14 Marines and a Navy sailor were wounded, several critically so, when their training exercise went horribly wrong. The amphibious assault vehicle they were training on burst into flames, badly burn many of them.
Such stories are increasingly common across the US military, where a growing number of troops are being killed or injured in non-combat situations, many of them in simple training exercises. Among the Marines, data shows that training accidents are up 60% from just three years ago, in 2014.
There is no official reason for why this is all happening. The best guess, however, is that with growing US deployments around the world, training schedules have been sped up dramatically, and that is taking its toll on the amount of time the equipment being trained on is getting maintenance.
It’s not just training, either. general non-combat operation accidents are also on the rise, as exemplified by the number of US warships that have inexplicably careened into other ships, or simply smacked into the shore. Random explosions and vehicle accidents are rising at an alarming pace.
The military is designed to maximize profits. The rest is just window dressing.
Are many of the military personnel now just so glued to their little iPhones and other screens that they aren’t paying attention? Or are they high on pot too much? And the maintenance crews as well. They’re obviously not paying attention to what they’re doing. My own personal conclusion is that it’s the zombie screen-staring time, and a lot of the young people are addicted to that stuff. They just can’t put it down, those little electronic gadgets.