A man was arrested on Saturday after climbing onto and attacking the hull of an Air Force C-130 at an airport in Ireland. The attacker was able to strike the military transport aircraft several times before being arrested.
The incident happened early Saturday morning, with the Garda Síochána (the Irish national police) and defense forces responding, in an incident that briefly shut down Shannon Airport in County Clare. In a video of the incident posted to social media including the U.S. Air Force subreddit, the man can be seen crawling along the wing of the plane as it sits on a taxiway, hitting the aircraft several times with some kind of tool. He then walks along the fuselage of the C-130, which is assigned to the 139th Airlift Wing of the Missouri Air National Guard, hitting it more before the video ends.
In a statement on Saturday, Garda Síochána said that an “adult male, aged in his 40s, was arrested for alleged criminal damage by gardaí shortly before 11am and is currently detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984 in a Garda Station in the Clare Tipperary Division.”
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The man’s identity has not been revealed, or his motivation for attacking the C-130. A spokesperson for the Shannon Airport Group said that the incident shut down airport operations for approximately 25 minutes.
Both the 139th Airlift Wing and U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa confirmed to Task & Purpose it was a plane with the unit. An Irish activist group tracking military flights in and out of the airport spotted the C-130 arriving on Friday.
“The aircraft was enroute to support bilateral Polish exercise Hussar Saber 26-1. Details of damage will not be released for operational security and we can confirm no personnel were injured,” a spokesperson for U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa said in a statement to Task & Purpose. “We are grateful for the prompt response by local authorities and defer to Irish officials for details on the incident.”
C-130s are extensively used by multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces for troop and cargo transport and medical evacuations. Most recently, at least two C-130s played a role in the operation to recover a missing airman in Iran after his F-15E was shot down. As part of the extensive rescue mission, two C-130s landed on a Forward Arming and Refueling Point, or FARP, in southwestern Iran, but got stuck in the soft soil. Unable to get them out and unwilling to leave them to Iranian hands, the American troops destroyed them and two helicopters, evacuating instead on three smaller planes that flew in as a fall back plan.
It’s not clear how the attacker in Ireland was able to get past security and reach the plane, which was parked on a remote part of the airport. However there have been multiple breaches at Shannon Airport, including one in May 2025 when a van crashed through a security fence.
Saturday’s incident is not the first time an American military plane was attacked with a hand tool while parked at Shannon Airport. 23 years ago, a group of Irish anti-war protesters were accused of attacking a C-40 Clipper plane, a modified Boeing 737 used by the U.S. military. The plane was in a hangar at the airport when protesters hit it with an axe and hammers. All five were acquitted of the charges against them three years later.
