|
|
April 06, 2003
Breaking: another report on the the friendly-fire incident
Christopher Allbritton - from Back2Iraq - has just sent in an e-mail report by satellite phone, from Arbil, in Northern Iraq: "We arrived today in Arbil, the seat of theKurdistan Regional Government, to find a city on edge and in mourning. An American fighter jet had just hit a convoy of _peshmergas_ and U.S. Special Forces in a friendly fire incident that left at at least seven Kurdish fighters and possibly three American troops dead. Also killed were several civilians, including the translator for BBC's John Simpson, Kameran Abdulrazzaq. The details of the attack remain unclear, but the attack by an F-15E Abdulrazzaq, an engineer by training, was a Simpson's translator. When he Simpson himself was slightly injured in the attack, and one of the BBC's Update: you can now read the complete story online. The Simpson report can be found at BBC (also: video) And here is: the initial newsrelease of CentCom, citation: "Early casualty reports indicate one civilian may have been killed, one US soldier, one Kurdish soldier and four civilians were injured. Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. More information will be released as it becomes available." Comments
There's always ways to get better, and it seems that one of next steps is to bring more and better information tools to the battlefield, right down to every individual soldier, allowing for better identification. Not for the first time in the past 17 days we are given a reminder of what a hideous thing war is. Posted by: Will Allen at April 6, 2003 12:03 PMI totally agree,but 25-30+% "blue on blue" is totally unacceptagle... Posted by: Rob..in NC at April 6, 2003 12:26 PMI guess standing next to intact enemy tanks will become a no-no now. I think the military, all branches, need to look at total systems integration instead of more "smart" bombs. How about smart planes that know where they are, where our forces are, and where the hostiles are. Each target should have live data with strength, ID/type and GPS co'ords streaming into and out of CENTCOM. Anyone wanting to fire should see a screen displaying their immediate area with red and green markers (bad/good guys). If a target turns green, DONT BOMB IT! Simple. We have the technology, lets actually use it. There have got to be some video game makers who can come up with some robust realtime target tracking software (look at the level of interaction and AI in video games these days, geeze). Posted by: Tim at April 6, 2003 12:28 PMIt's only "25-30+% blue-on-blue" because the Iraqis are so totally ineffective. The kill ration is totally out of whack. Posted by: Gryffin at April 6, 2003 12:50 PMA disproportionate number have involved Us strike aircraft, which are not as immured in the "fog of war" as people on the ground whose lives are on the line and have to make split-second decisions amid great confusion of battle. The problem seems not to be a lack of smart aircraft but a surplus of hairtrigger pilots. It's not as if they don't have a little time to check. Everyone is putting a brave face on it now, but I'd bet there will be some very serious repercussions. Northern Iraq is not a seething battlefield. What worries me is that nothing ever seems to be learnt from such incidents, not from GW1, Afghanistan or the earlier serious incidents in this war involving air-to-ground attacks. The Patriots blue on blue incidents can be accepted to be systems errors. Posted by: Dave F at April 6, 2003 02:32 PMTry to see if you can hunt down an old WWII training film entitled "The Japanese Zero," starring Ronnie Reagan. It detailed the differences between the P-40 and the Zero, and told about American pilots who shot down the former for the latter even though the P-40 looked -nothing- like a Zeke. Posted by: Ernest Brown at April 6, 2003 03:41 PMWWII was full of horrific friendly-fire incidents on a far greater scale than these we're seeing now. This in Iraq is awful, but it's an improvement. Our yardstick has changed so much. In the first 17 days of fighting in the hedgerows of France, the 12 U.S. divisions involved advanced 7 miles at a cost of 40,000 casualties. In his book "'44", Charles Whiting tells us, "There were now (by mid-day) 2,500 dead, wounded and missing Americans on Bloody Omaha, and by nightfall on June 6th, they would be joined by another 4,000 similarly dead, missing, wounded or captured Americans taking part in the invasion elsewhere, plus 3,000 British soldiers and 1,000 Canadians." Whoever said things are improving in friendly fire since world war two would fail military history 101. I agree this is caused by many factors, some of which are actually good, but it certainly is not "improving". Posted by: gnome at April 6, 2003 06:15 PMPost a comment
|