Friendly fire incident!

[Mud Eagle]

I've never been a "shooter", where I've had to work the ROE, but a few things strike me as significant:
- the FAC tells the at least twice that there are no friendlies in the area; is the FAC taking blame?
- did the FAC get his info from HQ? If so, were they negligent?
- if no one thought there were friendlies there, did the British unit commander violate procedures by not coordinating his unit's movements? If so, he's certainly culpable.

JTACs don't have global, prismatic, rotating SA...they have an understanding of the battlespace based on what they see and hear. In a Type 2 or Type 3 scenario there is every possibility that there may be friendlies that the JTAC doesn't know about. Perhaps another unit advanced further than they were scheduled to. Perhaps another unit used a different route than was expected.

The blame always rests where the pink finger pushes the red pickle button.

 

[5niner0]

JTACs don't have global, prismatic, rotating SA...they have an understanding of the battlespace based on what they see and hear. In a Type 2 or Type 3 scenario there is every possibility that there may be friendlies that the JTAC doesn't know about.

Well said. The JTAC is only relaying what the Army tells them.

That said, watching the video reveals almost nonexistant terminal attack control. These guys just appear to roll in and kill stuff. Must be an open kill container or something. Then again, I wasn't there so I really have no place to talk.

 

[Mud Eagle]

Well said. The JTAC is only relaying what the Army tells them.

That said, watching the video reveals almost nonexistant terminal attack control. These guys just appear to roll in and kill stuff. Must be an open kill container or something. Then again, I wasn't there so I really have no place to talk.

Since there are friendlies there, I doubt that they're beyond the FSCL and thus not in an open killbox.

I read in the report that they were Type 3 control, so that would make sense that there's not much positive control.