UAV Crash at Fort Stewart

I managed to monitor part of an interesting incident on 29 January 2007: the crash of a Shadow UAV during training by the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Divsion at Fort Stewart. The UAV belonged to A/2-3 BTB; search and recovery operations utilized assets of 2nd Brigade Headquarters, A/2-3 BTB, and 3-3 Aviation.

Due to my distance from Fort Stewart, I didn't hear any FM or VHF/UHF milair traffic on the operation, but I did catch activity on the Fort Stewart Trunked Repeater System. Most of the activity was on Talkgroup 2960, which has been identified as a 2nd Brigade talkgroup; SPARTAN elements (2nd Brigade), TITAN elements (2-3 BTB) and SHARK elements (3-3 Aviation) were coordinating requests for an AH-64 Apache to assist in the search. TITAN elements also passed last known altitude and heading to assist the AH-64 that SHARK 3 tasked to the search. Talkgroup 7312, which has been used extensively during recent 2nd Brigade training was used by SPARTAN X-RAY to advise training areas of the UAV crash.

The TRS was used to coordinate the activity of the units involved. Based on what I could hear, SHARK 3 had tasked DEATHSTALKER 6 (the AH-64 in the search) to communicate with 2-3 BTB on a SINGCARS net. All in all, it made for fascinating monitoring. Unfortunately I fell asleep before the UAV was located, so I missed the resolution of the search and how bad the UAV may have been damaged. TITAN mentioned that it's parachute had deployed, so hopefully damage was minimal.

Mac McCormick, KF4LMT
kf4lmt@comcast.net