Austin noted, in addition to praising the victims, that search and rescue efforts are still ongoing, and the circumstances of the disaster have not been reliably clarified.
According to specialized resources, the disaster occurred approximately 50 miles southeast of the island of Cyprus. It is in this area that work is now being carried out to search and recover debris.
Damn. If you’re unlucky enough to have some crazy shit like that happen where clearly the military is at fault I feel like you gotta at least get some sort of small settlement. Like a “we’ll pay for the medical bills related to injuries for life and here’s $100K to say sorry and also to not talk about this in the media” or something. I actually don’t know how common payouts from the DoD to completely unrelated bystander citizens is. I have to imagine they make payments somewhat frequently though just because the DoD budget is an infinite pit and it’s easy to pay people and they won’t talk shit.