On an exercise in a jungle training ground in Malaysia's Johor state, an Australian soldier ran out of bullets. A comrade handed him a magazine of blank 5.56-mm ammunition. But one of the bullets in his 30-round magazine was live. Unsuspecting, he aimed and fired. Instead of the hollow crack of a blank discharging, the barrel of his weapon erupted; the projectile destroyed the bright red plug, or blank firing attachment, screwed in to the end of his Steyr rifle. Standing nearby, a Malaysian 2nd lieutenant was struck in the head and buttocks by flying shrapnel. The officer fell heavily, covered in blood.
That incident occurred last July 10, when an Australian Army Reserve unit, from the 10/27th Battalion, Royal South Australian Regiment, was on an exercise with the Malaysian Army. When the Malay-sian officer was struck, soldiers were stunned. Weren't they supposed to be firing blanks? But Australian Defence Force chiefs should have been less shocked: such an accident had happened less than a year earlier, and closer to home. Time has learned that on Aug. 12, 1999, a round of live ammunition was fired in a mock attack at Duntroon Royal Military College's Majura Field Firing Range, near Canberra. No one was hurt.
Yet within months of the Malaysian incident, blank ammunition was found to be contaminated with live rounds at Duntroon last Aug. 28 and at the Kapooka Army Recruit Training Centre in New South Wales, on Nov. 25. While those bullets were identified before they were fired, it seems the Australian Army is unable to guarantee the integrity of its training ammunition-or explain the errors. "It's very strange to get a live round in with blanks," says strategic analyst and former Army officer Alan Dupont. "It sounds like there's been a system failure."
ADF quality-assurance representatives are required to monitor the manufacturing systems of all the force's ammunition suppliers, whether in Australia or overseas. The moment ammunition leaves the produc-tion line it is sealed into boxes, where it is kept, says the ADF, until issued in the field. When the boxes are first delivered, the Defence Materiel Organisation, the ADF's new purchasing body, unseals a number and inspects the contents to ensure "identification and segregation of differing ammunition." At this point individual bullets are sampled in a procedure set out in an Australian Standard. After inspection, the re-sealed boxes are distributed, says the ADF; the seals "inform and guarantee the user that ammunition in the box is exactly what is stated on the outside." The contents are again checked at military depots before they are issued to units. Time understands that testimony given to an official inquiry last month raised questions about the rigor with which these standards were implemented.
With two inquiries-one Australian, one Malaysian-underway, the events leading to last July's shooting remain uncertain. (The results of an investigation into the 1999 incident have been withheld by the Australian Army.) But there is no doubt that despite the Army's safety measures, something out of the ordinary happened. The Army says it is looking at "human error" as a possible cause; others fear it is merely seeking a scapegoat. Whatever the reason, says junior Australian Defence Minister Bruce Scott, the incidents "are not considered acceptable within the ordinary conduct of training operations."
The ADF maintains it "has a suite of policy, guidelines, regulations and procedures to safeguard against such instances." Locating the gaps in this suite is a major focus of the Army inquiry, headed by reserve officer Lt.-Col. Peter Schmidt. After taking evidence in Sydney on Feb. 20, the inquiry board went to Malaysia. (It is set to reconvene public hearings in Adelaide on March 28.) A week before it arrived, there was another shooting incident.
Again on Feb. 15, an Australian soldier, part of a company on six-month rotation at the joint facility at Butterworth, in northern Malaysia, discharged a live round instead of a blank. Fortunately, nobody was in the line of fire. In an embarrassing coincidence, the company was from the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment-the paratrooper unit at the center of the punishment beatings scandal uncovered by Time last August.
While it waits for the inquiry's findings, the Army has implemented special handling procedures for "fraction" ammunition (that which has been opened and separated). Blanks and live rounds are clearly distinguishable: blanks are crimped at the end, are lighter, shorter, and have no projectile. But once they're in a magazine-perhaps pre-loaded by an armorer or comrade-it's impossible to tell the difference.
The system, while not perfect, usually works. Of the 142,330 blanks fired by Australian soldiers in the past two years, only the five rounds mentioned here have turned out to be live. Still, as any soldier will tell you, even one mistake is too many. The Malaysian officer's wounds are said to have healed. But until the system's faults are corrected, soldiers training in the Australian Army will be living on their luck.