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It could just have easilly been civillians.
Look what happened to Terry Lloyd.
The US has had a recorded history of DELIBERATLEY attacking Canadian and British and other people in this recent Gulf war. Hell, they did it in WW2, they are going to carry on even now it seems.
We can prety much say, having seen what has been let out, that it most likley was deliberate. Isn't the first time A10's have gone for British convoys on purpose.
Why the hell would they do that?
Or are you just being a bit dim? No offense, but deliberately attacking an allied convoy? What next, sending a B2 after the whitehouse?
You know what he means. Accidentally deliberately doing something they promised they definately probably wouldn't do.
I was trying to be confusing.
You've confused me anyway
I've read it thanks. The pilots requested confirmation that there were no friendlies. This was confirmed. They then misidentified the scimitars as Iraq. Guess what - it happens. Its nothing to do with poor training or negligence, they were on free fire so they didn't need to request clearance to engage - that's not how it works. They had been told there were no friendly troops in the area and identified the vehicles wrongly - end off.
The smoke was only released after the first strike and was only seen after the second, at the same time as ground control informed them that there were friendlies in the area.
You and others seem to think soldiers and aircrew are some sort of superheroes - calm, impervious to fear and mistakes, rather than human beings trying to do a job in which other people are trying to do nasty things to them.
Do you want to back any of that up? Because if they attacked British soldiers knowing they were British soldiers that would be considered an act of war.
There's always an enquiey after a blue on blue. However, it recognises that in stressful situations mistakes will be made.
So were many places in Lebanon a while back, and when the IDF blew up building in Lenanese communities and killed innocent civillians was that acceptable?
It not the fact it's a British Serviceman that bothers me. It's the idea that the Ynaks will shoot at things they havn't yet ID'd. And in areas where there are large amounts of civillians is that acceptable. Is it fuck.
Who were actually in the convoy which was attacked, something worth noting.
Sorry but that is just bollocks.
Lets think back to world war 1, when artillery strikes and infantry charges weren't coordinated in real time, they were planned in advance. There are documented occurences when an artillery bombardment killing their own infantry because their watches were out of sync.
Someone probably got bollocked for it, but hey, it's war. Now in the 21st century even one friendly fire event makes the front page tabloids, and it must be dissected completely.
I tell you now, even in the 22nd century, if wars are fought, people will die, and not necessarily from enemy fire.
Wars are not run by clockwork. Just because someone isn't supposed to be there it doesn't mean they won't be.
The British armoured trucks look different from the Iraqis and have markings that identify them as allies, and the surviving troops lit a colour coded flare that told the Americans they were Allies. According to the reports the pilots received no training on Allied vehicle recognition (something that has been common and basic training for decades) and failed to picked up on the other two signs, most probably because they weren't made aware of them properly.
If that's not a fuck up caused by negiglence I don't know what is.
I think thats broadly true, and true in this case. I don't think there is any evidence for American soldiers deliberately killing British/Canadian soldiers and I wouldn't see any logic behind the claim anyway (unless you think Americans are indiscriminately bloodthirsty)...but there can be exceptions.
It also depends on what one means by "on their side." For instance there are serious questions over Terry Lloyd's death and the US soldiers who killed him. Was he "on their side" (on "our" side?) And wars - especially this war - are confusing places, the distinction between who is an is not "on our side" isn't that clear anymore. Complicated sectarian political movements backed up by armed militias, journalists, aid workers, "aid workers," civilians working for multinationals, diplomats, intelligence agents, hitmen, and don't forget the hundreds of thousands of hired mercenaries of many different nationalities currently working/fighting in Iraq.
Do you have a source for that, or are you just going on what you've heard? Have they even carried out an inquiry yet?
Possibly lack of intelligence and communication between the allied forces.
Both the convoy and the US pilots have radios, why was there no attempt of communication between them? There are surely procedures for that...
Basically, I agree there was a series of mistakes here, but the pilots are not to blame.
Secondly, you can't just say these things happen in wars and forget about it.... these things can be avoided in wars and there are procedures to do just that.
The cover up is no new thing, how many cover ups are there that we don't know about???!!
That said its kind of irrelevant. This wasn't that the crew mistook a scimitar for a BMP, but that they mistook it for a flatbed truck. If you identify something as sparrow and it turns out that its a ferret its not a problem with bird recognition skills.
On another day one of the pilots would have correctly identified them or the fact that British forces were in the area would have been communicated quicker. It wasn't, because nothing runs like clockwork and sometimes mistakes are made, which if people weren't tired, stressed, high on adrenaline etc, etc wouldn't be made. But it was Iraq during a war, not Piccadilly circus in rsuh hour.
I am afraid it is not.
An American tank column began firing on British soldiers. The commander soon found out what was going on, and ordered the units to cease firing. One of the tanks continued firing even so, even when the order was issued twice. He did eventually cease firing. This story has been repated - Americans begin attacking, find out it's Brits or Canadians, order given, a few cowboys think it's a good game to carry on firing.
And this isn't the first time the A10's have done runs on British units. Hell, between the huge Union Jacks draped on tank roofs during the invasion, and the fact they show up as ORANGE and thereby FRIENDLY you'd think it might be obvious.
So, I say deliberate. If I was a British commander, I'd tell our boys fuck this, return fire next time they do it.
That is a serious accusation.
Do you have a source for this? Sounds like gossip to me (my platoon were convinced that Spetznaz was helping the Serbs at one point and stories still appear all the time about USMC snipers in the Falklands - either with the Brits or Argentinians depending on the teller).
There is an example of a US pilot continuing on an attack run killing some Canadians after being told to 'hold fire'. Whilst in that case there seems to be to be justified criticism of the pilot (and possiby command, control and communications) no-one has seriously alleged that he deliberately attacked
Canadians knowing them to be Canadians.
Now it may be 'fog of war' that orders to stop firing aren't heard or the firer believes that he is acting in self-defence (Major Schmidt's defence), but that's a different matter.
And tbh if you gave an order for me to open fire on friendly units not only are you possibly facing a charge of murder, you're actually going to prolong the friendly firing. If you see yourself being fired back on, its going to be a lot tougher to a)work out whether it is friednly fire or whether you've bumped an unknown enemy force and b) convince the poor bastards on the ground of that fact.