The U.S. Army pulverized half a million dollars’ worth of hardware last week when it dropped three Humvees from the sky.
The vehicles, which cost upwards of $200,000 each, were part of a training exercise for the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade carried out on April 11 in Hohenfels, Germany, according to Stars and Stripes.
Related: The 10 Most Expensive Weapons in the Pentagon’s Arsenal
During the exercise, a number of Humvees attached to parachutes were pushed out of C-130 cargo planes. Most to the vehicles floated down to the ground. However, three were not so lucky.
One dropped out of the sky like a stone, soon followed by two more that slip their parachutes. A video of the incident is going viral. (The video contains adult language).
The flyby was part of Saber Junction 16, an annual exercise that tests the readiness of the 173rd. This year it included “the largest airdrop of personnel in Europe since World War II,” according to a U.S. Air Force press release.
No one was injured in the botched drop and the cause of the expensive screw-up is under review, a spokesman for the 173rd told Stars and Stripes.
These “things do happen, and that’s why investigations come up to identify what went wrong, what happened so we can learn from here and continue so when we do real operations, these things don’t happen,” the spokesman said.
