Leadership: Friendly Fire Blues
Ezoic
February 8, 2025: Friendly fire is when your fire power accidently kills or injures your own troops. Even in the 21st century, this is still a problem. American attempts to decrease or eliminate friendly fire incidents are running into three major problems.
The first one has to do with the fact that in the last three wars, U.S. troops were delivering the vast majority of the firepower. During Desert Storm in 1991, there were 500,000 American troops out there and 15 were known to have been killed by friendly fire. There were probably other cases, but in a battlefield situation, it's often very difficult to tell which side did the damage. In the 2001 Afghanistan campaign, there were about 10,000 U.S. troops and eight confirmed friendly fire deaths. In Iraq during 2003, there were 200,000 U.S. troops and 17 known friendly fire deaths. One thing not represented by these numbers is the intensity of combat, which was far higher in 2003 than in 2001 or 1991. Moreover, the 2003 fighting was often in built up areas, making it easier to fire at the wrong target. The 2003 sandstorms didn't help much either.
Second, any new identification technology has to operate without slowing down combat operations. When troops find a likely target, delays of seconds can be fatal to them. Also very dangerous are false signals. False positives, as in identifying enemy troops as friendly means the bad guys have a better chance to get you. False negatives mean more friendly fire incidents. A lot of friendly fire prevention technology has been developed and tested since 1991. None of it proved ready for regular troop use.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/2025020802624.aspx#gsc.tab=0
