Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti.

"We don't know who they were and I'm not sure we'll ever know who they were," she said. "Everyone acted appropriately."

The parachute troops were armed only with rubber training bullets.

"The good news is everyone was able to quickly assess the situation," Bush said.

The Fremont Correctional Facility is a mixed custody facility that houses inmates classified from minimum to administrative segregation. It houses 1,471 inmates and employs about 450 people.

Oooookay....now let's look at this for a second. Not only could this have been a terrible disaster if the prison guards had opened fire, but why were "Special Forces" THREE MILES OFF TARGET!!!

oldmanatee

Well, some of the bleeding heart libs want our soilders in jail already......



Perhaps, a refresher course on map reading is in order.......

matt_a

I think you're right. All I can hope is that these guys were VERY early in their trainning.

oldmanatee

But, look at it this way.. the purpose of the Special Forces is to pop up in unsuspecting places....I'd have to say..mission accomplished...

matt_a

Good point!

1nicescion

cant blame it on the parachute guys. its the ones who give the coordinants to the pilot and then to the person in charge who says "jump"!! the soldiers just do as they are told.

oldmanatee

I just noticed something... their commander is in FLA and they landed in CO....I'd say they were more than 3 miles off target.....

scionofPCFL

Maybe this was another branch of the Special Forces, with a different meaning of the word "special"?

ack154

iTrader: (7)

I wonder if they rode the short plane to the jump site?

Skeorx13

Hahaha, maybe they should be called the "Precious Forces"...

matt_a

Developmentally Challenged Forces.

etli

You should really feel sorry for those troopers themselves. When they got back to base their CO is probably going to tear them each several new holes.

Plus, I would guess a highly public snafu is going to go on their records.

matt_a

I dunno...like was already pointed out, the soldiers themselves had very little to do with when and where they jumped. Someone else gave them bad info.

What record? They don't exist.

BigMURR

"That was bad INTELLEGENCE very bad INTELLEGENCE"

"...I'm sorry"

scionofPCFL

Was the pilot part of the team? Or was he outsourced? Just keep in mind how great the lengths are taken in order to sectionalize the information on the "need to know" basis. could have been bunk info all the way around, or maybe it was only designed to look like an "accident" and it could have been just to see how they are react to "adverse conditions"?

BigMURR

^ doubt the military would want more attention to their flaws then they already have. This was a accident.

matt_a

I agree. You don't drop soldiers who appear to be heavily armed (but who only have fake ammo) into an area with real armed prison guards. It's just lucky that nobody got trigger happy.