The Boston Globe December 6, 2001
FIGHTING TERROR AMERICAN CASUALTIES
By Bryan Bender
WASHINGTON - An errant US bomb killed three US special forces soldiers yesterday as they battled the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, marking the first Army combat deaths in the US war on terrorism.
The friendly fire accident also killed five anti-Taliban Afghan fighters and wounded more than a dozen others, including Hamid Karzai, the man who earlier in the day had been chosen by delegates in Bonn to head Afghanistan's new interim government. The Pentagon called Karzai's injuries minor.
Pentagon officials said a B-52 bomber accidentally dropped a 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb about 300 feet from two special forces teams that were coordinating air strikes on Taliban positions a few miles north of Kandahar. The Pentagon identified the Army soldiers killed as Master Sergeant Jefferson Donald Davis, 39, of Tennessee; Sergeant First Class Daniel Henry Petithory, 32, of Massachusetts; and Staff Sergeant Brian Cody Prosser, 28, of California. All three were from the Fifth Special Forces Group, based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.
The injured soldiers - both the Americans and their Afghan allies - were moved to several medical facilities in the region, including Base Rhino, the forward operating base established by US Marines southwest of Kandahar. There, military authorities prevented journalists from covering the rescue efforts, opening a new chapter in the continuing friction between the news media and the Pentagon over press access to the war front.
The friendly fire deaths and injuries occurred as the Marines moved to cut off escape routes from Kandahar, where forces of the Taliban and Al Qaeda are cornered. In doing so, the Marines moved from building up a desert base outside the city to their first offensive actions in the conflict, officials said.
Anti-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen, backed by US bombing and American special forces, have been closing on Kandahar from the north, south, and east, including a force led by Karzai.
But the day's offensive was side tracked by the accident, at least temporarily. An investigation was quickly launched.
In the field, forward air controllers identify target coordinates, punch them into a hand-held device that transmits them to a pilot overhead, and instruct the pilot when they want the weapon released.
"This is one of the potentially most hazardous type of missions that we use as a military tactic," said Rear Admiral John D. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Calling in airstrikes nearly simultaneously on your own position, on enemy forces that you're engaged in close proximity to, is a hazardous business and takes very fine control and cooordination and precision."
One possibility is that human, not mechanical, error may be to blame. In a previous case of friendly fire involving the same type of weapon, Pentagon officials say their preliminary findings indicate that the wrong coordinates may have been programmed into the weapon.
Other possible explanations include a technical malfunction in the guidance system or pilot error, officials said.
The errant strike is the second in less than two weeks blamed on the Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM. The system provides a low-cost satellite guidance kit that can be attached to a variety of bombs to make them highly precise.
A JDAM was blamed for wounding four special forces soldiers last month during a battle to control a prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. A CIA operative was killed during the uprising, the first US combat death in the war.
Yesterday's losses also follow other reports of errant US air strikes and increasing numbers of civilian casualties. A defense official said the findings of the newly launched investigation could limit future use of JDAM, which has been used frequently in the current military campaign. But the Pentagon said yesterday it had not suspended use of the JDAM.
Questions were also raised yesterday about why a B-52 bomber, originally designed for strategic bombing missions, was used in a close air support role instead of a fighter plane or the special forces' AC-130 Spectre gunship.
But defense officials and specialists contend that the advent of precision-guided munitions over the past decade make it less important what kind of aircraft launches them.
"The old technology of the B-52 has been upgraded with the precision weapon capability," said Stufflebeem. With its ability to operate for long periods of time, the B-52 may have been the only US aircraft in the area at the time of the battle, he said.
If true, that underscores the challenges the military is facing in having to travel hundreds of miles to conduct strikes in Afghanistan. Many aircraft have been assigned to patrol so-called engagement zones until a target emerges.
Losses to friendly fire have dogged military commanders, particularly since the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, in which an estimated 20 percent of US casualties were the result of what the Pentagon calls "fratricide."
While military officials continue to work to avoid such losses, John Pike, a military expert at GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va., said they are a fact of war. "You can't eliminate fratricide any more than you can eliminate training accidents," he said. "Life is dangerous, and combat is more dangerous."
Some believe that, in the heat of battle, avoiding fratricide should not even be a defined military objective. "An obsession with preventing fratricide can inhibit a commander's ability to fight by taking away his ability to be bold and aggressive," Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told the The Stars and Stripes newspaper recently. "It shouldn't be a question of who kills Americans, but how many Americans get killed."
A defense official said yesterday that despite the setback, special forces were continuing to assist southern tribes in their efforts to defeat remaining Taliban and Qaeda forces. "There are still enough folks there," he said. "We will continue to provide what is needed."
Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
