HAFB M-16 flub latest of many

Utah's Hill Air Force Base is making headlines again this year for yet another major misstep, this time involving a small cache of wayward weapons.

Hill 75th Air Base Wing spokesman Charles Freeman on Thursday would only comment on this week's slip-up, involving individuals who lost a box of M-16 assault rifles.

"We are here to address this specific incident," Freeman told media. "As a base, we're moving on, we're moving forward."

Hill officials believe a missing box of 12 M-16s may have fallen off a government vehicle Tuesday afternoon. Hill issued a "Wanted" bulletin for a man suspected of picking up the container, putting it in his car and leaving the base, probably before an organized search of thousands of cars leaving Hill that day began.

"This is just a single incident of forgetting to do one thing," Hill Security Forces Commander Maj. Shannon Smith said on the phone Thursday. "There is no trend associated with losing small arms with any organization at Hill."

The group's unit responsible for the loss scoured the base, even searching bushes and loading docks, hopeful someone decided to leave the M-16s on base somewhere. "We covered all our bases as far as somebody leaving them on base or something like that," Smith said.

The one thing Smith said someone in a Humvee apparently forgot to do after training exercises on the base Tuesday was to secure a tailgate on the back of the vehicle. Smith said the group in that Humvee had no idea the 100-pound green plastic box filled with rifles had fallen out of the vehicle until they returned to an area on base where they were turning in their handguns.

"You can't hear anything in a Humvee," Smith said. "There's no deadening materials in a Humvee. When it goes down the road, it roars."

Several witnesses leaving the base reported to gate officials that they had seen the green box in the road. Hill security officials were not aware right away that weapons, albeit without ammunition or magazines, were stored inside. Smith said that, to those among the 20,000 civilians who work on the base who actually saw the container of rifles, it probably looked like "just a green box." Smith said he wasn't surprised that no one realized that it was a "high-value" item.

Based on witnesses who said they saw someone pick up the box and then put it in his car and leave, Hill is using a sketch artist to come up with a visual description of one individual. It's believed that person is a civilian.