The Military has started an investigation after an F-16 pilot opened fire in the direction of the soldiers who were to take part in a shooting exercise on the island Tarva in Sor-Trondelag.
The incident happened on the night of April 13, the newspaper VG reports. Two F-16 planes were to shoot at targets pointed at by the ground forces , but the exercise did not go according to plan.
Instead of hitting the target the officers were to point out, the pilot in one of the planes attacked one of the control towers at the shooting field, according to the newspaper. Three officers were inside that tower, and everything is said to have happened so fast that the officers did not have time to react before the projectiles from the powerful Vulcan cannons rained down at a rate of 100 shots per second.
– There is always a certain risk in connection with exercises and training with sharp weapons. But of course this is something that should never happen. The investigation commission will discover what excactly went wrong. But this was certainly a close call, communications manager Stian Roen of the Air Force says to VG.
Roen adds that they take this matter very seriously and that both the pilot and the three officers were taken care of by the Military after the incident.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
