NEW YORK: Even the smartest weapons are dumb when the people who programme or fire them make mistakes.
That’s why the Pentagon and its defence contractors are retraining their sights on human error in an effort to cut the number of US military personnel killed by “friendly fire.”
It’s little consolation to them that “friendly fire” casualties are a quarter lower in this Iraq conflict than they were in the 1991 Gulf war, thanks to more precise weapons. The challenge is to create weapons systems that prevent combat personnel from making fatal mistakes and firing on their own troops or their allies.
“The problem remains that if you see someone and you don’t know who they are, you fire on them,” said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “A lot of incidents in this war have been a failure of technology to avoid this.”
In the first Iraq war 12 years ago, 35 of the 148 US troops killed in combat died as a result of “friendly fire.” That means almost a quarter of American war dead from that conflict were killed by friendly forces.
In this war, as of Monday, “friendly fire” killed 16 out of the 89 Americans who had died in the conflict. That’s about 18 per cent.
“Technology can make it more likely you’ll win in combat, but it isn’t a fix for civilian casualties or ‘friendly fire,’” Lewis said. “It’s still higher than anyone wanted.”
INVESTING IN BATTLEFIELD INTELLIGENCE: Some of the Defence Department’s newest contracts may not grab headlines, based on their dollar amount, but they could lead to priceless results, in terms of lowering the US military death toll from “friendly fire.”
Privately held Innovative Concepts Inc., of McLean, Virginia, for one, has received a $6.8 million contract to enhance a communication system that automatically transmits location data and targets information between ground command posts and army helicopters.
This is intended to keep combat personnel from writing down coordinates incorrectly and then passing on the wrong information to a helicopter poised to strike.
Goodrich Corporation, the former tire maker turned aerospace systems manufacturer, is improving engine sensors that monitor and control how fast a pilot can fly without melting the engine or blowing up pieces of it. The sensors can help avoid deaths caused by equipment malfunction.
“A jet engine has 300,000 parts. You need a pretty capable computer that looks at scores of inputs, takes the information and turns it into what’s permissible to do,” said Stephen Huggins, senior vice president of strategic resources for Goodrich, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The tiniest components, too, are being updated. White Electronic Designs Corporation is developing computer-chip modules for fighters and digital receivers to locate friendly troops. The Phoenix-based company is also working on components for a receiver to automatically transmit a downed pilot’s location, removing the chance he or she will give bad directions.
“FRIENDLY FIRE” RAISES REFORM ISSUE: The latest round of “friendly fire” incidents, as the US-led war on Iraq enters its third week, suggests the US military failed to make needed reforms after many similar tragedies in the 1991 Gulf war, analysts have said.
On Sunday, a US plane mistakenly bombed a convoy of US special forces and Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq, killing 18 Kurds and wounding more than 45 people.
A day later, two US Marines died and three were injured when an artillery shell punched into their armoured vehicle in fighting to secure two bridges over the Nahr Diyala river. Marines said “friendly fire” caused the blast, while Colonel B.P. McCoy said an investigation had begun.
“The technology in that situation worked as well as it was supposed to. It was human error,” said Victoria Samson, an analyst at the Center for Defence Information, a Washington D.C.-based non-partisan think tank focusing on military issues.
Samson and other military analysts are calling for improvements in devices for identifying friend or foe, such as better beacons to transmit signals.
Critics note that the Pentagon in 2001 cancelled as “too costly” an Army programme to equip tanks and other military vehicles with electronic devices enabling troops to distinguish US vehicles from those of the enemy. A similar system currently is in the testing stages.—Reuters
