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| International |
| Eliminating Fratricide |
| 2003-09-09 |
| IT KILLED 35 troops during Operation Desert Storm and was considered one of the biggest problems facing U.S. forces on the battlefield. A decade later, little has changed. I disagree. My opinion is that if you eliminate the problems with the Patriot Misslie System. This military campaign represented substantial progress in eliminating Blue on Blue enagement. The U.S. military calls it "blue on blue"--but most people know it as "friendly fire" or "fratricide." The problem of friendly forces killing their own has been a danger throughout history. Though the rate of friendly fire deaths has declined since the Gulf War, the combination of more rapid movement on the battlefield, more precise weaponry, and the increasingly close ranges within which these weapons are being employed in modern warfare has made the chance of fratricide more dangerous--and more deadly. Has no progress been made or are engagements more complex? For example, the Patriot missile system was designed to intercept air craft but was jury rigged as a missile defender during Gulf War I. It was upgraded and did a much better job of knocking out missiles, but definitely had some problems with Identification Friend or Foe (IFF). IFF during a multinational operation is no easy task. U.S. commanders were keenly aware of the dilemma in Iraq. Still, forces that deployed during the war were often ill prepared to deal with the potential for blue-on-blue strikes. Sometimes life and death hung in the precarious balance between the gut feeling of a Marine or soldier on the ground and a pilot’s targeting computer in the air. During the Vietnam war U.S. aircraft and some troops on the ground carried a system called Identification Friend or Foe--essentially a radio transponder that sent a coded message to another transponder that identified the sender as a friendly aircraft. These systems were sometimes transferred to ground units to let aircraft high above know who the good guys were in the dirt. But IFF systems were prone to interference and the codes could be broken or mimicked. Over the years, various updated versions of the IFF system were developed, but never universally employed. A special problem that becomes even more complex when the US goes coalition building. Decades later, both U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq were forced to settle for more low-tech approaches to the dilemma. Standardized communications such as the so-called "nine-line" brief--a detailed list of coordinates dictated to pilots by ground units calling for close air support; well defined forward lines of control and "kill boxes" that designate where friendly troops are positioned and where U.S. forces are free to engage any target that’s moving; and some ingenious tricks such as affixing strips of tape to helmets and jackets that glow green when viewed through night vision goggles are but a few of the methods by which U.S, and coalition forces kept from killing one another in the wide open deserts and village warrens of Iraq. But that still didn’t prevent blue-on-blue casualties. At least two British fighters were shot down when Patriot missile batteries mistook them for Iraqi SCUDs; a Marine AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter shot and disabled an American M1A1 Abrams tank, injuring its crew; and at least six Marines were killed when an Air Force A-10 Warthog attack jet engaged them during the battle of An Nasiriyah on March 22. New systems are being supplied to forces in Iraq such as the Blue Force Tracker--the most modern version of the IFF--and futuristic technologies are being developed which could give weapon sights a "shoot, no-shoot" signal or even disable the weapon if it is pointed at blue forces. But the U.S. military is still a long way from getting the problem licked. "We’re the most technologically advanced country in the world," remarked the Marines’ top commander in Iraq during an interview at his Camp Babylon headquarters. "Shame on us as we continue to kill our young people because we haven’t developed something that ’beeps’ or ’squawks’ or sends out a transmission or something that tells our troops ’oops, that’s a friendly vehicle.’" A recently concluded Joint Forces Command exercise conducted in Gulf waters off Florida and meant to tackle the problem is a start. But if the post-1991 Gulf War efforts at eliminating friendly fire are any indication of this nation’s progress, the services still have a long way to go. I was inspired to include this by an issue that Murat and I discussed yesterday. While I was actually in Izmir, Turkey a number of years ago, the USS Saratoga accidently shot the TCG Muavenet with two Sea Sparrow missiles during an excercise. I expressed appreciation to Murat for the fact that my ship was treated politely despite the incident. In many countries I would have expected to have experienced a reenactment of the Steve McQueen movie, The Sand Pebbles. Murat expressed that it is generally still believed in Turkey that the Turkish flag ship was purposefully targetted. I don’t believe so but have no inside information other than what is in the public domain lke the circuit court document at http://www.law.emory.edu/11circuit/rt... Although I beleive that the US military has improved in this area, I certainly wouldn’t want to argue that point with the families of Canadiens, Italiens, Turks, South Korean, British and Afghanistani soldiers and civilians that have suffered accidental death due to US Military Operations. I don’t think we will ever be able to eliminate all incidences without keeping our military totally stationary in Conus. I don’t see that happeneing anytime soon. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #6 Also this is my first post and I dumped it under the wrong topic. If some one could move it to a more appropriate place that would be appreciated. Don't want to mess up anyone looking for an update on Nude Volleyball. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-9 2:57:56 PM |
| #5 Would hope that the in a safe condition that Patriots are tested for target differentiation of the planes of our allies as soon as possible. That would be a priority for me if I were deploying and selling them throughout the world. Bad results could be quite discouraging for US allies. I also hope that work is being done for a conutermeasure for the Silkworm or other low flying cruise missiles. I'm sure I'm not teh only person who noticed that a cruise missile got through. Don't want to encourage buyers of the cruise missiles that the one Aussie is building in his garage. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-9 2:56:10 PM |
| #4 The big blue-on-blue problem is between coalition partners because the equipment tends to be slightly different. One of the ways the recent Iraqi war lowered the number of incidents was to give the UK their own sector. The US still provided some air support but in an increasing number of cases the UK provided their own close air support. |
| Posted by: Yank 2003-9-9 2:23:01 PM |
| #3 Fratricide with respect to an anti-air weapons system is pretty understandable as because of the high speed of the target there is not much time to make choices and the systems should be in automatic anyway. I had thought the Saratoga/Muavenet incident was an anti-aircraft foulup. The link I incuded to emory/law showed that not to be the case. It looks perfectly assinine in hindsight. I imagine that several folks paid a heavy price and that case deserved it. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-9 1:49:04 PM |
| #2 Another factor too take into account is the possibility of identify a enemy missle or aircraft as friendly. It's true we have had FFA's sometimes, but it's also key to remember that if we hesitate too long we might have let a enemy get away. Or even worse, given the enemy missle/aircraft a free pass at our ground-bases. Too my knowledge, all of the Patriot FFA incidents were with aircraft coming TOWARDS our forces, and the system acted like it was supposed to. Human error is unavoidable in war. My sympathies go out to the families who lost loved ones in FFA's, but they didn't die in vain. Not only are we correcting problems because of their tragic deaths, but also learning how to avoid the situations altogether. In the long run, it was better to have those FFA's then to let a enemy escape or get through our front-line to attack us. |
| Posted by: Charles 2003-9-9 1:44:59 PM |
| #1 one of the facets in the friendly fire issue is the lethality, accuracy, and autonomy of the weapon systems. The time from identification to engagement of a target has shrunk considerably since ww2 and even DS1. Because of this it is far easier for friendly forces to be designated a threat and attacked. There is less time to pull the plug on the engagement. More often than not the attack will be deadly, no more near misses on the scale of past conflicts. however, murphy's law indicates that these things will happen. The Patriot system can be rectified, and from my navy FC friends who were in the gulf, I learned that there were some close calls out there with some cowboy allied aircraft. Or even some Iranian craft that decided to do a flyby without notifying everyone. A lot of times the key to Fratricide is communications. Everyone looks to other ways to fix the problems, such as fail safes, or blaming the commanders. What it comes down to a lot of time is lack of communication between various elements in what is now an increasingly complex, and coordinated war. -DS "the horns hold up the halo." |
| Posted by: DeviantSaint 2003-9-9 1:19:54 PM |