umm it really depends….

“Hi Blokes, I’m down here… I’m down here!!!!”

8 simple words

The Sun would probably accept a public beheading — like good little dhimmis…

lan astaslem on February 6, 2007 at 11:20 AM

Gotta love Uncle Rupes Murdoch, eh?

How many faces does that man have, precisely?

It can be a chore to sort out armored vehicles even when they are laid out on a bombing range and marked on a map. It’s even harder when you are on a dynamic battlefield with tens of thousands of moving pieces with imperfect knowledge of where everyone is. It’s a miracle that more friendly fire does not happen. A miracle.

Ask the 1,077 Australian and American Bluejackets who ended up sleeping on the bottom of Iron Bottom Sound the night of Aug 9, 1942.
A wild free for all with friendly fire accounting for a large portion of those deaths. Even the Japanese found themselves firing on their own ships that night. The commander of the USS Bagley didn’t even get a no-no for slamming a torpedo into the HMAS Canberra.

Like I said earlier in this thread…..kick em out of the cockpit, but prosecution=witch hunt.

You can only have orange placards on top of your ground vehicles if you own the sky. I assume because of the allied Air Forces in place it was determined that the Iraq AF would not be a problem and therefore the allies could place orange placards (I assume ahead of time) to help minimize the risk of a friendly fire attack.

If I were an Iraqi commander I would paint the top of my vehicle orange (or my rockets orange) if I knew “orange” would not be attacked.

Fog of war.

In the age of high-tech electronics, Clausewitz still rules the battlefield.

georgej on February 6, 2007 at 6:59 PM

Fog of War exactly. However there were no high tech electronics involved, (unless orange paint is high-tech).

Back in 2003 the Brits did not have Blue Tracker (not sure if they can interface with it now) and had to resort to orange placards placed on their convoys.

Here is what happened, as I understand the video.

1. They were sent to attack a group of targets in that area.

2. They found a group and were trying to get confirmation by having arty dropped on the target.

3. During that time a pilot sees a group of 4 moving into town (to take cover positions)

4. Notices they have orange on top, previously told no friendlys in the area?

5. I thinks they maybe be orange rockets. Asks again are their friendlys in the area. Answer = No

6. We are BINGO (For those that do not know “bingo fuel” does not mean you are out of fuel it means you have enough fuel to make it back to base, with a bit of a reserve). In short time to start heading home.

7. I don’t want to head home and allow the enemy to set up positions in town to attack the ground troops.

8. Rolling in

I am not saying the A-10 pilots did not make a mistake (hindsight being 20/20 we all know they attacked British troops and you had a pilot weeping on they way home) and I am certainly not trying to dismiss what occurred.

However the fog-of war being what it is the question to be answered is were they negligent in the mistake?

In the age of high-tech electronics, Clausewitz still rules the battlefield.

The simple answer to this is a Court Martial.

Lawrence on February 6, 2007 at 1:26 PM

Is there anyone here who after watching the video believes something like that was skipped? I mean these guys knew they were dead-to-rights immediately.

Esthier on February 6, 2007 at 1:37 PM

I don’t know for sure. This video is only part of the whole story.

If a military officer of any type chooses to disregard targeting and firing procedures like this video suggests, and it gets friendlies or civilians killed, it generally means some serious punishment for disobeying an order. A full court martial and prison time is a possible punishment.

But again, in this case, I don’t know the rest of the story.

Even CBS news gets close to the truth.

What the story omits (of course) is that the rate of friendly fire in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts has been – by far – the lowest in military history. Ever. For any nation. Period.

In World War II, friendly fire deaths accounted for 14%; in Vietnam the numbers weren’t much lower; in Desert Storm, it was something like 23%, due to a couple large-scale incidents (and the low number of casualties over all). In the U.S. Civil War, there were battles in which an estimated one-half to two-thirds of the deaths came from either friendly-fire or infection spread by the surgeons trying to save lives.

In the post-9/11 conflicts, the friendly fire rate is less than ONE PERCENT. It is a testament to our technology and the skill of our soldiers.

That’s the story here. It’s an amazing one, too. Too bad nobody’s particularly interested.

I can’t find any record of the crew of the other tank being “brought to account” and I can’t find any record of The Sun’s moral outrage over that friendly fire incident.

Nice going armchair ace. I’m sure you hit your paper target every time your at the rifle range. Too bad you don’t support the troops. They’re fighting there so you don’t have to here.

“Our side” is always blue, the enemy is always “red”, allies are almost always blue (sometimes green if there’s a distinction that must be made.)

Blue on blue happens. Very bad for everyone involved, and their families, even if there are no fatalities. This story is old — four year old — news, spiced up with gun camera video.

This is just the media cheering for the other side.

htom on February 6, 2007 at 12:45 PM

Couldn’t agree more, htom.
I’m angry at The Sun for stirring up this hornet’s nest.
The war in Iraq at that time was barely a week old…and these pilots asked at least twice if there were friendlies in the area and were told “No” twice.
It’s not gonna do anybody any good at all for this video to be seen except possibly our enemies who get to see our operational procedures and what our cockpit cameras look like.
And it’s gonna inflame even more hatred for us in the UK, which has been going wobbly on us for a long time. Many in Britain are already urging Blair to pull their troops out of Iraq and this will just make it worse…
So much for the “special relationship.”
You could tell that our guys had made an honest mistake and were just sick about what happened.
Damn it.

One of the general principals of ROE is that a military member typically must positively identify a target before engaging it. Based only on this video (which is not the complete story), it appears the one pilot did not. They were under the control of a FAC and at the very least should have obtained permission to roll in the the target.

A couple more words on ROE. It’s often quite detailed and spells out exactly what procedures should be followed this kind of situation. Since ROE is classified, we don’t know for certain whether any procedures were violated or not, so it’s impossible to determine with certainty if the pilot is to blame, the FAC, the Brits, the ROE procedures themselves, or a combination of some or all. Without the full picture, we just don’t know.

The Sun Online has obtained and released the videotape of a ‘Blue on Blue’ incident that occurred in 2003.The tragedy unfolded on March 28, 2003 — day seven of the invasion to topple Saddam. The two single-seat, slow-flying jets were…

The simple answer to this is a Court Martial.

Lawrence on February 6, 2007 at 1:26 PM

Is there anyone here who after watching the video believes something like that was skipped? I mean these guys knew they were dead-to-rights immediately.

“The pilots need to be brought to account.”

What does that mean?

honora on February 6, 2007 at 10:27 AM

The story suggests that the pilot(s) made a personal chose to skip and or short-cut safety protocols without proper authority, and it got friendlies killed.

The simple answer to this is a Court Martial.

God help these airman and the the families of those killed and wounded.

Additionally, I spent many years in the AF dealing with recognition of military equipment and training others for it. I find it hard to believe they could identify the specific make of some vehicles and couldn’t tell those vehicles they were shooting at were Brits. A-10 pilots go through extensive training to recognize vehicles and they should have caught that.

That being said, their punishment (if any) should come from within and not be given over to a foreign entity, friendly or not.

I can just imagine how I’d feel if I’d just lit up some friendlies. I hope it didn’t go too badly for them. They did check and get cleared for a go.

Sh*t sh*t sh*t…

Blue on blue happens. Very bad for everyone involved, and their families, even if there are no fatalities. This story is old — four year old — news, spiced up with gun camera video.

This is just the media cheering for the other side.

I feel sorry for these guys. It is readily apparent how hard they were trying – whether they screwed up in some way or not – and it is almost assured at this point their identities are going to become known.