Friendly fire

[3] Use of the term friendly in a military context for allied personnel started during the First World War, often when shells fell short of the targeted enemy.

[6] Friendly fire should not be confused with fragging, which is the uncondoned intentional (or attempted) killing of servicemen by fellow personnel serving on the same side.

Jon Krakauer provides an overview of American casualties during and since the Second World War: While acknowledging that the "statistical dimensions of the friendly fire problem have yet to be defined; reliable data are simply not available in most cases," The Oxford Companion to American Military History estimates that between 2 percent and 25 percent of the casualties in America's wars are attributable to friendly fire.

It's part of a larger pattern: the temptation among generals and politicians to control how the press portrays their military campaigns, which all too often leads them to misrepresent the truth in order to bolster public support for the war of the moment.Although there may well be a longstanding history of such bias,[9][10] Krakauer claims "the scale and sophistication of these recent propaganda efforts, and the unabashedness of their executors" in Iraq and Afghanistan is new.

The concept of a fog of war has come under considerable criticism, as it can be used as an excuse for poor planning, weak or compromised intelligence and incompetent command.

[13][14] Another case of such an accident was the death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, although the exact circumstances of that incident are yet to be definitively determined.

[18] Some analyses dismiss the material impact of friendly fire, by concluding friendly-fire casualties are usually too few to affect the outcome of a battle.

[21] Attempts to reduce this effect by military leaders involve identifying the causes of friendly fire and overcoming repetition of the incident through training, tactics and technology.

In the 1991 Gulf War, most of the Americans killed by their own forces were crew members of armored vehicles hit by anti-tank rounds.

From the earliest days of warfare, identification systems were visual and developed into extremely elaborate suits of armour with distinctive heraldic patterns.

Efforts to provide accurate compasses inside metal boxes in tanks and trucks has proven difficult, with GPS a major breakthrough.

The use of infrared lights and thermal tape that are invisible to observers without night-goggles, or fibres and dyes that reflect only specific wavelengths are developing into key identifiers for friendly infantry units at night.

[21] Some tactics make friendly fire virtually inevitable, such as the practice of dropping barrages of mortars on enemy machine gun posts in the final moments before capture.

[22] The shock and awe battle tactics adopted by the American military – overwhelming power, battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force – are employed because they are believed to be the best way to win a war quickly and decisively, reducing casualties on both sides.

However, if the only people doing the shooting are American, then a high percentage of total casualties are bound to be the result of friendly fire, blunting the effectiveness of the shock and awe tactic.

[26][27] Incidents include: the killing of Royalist commander, the Earl of Kingston, by Royalist cannon fire during the English Civil War;[28] the bombing of American troops by Eighth Air Force bombers during Operation Cobra in World War II;[29] the attack on the Royal Navy 1st Minesweeping Flotilla off Cap d'Antifer, Le Havre by 263 Squadron and 266 Squadron RAF on 27 August 1944, sinking HMS Britomart and Hussar, and irreparably damaging HMS Salamander, killing 117 sailors and wounding 153 more;[30] the eight-hour firefight between British units during the Cyprus Emergency;[31] the sinking of the German destroyers Leberecht Maass and Max Schultz by the Luftwaffe in the North Sea during World War II; the downing of a British Army Gazelle helicopter by a British warship during the Falklands War;[32] the downing of two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters by USAF fighters in 1994 during the Iraqi no-fly zones;[33] the shooting down and killing of Italo Balbo, the Italian governor of Libya over Tobruk by Italian anti aircraft fire in 1940; the accidental shooting of Stonewall Jackson during the American Civil War; the killing of a Royal Military Policeman by a British sniper during the war in Afghanistan;[34] and the Tarnak Farm incident when US Air National Guard pilots in 2002 bombed 12 Canadian soldiers, four of whom were killed;[35] these were the first Canadian casualties of the war in Afghanistan.