A 30-year Australian defence force paratrooper and sniper has died after colliding with an instructor during a parachute training incident.<\/p>\n
Warrant Officer Lachlan Muddle, 50, hit a fellow soldier a few hundred feet above the ground at Jervis Bay Airfield, NSW’s south coast, on Monday evening, a senior officer has confirmed.<\/p>\n
He sustained fatal injuries during a high-altitude training exercise for the Australian Defence Force’s Parachute School.<\/p>\n
The two men had already deployed their parachutes when the collision occurred, Special Operations Commander Major General Garth Gould told reporters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“Both paratroopers were highly skilled, between the two of them they had several thousand jumps to their credit,” he said.<\/p>\n
The other soldier involved in the collision sustained minor injuries and was first to provide first aid assistance to Muddle.<\/p>\n
Muddle joined the ADF in 1994 and served the majority of his time in the Special Air Service, the senior officer said.<\/p>\n
“He was a highly-qualified Special Forces sniper and military free fall parachutist,” Gould said.<\/p>\n
The highly regarded 50-year-old would be remembered for his sense of humour and deep commitment to serving the nation, Gould said.<\/p>\n
The Department of Defence said they would support his family and all members involved in the tragic accident.<\/p>\n
“The death of one of our soldiers is a tragedy and deeply felt by the army family and across the broader defence community,” the department said in a statement.<\/p>\n
All parachuting operations across Australia have been paused while initial investigations into the incident are conducted.<\/p>\n
The exercise was part of a six-week advanced free fall training exercise and was conducted in the early evening with participants wearing night-vision goggles, Gould said.<\/p>\n
The death is the first in a parachuting accident since Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, son of former federal defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon, died in March 2024 during a training incident at RAAF Base Richmond, northwest of Sydney.<\/p>\n
Fitzgibbon’s death led to an investigation by the Department of Defence and a two-month halt to parachute training activities.<\/p>\n
Despite the two deaths, Gould said he was confident in the safety procedures in place for parachute training.<\/p>\n
“They are up to scratch and fit for purpose, I’ve got a high degree of confidence in our training system,” he said.<\/p>\n
RSL NSW extended its condolences to Muddle’s family and the wider defence community after the accident.<\/p>\n
“Training accidents are a stark reminder of the risks our servicemen and women continue to face in service to the nation, both here at home and abroad,” RSL NSW said on Facebook.<\/p>\n
The last active service member to die in any incident was in October 2025, when a M113 armoured personnel carrier rolled during a training exercise west of Townsville.<\/p>\n
Two other service members were hospitalised with relatively minor injuries after the incident but were released.<\/p>\n
Two soldiers were also killed in a truck rollover south of Townsville in August 2021.<\/p>\n
The department was charged in September 2023 with breaching federal work health and safety laws over the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 30-year Australian defence force paratrooper and sniper has died after colliding with an instructor during a parachute…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,1403,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-423741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-defence","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}