Two paratroopers were injured during an exercise by the Commando Troops in Belgium on Thursday. Things went wrong once in the air when two soldiers collided and once during landing.
Both accidents happened after the Marines were dropped with a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft above Diest, Belgium, near Leuven. Two soldiers became entangled with their parachutes when they jumped from the plane. Miraculously, only one soldier was injured. The other had not a scratch. Another Marine had an unfortunate landing and was also injured. The soldiers are stationed in Doorn.
Ended up outside the drop zone
In the Belgian newspaper The last news (HLN), Adjutant Major Ponet of the Belgian Armed Forces says that there is always a small chance that a jump will go wrong. . “And that has now happened. But everyone did the right thing. It is now up to our Dutch colleagues to investigate what exactly went wrong.”
In recent months, one soldier has been killed and several injured in accidents during exercises abroad. Last week there was also an incident at the airport in Schaffen. A Dutch paratrooper ended up outside the drop zone due to an unknown cause. It is not clear whether there is a connection, but the Dutch armed forces are jumping to the conclusion HLN recently with a new type of parachute.
Exercises are more massive, the risk of accidents is greater
The risk of accidents during military exercises has increased because these exercises are more massive than before. In addition to more participants and the use of more heavy military vehicles, the training takes place in a higher spectrum of violence and is carried out as realistically as possible. This has to do with the war in Ukraine, which poses a threat to Europe, says a Defense spokesperson following an accident involving two paratroopers from the Dutch air force in Belgium. There have recently been several other accidents during exercises that resulted in one death.
Military personnel are now training for ‘preparedness for war’, where previously these were mainly smaller exercises for peace missions, the spokesperson says. For example, armored vehicles are now practiced in the dark, without lighting. It’s a different way of practicing, which can be a bit harder, he says. Moreover, there are now often more participants at the same time and an entire brigade – about 3,000 to 4,000 men – can go out together to practice.
The spokesperson emphasizes that these are preliminary assumptions and that investigations into the accidents are ongoing, including by the Defense Safety Inspectorate. The military police are also investigating possible criminal aspects
At the same time, the spokesperson points out that it may also appear that there are suddenly more incidents, because the ministry immediately makes a press report after each accident in the context of openness. Previously, this was done in a weekly overview, which attracted less attention.
The accident must be properly evaluated, says the Union for Civilian and Military Defense Personnel. “When skydiving there is always the risk of accidents happening and this must be prevented as much as possible,” said union president Jean Debie. “A proper evaluation must take place to see what happened and to see whether procedures need to be adjusted.” According to him, these types of evaluations happen all the time at Defense.
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Tags: Parachute jump marines wrong Belgium soldiers injured Domestic
