How can we prevent Aircraft Friendly Fire ? (Blue-on-Blue)?

Question

The US has satellites that can see what your reading, yet their top-gun fighter pilots seem to only have high-altitude visuals to go on and air-controllers who go on information to where Allied units are supposed to be in an area....

Surely we have the technology to prevent or greatly reduce the possibility of friendly fire ? When our troops were shipping out for war.. I know some of them put strip of reflective tag on their arms.. but that is ridiculous in its hope of preventing FF and assists enemy too.

RFID ? If you used daily codes for Allied units in the field to transmit you'd want to make sure the codes weren't leaked to enemy.

Surely there has to be some practical, cost-effective solution ?

m1a1mikegolf..

I'm not disagreeing with you... cause my own map co-ordination is poor.. and I suspect the British commanders don't always play it by the book... but at the same time maybe the fact the USA scores more FF hits on British troops is partly because we join you on major Allied operations..... with other countries not committing anywhere near as many troops or armour.

Answer 1

For a solution on blue on blue could we not look at commercial aircraft? Transponders are put on aircraft to identify whom and what they are, why couldn't a modified version be put in allied military vehicles so when under attack from (friendlies) they would know who they are attacking. Cheaper than the cost of lives lost, and maybe the Americans could stump up the cash for the upgrades seeing as they seem to be doing most of the killing.

Answer 2

A part of the problem with US forces continually attacking allied troops is that a large proportion of the pilots are high on a drug called Dexedrine which is very similar to meth amphetamine whilst flying combat missions, if you don't believe this type go pills into your search engine.
Sad wolfpacker if you believe that there has been no friendly fires incidents by US troops since 2003 you are deluded, in about 30 seconds i found lots of accounts of friendly fire resulting in deaths and injuries including one death from less than 2 months ago, this article also describes another incident from September last year which resulted in the death of 1 Canadian soldier and the wounding of dozens of others. Maybe the reason for your ignorance is that it is highly likely the US TV does not want these stories going out on the news as it makes your troops look incompetent.

Answer 3

Sometimes the solution can be so simple its not obvious.....

The USA and the Soviets battled with how to make their nuclear generators for the submarines safe and sealed.. and no scientists came up with solutions to the problem.

On the USA side, at the last moment some normal type fella had the idea of using electro-magnets to put the rods in to the core, allowing the chamber to be fully sealed, so no radiation leakage.

The Soviets had better submarines in design... but their nuclear reactor was leaky cause wasn't fully sealed... their first nuclear powered subs went to sea having to use a lever to bring the rods in to the core, with loads of leakage to the crew.

So lesson is... the experts don't often consider most practical way to do things - and finding a way to prevent or limit friendly fire can and should be done as a priority.

Answer 4

Would the ground troops be better off waiting the few hours till a satellite got to the right place to direct their air support? Probably not.

It can't be prevented completely, any time you're calling in support fire there's always going to be a chance somebody will miscalculate that fraction of a degree that will make a round fall 100 feet short. But the military should, and no doubt is, look into ways to make it less likely.

Answer 5

If you can come up with a practical solution then the military will buy it from you for millions of dollars.

The biggest advance in fratricide avoidance has been lightweight and inexpensive GPS receivers. In over 90% of fratricide incidents wither the shooter or the victim was somewhere other than where they thought they were.

Another huge problem is that despite the fact that all NATO countries are supposed to use the same doctrine - not everyone does and some countries (Great Britain) are notorious for failing to coordinate with their allies.

(My personal beef with the British troops is the fact that they either are unable to read a map or they completely ignore those lines on the map that tell them what their sectors are and where they are not supposed to be. (The British have a bad habit of showing up unannounced in other nations sectors - this tends to be unnerving to people expecting contact with the enemy.)

And BTW for those amateurs out there - want to guess what color the Iraqis were using for combat identification? Orange!!!

And it is telling how none of the British people posting here even admit the possibility of a mistake on their side.

Answer 6

Unless one army knows where the other army is or where it is suppose to be, there is no way to end all friendly fire. This case which is the same one that we have heard about for a while since it happened in 2003. Talking about going on & on about something. It has been investigated by both the US & the UK & found to just be a horrible accident. Who was at fault? bad karma - bad timing & no one knowing where each other is at.
There is not time to use the technology or the money to install the technology that would be needed to verify every hit. If no troops are supposed to be in the area & troops are moving, it is logical to assume they would be the enemy.
The US & UK have changed their communication since then. Hence no friendly fire deaths since 2003.

Answer 7

Great question. FF is awful (especially at the start of Iraq 2003, where the UK was losing more men to the US than the Iraqi army!).

We should perhaps put things in perspective, though. In the Middle Ages, a country lost almost as many troops to their own side, than to the other side! A fight in a field, with thousands of troops on both sides, was chaos.....it went a little something like this in the old days: you're injured, with impaired vision, and sense, since you've just been brained, in the middle of a field....you have an axe...and see someone approaching you...so you take off his head...whoops, sorry, John!

Answer 8

there are recognition signal being used in IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN AT THE MOMENT. but if our TRIGGER HAPPY. ALLIES insist in attacking anything that moves they won't be much dam good will they and more BRITISH SOLDIERS will meet there maker courtesy of our AMERICAN FRIENDS. this is happening to often and it's time an example was made of these gun ho PILOTS and they were charged with the unlawful killing of this and other soldiers.. these people are laying there lives on the line. and to be killed by so called FRIENDLY FIRE INCIDENTS is totally out of order more like UNFRIENDLY FIRE. I'D SAY.

Answer 9

Weapons of mass destruction are practical and cost effective. Just need to call them 'Super Happy Whammy Fire'.

Answer 10

The prevention was supposed to be the orange dayglo panels laid out on the vehicles.. Unfortunately the pilots didn't pay any attention to what they saw, ..

Under such negligence nothing short of of a huge sign saying coalition forces please don't shoot at us would have helped!. obviously the Iraqi forces would have seen such a sign and shot at them too..

In war accidents happen..