Who Goes There: Friend or Foe? - Federation of American Scientists

28 I Who Goes There: Friend or Foe?
Africa in 1942 rather than the deserts of Iraq a half
century later.
In one barely avoided fratricide, a group of
tanks was waiting for a second unit to catch up.
Radio communication confirmed that all of the
second unit’s forces were behind the frost unit.
Two Iraqi T-55 tanks crossed in front of the first
unit, which quickly destroyed the enemy tanks.
Just minutes later, two more armored vehicles
were detected, moving in the same direction as
the original T-55s. From consideration of the
tactical situation, they obviously seemed part of
the same Iraqi group. An alert tank gunner
noticed, however, that the vehicles showed on the
thermal imager the characteristic ‘hot wheels’ of
U.S. infantry fighting vehicles and called out to
hold fire. In fact, these were the scouts from the
other units reported behind-but showing up
ahead of—the first unit and reported heading
north but actually going west, which unfortunately
was the same direction as the nearby
enemy force. 61
Another case did not turn out so well. Two
units were traveling at night in parallel but not in
constant visual contact because of a gentle rise
between them. The units passed on either side of
an Iraqi infantry force armed with rocketpropelled
grenades. The Iraqis fired at U.S.
infantry fighting vehicles to one side. The explosions
were seen by U.S. tanks in the other unit,
which mistook the explosions for gun flashes
from Iraqi tanks. The U.S. tanks returned fire and
hit some of the U.S. infantry fighting vehicles. 62
There were no fratricides of airplanes. Air
superiority was so complete and accomplished so
quickly that very restrictive rules of engagement
were possible, which might have hampered the
effectiveness of the air arm but avoided any
fratricide.
SUMMARY
A historian might wince at drawing lessons
from a collection of anecdotes, but some general
points come through. First, fratricide result most
often from a complex chain of errors. The stories
often read: identification was wrong, yes, but
misidentification would have been unimportant if
navigation had been reliable, navigation errors
could have been overcome if communication had
been adequate, and so on. Also, these anecdotes
make clear that while misidentification often
leads to fratricide, failures of command, communication,
coordination, and fire discipline are at
least as important. Although an accurate estimate
of the overall frequency of fratricide is impossible
to determine, the two percent rule of thumb
presented by Schrader and others is almost
certainly too low. In every case in which good
data are available, the actual rate of fratricide
turns out to be much higher than two percent and
higher than most would guess. Finally, the types
of fratricide change much less quickly than
military technology. This suggests that technology
is only part of the solution; reducing fratricide
will always depend on the training and Skills of
the combatant in the field.
61 Center for ~y LMSOILS Learned, “Fratricide: Rduchg Self-Inflicted ~ss~,” Newsietrer (April 1992) No. 92-4, p. 1.
62 ~s ~~e is ~-bly sw to one ~cm at the Natio~ ‘Tr~g center, de~ri~ by GoMsmith. h tkit case the fkheS Were
simulated incoming artillery, but friendly units on either side took them to be gun flashes from enemy forces and returned fire.