A US soldier has died after he was crushed by a tank on a training exercise in California.
Combat engineer Adrian Bonsey, 29, was on foot in a large-scale training exercise in the Mojave Desert when he was run over by a 27-ton M2 Bradley fighting vehicle.
Specialist Bonsey, who was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart in Georgia, was killed at 4.30am on June 10 during hours of limited visibility, an army spokesperson said.
“This is a devastating loss for our entire division,” Maj. Gen. John Lubas, the 3rd Infantry Division commander, said. “Adrian was an exceptional soldier who was committed to our mission and proudly serving our nation. We are heartbroken and will wrap our arms around his family, loved ones and fellow Soldiers during this difficult time.”
View 3 ImagesAn M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle during a training exercise (file photo)(Image: U.S. Army)
Specialist Bonsey, from New York, joined the army in 2023 and had been stationed at Fort Stewart for two months, the US military said. He previously served at Fort Carson, Colorado, and deployed to Poland in 2024.
He was part of a large-scale training exercise at the National Training Center, located in California’s Mojave Desert. Such training sees army units spend around a month on large-scale exercises designed to simulate war conditions.
This type of training is typically the final stage before army units are considered ready for potential combat deployments abroad.
View 3 ImagesFort Stewart, Georgia(Image: AP)
Bradley fighting vehicles are operated by a three-man crew and can carry a six man rifle team into combat. They are armed with a 25mm chain gun and M240C 7.62mm machine gun as well as TOW anti-tank missiles.
There were 31 soldiers killed in army training accidents in 2025, according to Pentagon figures, with fatalities split between aircraft crashes and ground incidents. Most of the ground deaths involved military vehicles, many in rollover incidents.
The service has averaged roughly two vehicle-related fatalities each month since 2020, down since the mid-2000s when deaths were triple that, amid a scramble to train units for the Iraq war surge.
Article continues below
Repeated army investigations have highlighted factors such as sleep deprivation, inadequate training and inexperienced leaders supervising high-risk exercises playing a role in such training accidents.
The incident remains under investigation.