US jettisoned bombs on Great Barrier Reef

[Major Eazy]

It says in the news that two US Marines Harriers were supposed to drop bombs on an island as part of a training mission somewhere near Australia, but where then ordered to abort the mission. Since the Harriers can't land while heavily loaded, it was safer to jettison the bombs, but the news imply that the Harriers were supposed to drop the bombs somewhere else, and they end up dropping them in the wrong place, namely the Great Barrier Reef.

Considering the threat to the Great Barrier Reef, are those clowns going to recover their rubbish? I assume the Americans would rather recover their unused and jettisoned bombs than to risk anyone else picking them up, as well as the risk of the RDX, TNT, C4, or whatever they put in those bombs, leaking out and doing more harm to the Reef? if so how much more damage are they going to cause to the Reef? Surely it would be hard enough for divers and specialist recovery equipment to try to recover those bombs and not ruin any more of the Reefs?

Even if they were to leave the bombs there, is there any risk at all over length of time, that the bombs would become unstable and leak their stuff which would harm the Reefs?

 

[2blue4u]

Inert training bombs. No explosives, just lumps of metal.

Nothing to see here - move along....

 

[Shine On]

It's two bombs. One was an inert practice bomb, the other an un-armed laser guided bomb. So from that, the inert one shouldn't be an issue as there is no fuel or explosive. The other one should remain stable, I'd imagine they'd recover it although its a beast of a thing (4000 lb's!).

I guess whilst the media are painting their story of shock, where the bombs landed are not actually on the reef, so there shouldn't be impact damage etc, so I'd imagine they should be recoverable with minimal environmental impact. I dare say that if the alternative was an aircraft ditching anywhere nearby, this would be a much better option.

 

[robhooley167]

"The two AV-88 Harrier jets launched from aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard each jettisoned an inert bomb and an unarmed explosive bomb in the World Heritage-listed marine park on Tuesday, the US 7th Fleet said in a statement."

http://news.sky.com/story/1118492/great-barrier-reef-anger-after-bombs-dropped

 

[Major Eazy]

Okay, I can see what some of you meant about the bombs being inert, just dummy bombs for training, so they can leave it there, after all there are so many junk on the sea bed, but, some news did say there were also unarmed explosive bombs. It is possible for aircraft to carry one dummy bomb and one real bomb, and there were two Harriers, assuming they carry same payload (ie: Harrier 1 carried one inert and 1 real, while Harrier 2 carried 1 inert and 1 real) so that would mean 2 inert bombs but also 2 real explosive bombs.

I suppose it is a good job they're not live bombs which would make recovery easier?

 

[2blue4u]

Wow - 4000lbs! I didn't know an AV-8B could carry that much.

The four jettisoned bombs totalled 2000lbs.