The Press-Enterprise May 04, 2003
Deadly mistakes
It's a tragic but unavoidable part of war, military officials say; some contend more can be done to reduce accidental deaths
By Gregor McGavin
With the war in Iraq over, military investigators are adding up one of the steepest prices America has paid there -- U.S. troops killed not by the enemy, but by their own side.
At least a dozen U.S. servicemen may have died in "friendly fire" incidents during Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to U.S. Central Command in Qatar, which is investigating those deaths. Two of those victims have ties to the Inland area.
Military officials say the deaths are tragic, but even 12 friendly-fire victims would be a dramatic improvement over the last time the United States went to war. In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, friendly fire killed 35 U.S. troops.
But some experts say the military has not done all it could to prevent friendly fire. Despite all the high-tech innovations after the Gulf War, most U.S. and allied troops went to Iraq this time with little more protection from accidental death than they had 12 years ago.
"If we're spending money on reducing the possibility that the enemy can kill us, why not stop us killing us?" said John Pike, who heads GlobalSecurity.org., a Virginia military think tank.
If confirmed as friendly-fire deaths, a dozen fatalities would be about 9 percent of the total of 138 killed in combat, compared with 24 percent killed by friendly fire in the first Gulf War. That percentage was believed to be the highest in a century.
Friendly fire became a military priority after the Gulf War, when the number of victims shocked the nation and prompted the Pentagon to pour billions of dollars into satellite and computer technology aimed at giving troops a better view of the battlefield.
"But I think that got lost somewhere along the line," said Pike, who pointed out that the military halted development of a high-tech tracking system for ground troops that distinguishes between friendly and enemy vehicles.
"Friendly fire is a big issue in wartime and it's not a high priority in peacetime," Pike said.
Military officials say friendly fire is an unavoidable part of modern warfare. No matter what training and high-tech systems are used to combat fratricide, some troops will be lost in the so-called "fog of battle" -- the cloud of dust and smoke and urgency that hangs over the battlefield. Fatigue can also be a factor.
The military defines fratricide as "the act of firing on friendly personnel or equipment, believing that you are engaging the enemy." It doesn't include accidents such as plane crashes.
A mistake by one soldier can lead to a series of errors and friendly-fire deaths, said Army Lt. Col. Greg Butts, chief of operations at Fort Irwin near Barstow, site of a battlefield training center.
And officials say the rapid pace of high-tech weapons increases the potential for mistakes.
"This war was like a sprint to the goal line," said Marine Col. Keith Oliver at U.S. Central Command. "It didn't leave much room for error."
Experts say the effectiveness of U.S. forces actually has made combat mistakes more visible.
With the number of hostile-fire casualties decreasing, the percentage of deaths caused by friendly fire is increasing, said Mark Burgess, a former British Army officer now at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., a national security research organization. "It can look worse than what it really is."
Estimates of friendly-fire death rates in previous wars vary widely. For World War II, the range is 2 percent to more than 20 percent of battlefield deaths, according to military accounts and estimates by veterans groups.
Area connection
In the Inland Empire and across the nation, relatives of servicemen who died in Iraq await the final word on the cause of their loved ones' deaths.
"They just told me it was an ambush; that's all they told me," said Jasty Gonzalez of Rialto. Her husband, Cpl. Jorge Alonso Gonzalez, 20, was one of nine Marines killed March 23 near An Nasiriyah in Iraq.
"I just want to know exactly how he died," she said.
The Department of Defense has notified relatives only that the Marines were killed in action, but according to a report by the Center for Army Lessons Learned, a research center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the deaths are being investigated as possible fratricide.
The report said the nine Marines may have been mistaken for Iraqi fighters and killed in an attack by a U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II warplane.
The center said another possible friendly-fire victim is Marine Cpl. Jesus Angel Gonzalez, 22, of Indio, who was shot in the chest April 12 while staffing a checkpoint in Baghdad.
Investigators at Central Command in Qatar are probing about four dozen combat deaths, Oliver said. Some were clearly in accidents such as vehicle crashes, but at least a dozen may have been killed by friendly fire, Oliver said.
Scuttled program
Pike, the head of the think tank, said the military threw away its "best hope" for sharply reducing friendly-fire casualties in 2001, when it pulled the plug on the Battlefield Combat Identification System, or BCIS.
The Army had planned to outfit every combat vehicle with microwave devices that would allow ground troops to identify other vehicles on the battlefield. Ground-to-ground incidents accounted for about 60 percent of the fratricide deaths in 1991, according to the Center for Army Lessons Learned.
But the military abandoned BCIS in 2001 as too expensive. The Army estimated it would cost about $700 million to outfit its 12 divisions.
The Department of Defense's budget that year included $60 billion for procurement of weapons and other material, but "these programs that are just a few hundred million dollars, they get lost," Pike said.
"When the defense contractors are up there lobbying, it's the big multibillion-dollar programs that get the attention," Pike said.
A 1993 U.S. Government Accounting Office report had warned that the system would be too costly and "would not be enough for a large-scale operation, leaving forces still subject to fratricide."
Still, the military spent nearly a decade and $180 million on BCIS before discarding it.
In the absence of a large-scale system to help troops distinguish friend from foe, the military has relied on quick fixes. For example, all U.S. combat vehicles in Iraq were outfitted with reflective panels with identifying markings visible only through night vision goggles or thermal sensors.
And every U.S. combat vehicle is outfitted with a Global Positioning System that enables military planners to keep close tabs on vehicles on a battlefield. But it doesn't help troops distinguish between friendly and enemy forces.
"We truly accelerated what we could to give our soldiers in this conflict the best that we could," said Maj. Amy Hannah, an Army spokeswoman at the Pentagon.
A small number of units have been equipped with computers that display a "tactical Internet," which differentiates between friendly and enemy vehicles and updates movements in real time. But Hannah said such technological advances are "spread thinly" across the Army's 4th Infantry Division, with most troops relying on more low-tech protection.
Many troops rely on credit-card-sized strips of reflective tape on their helmets that can be picked out by night-vision goggles. The tape was seen as an improvement from the first Gulf War, in which troops painted inverted V's on armored vehicles with thermal paint to identify them as friendly.
Impact on allies
Friendly fire also places a heavy burden on U.S. allies.
British Army Lt. Col. Andrew Larpent, who commanded the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in the Persian Gulf War, watched from the ground as nine of his men were killed and 12 seriously wounded when a U.S. A-10 Tankbuster plane mistook them for enemy troops.
Larpent, now retired, in January called for the British military to implement a system to protect British troops from American fighter pilots before sending them into battle in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"It is a lack of care by U.S. pilots who should take more care," Larpent said.
"They're happy enough to spend the money to protect aircraft, but obviously to put the same technology into the other vehicles is considered too expensive. But what price the lives of soldiers from their own side?"
Burgess, of the Center for Defense Information, said a bit of gallows humor among British troops holds that "when the British are coming, the Iraqis duck, and when the Iraqis are coming, the British duck. When the Americans come, everyone ducks."
The United States' position as the premier military force and its high-tech weapons give it the greatest potential to inflict damage, both intentionally and accidentally, Burgess said.
"That doesn't mean that the Americans are necessarily more careless," he said. "They seem to be doing everything they should be doing" to train soldiers, he said.
Five of the 32 British troops killed this time in Iraq fell to friendly fire, or about 16 percent. Three were killed by U.S. forces.
Improved training
Perhaps the most promising approach to reducing fratricide is the stepped-up training at the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, and at bases nationwide. Friendly-fire training has intensified since the Gulf War.
At Fort Irwin, combat troops undergo computer-based training to recognize 90 U.S. and allied vehicles by sight and by thermal signature. At Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, more than 4,000 members from all the armed forces take part each April in war games, and the results are closely evaluated.
The training mirrors the stress, confusion and fatigue of the battlefield, and it works, according to Army Col. Mike Hiemstra, director of the Center for Army Lessons Learned.
"The loss of even one soldier is one too many," Hiemstra said. "I think we can say we are making progress."
Press-Enterprise staff writer Marlowe Churchill contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2003, The Press-Enterprise
