The Associated Press March 5, 2003
Friendly-fire worries still plague military 12 years after Persian Gulf War
By SHARON L. CRENSON, MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writers
In the dark chaos of battle on Feb. 27, 1991, the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Armored Division pushed eastward through southern Iraq, clashing with Iraqi Republican Guard armor and infantry, the latter firing rocket-propelled grenades.
The grenades hit U.S. M-1A1 Abrams tanks with a small flash, inflicting little damage. But other Abrams gunners - knowing the Iraqis were coming from all directions - mistook the flashes in their thermal sights for enemy cannon fire. They fired back.
"It was confusing, it was dark, it was scary," said Col. David S. Weisman, commander of the 3rd Brigade.
Six of the brigade's 4,400 soldiers were killed, all by friendly fire.
A total of 35 of the 148 U.S. combat deaths in the Persian Gulf War resulted from what the military now calls "fratricide." A further 78 U.S. soldiers were wounded by their brethren, making the phenomenon responsible for 17 percent of all American casualties.
Troops heading into a looming second Gulf conflict have some new tools to help, but a high-tech system that was the Pentagon's best hope for sharply reducing friendly-fire casualties has been scrapped as both ineffective and too costly.
"I don't think the Army is significantly better off this time around," said John Pike, director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va.-based think tank that studies military policy. "They have clearly laid the groundwork for an 'Army drops the ball on fratricide' story."
The Defense Department spent 10 years and $175 million on the Battlefield Combat Identification System, a technological strategy favored by seasoned officers such as U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO Supreme Commander who played a key role in the Gulf War.
BCIS was envisioned as a sophisticated signal-and-answer system to be carried by military vehicles and troops in the air and on the ground. Here's how it was intended to work: A tank equipped with it would send an electronic signal toward its target before firing. If the target was "friendly," it would detect the signal and reply, preventing the first tank from firing. Enemy targets, as well as any vehicle not equipped with BCIS, would be unable to detect or respond to the signal.
The U.S. General Accounting Office had warned from the start that the system might never work if it wasn't compatible with technology used by our NATO allies, which it wasn't.
Furthermore, to be effective in battle, this electronic communication would have to occur in a split second - something BCIS engineers could not perfect. And the cost, up to $50,000 per vehicle, was prohibitive, the military concluded when it abandoned the system in 2001.
Clark said he is still hopeful an automatic signal-and-answer system eventually can be built. This fall, British, French and U.S. forces will test another device that could be used by all allied forces. It sends a "don't shoot" message in less than a second to any friendly force aiming at it within 60 kilometers.
Pete Glikerdas, a civilian engineer who heads combat identification projects at Fort Monmouth, N.J., said the system is designed to cost about $20,000 per unit and be about 98 percent accurate. The technology is the result of long negotiations between NATO allies who needed to develop agreeable standards so their weaponry and communications systems could work together.
For now, the 200,000 U.S. troops assembling in the Gulf are relying heavily on global positioning technology as their best defense against friendly fire.
This technology allows combatants to map their own battlefield locations, as well as those of friendly and enemy forces. The more soldiers know about their relative positions, the less likely they are to make mistakes.
Global positioning systems make the mapping much faster and more accurate than it was during the first Gulf War. But Glikerdas said today's electronics are still too slow.
"When the conflict breaks and you're on the ground, who has time to look at the displays?" he asked.
With that in mind, the military is also relying on some surprisingly simple-sounding improvements.
For example, all military ground vehicles in the Gulf are supposed to be equipped with reflective panels, not unlike those on a child's bicycle. Attached with Velcro, they have unique, highly confidential markings that can be seen only through night vision goggles or certain thermal sensors.
Still, one of the most important protections against friendly fire remains much the same as it was 12 years ago - basic military tactics and training. Aerial spotters still travel with armored battalions to identify targets and relay their locations. Troop commanders still divide the battlefield into a grid, with various squares of territory opened or closed to air and artillery attacks depending on movements of U.S. troops.
Videos help teach servicemen and women what enemy vehicles and equipment look like, as well as the difference between types of explosive flashes.
And soldiers are spending more time training with thermal sights and night-vision goggles, though Clark said it's not yet clear how much difference such preparations will make.
Military officers and engineers working to reduce friendly fire are taking on a problem that has long plagued military campaigns - although friendly-fire casualty statistics from past wars are generally considered unreliable even by the Pentagon itself.
In World War II, for example, friendly fire accounted for as few as 2 percent of the casualties or as many as 21 percent, depending on whether you trust one of the military's official estimates or an analysis by The American War Library, a research and information group run by veterans. For the Korean War, estimates range from 2 percent to 18 percent; and for Vietnam from 2 percent to 39 percent.
Today's weapons systems are more accurate and lethal than ever, making friendly-fire incidents even more devastating.
Desert Storm focused attention on the issue because American casualties from enemy fire were so few. In that war, the military investigated every friendly-fire incident in detail, and the findings prompted a renewed commitment of money and research.
Overwhelmingly, Gulf War friendly-fire casualties were Army, which supplied the most combatants and is vulnerable to artillery, armor, infantry, and airborne assault.
With thousands of vehicles moving on the battlefield, even calling in an artillery strike to back up your own troops can be dangerous.
"By the time artillery hits, one of your own could be in the place where the enemy was before," Clark said.
Military experts say the sheer number of combatants makes mistakes almost inevitable. U.S. officials estimated that the 1991 American-led forces began the Persian Gulf War with 443,000 troops in the combat zone compared with Iraq's 623,000. About 200,000 of the coalition forces were American.
Mistakes by Air Force and Navy pilots flying bombing sorties can also devastate ground forces. Army Lt. Gen. J. Lesley McNair was accidentally killed by U.S. bombs while observing an operation during World War II. In Vietnam, helicopter gunships killed U.S. troops on Hamburger Hill.
Even now, air traffic control systems are not foolproof when it comes to coordinating with ground troops.
Last April, four Canadian soldiers were killed by an American bomber in a friendly-fire accident in Afghanistan when a U.S. F-16 dropped a bomb on Canadians taking part in a live-fire training exercise. A decision on whether the two pilots should face court-martial is pending.
The Canadian deaths highlighted two of the most difficult problems about friendly fire: coordinating coalition forces that use different weapons and communications equipment, and coordinating air-to-ground strikes.
The biggest advance the Air Force has made in air-to-ground accuracy since 1991 is the introduction of GPS-guided ammunition. Ground troops radio the target coordinates to a pilot, who enters them into a computer that directs the bombs, said Steve Scott, a retired lieutenant colonel now working on research for the Air Force Special Tactics Group at Hurlburt Field, Fla.
In essence, the technology converts free falling bombs into "smart" munitions that are more accurate, particularly in bad weather.
Its primary weakness, Scott said, is the possibility of someone making a mistake in the voice relay. The Air Force is now working on a machine-to-machine communication solution that would reduce the possibility of human error.
Timothy Rider, spokesman for the Army's Communications and Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., said it is too easy to criticize the military for not doing enough to reduce friendly-fire casualties.
"There's never a satisfactory answer to a soldier being killed by fratricide," he said. "But a lot of people think you can just snap your fingers and there's a technological solution to fratricide. But it doesn't work that way."
Technology, he said, doesn't eliminate the possibility of human error. "If you're careless with the best technology, you're going to kill your buddies."
Military historian Donald Abenheim, a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, said he's skeptical technology will ever provide a complete solution to friendly fire.
"We have this attitude that there can never be a mistake," Abenheim said. "In fact, war is in the realm of chance; and inevitably there's going to be friendly fire."
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press
