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A lot has been made in the fethwit press about blue on blue incidents (or friendly fire as its also MISTAKENLY called) over the last 20 odd years or so of global conflict, they were, a frequent, almost weekly event in Bosnia, commonplace in the 2nd Iraq conflict, but barely reported now in the Afghan conflict, so my question is three-fold....

Did the increase of new technology in the 90's lead to more blue on blue's (given the "newness" of the technologies and less time to understand/train with them) or

has technology improved identification methods, or

is it just going unreported?

Discuss...

I had to actually Google that term, didn't know it meant friendly fire.

I'd say it's likely a mix of those three, though less of the first if any of it at all. Any force would likely have some training behind any new technology before they start using it widely.

I'd say that technology does help prevent friendly fire and the more we progress the less likely it is to happen providing training is done properly. So long as people are trained for when it doesn't work too.

When you hear about friendly fire its most often a breakdown in communication or a malfunction in the tech.
Anything open to human error will go wrong eventually.

E.G Making out a friend or foe tank in the dark from several KM away whilst in a combat environment is always going to be dangerous when judged by human eyes alone.

I think in these days a single case of friendly fire is going to be all over the news whereas in the past they would not be so publicized.

So friendly fire can be perceived to be going up but is going down I think

n0t_u wrote:I had to actually Google that term, didn't know it meant friendly fire.

I'd say it's likely a mix of those three, though less of the first if any of it at all. Any force would likely have some training behind any new technology before they start using it widely.

agreed, BUT, if a new piece of shiny kit comes in, how to work out the bugs, glitches, faults and small details, if you've only just started using it?

i have no doubt that familiarity with a piece of kit is paramount, but how to get that if you've rushed it into service?

im not saying this is always the case, some are pretty easy to use, the carl gustav 66 rocket launcher for instance, pull out pin, aim, press trigger..... BOOM

but with more extensive bits of kit, like for instance, surface to air missile defence systems, which i would imagine take a fair amount of training on, unless you've had the time to do so, then its pretty much in the hands of lady luck

i believe there was an instance where a RAF tornado was shot down in the second Iraq conflict (it may have been the first, im not too sure) by one of these new shiny systems because it was complex and the users were new to the system

I'm reading a book at the moment about the siege of Quebec in the 18th century. There was a letter from the officer in charge detailing the officers to be careful about accidentally firing on their own troops.
My guess would be that 'friendly fire' has been going on in conflicts since time immemorial, it's just that it's reported nowadays.

And sadly, even with the technology and special plans to try and prevent it, it still occurs - thinking of the APCs carrying British troops that were accidentally blown up in the first Gulf War for instance.

Pacific wrote:I'm reading a book at the moment about the siege of Quebec in the 18th century. There was a letter from the officer in charge detailing the officers to be careful about accidentally firing on their own troops.
My guess would be that 'friendly fire' has been going on in conflicts since time immemorial, it's just that it's reported nowadays.

And sadly, even with the technology and special plans to try and prevent it, it still occurs - thinking of the APCs carrying British troops that were accidentally blown up in the first Gulf War for instance.

which im sure was a lot easier to avoid whilst stood in long lines wearing bright red jackets, problem is, for all the IR ident light, or sonic beacons EVERY NATO vehicle carries, there is always going to be human error, sometimes unavoidable, sometimes avoidable.

I heard a buzz that NATO vehicles would be fitted with jamming devices that block friendly weapons systems from locking onto them, how much truth is in this, i dont know, but it seems a reasonable idea, and if it works, could prove the answer to this awful question

During the invasion of Iraq we found out about a guy operating some kind of SAM system (It was either a stinger or avenger IIRC) was locking up a US airplane, reading it's IFF and stopping the firing sequence. At which point the soldier would reset the system and try again. Since I heard about it from a guy who knows a guy, I'm not sure how true it is. But it seems plausible, sometimes idiots are the cause of fratricide.

I dot think that the actual occurrence of friendly fire has become more common because of technology. I think technology has allowed us to fight under different conditions, night and bad weather, increasing the amount of combat with a similar amount of blue on blue. We also hear about it more often and sooner because of modern media and instant mail.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/11/national/main1391626.shtml

The article is 3 years old, but I assume there hasn't been a major change since then. It seems that friendly fire is becoming rarer and rarer.

I don't think it is becoming rarer, just not discussed in the media. Nobody wants to learn that there son or daughter was killed or injured by blue on blue fire. As long as wars are fought, there will be unintended casualties. How it is handled, prevention steps, training, and technology may bring us to a safer battle field (wow, can not believe I typed that) but it is not ment to be safe, and the fog of war will always be there.

From PERSONAL EXPERIENCE friendly fire is anything but. My view is that some countries train their forces to take a more 'Maverick' approach when it comes to military engagements. Take the RAF and USAF. The RAF have strict rules of engagement, not to engage unless fired upon. Even if fired upon by ground forces, unless absolutely necessary to defend yourself, you are not entitled to engage unless that was your actual mission. The USAF generally have assests in the air patroling with free reign to engage, being called upon by ground forces. There's is the more difficult role I think. That being said there are plenty of bad press, the most famous being the A-10 incident which led to the death of 1 British personel and injured 5 others....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/190th_Fighter_Squadron,_Blues_and_Royals_friendly_fire_incident

Despite being told there where friendlies in the area, the A-10 pilot engaged the British vehicles which where clearly identifed with the orange ID plates before being given permission to engage or waiting for confirmation of the target from FAC. The A-10 Pilot has been described as a 'hero' in his home town and a 'murderer' in the home down of the dead. Due to US policy, no US Serving personel can be tried in a foreign court (or even have to turn up) for any war crime or investigation.

A-10's were also responsible for the deaths of 2 BBC reporters (and injured many others) and the deaths of 13 other Press when they attacked a column of vehicles containing members of the Press, US Officials and a Kurdish envoy, all of them NC's. Not to mention the killing of British soliders from the F-18 Bomb dropped on them rather than the enemy position the ground forces had asked the air asset to engage! And lets not mention the Canadian Tanak Incident (F16 Pilot asked to engage ground forces. Told to 'Hold Fire possible firendlies', but engaged anway. They were Canadian Friendlies).

Sometimes 'friendly fire' is a result in malfunctioning technology, like the US Patriot that took town a British Tornado killing both crew due to the Tornado's electronic ID box failing in flight.

I may be a bit biased against the US due to personal experience, but these guys do have a tough call to make, and sometimes that call is wrong. The Brits have had their fair share of Friendly Fire at each other, but this has only ever been ground force engagements. Here's another interesting fact........ In the recent wars in the Middle East, not 1 US serviceman has lost their life due to a Friendly Fire incident caused by an Allied force of another Country. The US though, have caused the deaths of British, Iraqi, Kurdish, Dutch, Canadian, German, Italian, Afgani and more recently, Pakinstani troops.

Technology has allowed us to pick up the pace of killing, or identifying targets in need of engagement. however, It will always come down to an imperfect understanding of the situation, because in conflict both sides are employing forms of deception.

And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

Anyway, I would say its a ticking time bomb, the military is becoming increasingly reliant on technology to determine who is blue and who isn't , there will inevitably be situations in which the technology fails and a friendly is engaged (see: Black Hawk shootdown for such an example)

chaos0xomega wrote:And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

Where's the enemy?

TheSecretSquig wrote:From PERSONAL EXPERIENCE friendly fire is anything but. My view is that some countries train their forces to take a more 'Maverick' approach when it comes to military engagements. Take the RAF and USAF. The RAF have strict rules of engagement, not to engage unless fired upon. Even if fired upon by ground forces, unless absolutely necessary to defend yourself, you are not entitled to engage unless that was your actual mission. The USAF generally have assests in the air patroling with free reign to engage, being called upon by ground forces. There's is the more difficult role I think. That being said there are plenty of bad press, the most famous being the A-10 incident which led to the death of 1 British personel and injured 5 others....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/190th_Fighter_Squadron,_Blues_and_Royals_friendly_fire_incident

Despite being told there where friendlies in the area, the A-10 pilot engaged the British vehicles which where clearly identifed with the orange ID plates before being given permission to engage or waiting for confirmation of the target from FAC. The A-10 Pilot has been described as a 'hero' in his home town and a 'murderer' in the home down of the dead. Due to US policy, no US Serving personel can be tried in a foreign court (or even have to turn up) for any war crime or investigation.

A-10's were also responsible for the deaths of 2 BBC reporters (and injured many others) and the deaths of 13 other Press when they attacked a column of vehicles containing members of the Press, US Officials and a Kurdish envoy, all of them NC's. Not to mention the killing of British soliders from the F-18 Bomb dropped on them rather than the enemy position the ground forces had asked the air asset to engage! And lets not mention the Canadian Tanak Incident (F16 Pilot asked to engage ground forces. Told to 'Hold Fire possible firendlies', but engaged anway. They were Canadian Friendlies).

Sometimes 'friendly fire' is a result in malfunctioning technology, like the US Patriot that took town a British Tornado killing both crew due to the Tornado's electronic ID box failing in flight.

I may be a bit biased against the US due to personal experience, but these guys do have a tough call to make, and sometimes that call is wrong. The Brits have had their fair share of Friendly Fire at each other, but this has only ever been ground force engagements. Here's another interesting fact........ In the recent wars in the Middle East, not 1 US serviceman has lost their life due to a Friendly Fire incident caused by an Allied force of another Country. The US though, have caused the deaths of British, Iraqi, Kurdish, Dutch, Canadian, German, Italian, Afgani and more recently, Pakinstani troops.

i saw the video of the a-10 v Scots guards engagment on youtube...

on this occasion i didnt know any of the people involved, but there has been plenty i have who have been involved with, my company commander in bosnia marched over to a usaf base and promptly knocked the gak out of the pilot and even fired a shot at him (later claimed in the court martial as a "neglegent discharge") which was accepted and he was busted from a captain to a a Sgt. (he was promoted from the ranks so was spared the "ignomany" of being forced to resign his commision and leave the Marines)

but the real question should not be whether technology creates the problem, more of whether it can solve it? (with relation to air-to-ground engagments.

in reality, the battlefield ground-to-ground is a confusing place, especially in large scale fire-fights, where all manner of things can conspire against you, weather, smoke discharged from the weapons, confusion, disorientation etc, pilots have the fortuity of having instruments to tell them which way they're flying, and generally (unless flying at extreme low level) are out of the detritus of war.

With regards to the USAF policy on open engagement, do you think this is a bad, or a good thing? should it be changed to fall into line with the majority of other NATO standing orders?

Albatross wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

Where's the enemy?

I should have been specific, was referring to allied forces. Really though, in afghanistan the 'enemy' is what, 1%... if that? Iraq has been pretty much the same post Saddam... kinda funny how a few thousand can make things so difficult for the other hundreds of thousands.

With regards to the USAF policy on open engagement, do you think this is a bad, or a good thing? should it be changed to fall into line with the majority of other NATO standing orders?

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afdd2-1-3.pdf

P74, read upon kill box operations. I think its a pretty good policy, but I wouldn't exactly call it "open engagement".

AustonT wrote:
I dot think that the actual occurrence of friendly fire has become more common because of technology. I think technology has allowed us to fight under different conditions, night and bad weather, increasing the amount of combat with a similar amount of blue on blue. We also hear about it more often and sooner because of modern media and instant mail.

This, basically.

Technology can have the opposite results too. I've heard of a robot gun in South Africa going on a rampage and killing 9 people.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Albatross wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

Where's the enemy?

I should have been specific, was referring to allied forces. Really though, in afghanistan the 'enemy' is what, 1%... if that? Iraq has been pretty much the same post Saddam... kinda funny how a few thousand can make things so difficult for the other hundreds of thousands.

With regards to the USAF policy on open engagement, do you think this is a bad, or a good thing? should it be changed to fall into line with the majority of other NATO standing orders?

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afdd2-1-3.pdf

P74, read upon kill box operations. I think its a pretty good policy, but I wouldn't exactly call it "open engagement".

not being an air force type, thats seems a tad over-complicated.... perhaps a simplicfication and clarification would help?

i mean, is there a joint forward control manual? if not, could this explain why?

Wee_Tam wrote:or friendly fire as its also MISTAKENLY called

Using the laymen term for it doesn't make it a mistake. In casual conversation or general news piece (like Pat Tillman for example) it is a perfectly fine term, but if filling out a professional report not or document, so much.

Wee_Tam wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Albatross wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

Where's the enemy?

I should have been specific, was referring to allied forces. Really though, in afghanistan the 'enemy' is what, 1%... if that? Iraq has been pretty much the same post Saddam... kinda funny how a few thousand can make things so difficult for the other hundreds of thousands.

With regards to the USAF policy on open engagement, do you think this is a bad, or a good thing? should it be changed to fall into line with the majority of other NATO standing orders?

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afdd2-1-3.pdf

P74, read upon kill box operations. I think its a pretty good policy, but I wouldn't exactly call it "open engagement".

not being an air force type, thats seems a tad over-complicated.... perhaps a simplicfication and clarification would help?

i mean, is there a joint forward control manual? if not, could this explain why?

There may be another manual for that, I'm not certain,but killbox operations are for general air-to-mud operations with or (more often) without terminal attack control, generally if there is terminal attack control its because there is friendly boots on the ground in the area requesting a strike/CAS. The point of the killbox is to enable pilots to attack targets of opportunity and to support friendly forces in the area in the most efficient decentralized manner (airpower being 100% coordinated from a desk thousands of miles away is bad mmkay?Then you end up with situations where planes aren't being authorized to provide CAS to units that desperately need it because of politics and communications breakdowns). My guess is that in this case the pilots figured that the separation between blues and targets was enough to not warrant terminal control and/or they were treating it as an independent attack separate from the ground forces maneuvers and they figured there was no chance of them engaging friendlies by accident.

Since the development of weapons that hit targets at the edge of visual range or beyond, there’s been friendly fire. In WWI roughly 50,000 French troops were killed by their own artillery. The Germans, who had serious problems in the late years of the war with guns losing their boring after repeated use, likely killed more than 100,000 of their own on the Western Front alone.

The trick is those numbers were measured against the horrendous casualty figures suffered by both sides, and end up being fairly minimal in the scheme of things.

Lately we’ve had some really, really one sided engagements. I mean, if you look at the first Gulf War, you’ve got 300 odd Coalition casualties compared to 30,000 Iraqi dead. When you look at the 40 odd friendly fire casualties it looks pretty big relative to the 300 total dead, but that’s really the result of the Iraqis killing so few Coalition troops. Compare the proportion of friendly fire kills to enemy kills and you get a measure of how much things have actually improved.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

No, that doesn't, when you read what he said. He said the US hasn't inflicted a friendly fire incident on their own troops, only on other nationalities, which would make less and less sense the greater proportion of troops the US represented.

Now, I'm fairly not convinced that figure is true, but it does highlight one of the issues of friendly fire in modern theatres - there's generally forces operating from a lot of different nations, and that brings in issues of seperate command structures not always communicating properly, as well as basic familiarity. So, the US would be much less likely fire upon their own troops, as they are more likely to have been informed as to where their troops are, and more likely to know what they look like.

Wee_Tam wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Albatross wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

Where's the enemy?

I should have been specific, was referring to allied forces. Really though, in afghanistan the 'enemy' is what, 1%... if that? Iraq has been pretty much the same post Saddam... kinda funny how a few thousand can make things so difficult for the other hundreds of thousands.

With regards to the USAF policy on open engagement, do you think this is a bad, or a good thing? should it be changed to fall into line with the majority of other NATO standing orders?

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afdd2-1-3.pdf

P74, read upon kill box operations. I think its a pretty good policy, but I wouldn't exactly call it "open engagement".

not being an air force type, thats seems a tad over-complicated.... perhaps a simplicfication and clarification would help?

i mean, is there a joint forward control manual? if not, could this explain why?

There is a forward controller manual, but most of what is being criticized is CAS without a controller.
The killbox and keypad system is a type of procedural air control. A killbox being very large, say a little bigger than the city of Baghdad and a keypad being several square miles numbered like a telephone or the numberpad on a keyboard. There is a coding system, it's colors in the manual, that let the aviator know the likelihood of seeing and engaging the enemy.
It's a lot like how you would call in a medivac and classic the LZs likelihood of enemy contact from none to probable with decending controls and requirements for identification before attacking. There's always a requirement to positively identify thier targets, when they fail too is when fratricide happens.

Ahtman wrote:

Wee_Tam wrote:or friendly fire as its also MISTAKENLY called

Using the laymen term for it doesn't make it a mistake. In casual conversation or general news piece (like Pat Tillman for example) it is a perfectly fine term, but if filling out a professional report not or document, so much.

I always thought it was called "Friendly Fire" because it was fired by "friendly" units, not because the explosives and shrapnel wanted to be buddies with the people being shredded by it. I never saw how the term was used MISTAKENLY."

TheSecretSquig wrote:

A-10's were also responsible for the deaths of 2 BBC reporters (and injured many others) and the deaths of 13 other Press when they attacked a column of vehicles containing members of the Press, US Officials and a Kurdish envoy, all of them NC's.

I remember reading about that in John Simpson's (long time BBC foreign correspondent) book. There were some American troops under fire a couple of miles away who had called in the A10. Despite the vehicles (Humvees) being clearly marked as UN vehicles on the roof, and the pilot doing a slow overpass before-hand, they were still identified as enemy troops. What apparently saved John Simpson's life was that he was travelling with a guy who had military experience. He identified that the A10 was coming in on an 'attack run', and they started to run for cover as a result. One of the BBC camera men (who he had worked with for 30 years) was only stood a few metres away but all that was left of him was a stain of blood on the ground, just because of the direction the blast from the bombs had travelled.
Really terrible, I'm not sure whether the pilot was ever officially reprimanded for it, but it wouldn't matter really if he was or not. In the end, 'war is raw' as they say, and it wouldn't have brought the deceased back to life.

Having watched that quite awful video of the helicopter shooting those civilians in Iraq though, the pilot and gunner didn't exactly come across as very disciplined. It was a discussion on another forum, but there were a couple of RAF guys on there who said that should never had happened, and how unprofessional (and gun-ho) the helicopter crew were.

sebster wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:And then you realize that those allied forces accounted for a total of about 10% of the military forces in theater, with the US constituting the other 90% and then it all makes sense why...

No, that doesn't, when you read what he said. He said the US hasn't inflicted a friendly fire incident on their own troops, only on other nationalities, which would make less and less sense the greater proportion of troops the US represented.

Thats actually rather incorrect... the marines have unfortunately been on the receiving end of the GAU-8 quite a few times... there actually seems to be a strong correlation between the A-10 and friendly fire incidents, somewhat odd I think...

Probably the correlation of an airplane meant to fire at troops and vehicles on the ground doing it's job. It doesn't mean there isn't something wrong there it's just that the correlation is obvious.

I concur, current technology makes friendly fire more or less frequent.

It has been suggested that the USAF thinks IFF means Indiscriminate Fire Frenzy. There are alternate acronyms for USAF also.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Thats actually rather incorrect... the marines have unfortunately been on the receiving end of the GAU-8 quite a few times... there actually seems to be a strong correlation between the A-10 and friendly fire incidents, somewhat odd I think...

A CAS aircraft is involved in a large number of FF incidents?

Wow, my mind has been blown.

Well when you consider that F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, and even B-1s and B-52s have all been used to provide Close Air Support to Coalition/ISAF forces and collectively the number of these aircraft deployed far exceed the number of A-10s by several times, its still somewhat surprising. The F-16 inventory alone is 3 times larger than that of the A-10. Thats not to say other aircraft haven't been involved in blue-on-blue incidents, but the frequency with which the A-10 has been relative to these other airframes (which probably have similar/greater sortie rates) is surprising, especially when you consider that it IS a CAS platform and therefore should be better equipped and its pilots better trained for counterland operations than others.

chaos0xomega wrote:Thats actually rather incorrect... the marines have unfortunately been on the receiving end of the GAU-8 quite a few times... there actually seems to be a strong correlation between the A-10 and friendly fire incidents, somewhat odd I think...

Yeah, like I said in the part of my post you cut out, I suspected the claim by whoever it was (he appears to have since deleted his post) was dodgy.

Still, it's good you now appear to understand the substance of his claim, so my clarification worked for you.