| |
The not-so-friendly reality of US
casualties
By David Isenberg
Talk about the gang that couldn't shoot
straight. Especially since it wasn't supposed to happen
again; particularly not in another war against Iraq. And
yet, it did.
As an article in the October issue
of Spectrum magazine notes, while US combat deaths have
fallen dramatically with the rise of long-range,
precision-guided weapons, the greater precision hasn't
eliminated "fratricide" - the military term for the
accidental killing or injuring of one's own forces.
What's more, the proportion of fratricide deaths has
remained static, and may even be on the rise.
 During World War II, friendly fire accounted for
anywhere from 2 to 21 percent of US casualties,
depending on whose figures one believed. During the
first Gulf War in 1991, by contrast, 35 (23 percent) of
the 146 US military personnel killed in action were
killed by friendly fire, and 72 (15 percent) of the 467
wounded were the result of friendly fire, according to
the Pentagon's 1992 Conduct of the Persian Gulf War
report.
While casualties from the Iraqi war are
still being tallied, it's already known that friendly
fire accounted for some 35 US and allied deaths, or 18
percent, during the first six weeks of conflict, out of
a total of 189 fatalities. The worst friendly fire
incident killed 19 Kurds fighting with the US and
injured three members of the US Special Forces when
their convoy was mistakenly bombed on April 6.
But, in actuality, the total might be higher
than the administration acknowledges. A recently
released report, "Truth from These Podia" by retired air
force colonel Sam Gardiner, recalls that during the
course of the war, central command officials claimed
that US forces came under artillery fire after Iraqi
soldiers surrendered under a white flag. The implication
was that it was a ruse. But Gardiner thinks that the
white flag stories were engineered to cover a very
serious friendly fire event.
Gardiner writes: "A
disheartening aspect of the white flag story is what is
beginning to surface about what might have been the real
cause of the Marine casualties near An Nasiriyah on
March 23. Marines are saying that nine of those killed
may have been killed by an A-10 that made repeated
passes attacking their position.
"We know from a
'Lessons Learned' report released early in October that
the death of nine Marines is under investigation as a
friendly fire accident. From individual reports, we know
that at least one of the Marines killed on March 23,
reported as having been caught in the ruse, was hit
directly in the chest with a round from an A-10 gun."
Tacit acknowledgement of Gardiner's assertion
can be found in the responses of the Department of
Defense officials who testified to the House armed
services committee on October 2. They were presenting
the results of the Pentagon's classified initial
"Lessons Learned" report on the main battle phase of the
war in Iraq. The 400-page final version will be
completed later this year. Admiral Edmund P Giambastiani
Junior, chief of Joint Forces Command, and
Brigadier-General Robert Cone, director of the Joint
Center for Lessons Learned for US Joint Forces Command,
said that the number of friendly fire incidents is
statistically lower than the 1991 Gulf War. But Cone
said during a news conference that he was not at liberty
to provide concrete numbers to back up statements
because several incidents in the recent conflict were
still under investigation.
Consider the
following exchange with reporters:
Question: At the hearing this morning,
Admiral Giambastiani said that statistically, US forces
did better on fratricide this time than in the Gulf War.
What are the numbers that support that statement?
Cone: I'm not at liberty. I get
those numbers from US Central Command in their ongoing
investigation, so I don't - I'd rather not - I'm not at
liberty to talk - to give you those numbers.
Question: I mean, he made that
statement in public. I mean, aren't you going to be able
to support it with some numbers?
Cone: Not at this time. But I will
say that, as I say, investigations are ongoing.
Giambastiani's remarks were particularly
noteworthy, considering all the praise heaped on US
military forces for their victory against Iraq. He noted
that the allies suffered a series of fratricides, such
as the Patriot antimissile system mistakenly locking on
and shooting down both British and US jet fighters.
"Where we needed substantial improvement, in our view,
fratricide prevention is the first on the list," he
said.
Fratricide is a problem in every war, but
after the 1991 Gulf War the Pentagon vowed to invest
heavily in new technologies that would reduce
inadvertent killings to an absolute minimum. The
Pentagon's 1992 Conduct of the Persian Gulf War report
said, "The more than 60 proposals examined during
Operation Desert Storm for quick fix solutions to the
fratricide problem indicate many ideas are available."
But in an interview with the Associated Press,
Giambastiani said, "We've just got to do better. We've
spent a lot of time and money on it since [1991], but
frankly we just weren't there. We didn't have it
deployed with all our forces. We were doing it at the
last minute. It wasn't a good story."
Ground
force commanders used an imaging system called "Blue
Force Tracker" that gave them a view of the battlefield
that showed locations of US and coalition forces.
However, that did not enable an American pilot, for
example, to communicate in the heat of battle with a
tank, or any other obscured object on the ground to
determine for certain whether it was friend or foe.
Lieutenant-General James T Conway, commander of
the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which, with the
Army's 3rd Infantry Division, fought in Baghdad in early
April, told reporters that while Blue Force Tracker was
a useful tool, it was not an adequate answer to
fratricide. And he should know. His Marines were among
the fratricide victims; especially those of March 23,
mentioned earlier.
The day before, an Army
Patriot anti-aircraft missile shot down a British
Tornado fighter, killing the two airman aboard. On April
2, a Patriot missile shot down a navy F/A-18C fighter,
killing the pilot.
Even allowing for the
difficulty in preventing fratricide, progress between
Operation Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom has been poor.
As Cone testified, "What I think we saw was we really -
in one regard, in terms of combat ID, I don't think
we've made a lot of progress in the last 10 years. I
think the fact is that we have fundamentally, I think,
the thermal panels and the IR BUDD lights for ground
forces ... And I think - and again, I could show you
some - what that looks like from an F-14 LANTIRN pod at
15,000 feet is not comforting in terms of the ability to
discern."
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information
on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
