US Plane Vs British Tank

Surely if there was any doubt about the side of the convoy then they shouldn't have attacked? Or at least waited for definate confirmation and permission to fire? Especially when friendlies were within 800m (not sure, I only caught the video this morning on sky news)

As said previously, its not like there seemed to be much of an immediate threat, at least the pilots didn't seem very bothered.

As far as I'm concerned, they should have seen the orange and ran. They clearly saw it, and deliberated. Finally deciding they 'might' be orange rockets. These 2 jokers should be court marshalled in my opinion, or at least thrown out of the service.

Ofcourse this is just the issue of the two Americans, don't get me started on good ol' Tony and the MOD! Absolute disgrace, should have stood up for the soldier and his family. Such a shame they had to see the video on the news.
 
well I've just seen the video on the news and it seems it wasn't entirely the fault of the pilots.... they were expressly told (and confirmed) by their radio contact that absolutely no friendlies were in the region....You can't really blame the pilots, the radio operator? the us army as a whole? yes... not the pilots though
 
Docaroo said:
well I've just seen the video on the news and it seems it wasn't entirely the fault of the pilots.... they were expressly told (and confirmed) by their radio contact that absolutely no friendlies were in the region....You can't really blame the pilots, the radio operator? the us army as a whole? yes... not the pilots though
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pilots weren't at fault, it's just that Washington didn't release it and no.10 didn't demand for it
 
Docaroo said:
well I've just seen the video on the news and it seems it wasn't entirely the fault of the pilots.... they were expressly told (and confirmed) by their radio contact that absolutely no friendlies were in the region....You can't really blame the pilots, the radio operator? the us army as a whole? yes... not the pilots though
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It was a farce from start to finish. :mad:
Two reserve rookie pilots who had never been in combat.
Attacked the convoy even though they were unsure of friend or foe.
Even as they went in for the second attack, they still didn't know for sure if it was the enemy.
The pilots were still trying to convince themselves that the orange panels were rocket launchers.

I agree that the information from high was wrong, but they still went ahead and attacked.
Then the Yanks try to cover it up and deny there are tapes.
A disgrace! :mad:
 
The real issue here is the cover up, by our own government, in denying any video existed and not releasing the evidence to the coroner
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sick :mad: i cant imagine what the relatives must be going through....

Just reveals the utter lack of respect our government have for our own armed forces :( Beggars belief really.... someone should be held accountable...
 
Stiff_Cookie said:
Also, the US and UK forces have a history of not communicating. so maybe the US didnt know there were British tanks there.
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"The aircraft is an A-10 tank buster aircraft, call sign Popov36. A second jet involved has the call sign Popov35. The call signs Manila Hotel, Manila34 and Lightning34 are three US Marine Corps forward air controllers on the ground attached to British units. In the video the pilots are heard becoming upset and swearing as they realise the mistake that has been made."

Not going to provide a link or copy the rest because it contains swearing, but there where US folk with us UK people down there.
 
I just watched it and to me it looks like the blame is equally shared between the pilots, and the people that told them there were no friendlies in the area (how many times, it was at least twice). What i did object to was the way they attacked without seemingly being unsure (then again they were under the impression there were no friendlies in the area). Maybe the reason they attacked quickly was because the tanks were approaching the town, as one of the pilots said? Anyway, it looks like a tragedy, a real accident.

I was unsure about this quote:

“It looks like he is hauling ass. Ha Ha.”
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Seems like someone transposing the video was trying to add some 'gung-ho' stigma to the pilots, as all he said was “It looks like he is hauling ass”. I definately didnt hear him laughing :confused:

Digital Punk said:
Two reserve rookie pilots who had never been in combat.
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The link up there says they were a lieutenant colonel, and a major. I didnt think that was particularly 'rookie'. And how do you know they've never been in combat? :confused:
 
Scam said:
And how do you know they've never been in combat? :confused:
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According to the news report on TV they hadn't.

Anyway, combat vets or not, they shouldn't have attacked once let alone twice while they were still trying to decide if the convoy was friend or foe.

Scam said:
I was unsure about this quote:



Seems like someone transposing the video was trying to add some 'gung-ho' stigma to the pilots, as all he said was “It looks like he is hauling ass”. I definately didnt hear him laughing :confused:
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From the footage I saw on the news tonight, you could hear one of the pilots laughing in the background.
It was faint, but audible.
 
Stelly said:
The thing I dont get is how its the US that does all the friendly fire and never the brits??

Stelly
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Thats not true, a Challenger killed the turret crew of another Challenger in 2003, and another Challenger gunner killed his own dismounted TC around the same time.
 
I have to admit, I was quick to judge the americans for this incident.

After watching the video I really sympathised with the pilots, they were specifically instructed that there were no friendly targets in the immediate area, from what they saw of the convoy they made a decision to attack, a decision that under different circumstances they could have been praised for, and could have saved the lives of coalition forces if they actually were hostile targets.

Obviously an error occured somewhere, be it a human or technical error that definatly shouldn't have happened.

As for the "looks like hes hauling ass, ha ha" comment it isn't just americans who make comments like that, i've seen several videos of British troops saying things like that in combat. It happens.

As for the "cover up", thats horrible, nothing like that should have happened. The family of the person killed *needs* to know what happened, I hate to think what life has been like for them not knowing, and getting nothing out of the government which their son died for.
 
It looks like part of the problem is something I referred to earlier - USA military do not appear to do well identifying foreign (to the USA) allied vehicles. They had a good look at the vehicles and I'm pretty sure if they had been USA military vehicles, the pilots would have recognised them. They were standard British army vehicles, but the USA pilots weren't sure what they were...you can hear the pilots talking about how maybe the vehicles were Russian.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I thought that the procedure when you have such dominance, there isn't a real threat and there's a soft target that you think might or might not be enemy vehicles would be to hang around and confirm, really confirm, with precise positioning, if there are people on your own side at such and such a position. This wasn't a split-second decision.
 
ff 4tw, honestly, rip to the people that dies, but this is warfare, people die, people make accidents, now we know americans have less iq than a britishman, which is why we have to expect them killing us, and anyway, its all a conspiracy, the americans are just trying to get rid of all nations, ours a bit slower and more suspicous though
 
Enfield said:
"The aircraft is an A-10 tank buster aircraft, call sign Popov36. A second jet involved has the call sign Popov35. The call signs Manila Hotel, Manila34 and Lightning34 are three US Marine Corps forward air controllers on the ground attached to British units. In the video the pilots are heard becoming upset and swearing as they realise the mistake that has been made."

Not going to provide a link or copy the rest because it contains swearing, but there where US folk with us UK people down there.
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I was refering to positioning of troops. Someone on the US side didnt know there were UK troops there. I wasnt refering to the troops on the ground not communicating with the air.

As for the poor training comments, well you guys really really do not know what you are talking about. You base your opinion on what you hear in the news. What you dont hear is about every successfull airstrike that is called in, or the US troops that are sent in to rescue foreign forces or the good deads that the US troops do or the times that a soldiers training allows him to save the lives of others. So, really, you dont know what your talking about. No military in the world is prepared for EVERY eventuality.

As for the event itself, if the pilots radioed in for troop positions and were told that their were no friendlies in the area than how can you blame them? The pilots have to trust the base to know that stuff because otherwise they are on their own. Is it the base operators fault then? Whose to say, did his screen have allied forces in the area on it? did he mistake what the screen displayed? If the allied markers weren't on his screen why not? Were the Uk forces ahead of schedule or off course? Was there a communication breakdown between the allied forces?

As for taking their time in the air, again, it goes back to not knowing what your talking about. THe more time you spend in the air trying to identify a possible enemy the more vulnerable you are to ground fire. If there was a guy down there with a MANPAD or an SA missle launcher than those pilots may have died. Russian Surface-to-Air missles can reach Mach 3+ speeds, way faster than an A-10 and just about any other aircraft. Pilots do not have time to fly in circles trying to identify targets. They called it in, got confirmation than there were no friendlies in the area and went in for the kill.

And yes, the British do make mistakes. Some of you talk about the US not being able identify foreign units but forget that a British Tank failed to identify one of its own tanks and attacked. What do you have to say for that? A horrible mistake and nothing else I bet :rolleyes:

I cant tell if the guy above me is being serious or not but either way its just baseless babble.
 
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I just sat through the whole video. It is quite shocking, but I'd agree that the pilots genuinely believed that they were enemies they were attacking- their support told them there were no friendlies. You can hear that they are truly shocked when the call comes through that it was friendly fire. They weren't the stereotypical 'trigger happy yank' shooting up everyone, it was an accident. Its still shocking to watch though.


And a quick point, statistically speaking of course there will be more cases of US forces attacking other friendlies- there are simply so many more US troops than any other country they the odds fall against them.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
And a quick point, statistically speaking of course there will be more cases of US forces attacking other friendlies- there are simply so many more US troops than any other country they the odds fall against them.
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If it was simply a matter of numbers there would have course also be many more cases of USA forces mistakenly attacking othe USA forces.

To elaborate: if it was just a matter of numbers then the huge majority of USA soldiers would lead to USA soldiers being the attackers in a huge majority of blue-on-blue (the term "friendly fire" gets on my ****) incidents...but it would also lead to the victims being USA soldiers in the same huge majority of cases.

Unless you can show that is the case, your line of argument is of course wrong.
 
Angilion said:
If it was simply a matter of numbers there would have course also be many more cases of USA forces mistakenly attacking othe USA forces.

To elaborate: if it was just a matter of numbers then the huge majority of USA soldiers would lead to USA soldiers being the attackers in a huge majority of blue-on-blue (the term "friendly fire" gets on my ****) incidents...but it would also lead to the victims being USA soldiers in the same huge majority of cases.

Unless you can show that is the case, your line of argument is of course wrong.
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There have been FF incidents from the US on the US, Canadians and UK. It isn't just one way.

There are not a lot of FF incidents when loking at the entire picture of sorties and close air support ops etc.
 
Stiff_Cookie said:
There have been FF incidents from the US on the US, Canadians and UK. It isn't just one way.
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Since I wasn't arguing that it was one way, that is a non sequitor.
 
Angilion said:
Since I wasn't arguing that it was one way, that is a non sequitor.
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I guess I missed the point you were trying to make. I was not trying to imply that the FF incidents were one sides or not but that the numbers of troops is, at least IMHO, a valid point for why the US seems to be the agressors in more FF incidents.
 
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