Friendly fire incident!

[Dizel8]

BS. They knew it was a blue on blue incident. The tapes were not released because they were classified. The pilots were cleared of any culpability long ago. Whoever leaked the tapes should go to jail.
SS

Not sure I agree with you there, the fact that the tape made it to the public, that is. The family wanted to know, but got stonewalled by the Pentagon. Often anything that puts the power that be in a bad light gets classified, more often than not to protect the guilty more so than to save the innocent

As for the pilots, I have never flown under such conditions, so on that I shall not comment, but I am sure they are suffering enough from guilt.

 

[Muddauber]

This video is an OPSEC violation that should never have been made public.


Muddy

 

[Huggyu2]

That tradgedy could have happened to anyone, there are plenty of AD f**kups as well.

The Gulf War '91 A-10 frat episode, and the F-15 vs. Blackhawk shootdown come to mind.

 

[Mud Eagle]

Next time you get deployed to OEF or whatever and you see this color....maybe you'll think about it.

Yeah, because the warlords, and Taliban, and A-Q would NEVER put orange panels on their vehicles after watching coalition forces do that for the last 5 years.

 

[Mud Eagle]

This video is an OPSEC violation that should never have been made public.

You say that as if the US had any choice in the matter. The Sun newspaper in the UK is the source of the leak to the media.

 

[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.