Share your most 'cock' up missions
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wah ... damn good stories and sides splitting ... did not know reservist ICT can be so 'involved'.
i remember another 1. i was attached to a det of 120mm SP motars i.e. motar in the m113 , that was training along lentor ave.
i think it was the 1st time the reservist det was there, and for some reasons unknown to us, the reservists use the m113 to mow down the foliage and vegetation around the area to set up the fire base. when go back camp, wah , big hoo-ha. The trg officer and the chief of staff called up the CO and ... after a lengthy verbal assault, asked the whole Bn to pay up. ok lah ... money no problem ... but where to buy the plants, and foliage back?
called and called and finally got the primary production board to sell us vegetation. not cheap eh ... each man in the Bn had to fork out $60 odd. but the next few dets and Bns that went into the trg area had an easy time. the M113 can be a realy good lawn mower. -
Ya..they getting reservist to do eervything now..I just got my SAF100 for operational duites .21days!!. Going to protect Changi or Jurong, well may add afew mission later. come to think of it, quite fun for ICT when you think of it
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wa seh.. firefight during POI?? I thought POI personnels are issued live rounds????!?!?!?Originally posted by smisig:Hi There..found ur website by chance last week..So here is mine cock up mission
Happen last year during our ICT for Patrolling for installation (POI)of Clementi Camp (next to the indutrial park) .AS part of the duites all vehicles were stopped before a stop spikes, an excersie vheicle was acting as a bomb truck and was cordoen off to 1 area, the civilian vehicle (Lexus) immediaelty behind it getting impatient tot the sgt was waving him to go, (actually the guy was asking him to stop). The poor guy in the lexus just step on the gas ..hehe bang the 1st 2 front tire just could take the spikes..the comms was just yelling and the CO was running toward the guard post.The commotion lasted for 1/2 hr as the guy was agruing with the CO and sentries on duties who shld pay..he lost in the the end.. later in the afternoon there was another vehicles and a motorcycles that was also "stopped" in the same way. the latter had to atted by the MO
The next was the unit before us and it happen. Any one working at Clementi Indutrial park? , went for the briefing for POI and the conducting officer (Maj i think) was not at all happy, he keep telling us not to challenge anyone outside the compond, It turns out that the previous units as contacted by the acting enemy outside the camp at 11++pm , the reservist so garang that they chase all the way into the next road and the enemy in turn fire back. Imagine u working late and all of a sudden GPMG and thunderflash..someone call the police and 1 patrol car came, had to call for more cars as they didnt expect to see the firefight..in the end the brigade chief has to come back to camp to settle all this.. -
they are preparing us for this year so last yr ICT we get to guard clementi camp using blank and thunderflash..if live rd siao liao Striats Times sure got report. Not bely comforting to be issued with live rd..lost 1 siao liao.anyway all PDF units get to do that last yr. alway prefer POI to field camp, decent sleep and bath.
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POI, my favourite ICT.
My unit was one of the first few units that was doing such exercise, POI was then installed not due to the 911 incident , it was few years earliar. It was installed after the malaysian army camp stolen rifles incident .
I remember one incident that one young officer(2nd LT) came to the camp for briefing, since he was not a personnel from that camp and therefore unable to produce a proper document for his biz in that camp.
My S3 who was NS Captain, took that opportunnity to tekan the fresh out of OCS young officer by locking him up in the guard room for the whole afternoon & took alway his handphone & did not allow him to make a call, and then dilly dally with his verification.
That young officer was fuming and did not know what was going on!!!
Afterall , POI exe was quite new then.
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Originally posted by smisig:
Wah liao, so cockup. during my time , the POI , firefight portion of the exercise was done in a partially deserted camp where we built up many firing postions all over the exercise area.
The next was the unit before us and it happen. Any one working at Clementi Indutrial park? , went for the briefing for POI and the conducting officer (Maj i think) was not at all happy, he keep telling us not to challenge anyone outside the compond, It turns out that the previous units as contacted by the acting enemy outside the camp at 11++pm , the reservist so garang that they chase all the way into the next road and the enemy in turn fire back. Imagine u working late and all of a sudden GPMG and thunderflash..someone call the police and 1 patrol car came, had to call for more cars as they didnt expect to see the firefight..in the end the brigade chief has to come back to camp to settle all this..[/b]
We were told then that if we encounter "enemy " outside the compound, we are not to fire or challenge him but report the incident to the police and let the police handle them unless of course fired upon.
If the enemy retreat from the compound, we are to stay put and let the police handle them. That is the right procedure.
So not to kena Tio Hu Li San!!!
The training officers for this incident sure get hell from the TC's commander!!! -
Some outfits take the close shaves with death in their stride,one of my friends, Guards recon were driving around Tekong in an open topped Land Rover along with two commandos, about 20-40 kph above the allowed speed limit for some perverse reason. They took the turn too hard, lost control and went straight into a ditch at top speed, propelling the two commandos and guardsman into the jungle off the road while it flipped over and got stuck in the ditch.
Amazingly, nobody was seriously injured and could walk from the crash, not long later, a Col. comes along in his own land rover and asks laidback, what happened, they immediately cook up a cover story on how a speck of dust got into the driver's eye at high speed, causing him to lose control.
At the same time, the medic which arrived on scene, miffled that he has no job to do, makes lame jokes about IVing the pengsang jeep, which was completely undamaged, safe a dent in the bumper. You don't get away with messed up behaviour any better then this... -
In another case, one of my friends in signals was out on a field exercise where they had to establish HQ comms by stringing out a $13,000 dollar 600 meter lan cable to establish command network.
In the meantime, one of the signals guys got hungry and he took out his mess cooker, set it on the ground, broke out a packet of maggie mee, started a fire, and started cooking. It didn't take long.
Comms down! Comms down!
It turned out he was making his fire on top of the lan cable. As those fiberoptic cables cannot be repaired like normal ones (as well as SAF too lazy to actually repair it), they had to sign the 1206 for the entire cable, cooking up some story on how a generator was placed accidently on the cable causing it to burn through. -
wah. den he had to forkout $13,000? major bleeding sia.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:In another case, one of my friends in signals was out on a field exercise where they had to establish HQ comms by stringing out a $13,000 dollar 600 meter lan cable to establish command network.
In the meantime, one of the signals guys got hungry and he took out his mess cooker, set it on the ground, broke out a packet of maggie mee, started a fire, and started cooking. It didn't take long.
Comms down! Comms down!
It turned out he was making his fire on top of the lan cable. As those fiberoptic cables cannot be repaired like normal ones (as well as SAF too lazy to actually repair it), they had to sign the 1206 for the entire cable, cooking up some story on how a generator was placed accidently on the cable causing it to burn through. -
Similar to this LAN cable. Our experience was with our fiber cables. We were on a 2 week division exercise. Since we were in Division, we tend to lay our cables all over the place.
Sometimes, the brigade side hq also nearby.
So when the exercise was cut. One of the very on brigade linesmen tore down all their d10. Since they did not recognize our fiber, they assume it was from enemy. So they proceeded to cut thru the thick cable with their puny wire cutters.
No matter, they managed with enuff tenacity to cut the thousand over dollar drum of fiber. Luckily all there was for us was just a BOI and writeoff. (U can repair fiber but the quality will never be the same again). -
I think they got off with their generator placed on lan cable as an "honest" mistake as it was a night exercise...Originally posted by Groovee:wah. den he had to forkout $13,000? major bleeding sia.
Signals is full of funny stories... there's one where my friend in signals was involved in the creation of this battlefield computer... it was actually a ruggerized IBM 250mhz PC... but dunno how they ruggerized it until it's various versions weighed from 250 kilos to 1 ton! Most of the weight came from it's reinforced gigantic monitor to allow the top brass to see it from afar... Apparently nobody in R&D thought of using a projector instead of a screen!
Anyway, that thing was so tough that it could probably survive being hit by bullets or a near miss by an arty shell... it could do anything but work. The IBM PC was slow, the software was buggy and it hung frequently... what's worse, the 200 dollar keyboard cable tended to get loose if you pulled it too hard and the only way to plug it back in was to take the unit apart!
True to Dilbert principals, when the keyboard cable got loose, my friend would usually carefully push the wire back in, put the tray back, and wait for the next user (preferably a rookie) to come along, and the moment the person pulled out the keyboard tray to use the keyboard, the cable would come lose and all the Signals guys over there will go "Wah lau! Look at what you do!" Usually the hapless rookie would actually be suckered into fixing the keyboard cable, a tedious job nobody wants to do.
Of course, that was if that thing could work or even get to battle in the first place, especially the version which weighted 1 ton and needed it's own transport unit... usually the smaller version would take a lot of the Singals guys to lug around while the other guys are yelling at them to hurry up and set up that thing. And of course, that thing usually failed to live up to expectations and long strings of hokkien vulgarities would often be heard in the night. One night, one guy got so fed up he kicked the thing right off the back of a 3 tonner, creating a crash that sounded like a bomb going off and that thing actually survived!
Of course, this thing actually went on an exchance programme to Taiwan, and the Signals unit had to wayang a lot to make it look good, as they were ordered...
Rumour has it that these battle computer units are siting in storage in some military base waiting for use in a time of war... considering the battlefield computing equipment we have now, my signals friend is not optimistic that anyone might use it at all.
Except for armour plating, of course. -
can sucker enemy into wasting rounds shooting at it.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Except for armour plating, of course. -
The mother of all screwups that I've seen has to be a demonstration mass drop at Tuas - a whole lot of Mindef brass were there to watch. The pallet on which the Mercedes jeep is dropped has 3 parachutes. Damn thing rolled of the Charlie ramp and only one opened. One of the boys was on the ground packing up his chute, heard a rushing noise and dived aside just in time to keep from getting squashed. Write off one Merc and one mounted Milan system. That was not a good day for 3rd transport.
Abseiling practice during BCT, doing a casualty rappel. My buddy was not the most height-loving kind of guy, and I was tied to his back as the casualty. He slipped while getting into L-shape and let go of the rope. Next thing I knew I was looking 8 floors up at the ground - he weighed 85kg, I weighed 65, and we both landed on my back on the cliff. Anyway, the safety line got wrapped around my leg and as my buddy kept flailing about, it got tighter and tighter. I headbutted the back of his head (good thing we were both wearing helmets at the time), and it was enough to stun him. I told him to keep still, called up to the safety line belayer and asked him to give me some slack while I untangled my leg. Once I did that, I told my buddy to plant his feet on the cliff and walk, not bounce, down the cliff. I left it up to my platoon sergeant to tear a few strips off the guy, but when I got back to barracks that night, I checked my back and saw that I had a bruise on my back from my shoulders to my hips.
Company exercise in Singapore. The three platoons were to approach the target from separate directions. My PC decided that he wanted to cut across this gravel pile which was about 2 storeys high. We got up to the top, going two steps forward and one step back, and found hat the bush on the other side was too thick to cut through quickly. I did a quick recce and reported that it was the same all along the length of the gravel pile. The PC insisted on trying another spot, and by the time we were done, we had gone up and down four times without finding a break. Eventually we skirted around the pile and the bush, as I recommended originally, and got to the target an hour late. Needless to say, the OC did not take kindly to this and the PC was assigned a whole pile of extras. Anyway, on the way back, I referred to the PC as Wally Weenie the Wonderschmuck, and the name stuck. For the rest of his tour with us, whenever anybody was looking for the PC, they would ask “Where’s Wally?”.
Night FIBUA exercise in Serimbun. We were the guinea pig batch for Mindef’s study into the effectiveness of issuing each man with a laser sight. The sight we used had a bracket that was bolted on to the barrel of the weapon, with the laser emitter sliding on and fastened by quick-release levers (similar to the ones found on bicycle wheel hubs). Anyway, went tom the first room, activated the laser, saw the red dot and fired. Same thing happened with the second room. Got to the third room, hit the activation button and got nothing. I checked my weapon and found that the sight had dropped off because the quick release lever was worn down. Anyway, we had to call for exercise cut, hit the lights and find the damned thing – it cost $1400 and damned if I was going to sign a 1206 for that.
LRRP exercise in Brunei. In our team we had two snipers, but one of the section commanders pulled rank and insisted on navigating. We walked for 5 hours, did a position check and found that we were only 2 klicks from where we started – the bugger had gone around in a circle. We took a break and one of the boys whipped out his camera – I still have the photo of the lot of us looking exhausted and pissed off, with the section commander looking somewhat sheepish. Anyway, when we started off again, the snipers did the navigation and got us there within an hour and a half.
Same LRRP exercise. The mission was to look out for a Land Rover with a cross on the side, and report the number written on the canvas cover. After a day and a half, a Rover appeared, but it didn’t have the cross. Two majors and a colonel got out of the Rover and poked around in the bush for about half an hour, then got back in and took off. We sent a report, but it wasn’t relevant to the exercise anyway. I caught up with an old school mate who was an OCS instructor, and I asked him if he knew anything about it. As it turns out, some OCS cadet had his rifle stolen while he was asleep – the weapon was later recovered at a nearby village. The cadet was an SAF scholar, so he didn’t get much more than a reprimand. -
well how come i'm not suprised.Originally posted by Gedanken:The cadet was an SAF scholar, so he didn?t get much more than a reprimand.
how responsible of all involved. -
Bo-leh.. any1 doing POI at Clementi Camp knows that the contact drill alway at the front gate and side gate which was infront on an open road to some Idust Bldg...I pity those rich pp living there.at nite thunderflash and GPMG fire ( there is some ang-mo hse we can see from our bunks...Maybe after Setp when i m back from POI I can share any cock up mission, may tried to get some photosOriginally posted by gary1910:Wah liao, so cockup. during my time , the POI , firefight portion of the exercise was done in a partially deserted camp where we built up many firing postions all over the exercise area.
We were told then that if we encounter "enemy " outside the compound, we are not to fire or challenge him but report the incident to the police and let the police handle them unless of course fired upon.
If the enemy retreat from the compound, we are to stay put and let the police handle them. That is the right procedure.
So not to kena Tio Hu Li San!!!
The training officers for this incident sure get hell from the TC's commander!!!
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Ehh, I'm not going to get into this. I've started enough trouble before and I've learned my lesson!Originally posted by HENG@:well how come i'm not suprised.
how responsible of all involved. -
no worries. whats fact is fact. no use hiding the truth, and nothing for ppl to argue about.Originally posted by Gedanken:Ehh, I'm not going to get into this. I've started enough trouble before and I've learned my lesson! -
My time, there was no blank issued to us, lot of wayang and running abt at Clementi Camp, I believe it is due the camp is too near to public eye for us to use thunderflashes & blanks.Originally posted by smisig:Bo-leh.. any1 doing POI at Clementi Camp knows that the contact drill alway at the front gate and side gate which was infront on an open road to some Idust Bldg...I pity those rich pp living there.at nite thunderflash and GPMG fire ( there is some ang-mo hse we can see from our bunks...Maybe after Setp when i m back from POI I can share any cock up mission, may tried to get some photos
We did the actual firefight with blanks in the old 3rd Guards barrack that was deserted then and away from public eyes. -
They still using these?Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:Signals is full of funny stories... there's one where my friend in signals was involved in the creation of this battlefield computer... it was actually a ruggerized IBM 250mhz PC... but dunno how they ruggerized it until it's various versions weighed from 250 kilos to 1 ton! Most of the weight came from it's reinforced gigantic monitor to allow the top brass to see it from afar... Apparently nobody in R&D thought of using a projector instead of a screen!
Anyway, that thing was so tough that it could probably survive being hit by bullets or a near miss by an arty shell... it could do anything but work. The IBM PC was slow, the software was buggy and it hung frequently... what's worse, the 200 dollar keyboard cable tended to get loose if you pulled it too hard and the only way to plug it back in was to take the unit apart!
Rumour has it that these battle computer units are siting in storage in some military base waiting for use in a time of war... considering the battlefield computing equipment we have now, my signals friend is not optimistic that anyone might use it at all.
Except for armour plating, of course.
Last time I was in the army, I used laptops for outfield ex liao leh...
& projectors oso using... even $60K plasma screens oso got...
luckily, mi not in G3 branch... who had to be responsible for the plasma screen, too ex liao... anything wrong, then 1206... die.... -
Well we can't possibly deprive the SAF and maybe even Singapore of a future leader just because of a silly and insignificant issue like having a rifle stolen while next to him, can we?Originally posted by HENG@:well how come i'm not suprised.
how responsible of all involved.
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is that meant in a sacarstic way or are u defending him?Originally posted by Viper52:Well we can't possibly deprive the SAF and maybe even Singapore of a future leader just because of a silly and insignificant issue like having a rifle stolen while next to him, can we? -
If u're defending him, consider these points.
1stly how can u be sure he's a future leader.
2ndly how does it bode for a future leader to be as irresponsible to lose something SIGNIFICANT like a deadly weapon?
3rdly how does it speak about biasedness and fairness in the SAF?
an ordinary soldier might face getting charged to teach him about responsibility. so our future leaders do not need to learn about responsibility. now i feel comforted about our future.
and i didn't know learning about responsibility would ruin ones career. the bad ones stumble from their mistakes. the real talents climb higher still because of their mistakes. -
Heng, don't worry man, I was being sarcastic.I guess the sarcasm was too well disguised that it caused the misunderstanding...Originally posted by HENG@:If u're defending him, consider these points.
1stly how can u be sure he's a future leader.
2ndly how does it bode for a future leader to be as irresponsible to lose something SIGNIFICANT like a deadly weapon?
3rdly how does it speak about biasedness and fairness in the SAF?
an ordinary soldier might face getting charged to teach him about responsibility. so our future leaders do not need to learn about responsibility. now i feel comforted about our future.
and i didn't know learning about responsibility would ruin ones career. the bad ones stumble from their mistakes. the real talents climb higher still because of their mistakes.
A check with some previous posts would show my stand on the scholar system in place and the large cracks which many "slip through".
I agree with all the points you make, but unfortunately all too often its the story of Singapore today, not just in the SAF. -
yeah... i actually missed e sacarsm on e 1st pass...Originally posted by Viper52:Heng, don't worry man, I was being sarcastic.I guess the sarcasm was too well disguised that it caused the misunderstanding...
A check with some previous posts would show my stand on the scholar system in place and the large cracks which many "slip through".
I agree with all the points you make, but unfortunately all too often its the story of Singapore today, not just in the SAF.
subsequent passes then i realised which is why i edited the post! haha
great to see there are others who see thru the web of lies spun by SAF. -
i didn't know POI nowadays got training before deployed leh.
when i was deployed late 2001, all we got was crashed course advanced UC, then ROE briefing, then everyone bring 240 x 5.56 go out liaoz... Knn.. we even have to build the MG nests... hehehe... arrr.... good o' days of lobo.