"Friendly fire". Been there, done that.

[trof]

And it's not that hard to do.

There's a segment on it on CNN coming up.
British soldier killed by "U.S. war planes".
Made me think about the time I was almost guilty of it.

I was on a joint forces exercise in the Carribean.
My squadron was flying RF-84 recon fighters.

We had been briefed that a Russian "trawler" was observing our operation from international waters. These were 'spy ships', loaded with electronic and radar gear. It was a common occurrence to have one or more around when we were conducting 'war games'.

At a 5 a.m. briefing my flight lead and I were given the latest observed coordinates of the trawler and instructed to "search out, harass, and photograph them" for 30 minutes or so.
Yeehaa! A 'license to buzz'. Lemme at 'em.

At daylight, Whiskey One One flight took off. Lead was Whiskey One One, and I was on his wing, Whiskey One Two.

11 did the navigating since I was fully occupied with flying close formation on his right wing. After a few minutes of circling at altitude I heard "12, I got 'im. Down there about 10 o'clock. I'll head on down. Count to 5 and then follow me in."
He peeled off and after the 5 count, I followed.

I saw 11 ahead of me and a few seconds later saw the ship below ahead of 11. Man, this is gonna be FUN.

Now I was down on the deck, about 50' above the waves and whipping along at 450 knots.

I saw 11 go screaming across the bow of the ship and then heard, VERY LOUDLY, "12...PULL UP...PULL UP!"

I pulled up and off of the target.
"What's the problem, 11?"
"Wrong boat."
Oh dear.

On the second try we did indeed find the trawler and harassed them for a half hour.

Turns out the first ship was a cruise liner. And they did file a violation against us. Because we were in simulated combat conditions we were immune from any charges. No sweat.

Later on I thought "What if this had been real, and not an exercise? What if we had our guns and rockets loaded and had been told to sink that trawler?"
Not pretty.

[DemoTex]

1. Nothing like a good slow-moving FAC to keep you out of trouble.

Fast-movers are extremely vulnerable to involvement in "friendly fire" situations. Especially on "One-Pass; Haul-Ass" missions. For close-air-support, an experienced OV-10 FAC and a brace of A-10 Warthogs is ideal. I don't think the A-10s in the Iraq FF fiasco were working with a FAC. A distant "airborne command center" tends to control the show now.

As for me: my flight suit patch said Alone, Unarmed, Scared Shit-less. It's hard to screw-up when you are permanently Winchester.

[trof]

2. Roger that. "Outa gas, outa ammo, and outa ideas"

At the time we laughed about our 'misidentification'.
Of course our enemy ID equipment was strictly eyeball.
Now I think "What if...?"

BTW, we were down at Ramey in PR on a Clove Hitch exercise.
On the last night before redeployment back to B'ham we had a farewell banquet at the club. Mess dress & the whole 9.

Somebody came up with an enameled Russian Navy badge and I was presented with the 'Loyal Order of the Russian Trawler'.
har

Them wuz the days.
Give me a 'cold' war anytime.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. They did have Forward Air Controllers

Transcript: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007060131,00.html

And:

In fact, a close reading of both reports shows they agree on the sequence of events which led to the American pilots firing on the British convoy.

The pilots did not have a clear idea of where they were and where the enemy was.

So when their forward air controller radioed in that the area was "clear of friendlies", he was talking about another location altogether, an area north of a canal outside Basra, where Iraqi forces had been spotted.

The A-10 tankbusters were flying south of the canal, where only a small force of the Household Cavalry was located, pushing north during what they thought was a welcome pause in the day's fighting.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6348811.stm

The problem seems to have been confusion between the pilots and the FACs over where the pilots were. The pilots saw vehicles with something orange on top of them - possibly orange panels denoting friendly forces. Because of the confusion of the area, an FAC said there were no friendlies in their area; one pilot asked for some artillery fire to confirm they were talking about the same area, but in the end the pilots convinced themselves they were orange rocket launchers, and decided not to wait for it, and attacked the vehicles.

[DemoTex]

4. Ground-based USMC FACs .. NOT airborne FACs.

"MANILA HOTEL, MANILA34, and LIGHTNING34 — three US Marine Corps Forward Air Controllers on the ground."

SKYCHIEF was the USAF AWACS (miles away at probably FL350 or so) that called off the attack by relaying through COSTA-58, a British aircraft in the vicinity.

Ground FACs are good, especially USMC ground FACs controlling USMC aircraft. However, I am talking about the apparent lack of an airborne FAC like an OV-10.