Blame someone else

WASHINGTON (Dec. 17) - An Air National Guard pilot who fired on a New Jersey school during a training exercise was to blame for the incident, but poorly designed controls in the F-16 also played a role, the Air Force concluded Friday.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, also disclosed that there have been three other incidents this year in which an F-16 pilot unintentionally fired during nighttime strafing missions. It did not say where and when the other incidents occurred, but the report noted that, like the New Jersey case, no one was hurt.

The report called the Nov. 3 New Jersey incident an "unfortunate and unintentional mistake." It said the pilot never intended to strafe the Little Egg Harbor Township Intermediate School and suggested computer software changes to the aircraft control systems to prevent another incident.

In an F-16, the same trigger is used to produce a laser marker to focus on a target and to fire the gun in certain modes of operation.

"In my opinion, using the same trigger for both laser marking and firing the aircraft's gun significantly increases the risk of human error and an unintentional gun discharge," Col. Kevin W. Bradley, the president of the Accident Investigation Board, said in the report.

The pilot was identified as Maj. Roberto Balzano of the 113th Wing of the District of Columbia National Guard, based at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The report said his commander will determine if any punitive or administrative action should be taken, and whether any retraining is necessary. Balzano has more than 2,000 hours of experience flying planes, 975 hours of which were in the F-16s.

Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Milord said military officials would not answer any questions regarding the incident until meeting with residents Friday evening in Little Egg Harbor Township.

Balzano, referred to in the report as the "mishap pilot," or MP, was verifying his aircraft position in relation to his intended ground targets on the Warren Grove Gunnery Range in southern New Jersey, 17 miles northeast of Atlantic City. The school is about four miles from the range.

"Unfortunately, the MP forgot that his aircraft's air-to-ground gun mode was selected and armed ready to fire. The MP immediately realized his error when the aircraft gun's discharged," the report said.

Balzano was on a nighttime training sortie conducting basic surface attacks at the range. A briefing session was held before the mission and Balzano was cautioned not to use his laser marker with the air-to-ground gun mode selected and the gun armed, the report said.

However, shortly after 9 p.m., Balzano was flying at approximately 7,000 feet over the range when he pulled the trigger, firing 27 rounds of 20mm ammunition. Eight of the 2-inch lead rounds punched through the school's roof, knocking down ceiling tiles. At least one rounded struck a child's desk, and others scuffed the asphalt in the parking lot.

Balzano immediately told the control tower something had gone wrong, scrapped his mission and returned to Andrews.

The range reopened Thursday. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., had called for the range to be closed until the investigation was completed, and officials shut it down.

We Americans seem to have created a new national past time, and it's called, "blame someone else". Those of you in my age bracket (50+) might remember the old Flip Wilson TV show from many years ago. Flip would dress up like a woman he called "Geraldine", and whenever Geraldine did something bad, she would say, on cue, "The devil made me do it". I'm not going to belabor the story above too long, but I think this is a classic American response to a major Air National Guard screw-up. It starts with a military official saying: "In my opinion, using the same trigger for both laser marking and firing the aircraft's gun significantly increases the risk of human error and an unintentional gun discharge," Col. Kevin W. Bradley, the president of the Accident Investigation Board, said in the report. Okay, let's just assume for a moment that the plane did have a poorly designed trigger system. Is there anyone out there who doesn't understand the US military spends billions of dollars developing and testing new aircraft? If I was shopping for a new car and found that one of the cars I'm looking at has a shift lever that indicated the car was in forward, although it was really in reverse, wouldn't that get a red-flag quickly? If you're one of those people who think the military is right regardless, read this statistic again: "Balzano has more than 2,000 hours of experience flying planes, 975 hours of which were in the F-16s." Think about this for a moment- if you flew a plane for 975 hours, wouldn't you get to know the peculiarities of that plane? Do you still think it was just an unavoidable accident? Try this one: "A briefing session was held before the mission and Balzano was cautioned not to use his laser marker with the air-to-ground gun mode selected and the gun armed, the report said." In other words, the pilot was specifically warned not to use the system in question...but he did anyway. If all of this doesn't scare you, then you have nerves of steel. But I didn't intend to spend all of my time writing about the military, rather I wanted to illustrate how we like to make excuses and blame others when things go wrong.

I suppose it started in the Garden of Eden when God asked Adam why he ate the forbidden fruit. What was Adam's response? "The woman you put here with me- she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." God told Adam directly not to eat the forbidden fruit, but what did he do? He ate it, then blamed someone else. Don't we all want to avoid taking responsibility for the mistakes we make? All you have to do is pick up a newspaper and you'll see plenty of cases of people not taking responsibility for their actions, and then to make matters worse, they want to blame others. A story recently ran on AOL telling of a woman who committed suicide with a shotgun she bought at Walmart. The mother contention was such: Since the Walmart pharmacy at a different store filled prescriptions for the daughter's anti-depressant drug, the massive corporation should have know not to sell a depressed person a shotgun. There are millions of idiots in our country that would sit in the jury box during that trial and rule in favor of the mother of the suicide victim. "What's wrong with that?", you might ask. Take a deep breath and consider another very likely scenario: The woman on the anti-depressant is shopping for a birthday present for her husband, and guess what he really wants? Yep, a shotgun. She goes into a Walmart and picks out the gun, presents her ID, and then finds that Walmart won't sell her the gun since their pharmacy fills an anti-depressant prescription for her. What would happen then? You guessed it- she'd sue Walmart for discrimination.

If a drunk driver kills a child, the parents of that child are outraged, right? They have the perfect right to be outraged with one major exception: If they drive while intoxicated, they forfeit their right to outrage. Before you get mad, think about this. Maybe the drunk driver that killed their child never had a drunk driving accident, or even a ticket prior to this accident. If the parents of the dead child have driven drunk, didn't they have just as good of an opportunity to kill someone else's child? But heck, let's blame someone else whenever bad things happen, it's the great American way.