WASHINGTON - Poor communication and the U.S. military's failure to address decade-old concerns over safety and training may have contributed the to the spate of "friendly fire" deaths in the Iraq war - already approaching one-quarter of the U.S. and British combat-related deaths so far, military experts said Tuesday.
Even before the war, military officials had identified such potential problems after accidental shootings in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the Afghanistan conflict, but they said the armed services had failed to completely correct them.
The latest disastrous instance of American forces shooting accidentally at allied troops occurred Sunday with a U.S. bombing that killed 18 people and wounded 45 others in northern Iraq.
U.S. Air Force officials say that while the friendly fire incidents are all under investigation, the use of precision-guided weapons means that pilots and troops on the ground have little margin for error when it comes to identifying targets.
After the 1991 war, when 35 of the 148 U.S. deaths were caused by friendly fire, the Pentagon pledged to devise "friend-or-foe" technology that would allow tanks, helicopters, planes and soldiers to identify U.S. troops and vehicles.
The bulk of that effort went into a U.S. Army program, which spent more than $100 million developing an electronic identification system for vehicles. But the Battlefield Combat Identification System was canceled because it would have cost $920 million more to place it in Army vehicles.
The other services pursued their own friendly fire prevention measures but not in coordination with each other.
The failure to come up with a comprehensive solution, some military officers say, was apparent during the war in Afghanistan. The number of accidents and near-accidents in that war has been so unnerving that ground commanders and air crews have registered a chorus of complaints.
Now in Iraq similar concerns are being voiced again.
"The number of friendly fire casualties calls into question just how well 'internetted' together the force is," said military analyst Loren Thompson, referring to military efforts to electronically link U.S. forces in the field. "Both Clinton and Bush put a big emphasis in internetting the troops, but apparently it hasn't gone far enough."
It will be some time before military investigators piece together why a Navy jet mistakenly bombed friendly Kurdish forces near Mosul on Sunday.
But that accident is only the latest in a growing list of friendly fire incidents that have occurred in 20 days of war. Though investigations are still under way, nearly one-quarter of the U.S. and British deaths in combat-related incidents are believed to be due to friendly fire.
Even without adding the Kurdish casualties, that rate is higher than in the 1991 Gulf War and the recent war in Afghanistan, which produced at least 10 accidental air-to-ground attacks that killed U.S. forces, their Afghan allies and civilians.
The accidents in this war with Iraq are as varied and complex as the battleground itself. A British fighter has been shot down by a U.S. Patriot missile while an investigation is under way into another possible downing, this time of an American jet, by a Patriot. Troops have fired on other troops. Tanks have mistakenly attacked other tanks.
There have been at least four known incidents of U.S. planes attacking allied forces by mistake. One occurred when an A-10 attack plane struck a British position, killing a soldier. A second occurred when an F-16 fighter jet mistakenly fired at a friendly Patriot missile battery. A third involved an F-15 strike that killed three U.S. servicemen. The fourth was Sunday's bombing near Mosul.
In that incident, U.S. officials said a Special Operations soldier working with the Kurdish militiamen asked for an air strike on nearby Iraqi tanks. It is unclear whether the pilot mistook the Kurdish vehicles for the enemy tanks, or whether the mistake was made in relaying information from the ground.
Either way the use of precision guided weapons can be deadly if targeting is not near perfect.
"Certainly it has made it much more precise, and therefore much more lethal," said Lt. Col. Christy Nolta, an Air Force spokeswoman. "The rules of engagement and the verifying of targets has to be very strict and disciplined, because you're probably not going to miss."
The Pentagon expresses its regret over each friendly fire incident, but military leaders also suggest that such accidents are inevitable when forces as large and powerful as the U.S. and British militaries are deployed.
"There have been friendly fire incidents in every war in the history of mankind," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said recently.
Still friendly fire incidents in Afghanistan raised alarm.
One attack in particular, the accidental bombing of Canadian troops in an incident involving two Illinois Air National Guard F-16 fighter pilots, seemed to typify the frustration. The accident killed four Canadians and led to a high-profile disciplinary hearing for the two pilots involved. Recently, an Air Force hearing officer recommended against a criminal court-martial.
© 2003, Chicago Tribune.
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