An American drone apparently killed two US troops in Afghanistan last week in what may be a first-of-its-kind case of friendly fire.
NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski writes that the strike killed a Marine Staff Sergeant and Navy corpsman while they were reinforcing Marines under fire from the Taliban in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The Marines reportedly saw the troops headed towards them through a Predator’s infrared camera, could not distinguish them from attacking Taliban and ordered in the Predator-borne Hellfire missile airstrike that killed the two men.
“It’s believed that this is the first time that US service members have been killed by a Predator in a friendly fire incident,” Miklaszewski reports.
The strike follows the Los Angeles Times’ in-depth chronicling of a February 2010 drone strike gone awry. In the incident, a combination of misinterpreted signals and the fog of war led drone operators and special operations forces on the ground to think a convoy of Afghan civilians in vehicles was an inbound Taliban attack force. (Read the transcript of the chatter between the drone pilots and the ground troops here.) The strike killed 15-16 men, one woman and three children according to the US military. Local Afghans set the number of dead at 23, including two children.
Drone strikes and the accidental civilian casualties they cause have been the subject of intense debate over the years as the US has increasingly relied on unmanned aerial systems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This latest incident, apparently the first friendly fire incident against US forces involving an unmanned system, and the investigation that will follows adds new fuel to the debate over the reliance on unmanned systems and their precision in combat.
Photo: Flickr/US Air Force
Adam Rawnsley is a former think-tanker and contributor to Danger Room who writes about terrorists, pirates and associated bad guys.
olearymo
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 11:27 AMI think you mean:
“Controllers of an American drone apparently killed two US troops in Afghanistan last week in what may be a first-of-its-kind case of friendly fire.”
Iain Graham
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 2:56 PMOne can only act on the information that they are given. Friendly fire is unfortunate, but in cases like this, the operator really didn’t/couldn’t tell the difference, which is a failing of the drone, not the operator.
I’m not sure if this is the case, but would everyone be carrying some sort of IFF, bar the two killed, or have I been playing too many games?
rb
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 8:32 PMThe operator pushed the button. The drone didn’t do it on it’s own.
If you’re not sure, don’t bloody do it.
Yes, you play too many games.
Daniel
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10:20 PMSure it’s not solely the controller’s fault, but how can it be the drone’s fault? It doesn’t have a mind of its own (Just yet).
It’s a shared fault of the team tasked with operating the drone. It really boils down to their training.
“Friendly fire is unfortunate”. “Unfortunate” cannot describe it. It is really unacceptable. It shouldn’t even have happened, had the troops been trained to not “take chances” and relay information with some sort of reliability.
The american military is just looking like a team of rednecks going guns-a-blazing into a war zone making cannon fodder of anything they set their sights on. It’s a joke. You have some sort of trust in your country’s ability to intelligently “defend” (Not in america’s case) itself at times of war.
Steve
Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 11:28 PMThis is pretty much the plot of Eagle Eye.
Even though a Drone launched the missile, ultimately it was the human operator who gave it the greenlight, despite (evidently) not being entirely certain of the target.
Don’t know why people are focusing on the drone aspect at all. It’s not an AI miscalculation, it someone used an RC car to (somehow) kill another, it’ll be the HIS damn fault, not the car’s.
Newtown Mack
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10:24 PMIf it bleeds, we can kill it