Question: concerning "Friendly Fire"

Of course. Since the invention of arrows and perhaps before this, there have doubtless been instances of friendly fire. Can you imagine ancient archers raining down hundreds of arrow on enemy infantry never accidently hit their own?

War is a very messy business whether you are shooting catapults, cannons or dropping bombs from airplanes. I am sure that there are quite a few examples in *any* war.

I think the difference is that in most wars the government is able to cover up its mistakes, and perhaps no one in power cares anyway. Whatever else you want to say about our government, it is remarkably open compared to any other government in history.

Unfortunately my cursory searches on the Internet revealed only that there is an book on this subject -- "Blue on Blue: A history of friendly fire." Other than American examples in the Civil war and WWII I didn't find any other.

But it seems to me that the US now cares more about the safety of its soldiers (and civilians) than any other government in history. Unless you can explain why American soldiers are more at risk than those in other conflicts I have to believe the only difference is what is reported.

I would be very surprised if friendly fire incidents were not much less common in the modern US military than in any other.

I am amazed that, with all the smmart bombs to prevent collateral damage and all the high tech, weve not developed a simple troop transponder that, when queried by a firing airplane , gives an IFF type signal (identify friend or foe) Airplanes have had this , although in the daylight bombings by Britain in WWII , there were incidents of bombers hitting planes below them.
Still, Id think such a small device with a computer chip, encoded with a seriial number or sequence that lets the attacking vehicle clearly be put on notice that "Hey dummy its one of our own"

and I hate that oxymoron.

Good article on "friendly fire"


It's been there all the time.
(And it seems that Gulf War I was the worst).

(And I also hate the phase)

Thanks Guys.
....I read the link. Again, no mention of other countries. Could we be the biggest bumblers? The most reckless? I hope it's because you don't hear about the ohter countries, but it seems odd.

As was pointed out above, friendly fire incidents go back to the very beginning of armed conflict. A thrown stone bops a member of the same tribe; oops! War is very chaotic, and in chaos one must expect that accidents are more frequent, and serious, than in more settled times.

As long as war was conducted with swords, pikes, bows and arrows, the number of unintended casualties was limited. Battles conducted on small battlefields where everyone was grouped together into clearly defined formations also limited friendly fire incidents.

With the application of gunpowder to military art, the number of friendly fire incidents ballooned considerably. Early artillery pieces frequently exploded killing and injuring the gun crews, and anyone else near by. Smooth bores meant that accuracy suffered beyond, say 25 yards. During the Napoleonic Wars the common doctrine was to mass your infantry into squares, and to withhold fire until the last moment before the enemy's formation crashed into your own. Battles fought in that manner had relatively small numbers of friendly fire incidents by infantry fire, but artillery FF incidents were frequent by all armies of the day.

WWI was notorious for the number and severity of the FF incidents. Massive artillery barrages onto unseen targets frequently landed in places they weren't intended. The famous Lost Battalion lost almost as many soldiers to FF as it did to enemy fires. Mistakes were common, and the ability to precisely target munitions was still very poor compared to modern technology. WWII was in a way even worse, because of the rise of air power. Bombing campaigns could only succeed by the use of massive carpet bombing, that is saturation of a whole area with heavy, iron bombs. It has been rightly said that more cows were killed by Allied bombs than Nazi factories were destroyed. The same bombs that killed cows instead of factories, also killed Allied forces as they raced along the roads of France toward Germany. During WWII the idea of close air support of infantry and armor was adopted by all of the contending armies. We shot down our own aircraft, and those aircraft frequently straffed and bombed Allied troops. The Germans were generally less concerned with errant munitions, and their military forces suffered accordingly. The massive firepower unleashed in the general direction of where soldiers believe the threat lies greatly increases friendly fire incidents.

The more effective the enemy is at killing our soldiers, the higher the ratio of friendly fire incidents will be to overall casualties. For instance, in an engagement where Red and Blue Armies each have 1000 soldiers, the Red Army inflicts 20% casulaties on the Blue Army there would be 200 casualties by enemy fires. Lets say the Blue Army has 3% FF casualties, that is 1:100. If the Red Army is Iraqi, we can expect perhaps 10% casualties from their fires, but the with 2% FF incidents that renders a ratio of 1:10. The example here is for illustrative purposes only.

The question is, or should be, has the percentage of FF casualties decreased with the advent of modern battle management technology? I don't know of any study of that actual question, though in the last five years there have been at least two fine studies on the problem. My guess is that our soldiers today are much less likely to be the victim of a tragic accident than where our fathers in WWII, or Korea.

Friendly Fire incidents and Collateral Damage, only differ in the clothing worn by the victims. The unintentional killing/wounding of civilians and destruction of civilian property, is Collateral Damage. The unintentional killing/wounding of one's own soldiers, or the destruction of our own equipment is Friendly Fire. The key here is intention. A further distinction is in the care taken to prevent unintentional harm to soldiers or civilians. US and British forces take exceptional care, spend vast sums, and assume great risks to avoid unintented harm. There are those who do not take any precautions to avoid unintended killing and destruction. Some of those are in violation of the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and as such are War Criminals.

The use of human shields, chemical/biological weapons, and the use of hospitals, churches and schools are all prohibited by International Law, and those Iraqi's using those tactics are War Criminals.

Heavens Booman - my uncle flew bombers in WW II.

After D Day, he was severely psychologically damaged by knowing that, on many missions, they were likely to be bombing Allied troops, since communications were so chaotic for a long time, that fronts were not clear, and it was known that they were bombing areas that had already been taken some of the time. They just didn't know when.

This is just one tale - I guess in the past, it was not always as clear that it was happening, or it was censored. I bet it was censored in WW II.

Oh - Booman, I am Australian and so was my uncle.

Booman - very early in the present 'conflict' (March 26) British troops were killed in such an incident:

Mr. Stillwater,
...There has been more than one incident of U.S. killing Brits, in FF. In at least one of them the Brits were pretty upset about it. They called the Yanks "cowboys". Years ago, I read about NATO war games in which the U.S. finished dead last. Things like this just make me ask , are we the biggest bunglers, or the only bunglers? BTW, those NATO results came after the draft was abolished. Another story, in itself.

...Pardon me for not noticing you mentioned a british incident...That's one, and counting(?).......

Thanks Dlowan,
...I thought surely other countries had to do it, I just don't remember seeing it before. As a matter of fact, I don't recall being aware of the phrase,(FF) and concept before Viet Nam.

I was going to say that there was a British incident just recently, but that was already mentioed.

I wish they would call it something other than "friendly fire"!

Hmmm - ferked-up fire?

That's much better ;-)

I third that motion...Friendly fire is an oxymoron.