May 29, 2004

Army attributes another death to friendly fire. While his is a high-profile death, perhaps it should make us more aware of the United States' consistent problem with friendly fire - and that rates of "blue on blue" are getting higher, in spite of technological advances.

Estimates of friendly-fire casualties in wars before Gulf War I range from the military's claim of under two percent to one project's finding of over 25%, but all agree that friendly fire has increased in frequency. The military says over one fourth of Gulf War I casualties were killed in friendly fire incidents, prompting officials to demand action to reduce these incidents. Yet over a decade later, little progress has been made. One program designed to prevent fratricide was scrapped in 2003 over budget concerns. Will the death of a much-loved sports star finally bring the problem of friendly fire the recognition - and prevention budget - it deserves?

  • Good links, musingmelpomene. Thanks.
  • In Gulf War I the majority of British fatalities were from US troops. Currently in Iraq the score is 32%
  • sjbildermann, that's why I find the "well, we're not getting killed as much so of COURSE a higher percentage are friendly fire" logic rather strained. I have not yet heard of British troops killing US troops - but have heard it happens the other way around fairly frequently.
  • The problem is that most of the training troops recieve is breaking down the inhibitions around killing people. There was research done during the second and Korean wars by the US army that revealed as few as one quarter and one third of GIs fired their weapons, ever - the rest simply wouldn't shoot other people, even in the heat of battle. Since then, there has been a major investment in teaching troops to be more comfortable with killing.
  • I wonder how much of this rise in friendly fire rates can be attributed to the added lethality of the weapons that we use compared to the enemy. The gap in effectiveness between the weapons of the US and their enemies has a lot to do with it, I would imagine. We have fewer combat deaths than before due to all of the gear, technology, and armor, but the weapons that we create are designed to be effective against a similar foe. With less combat deaths to drop the percentage of overall deaths from friendly fire, the problem appears to be larger. It's not that it's not a problem, just that I'm not sure if it's truly accurate to say that it's a larger problem than it was, say in WWI where our own artillery often was misfed information and fired on our own targets. There's a good summary of what I'm trying to say here.