last month two marines were killed and 17 injured not in war but in transit their truck flipped
over on a highway outside of camp lejeune north carolina and it's not as uncommon as you think
we found that as a parent or partner of someone in the military
you're far likelier to get that dreaded call and learn your loved one was killed in an accident
rather than in combat and many far too many of the accidents involve armored vehicles
during training the story will continue in a moment
first lieutenant connor mcdole a platoon leader in the marines was out on a training mission in
a light-armored vehicle like this at camp pendleton california in may 2019
when he hit an unmarked ditch covered in brush describe what happened he called out
to his men roll over roll over roll over pushed his gunner in the turret next to him down under
the armor but he couldn't get himself down in time and it careened into that ditch
rolled over and crushed him connor was susan flanagan and michael mcdole's only child at first
i thought that this was what happens when you train like you mean to fight but when we went
to san diego to bring him back i had a couple of idle moments in the hotel and i googled rollover
and military and i discovered that at pendleton a month before a marine raider had died
in a rollover so i googled further back the army etc and suddenly i saw a whole series of deaths
in rollovers of military vehicles all kinds humvees light armored vehicles broadly fighting
vehicles and then i realized this is not a single incident this is a systemic problem during
training during training i can accept people dying in combat but if you're training in your own
country and you're dying needlessly in preventable accidents this is a massive problem which has to
be fixed to fix it mcdole kept digging and what he uncovered he says was so serious and yet so
routinely neglected that it led to this scathing report by the government accountability office
the gao found close to 4 000 of these accidents in the army and marine corps from 2010 to 2019
resulting in 123 deaths nearly two-thirds of which involved rollovers and shockingly most
occurred in daylight on regular roads even in parking lots it's the tragedy of low expectations
that it's expected people will die in training are you saying that they expect us this what do
you say it's regarded as that's that the price of being a soldier or a marine in training yes
they ex training is dangerous these things happen but they don't just happen the gao concluded there
was often improper supervision the drivers were poorly trained and vehicles inadequately inspected
some accidents involved multiple factors as was the case with christopher bobby nemm a navy
sailor these are screams of joy from bobby's mom nancy when he surprised her one christmas
a year and a half later in the summer of 2020
he and 15 marines were training off camp pendleton in amphibious assault vehicles or aavs like these
giant armored vessels marines used on both land and sea his step dad peter vienna
says the marines had no business sending out the aavs used in his son's drill they're 40 years old
and they were in terrible condition and instead of asking for better condition aavs which there were
there were plenty of them they had gotten these all of them that were in poor condition
so they're sitting in a parking lot on camp pendleton baking in the sun they're
deteriorating peter ostrovsky's son jack ryan was also on that mission a week prior to the mission
we were speaking on the telephone and he made the comment that aavs sink all the time they've called
them and he he called it a floating coffin do you think he was worried oh absolutely two aavs broke
down and their son's designated vehicle sprang an engine leak and yet the mission was not aborted
what was the drive to go forward with faulty equipment they're trying to keep a schedule
stay on time the safety of our sons took a second place to completing a training mission this isn't
combat this isn't got to do it right now this is training there should have been an all-stop
at many points but 16 young men crowded into the aav as seen in this video that one of the
marines sent his dad it almost immediately started taking on water ankle level calf level seat level
as one by one the aav systems were failing the communication system was down they were in the
dark using their their lights on their cell phones to try to see wait wait the lights didn't work the
safety lighting that's supposed to function didn't function were there life boats no so they're
supposed to be two safety boats in the water they they put they went with none this is the aav
at the bottom of the ocean in underwater video we obtained through a freedom of information request
seven men made it out alive nine did not turns out most had received little or no safety training on
how to escape it doesn't make sense there's so much of it that doesn't make sense they were
taken on water for 45 minutes yet they were still found at the bottom of the ocean with all their
their gear still on their body armor and that they should not have that should have come off they
didn't know what to do they were all looking at each other like what does this mean what do we do
you know the the marine corps did its own investigation and the marine corps concluded
that this and i'm going to use the direct quote was preventable the top down incompetence
the lack of readiness really the lack of duty of care for our sons it was it was shocking can
you sue the military or the commanders for what happened there's the ferris doctrine
makes that impossible the ferris doctrine prevents anyone from suing the military for
anything that happens to service members on the job no matter how egregious the biggest thing
for me is these boys was not protected i had this vision in my head nightmares of the aav going down
what was his last word this was one of the worst training accidents in marine corps history
but accidents keep coming and the gao states less serious ones are likely under-reported christian
avila tavares an army combat medic was on a training drill in 2018 when one vehicle broke down
so his vehicle had to tow it this is around wow 1 30 am maybe it's dark it's raining it's muddy
the vehicle that we were told uh just slid and hit us and so we just rolled over and i was expelled
from the vehicle and then the vehicle just landed on top of me pinning me down from the waist down
so this giant monster vehicle rolls over on top of you yes on top of me his left leg had to
be amputated above the knee the right leg was so badly damaged he spent the next two years in rehab
learning how to walk again killing it bro killing it and we learned there was another
rollover during training at that same place that same day as avila tavares's the army told us
there were fewer vehicle deaths last year saying most are caused by human error and inexperience
nearly one in five enlistees joined the army with no driver's license the pentagon
and marines declined our interview requests though the new defense budget mandates several new
safety provisions and aavs will no longer be used in water drills but there are more steps
the military could take that they haven't involving relatively inexpensive upgrades to
the vehicle involved in most accidents the humvee this test footage by emmy a safety system supplier
shows what can happen inside a humvee in a rollover but watch drivers could have a better
chance when humvees are retrofitted with emmy's restraints and airbags one reason there are so
many humvee accidents is numbers over a hundred thousand are used by the army alone another cause
is engineering their high center of gravity makes them prone to flip over and because humvees were
easy targets for ieds in iraq and afghanistan the military added extra armor that made them
even less stable okay we were invited by ricardo defense a small military contractor to suit up for
a demo of how unstable these vehicles can be while making turns all right let's go we were going less
than 30 miles an hour the two yellow bars were there to prevent us from actually tipping over
oh my god most humvees do not have anti-lock
brakes or electronic stability control that prevent rollovers
but eight years ago ricardo developed them for the humvee
ricardo's president chet greyson do the same thing with the system on please
with the system on all wheels remain firmly on the ground my goodness gracious the system works so
well it's now mandatory in all new humvees but what about humvees already in use well ricardo
came up with a safety kit that could be installed for about 16 thousand dollars per vehicle in about
54 000 of the older humvees you could make 10 or more old vehicles safer for the price of one
new vehicle and yet the department of defense is asking for a lot of money for new humvees
but only a fraction of what's needed to retrofit old ones if the budget were to be approved today
as the numbers stand we would have enough funding for about 545 vehicles 540 vehicles out of 54 000
that's it that's it yeah and so that's about one percent of the fleet at that rate it'll take a
hundred years to get the fleet fit a recent letter to the pentagon from several congressmen endorses
your kit they calculated that the difference in cost between putting your kid on and building
a new vehicle is about 13 billion dollars it sounds like a no-brainer why wouldn't you do
it chair of the armed services subcommittee on readiness congressman john garamendi told us
that congress and the pentagon's preference for new over upgrades is often predicated on keeping
defense contractors fed have you made any move to say nobody should be in a humvee that doesn't have
anti-lock breaks we have tried and i have lobbied we want to increase safety in training
because people are dying needlessly in preventable accidents it won't cost that
much but it's got to be done and that's for the american people depress their members of congress