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A US Air Force Helicopter flying at 10,000 feet over Manassas, Virginia, was shot at on Monday. The bullet injured one of the two pilots on the helicopter, and officials took him to a nearby hospital. The Air Force confirmed the incident via a statement by an official Wednesday afternoon.
The FBI is investigating the incident to discover if someone purposefully took aim at the military aircraft, or if someone simply shot randomly into the air.
Normally, military personnel are more worried about finding the best cell phone plans to call home with than literal random bullets hitting them at 10,000 feet. The odd incident surprised many online commentators on Wednesday, who thought the situation highly bizarre. The idea of someone purposefully taking aim at a military aircraft over US soil is simply hard to believe. Likewise, an accidental bullet would be so unlikely to ever strike a military craft that it seems strange it would have occurred.
The Air Force released an official statement regarding the incident. “A UH-1N Huey helicopter assigned to the 1st Helicopter Squadron at Joint Base Andrews conducted an emergency landing at 12:43 pm on August 10th in Manassas, Va during a routine training mission.
“The Office of Special Investigations is fully engaged with our FBI colleagues on this incident. OSI take threats to our Airmen and our resources very seriously. As this is an ongoing investigation, no further investigative details can be released at this time.”
The US military does not take purposeful attacks lightly. As the largest and richest military in the world, they are not the sort of force a random civilian would want to take on. Of course, this doesn’t rule out that a disaffected and unwise person could have taken a pot-shot at the helicopter. However, their aim would need to be exceptional to purposefully hit a vehicle traveling at 10,000 feet.
To lead the shot effectively, a shooter would need to be a trained marksman. Accounting for the wind, bullet fall-off, and the movement of the vehicle relative to the shooter’s position is quite difficult. In essence, that’s a lot of work to go through just to injure an airman performing a normal training operation. However, the odds that someone randomly fired a bullet up in the air that happened to clip a military helicopter is equally unlikely and bizarre.
Officials encourage anyone with any information to contact the FBI at 202-278-2000.
