1 That's going to leave a mark

2 How did the French get a hold of real bullets?

3 I like the fact that it was during a hostage rescue demonstration.  Makes me wonder if those kids were acting as hostages.

4 If I'm ever a POW, please don't let the French come to rescue me. Also, please don't let Wesley Clark sum up my military career...

5 Lucy Ricardo moment: "Wait a minute... If this demonstration was using REAL bullets, then that means that the French military is using... OH NO!" Splains a lot.

6 This really smells fishy to me, or to anyone with military experience.  Semiautomatic weapons, such as the French FAMAS rifle, require a Blank Firing Adapter (BFA) in order to cycle when shooting blanks.  Conversely, if live rounds are fired from a weapon with a BFA, severe, catastrophic damage will result to the weapon, and probably to the shooter.  So this incident requires that a BFA was not installed on the one weapon, which coincidentally was also mistakenly loaded with blanks.

Further, blanks sound different from live rounds.  TV and the movies fake nearly everything involving firearms, so most of what non shooters think they know about them is wrong.  A high velocity rifle bullet is supersonic, and makes a crack independent of the discharge of the weapon.  Anyone who's ever heard incoming rounds knows the sound, it's unmistakable.

So we have to assume that two simultaneous mistakes were made on the same weapon, accompanied by the shooter not realizing he was firing live rounds, and shooting 17 bystanders.  Just doesn't sound at all right.

Further, I can't imagine the unit NCOs not inspecting every trooper and weapon before the exercise.

7

I agree with Steve.  Only weapons created by Hollywood can fire more than one blank without a blank firing adapter.  Without it there is no mechanism for chambering the next round.  The blank adapter mostly seals off the end of the barrel.

If you fire a live round through a weapon with a blank adapter on it, it will blow up in your face.  If you fire blanks without a blank adapter, then you will come to a dead halt after the first round--and maybe end up with a jam that will take many minutes to clear.  The soldier had to know it was live rounds, because otherwise he would have had a blank adapter on.  If the blank adapter was on, there would have been one fatality instead of 16 wounded.

8 How could anyone possibly not know they were loading live rounds?

9 "No brass, no ammo, Sergeant!"

For the other moron vets, how many freakin' times did you have to utter this phrase?

Damned shame. Hopefully the wounded will recover quickly and completely.

10 a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques

If that's true, their techniques suck. I always thought in a hostage situation it was all about identifying targets and not spraying and praying.

Maybe the guy thought he had blanks so he could fuck around and 'pretend' to shoot any and everyone but it seems that's bad form to. Also it seems after hitting the first 10 or so, you might notice something is up

Something is definitely odd about this.

11

A Defense Ministry official said the incident occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks.

They've should've stuck to their tried and tested protocol:  surrender to their demands.

 

"No brass, no ammo, Sergeant!"

Not a vet, but quite a few times myself during ROTC.  I remember once, they shook down everybody's pant legs, pulling them out of boots, finding a few cadets who jammed some spent brass down there hoping to score a nice little souvenir.  I had never seen someone truly piss themselves of fright before.

12 That's the highest body count by a French unit since 100 200 years....err ever!

13 I once turned in a clip to the armorer that was short one round.  There was hell to pay. 

This kind of thing should never, ever happen.  I hope the wounded recover completely and quickly.

14 Knowing the French, this probably wasn't an accident. Just ask the crew of the Rainbow Warrior.

We like to make fun of the French for being a bunch of pussies, but that only applies to certain of their national politicians. Down lower on the food chain, it's a different story. You absolutely, positively do NOT want to mess with the French police, who do not take kindly to troublemakers, or your relatives might find your body only after it's been dumped off the short end of a Marseilles loading dock.

15

What's his name?

_{somebody had to ask}

16 A Defense Ministry official said the incident occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks.


Le Waco, n'est ce pas?

17

5 "No brass, no ammo, Sergeant!"

Right.  It's difficult to imagine how this could have been an accident.

18 In all fairness to the French, they've probably never seen live rounds before and have no idea what they look like. 

19 I'm not surprised, their military is on the verge of collapse as is.

20

Oregon,

If you think the Gendarmeries are such badasses when it comes to troublemakers, then why did they get their asses handed to them by "youths of indeterminate ethnic orgins" last year and the year before that in Paris?

21 EC beat me to it. Oregon, I think that the reputation of the French police and especially the CRS is based on their behavior with the riots of the 50s and 60s against the Algerian debacle. Unfortunately they have indeed become pussified.

22

I saw this over the weekend and I assumed that they were using SMGs for the demonstration. And my first thought was if they loaded their own magazines, how could the soldier not know that it was live ammo and not blanks. And secondly this was during a hostage rescue - isn't the point to only fire at the perps? How do you end up firing at the audience - that's goes against all the firearms training I've ever had.

My dark thoughts are that the soldier in question has Hussein or Muhammad somewhere in his name.

23 The French hostage rescue team then promptly surrendered to the injured 3 year old...

24

Civilians injured?

Children, too?

Somewhere there is a Palestinian saying, "Damn! that's some good PR."

25

OregonMuse is right on a certain front, though... while their politicians and evidently gendarmerie may be a bunch of pussies, if you want wet work done in this world, you call the French. It is precisely because they are so unprincipled that they are as good as they are.

BTW- found this on YouTube for all you Heavy Metal fans, and for anyone who likes cool aviation shots... it's the French AF flying Mirage F-1s in Chad set to "Reach Out" by Cheap Trick. That was my favorite song off of that soundtrack, and the footage is pretty impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewcESCGCFYU

Okay, I tried to get it to appear as something else than the URL in the hyperlink box- can someone explain to me how that works?

tmi3rd

26

tmi3rd,

You mean DGSE spooks?  If I were considering which nation had the best field agents for doing wet work, then look no further than the Israelis.

 

Jews....is there anything they can't do?

27 What a clusterfuck. Was this a demo or a wild west show?

28

Jews....is there anything they can't do?

Make good ham?

29 Jews....is there anything they can't do?

Eat bacon. Other than that and shellfish, they pretty much got it all covered.

30 Seems like a high body-count for the entire French army--including those in Afghanistan, who haven't killed any "Indians lately"

31     "Hostage freeing demonstration..."? 

The Movie SPEED comes to mind.   "Shoot the hostage!"

32 Steve got it right.  A BFA is so obvious when fitted its impossible for the supervising NCO and armorer's to not notice it missing.

The crimped ends on blank rounds are also impossible to confuse with live ammo.  Literally, a blind man can tell the difference.

33

 

It would be hilarious except that there were kids involved.

Is it S.O.P. to shoot the hostages also?

Perhaps they have been reading the Al Qaeda manual instead.

 

34 Is it S.O.P. to shoot the hostages also?

HEY!!  What the fuck did WE do???

35 Gotta go with the sceptical commenter's above. This whole incident smells fishy.
Although , these are French NCO's we're talking about .

36

EC-

I hear you- it's just that in my experience, you don't have to wait as long for DGSE to get to you on their to-do list... Mossad tend to have a lot of work on their plates. unlike us, Mossad seem to strike as soon as they identify a target.

tmi3rd

37 They don't tell you what the weapon was. It seems like a low body count (or rather, low fatality rate) for someone using rifle ammunition, even poodle-shooter grade (5.56). Given that this was a hostage rescue scenario they were enacting, it is more likely pistol ammunition. Even a weapon like an MP5 needs a BFA to cycle properly.

I've used light machine guns with wooden training rounds. These have a muzzle attachment called a 'bullet masher' to shred the rounds safely but the weapon will feed and cycle without it.

Until we get more details this is just speculation.

38

@somebody had to ask:

I suspect his name is uh, not all the French if you get my drift...

39 Perhaps these "youths" were trying to burn the duece and a half the soldiers showed in?

40 dammit, up in I meant

41 That's the highest body count by a French unit since 100 200 years....err ever!

200 years is just about right.

Let's not forget that the French under Napoleo kicked the utter crap out of every army in Europe for a good decade, before Napoleon inexplicably decided to winter in Moscow.

42 Bet ya that's more people shot in one incident by Frenchmen than since they bugged out of 'nam.

43
Okay, I've got to come to the defense of the French. I've done it before here, and I'll do it again.

The French aren't pussies. However their political culture and its human functionaries place a high premium on realpolitik and calculating, unprincipled policy formulations, which leads to the sort of actions (or lack thereof) that reveals itself in what is for all intents and purposes cowardly behavior that result in morally dubious outcomes.

Let's not forget that the French in the First World War took on what has been arguably characterized as the finest army in history to that date (i.e., the German army in 1914) and defeated it. Yes, the British played a huge role in that defeat and the Americans were important to the final outcome, but it was the French who suffered the most and gave the most in that conflict.

As for the Americans--we were important more for merely showing up than for the fighting we did. I'm not belittling our sacrifices and successes and if the war had lasted beyond November 1918 we would have assumed burden of the fighting--and dying. Petain said words to the effect that "the Yanks and tanks" spelled doom for the Germans, but ultimately it was the French who brought the hammer down on the Huns.

Lest it be forgot, the French and the Germans fought the largest and longest field battle in history at Verdun. The French went toe to toe with the Germans, and won. The French suffered some 380,000 casualties, but they hung in there, inflicting around 330,000 casualties on the German.

Or consider the First Battle of the Marne. After losing upwards of a half million men (that's right--500,000 men KIA, WIA, MIA!) in the Battle of the Frontiers in early August, the French retreated for two weeks, then turned on their pursuers and defeated decisively them along Marne River nine, just outside Paris. Military men and scholars will tell you that retreats are very hard on armies--the latter tend to crumble and fall apart. For an army to recover, counterattack, and triumph after retreating two weeks--well, that shows steel, pure steel, in the hearts and souls of the French poilus and in France itself.

Upon the conclusion of that battle the German commander, Moltke, reputedly told the Kaiser: "Sire, the war is lost."

The Germans were baffled by French resilience. After the war, von Kluck, one of the German army commanders, declared: "That men who had retreated for ten days, that men lying on the ground half-dead from exhaustion were able to pick up their rifles again and attack at the sound of the bugle: that was something we had never reckoned with; that was a possibility we had never discussed in our war colleges."

And let's not forget, either, French cran (balls, or guts) in the Battle of Dienbienphu. The French lost that due to a wretched operational plan and even terrible leadership at the highest levels of command, but not for want of courage and fighting ability.

Turn the French loose, and they'll do just fine.

44 So far today....
 
Eddie the Eagle: 1
French "professional" military: 0 (16 errors)

45 Obviously the Joos did a Jedi mindtrick while they were loading their magazines with live rounds.

46 Should anyone wonder why the good Inspector Clouseau was French?

47 Even with a small caliber pistol round, the recoil difference between blanks and live ammo is dramatic.  Also, it took 16 hits before they realized something was wrong???  Fishy at best.

48 Some great comments on this! I just wanted to add that the Brazilians also have demonstrated their unique hostage rescue skills by doing a demonstration with live rounds and real people. They too, shot up a lot of folks and a few died if I remember correctly. I've looked all over for a link, but I can't find one, you will have to take my word for it. It happened a few months back. They were all scratching there heads as to how the demonstration could have gone so wrong. I've been in Brazil for 3 years and I keep thinking there is nothing more here that can surprise me, but they always find new ways.

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