| -Caveat Lector-
Military rivalry 'causes friendly fire
deaths'
19:00 02 April 03 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition In modern warfare, one of the biggest dangers to troops is not knowing who is friend and who is foe. In the first days of the US and British invasion of Iraq, an American Patriot missile shot down a British Tornado fighter-bomber, while near Basra one British Challenger tank destroyed another. Then in a disturbing echo of events in the 1991 Gulf War, an American A-10 plane destroyed a British armoured vehicle. At first sight these look like inevitable
accidents, triggered by technological failures of 21st-century military
technology. But the truth may lie deeper. Blame for such accidents usually lies
with the culture of rivalry that pervades the armed services, say safety
experts. And the way such "friendly fire" incidents are investigated - with the
emphasis on finding individual culprits rather than any organisational failings
- means military planners may never get to the root cause.
There is no dispute that high-tech equipment
can foster friendly fire accidents. The American and British forces in Iraq use
thermal or radar images to engage the enemy at maximum range in limited
visibility, says Scott Snook, former head of the Center for Leadership &
Organizations at the West Point military academy in New York.
When troops cannot see and check the target
with their own eyes, they are more likely to make a mistake. Similarly,
electronic identification systems can fail in action: the US Army says a
software error led the Patriot system to identify the Tornado as an incoming
missile.
NATO is planning an all-embracing digital
"combat ID" system for its members' forces, but this will not be fitted until at
least 2006, according to Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD). Until then, the
MoD expects "fratricide" to account for 10 to 15 per cent of British deaths in
combat.
'Unavoidable feature of warfare' Even when the system is fully operational, few expect it to eliminate casualties completely. "History shows that fratricide is an unavoidable feature of warfare," admits the National Audit Office, Britain's public spending watchdog, in a 2002 report on the MoD's attempts to improve combat identification. Yet the number of accidents could still be
reduced - and not just by finding technological solutions. "The deeper issues of
inter-service rivalry and the difference in cultures between army and air force,
and even within those, are very rarely addressed," says Snook, now at Harvard
Business School. "They are often the biggest contributor to friendly
fire."
As an example, he cites the shooting down of
two US Army Black Hawk helicopters by two US Air Force F-15s in the No Fly Zone
over northern Iraq in 1994. The incident, which killed 26 servicemen, occurred
in part because the jet pilots had no record that the helicopters would be in
the area.
When asked why the Black Hawks had not been
entered on the mission sheet detailing the aircraft in the air that day, the
USAF serviceperson responsible said: "We don't consider helicopters to be
aircraft."
The omission is a startling indication of how
communications can break down, says Snook. "Here's an important word like
'aircraft' and that word meant something completely different in these different
cultures."
Systems theory
"We may not have learned all the lessons of
friendly fire events," agrees Nancy Leveson, an aerospace safety expert at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She believes current investigative
techniques tend to be aimed at assigning blame to a person or group. Instead, an
inquiry should look at the broader picture.
Leveson has devised a system that can help do
this, a full description of which has just been accepted for publication in
Safety Science. Called STAMP, for "systems theory accident modelling and
processes", the technique is based on systems theory, the idea of developing
mathematical descriptions of complex systems. It can be applied to a range of
accidents, from friendly fire incidents to nuclear spills and train
crashes.
Friendly fire investigations usually search
for one key event that triggered a fateful sequence. But which event in the
chain gets blamed can be quite arbitrary. The STAMP technique paints a picture
of the whole system and the interdependencies within it, says Leveson. That
allows investigators to spot generic safety failures.
Some are sceptical. "Where will the process of
data collection and interpretation stop?" asks Jim Armstrong, a systems expert
at the University of Newcastle. But Peter Ladkin, a specialist in
safety-critical systems at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, says:
"Friendly fire accidents seem suited to a STAMP analysis as most are
predominantly due to organisational and human factors rather than
technology."
String of errors
The official US Department of Defense inquiry
into the 1994 Black Hawks incident found a string of errors on top of the
failure to list the helicopters as aircraft. The helicopters used the wrong ID
codes and radio frequencies for the No Fly Zone. And the radios in the air force
F-15s used anti-jamming technology that made them incompatible with radios in
army helicopters.
But far more pervasive failures emerged when
Leveson, along with Peggy Storey and Polly Allen of the University of Victoria
in British Columbia, Canada, applied a STAMP analysis. Overall military control
structure in the No Fly Zone was badly coordinated, and this led to confusion
and a failure to enforce safety constraints, they found. Inadequate training
compounded the problems.
The Pentagon is not totally dismissive of
Leveson's results. "We are confident in our assessment of the incident," a
spokesman told New Scientist, "but also recognise safety issues are complex and
typically involve more than one factor. While we appreciate the re-evaluation,
and have examined it, we cannot comment on its validity nor discuss its
conclusions."
The Royal Air Force inquiry into the Tornado
accident seems unlikely to embrace Leveson's approach. "It will be the same as
any other accident inquiry," says an RAF spokeswoman, adding that it may be
concluded more quickly than usual because the US Army has accepted liability.
But that is part of the problem, says Snook. "The overriding emphasis is to find
someone to hold accountable. And often that trumps any learning from the
incident."
Another problem is that new rules introduced
in the wake of an accident can do more harm than good. "You end up with so many
rules to prevent that particular incident happening again, people can't do their
jobs. So they just start breaking the rules," says Snook. And when everyone is
breaking the rules, accidents are more likely to occur.
Snook speaks from experience. In 1983, he was
serving with the US 82nd airborne division in Grenada when a US Navy jet opened
fire on him and his men. "I couldn't believe that some of the best-trained and
best-equipped people in the world could make these mistakes. Now, 20 years
later, I find myself thinking the same thing."
<A HREF="">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Paul Marks and Ian Sample Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http://archive.jab.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om |
- [CTRL] The Political Compass Euphorian
- David Sutherland
