SYDNEY (AP) — A search and rescue operation was underway Saturday for service members involved in the “mishap” of an aircraft off the east coast of Australia, U.S. Marine officials said.
Ships, small boats and aircraft from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group were conducting the operation following the incident involving an MV-22 Osprey, the Marine base Camp Butler in Japan said in a statement.
The statement did not provide further details, and it was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties.
Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne said the incident occurred off the coast of Shoalwater Bay in Queensland state.
“I can confirm no Australian Defence Force personnel were on board the aircraft,” Payne said in a statement. “The United States are leading the search and recovery effort.”
Payne said she had spoken with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “to offer Australia’s support in any way that can be of assistance.”
The Osprey aircraft were in Australia for a joint military training exercise held by the U.S. and Australia last month in Shoalwater Bay. The Talisman Sabre exercise, a biennial event between the two nations, involved more than 30,000 troops and 200 aircraft.
The Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies like an airplane. They have been involved in a series of high-profile crashes in recent years.
In 2015, a U.S. Osprey crashed during a training exercise in Hawaii, killing two Marines. Last December, a U.S. military Osprey crash-landed off Japan’s southern island of Okinawa. Its five crew members were rescued safely. And in January, three U.S. soldiers were wounded in the “hard landing” of an Osprey in Yemen.
Anyway, we must hope for the best possible outcome here! Maybe USA got very lucky, knock on wood!!
You can be a grammar cop as much as you like, but you need to weigh it against the likely effects, in this case, none.
First, this is an AP article and grammar copping in this forum is not likely to have any effect.
Second, this is a quotation by an Australian. The Brits frequently refer to the United States as a plural entity. And, after all, Australians are just Brits with the pommy bits knocked off.
The United States has been considered a singular entity by Americans since shortly after the Civil War. Note the use of the plural in the Thirteenth Amendment (1865):
It’s unfair to hold Brits (or Aussies) to American English standards.
Ayep. Cain’t 'spect them folks t’talk all k’rekty-lahk, now can ya?
British usage, and I presume Australian as well, often refers to corporate entities in the plural as well. “Microsoft are under investigation by the EU”, for example.
As noted by @the_loan_arranger, it is the Queen’s English.
As any White House spokesperson could explain to you:
The Aussies are very weak and didn’t join the Great State of America on July 4, 1776, to fight and defeat the Redcoats. While we spent that night celebrating with fireworks on the National Mall in DC, the Aussies were letting England cram the British language down their throats. Australia’s ban on assault weapons allowed the Redcoats to defeat the Aussies so easily. England also forced weak Australia to drive on the wrong side of the road and take a whole bunch of bad hombres that had been locked up in England’s prisons. It wasn’t until Obama was president that America was so weak that Australia forced us to take those prisoners and let them come to America and live next to our children and schools and golf courses. Unbelievable!