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Comment by greenavocado

1 month ago

The Royal Australian Air Force shut down airspace over an air force base to test fire a “high-powered” single-shot .50 caliber rifle. They are a parody of themselves.

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greenavocado

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defrost  1 month ago

The RAAF didn't test fire, nor did they "shut down" the air space.

Politicians and the police staged an air field adjacent test firing for media that carried risks that caused restricted, and warning notices to be issued for the air space.

  A Department of Defence spokeswoman said the activity was supported by Defence.

  “For safety, Air Force used a notice to airmen and provided air traffic control for a period of time in the vicinity of the area,” she said.

  “At no time were RAAF Base Pearce’s flying operations impacted. The activity was coordinated between WA Police and Defence in accordance with standard procedures.”

  National Shooting Council vice president told News Corp the demonstration was an “orchestrated media event to create fear in the community ... they were clearly told it was too risky but they went ahead anyway”.

  “There was a very, very high risk of ricochets and therefore injury to members of the public, press and police attending because of the type of targets they were shooting at … they were very lucky to get away with it with no-one being injured, killed or worse for this little sh.t show,” he said.

~ https://thewest.com.au/politics/state-politics/raaf-base-pea...

^^ NOTICE: this is from two years past in 2023 .. The Western Australian newspaper website has wrapped this with a masthead with todays date (2025). If you search on the story there are several links from 2023 referencing this .. I cannot fathom why The West has done this to date other than it's a rag with a monopoly in a small state and they can't be arsed to do a good job here.

  • ultrarunner  1 month ago

    As a pilot, if I see a notam "that caused restricted … notices to be issued"-- especially in a military context-- I would be very comfortable describing the affected airspace as "shut down". I'm probably missing something as your link to an apparently low quality story is also paywalled. Maybe they're referring to the fact that the military almost always exempts itself from its TFRs, so technically it wasn't completely "shut down", but by that definition no airspace is ever shut down.

    • defrost  1 month ago 

        “At no time were RAAF Base Pearce’s flying operations impacted.

      I'm also a pilot .. that RAAF base is mostly low traffic and my reading of everything published is they scheduled the media event for dead time and didn't have to abort or turn anything about.

      I'd go further and guess that had the base been required for anything (sudden emergancy landing, etc) the media event would have been shut down and pushed away.

      None of which supports the hyperbolic aspects of the original GP claim above.