With huge budgets and low salaries for soldiers, providing service members with the right operating equipment is of the utmost importance. Our Army what can be done to repay those who have elected to serve. It often fail to achieve this goalhowever, and now, ironically, a safety feature in military-issued parachutes is killing servicemen in horrific accidents.
In case you lost it:
Army personnel Sgt. Brycen Erdody filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the T-11 backup parachute, Airborne Systems of North America, on Monday. The T-11 backup parachute is a backup parachute that rests on a soldier’s chest should their primary canopy fail.
Erdody’s arm was nearly severed when a sudden strong wind blew his T-11 spare parachute in 2019. Erdody underwent five surgeries to repair the damage to his body caused by the accident. tried, but could potentially lose his arm.
At least two other service members died after their T-11 reserves were deployed. It is impossible to know for certain how many service members have died as a result of desertion, but an Army Infantry School bulletin puts the number in the tens. Two deaths confirmed by Washington Post are suffering:
Navy SEAL Director Petty Bradley Cavner was killed in El Centro, Calif., when his reserve T-11 was activated by a strong gust and his head hit the doorframe of the plane as he was swept out. A lawsuit filed by Cavner’s parents ended in a secret settlement in 2017, according to court records.
Air Force Special Operations Officer Sgt. Cole Condiff also died when his reserve T-11 blew up due to a gust of wind, pulling him from an aircraft flying over the Gulf of Mexico. His body never recovered.
an air force investigation blames Condiff and his teammates for not noticing that a protective cloth – added to the tether cap after Cavner’s death to prevent another accident – was stretched too far by an inch , so it cannot prevent the wind from spreading as intended.
A military parachute instructor with 20 years of experience who is not a plaintiff in Erdody’s lawsuit says the inserts are a “Band Bandage.”
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Since Erdody is unable to sue the Defense Department due to the Feres doctrine, he is suing Airborne Systems of North America for causing his extensive injuries with the faulty parachute. The lawsuit alleges that a relatively recent update to the T-11’s 50-year-old design wasn’t properly tested, and that the company both designed a faulty chute and failed to warn soldiers of the danger.
A spokesperson for the Army told the Post it is investigating safety issues and solutions to the wind blast issue. Until major changes are made, the T-11 reserve chute remains in service to this day
“They’re still jumping the same system I used when I got sucked outside of the airplane,” Erdody told the Post. “There’s been nothing, no fixes.”
