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Originally Posted by Bluesman
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As to the friendly fire thang, I know a bit about that, too. I consider myself extremely lucky - LUCKY, folks, not particularly talented - to have never caused anything like that with my work. Was I careful? Bet your ass, I was, because I lived in terror that it WOULD happen to me someday. I know a guy that called in a bad target, and got a whole pile of innocent people killed. It hurt him BADLY, and he almost didn't come back from it. Well, it could have been ME, because this is the truth that I had to try to live with as I did my job: sometimes, you are just playing the odds, and conditions and circumstances are such that you're hoping that The Breaks are going to fall your way. Because a decision has to be made, and that 75% probability that you're going to be right will have to be good enough to go ahead and release hell onto SOMEbody, because NOT shooting will get somebody - probably OUR guys - killed, too. So you make your call, eat a Tums, chew off your fingernails to the second knuckle, and hope like almighty that you haven't committed the evening news' lead atrocity story. (I'm not asking for anybody's admiration here, but THAT is PRESSURE, folks, and while I do not consider myself to have any insight into combat stress, having never heard a shot fired in anger, I have felt ENORMOUS responsibility while I weigh my decision and wait to hear what happened, and relief when it comes out right - again.)
I wrote this recently:
When you're pressed for time (and you always are) and you're exhausted (and you usually are), it's WAY too easy to screw up, and that's why we demand such professionalism from our people. I was purty dam' hard on doing the little stuff right, and my people were expected to meet or exceed all the standards in All Things Air Force, whether it was lethal or not. Because I wanted their minds trained to think about DETAILS, because that is where the mistakes lie in wait for the careless, and they can kill you, or cause you to kill somebody else. But sometimes, all control is removed from your hands, and you have to do your best, and prepare yourself for the fact that not everybody is as lucky as Sgt Bluesman was.
With the version of the combined air and land forces doctrine that the US military trains for and stresses, it may seem to a Brit unit commander that USAF pilots aren't taking proper care. But the speed and personal initiative and decentralized decision-making that the doctrine stresses and that also makes battlefield success seem effortless and irresistable, the friendly-fire losses that seem so high are actually replacing battle casualties that would be WAY higher, should a more 'careful' approach be adopted. And I would tell that furious commander that he got to BE furious about his losses to Yankee cowboy fighter jocks because he wasn't dead from enemy ambushes, artillery strikes, days-long breaching ops through obstacle belts, etc.
Long post. Sorry.
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But blues, You are comparing planned targets, and targetting to CAS. Apples and Oranges.
You don't release unless you are sure you have the target, as defined by the TACP, in your sights.
Well, at least thats how Marine and Navy pilots do CAS. As do most of the AF pilots.
I've had CAS missions,(real life) that the pilot didn't drop because on pop-up
he didn't get a good picture of where we were. So we recocked and got the situation right before any ord was dropped.
As lethal as modern munitions are, you cannot afford to be 75% sure. And I don't want pilots that are flying missions in support of my unit to accept that.
There is NO EXCUSE for a pilot to shoot at an AAV. Or LAV-25s or Warrior and other British vehicles that they have.
I read somewhere that CentCom has stated that by AF regulations, pilots
are not obligated to visually confirm their targets before engaging. I know for a fact that N/MC pilots do. And what a piss poor excuse to tell some 19 yr old Marines widow. "Wasn't the pilots fault. By AF regs he didn't have an obligation to ID his target."
When a group of vehicles are in a no engagement zone and the pilots talk themselves into believing that the orange ID panels are Orange Missiles. There is something wrong. Whep the pilot decides to engage without permission from the FAC And for the conversation following the incident is all about how "We are in Jail, Dude."
Then DoD clears both pilots of wrongdoing. The British Cdr has EVERY right to feel the way he did in his statement.
It also leads to statements like this from a US Commander
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Lt. Col. Jim Braden, a Marine attack helicopter squadron commander who helped orchestrate the latter stages of the Nasiriyah battle, personally ordered two A-10 pilots to abort a rushed airstrike there. Braden says, "A lot of Air Force pilots I've worked with just seem to be looking for an excuse to pull the trigger and aren't really concerned about where friendlies are located. Their attitude is 'Just give me a GPS grid coordinate and let me do my thing.'"
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