Re: I couldn't believe this one
How about everybody stop bashing the OP for starters. It is a bit unfortunate that he posted the image here without further information, but the real problem is that most people see an image and jump right to whatever conclusion their preoccupation dictates, completely skipping the thinking process in between.
I PMed the OP right away after seeing the image, and apparently he got the image from a buddy in the USMC. Unfortunately the information when and why this happened seems to be lost since someone just pulled the gun out of a pelicase like this and snapped the pic, so we'll probably never learn what caused this. The OP didn't intend to cause a shitstorm here and was regretful that he did, so there's no reason to be so harsh. If you want to be harsh, be harsh on the people that jump to cunclusions without utilizing some common sense before.
Now for the technical side: Although I don't like the fact that this happened at all, I'm not really surprised by it either. The Marines are tough on their gear, and shit happens, especially when protecting your gear is not your first priority during use. I can imagine a couple scenarios where a turret takes a very sharp impact and could fail, either right away or after some time because it was damaged without the damage becoming immediately apparent. In that case, the information about what caused the damage is lost.
As an example, there have been cases reported here before where windage turrets of reputable brand scopes have been snapped off because they were placed in front of the corner of an obstacle so that the turret took the full recoil force, and there are reports of parallax knobs failing on other high end scopes in this thread. People need to learn and accept that there are limitations to the structural integrity of even the toughest scopes. These instruments will take a lot of abuse, but there are limitations, and an organisation like the USMC will likely run into these limitations every once in a while, firstly because they have a four-digit sample size and secondly because they don't buy scopes to admire on sunny days at the range. Of course every failure will be considered to possibly implement improvements in the future, but I've seen how the scopes tend to look that come back for servicing from the USMC, so I'm not going to loose sleep over a damaged scope as long as I know that the design itself is sound.
Disclaimer: I work on the design of these scopes and I don't believe in telling people fairy tales about the infallibility of any mechanical object that no serious designer and no serious user believes anyway. The customer has a right not to be treated like a complete moron.