“This is the clip that has been leaked which shows a US plane shooting British soldiers on the ground killing and wounding one. THE SOUND IS DELAYED, PLEASE READ SUBTITLES.”
Cayman Islands – Cay Compass News Online – US friendly fire video leaked — This will never end. It’s actually a miracle this is not happening everyday. And exactly how much fuel is wasted shooting down some anonymous characters under these circumstances. Of course you have to go to YouTube to get the video since the TV folks won’t show it and the papers will not link to it. Then again, it’s only slightly interesting except for the fact that the jet jockeys were not too pleased with themselves. This is by no means a creepy or violent video, but it is what the congroversy is all about.
The excitement of two American pilots turned from panic and finally despair with one man saying, “I’m going to be sick. We’re in jail, dude,” after their planes shot and killed a British soldier during a friendly fire incident in Iraq four years ago, according to a leaked video released by a newspaper Tuesday.
The Pentagon had refused to release the video to the family of Lance Cpl. Matty Hull, who was killed when U.S. jets fired on his convoy in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on March 28, 2003, despite requests by British government officials and the coroner investigating the death.
British coroners tasked with opening inquests into suspicious deaths have become increasingly critical of military errors. One coroner last year criticized American authorities for failing to provide access and name U.S. Marines involved in the death of British television journalist Terry Lloyd, shot in Iraq in March 2003.
The leaked tape comes as criticism mounts against U.S. President George W. Bush over the war in Iraq and has stirred tension between the U.S. and British governments.
It was shown on TV here in Canada earlier this afternoon.
They really screwed up.
correct me if I´m wrong but this can be a total fake: voiceover+subtitles? I don´t buy it until they confirm it…
This is not a fake!
It was a goof up.
“congroversy”?
were I a less cynical person, I would be actually shocked at the indifference the US military shows the families of soldiers slain in “friendly fire” incidents. Between this and Pat Tillman, it is very clear that they care more about some bad PR than being honest with grieving families.
Why is this news!?!? Human beings screw up, especially in war. It just returns the feeling of loss for those that were killed and wounded more than three years ago. If it happened yeatrerday, it would be news, since it happened three years ago it’s just anti-war type.
Yes, the war stinks and we shouldn’t have started it, but let’s figure out a way to leave and not hand Iraq over to the IED tossing extremists at the same time.
Why weren’t these pilots better trained?
As ghm101 points out, this is exactly the issue.
A BBC news report last night carried an interview with a British Army colonel, the then CO who had lost nine men in a virtually identical incident during the 1992 Gulf war and he made that point. He didn’t blame the pilots, he said, but he did blame the generally poor training they received and censured the Pentagon for incompetence. The US military, he claimed, were notorious for being trigger happy, for shooting first and finding out later, a view that the many incidents of Allied deaths through so-called friendly fire seem to bear out but he put the blame for this squarely on the prevalent military ethos rather than on the pilots or soldiers in question. As a simple example, any pilot should be trained to recognise the shape and outlines of friendly planes and tanks and be required to investigate further, perhaps by flying lower or taking other appropriate action, to confirm matters particularly when, as here, there was no evidence whatever or hostile activity.
There is a further point which puts the administration in an extremely bad light and that’s its unwillingness to accept blame and duly properly try to improve matters. As far as the colonel cited was aware, no public investigation of the manslaughter of his nine soldiers had been held, no apology or compensation had been made by the US to the victims’ families, no sanctions had been invoked against the pilots concerned or their commanding officers. Exactly the same is happening in the present case and the UK’s MoD (Ministry of Defence) appears to be as complicit in trying to hide the truth as is the US’s DoD, each of them stonewalling at every opportunity, actively seeking to prevent disclosure.
It’s taken a determined coroner at the UK inquest into this current death (and that happened four years ago) coupled with some public spirited leaking and now the use of YouTube to get the scandal aired. Let’s hope it has some effect on both Pentagon and MoD attitudes and perhaps effects some very long overdue changes to the training and ethos of the US military.
The Sun newspaper in the UK broke the story and the video. They have the best copy of the video here: http://tinyurl.com/y7zwxm
The most important aspect of the video is these pilots genuinely thought this was an enemy target. They were getting conflicting information from the AWACS until after they strafed the target. These pilots expressed remorse at their mistake and were in obvious mental anguish when the reality of what they did set in. These pilots deserve as much sympathy as the British causalities on the ground.
#7
Why is this news?
Well because:
The Coroners’ enquiry is only just now happening.
(After delays and uncooperative military attitudes to providing requested evidence)
And the film has only just come to light.
No doubt the powers that be hoped by delaying things and being difficult they could either get people to think this “Old News” and discount it thereby minimising its negative PR harm.
Sound like a familiar attitude Chris? – Their plan sure worked with you.
The family of the killed soldier has wanted to see this film for ages and have been told at various times: “It is classified” or “there is no film”
It is news because these friendly fire things keep happening.
It is news because of the military attempts to conceal the truth from people with a right to know.
“Friendly fire” deaths happen in every war there are probably fewer incidents in the last 20 years than in previous times. Assuming the text and audio are in order I find it interesting that they weren’t told where the friendlies were until after the incident. I don’t think this has anything to do with pilot training but a tremendous failure in communication and coordination. When will people learn it’s pointless to try to cover these tradgedies up?
#9
The Sun had a different analysis of the video from you pointing to 6 specific errors the pilots made. AWACS were not involved -rather embedded forward air controllers.
“ERROR ONE came when they asked the Forward Air Controller, call sign Manila Hotel, if friendly forces were around the Iraqi vehicles — not to the west.
ERROR TWO neither pilot gave the precise grid references for the Household Cavalry patrol to double check its identity.
ERROR THREE saw them convince themselves the identification panels were really orange rocket launchers.
ERROR FOUR POPOV36 decides to attack, saying he is “rolling in” — without permission from the Forward Air Controller. POPOV35 asks for artillery to fire a marker round into the target area to clear up confusion.
ERROR FIVE came when POPOV36 attacked without waiting for it.
ERROR SIX POPOV36 strafes the column for a second time but still doubts its identity.”
Me, I think they didn’t have the training to be flying A10s in combat over coalition forces.
The pilots do have my sympathy and I blame the system that put them there.
But then again, these pilots were not under fire, the convoy was not firing on anybody, they could have just taken a bit more time, been a bit more precise got the right Id and NOT killed the wrong bloke.
Why are British troops even still in Iraq? I can see Afghanistan but Iraq?
what’s a couple more dead to rationalize.
#8
> As a simple example, any pilot should be trained to
> recognise the shape and outlines of friendly planes and
> tanks and be required to investigate further, perhaps by
> flying lower or taking other appropriate action, to confirm
> matters particularly when, as here, there was no evidence
> whatever or hostile activity.
Sorry, but that is utter bullshit. First pilots *are* trained on the outlines and designs of friendly equipment. Second, air missions must have ground confirmation and intel. If you want to prevent this type of mistake, asking the pilots to do extensive confirmation of the targets is not the right approach. If you are lucky, you will get that kind of confirmation only after the first straffing run when the crew says something to the effect of “hey they didn’t look like an Iraqi tank that we just smoked.”
#10
> It is news because these friendly fire things keep happenin
And they will continue to happen in every combat situation from now until the end of time. It happens in war. You try to mitigate the situations where friendly fire occurs but at the end of the day it will happen.
“And they will continue to happen in every combat situation from now until the end of time.”
And with a president like Bush and an economy based on war profiteering, we are guaranteed to be at war from now until the end of time.
A similar event happened when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and a smart bomb almost took out U.S. SPEC-OPS, CIA Officers, and President-to-be Hamid Karzi. Thankfully a reinforced cinder block wall took the brunt of the explosion.
#15 Is correct in his analysis as this will continue to happen however the probability of said event occurring can be lowered with greater technological advance. There are new systems being deployed in U.S. brigades, I think soon to be NATO also, where beacons will tell pilots if they’re about to drop ordnance on a friendly target.
#16 Actually the percentage of (military spending)/(total GDP) is at a very low level since WWII levels, here’s a nice graph http://tinyurl.com/234wcj.
Overlooked here, the A10 pilots were Airforce reservists, weekend warriors. Neither had ever experienced mixed operations with allied forces. Neither could identify by sight that their targets were friendly, if they were standing next to them.
Thomas, you rather confirm my point as to a difference in attitude. Being intelligently and constantly observant – of which being trained with sufficient rigour to recognise relevant outlines and shapes instinctively – is a vital part of a pilot’s competence. I don’t suggest for one moment that such observation should or can replace ground intelligence or technically derived feedback but it’s a necessary complement and, sadly, one shown too often to be lacking. You’re no doubt right in claiming that the pilots are trained but it’s clear that they’re not trained to a sufficiently high standard in this area.
While I fully accept the huge difficulties that a pilot faces travelling at high speed and altitude above dangerous terrain the fact remains that the undue reliance on technology as against human intuition, intelligence, sensitivity and skill coupled with a prevalent “kick-ass” attitude leads to unnecessary deaths even allowing for, as you point out, the fact that some such deaths are a fact of war.
The controversy isn’t about the friendly fire. I don’t think anyone even read the news here – you have to read British news to get the story that’s so distortedly covered in the US. The whole “USA! War is hell!” nonsense is getting in the way of understanding here.
The story is firstly, that the request for testimony from the airmen from the coroner was refused. No US serviceman was allowed to testify. So no final report on the circumstances surrounding the deaths was possible.
Secondly, Blair and his people claimed they had never seen the video, and it turns out they lied. They therefore are complicit in blocking the inquest. And are outright buggering liars.
In the UK, the second point is big, big news, as it calls into question which country Blair thinks he belongs to. His duty was to his servicemen and their families, and he was derelict for political reasons having to do with his buy-in of Bush’s war. The whole war, the lies and stonewalling going into it, is public dynamite in the UK .
I hope that after he’s bounced from office, he gets a nice seat on the Carlisle board for his work, along with a nice block of stock.
“I think they’re orange rockets.”
He is definitively from the MTV generation.
Here’s the exchange I heard between the pilot and FAC on Youtube video titled “American Friendly Fire on British Troops in Iraq – pt.1”.
PILOT – “Looks like we got orange panels on them, though. Do we have any friendlies in the area?”
No response.
PILOT – “Confirm there are no friendlies this far north on the ground”.
FAC- “That is an affirm. You are well clear of friendlies”
As a retired military pilot, I would say that any military pilot would have rolled in on that target after hearing that.
I would suggest that everyone actually watch the entire video, listen to what happened, and who said what.
The news analysis of the “blame” just doesn’t agree with the facts of the video. These pilots repeated told their controllers that the vehicles appeared to have orange blocks on them (friendlies) only to be told repeatedly that no friendlies were in the area.
A tragic accident.
Six Canadian soldiers were killed when two U.S. reservist pilots dropped a 500lb bomb on them in 2002 in Afghanistan. Wasn’t that enough of a lesson to wait until you’re sure you’re killing the enemy?
I don’t blame the pilots, but there seems to be a problem with the U.S. military on this.
Friendlies at Kandahar….
So they paint big dayglow orange arrows on the roof of each coalition vehicle so that friendly fire incidents are prevented and these two numbskulls are somehow unaware of this. Rockets aren’t painted orange, they’re camoflaged!!
I bet if the Brits had returned fire and downed the A10’s the US would have been baying for blood.
Kohntopp killed a British soldier and injured many others in Iraq due to incompetence and a complete lack of professionalism. How do they train these jokers because it seems that they kill and maim allied troops and get rewarded for doing so? Judging by the pilot’s comments he obviously hasn’t been affected by his blunder and seems more concerned in saving his career. As for British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps it should be explained that incoming fire is more likely to come from the Americans rather than insurgents. Some ‘special relationship’! Best reinforce the your body armour lads… especially at the back!