my jet

wo Army soldiers, whose combat duties include working to prevent “friendly fire” mishaps, narrowly avoided harm when an F-16 fighter jet from Hill Air Force Base opened fire on their SUV while driving at the Utah Test and Training Range.

The incident occurred during a nighttime training mission April 8 in which the fighter pilot was practicing shooting at ground targets. The soldiers were not hit, but did suffer minor injuries “while exiting the vehicle in rough terrain,” according to a statement from the base. The sport utility vehicle, a rental from Avis, was damaged in the incident, but base officials declined to say whether it was hit by the jet’s 20mm cannon fire or crashed after the soldiers jumped out.

Airmen and base contractors from unrelated commands at Hill have been the subject of several unflattering and high-profile incidents made public over the past month. In early March, Defense Department officials revealed that they were looking into the mistaken shipment of four ballistic missile fuses from a depot at the northern Utah base to Taiwan, which had ordered a set of helicopter batteries. Last week, base officials acknowledged that they had burned several pounds of depleted uranium in a Layton incinerator before realizing that the parts were tainted with the radioactive material.