[Newsbot]

Title: Inexperience cited in Canadian friendly-fire death: U.S. report
Category: Military
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2009-09-04 00:25:13
Canadian

[gonavy47]

That's right...always blame the victim!

[Akhenaten]

Whatever. This is why you can't spell 'party' without a little 'arty'.

[gonavy47]

WHAT?! Oh that's cute, but the guy's still dead!

[Akhenaten]

?

[bootlegga]

Translation = The USAF doesn't want to deal with Harry Schmidt part deux.

[DrCaleb]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Translation = The USAF doesn't want to deal with Harry Schmidt part deux.

Deeper than that. They didn't learn anything from that incident, or this one.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Translation = The USAF doesn't want to deal with Harry Schmidt part deux.

I don't think this is really the same thing tho. CAS is always dangerous and mistakes get made.

Shmidt was just reckless. He saw ground fire and assumed it was coming at him. HE also didn't wait for the FAC to give him a sit-rep and made the decision on his own to attack.

In this instance, the pilot rolled in to attack a target that was obscured by smoke from several other attacks, saw flame amidst the smoke and sadly figured THAT was the target. He fucked up, he admitted he fucked up. It's just the US brass that are being dickish about it all. Yet this type of accident has been happening since the development of CAS. You can try and reduce the risks as much as humanly possible but mistakes will always be a small part of CAS.

In this case, I feel sorry for all parties involved. Pte Graham and his family AND the pilot. This wasn't some hopped up Air National Guard wannabe warrior. He was a veteran of 60 CAS missions and a flight leader. Even professionals make mistakes from time to time.
And from the sounds of things, the poor AC was overloaded with no sleep and pulling double duty for the artillery as well.

As unfortunate as this accident was, there really is no single place to lay the blame.

[gonavy47]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

bootlegga bootlegga:

Translation = The USAF doesn't want to deal with Harry Schmidt part deux.

I don't think this is really the same thing tho. CAS is always dangerous and mistakes get made.

Shmidt was just reckless. He saw ground fire and assumed it was coming at him. HE also didn't wait for the FAC to give him a sit-rep and made the decision on his own to attack.

In this instance, the pilot rolled in to attack a target that was obscured by smoke from several other attacks, saw flame amidst the smoke and sadly figured THAT was the target. He fucked up, he admitted he fucked up. It's just the US brass that are being dickish about it all. Yet this type of accident has been happening since the development of CAS. You can try and reduce the risks as much as humanly possible but mistakes will always be a small part of CAS.

In this case, I feel sorry for all parties involved. Pte Graham and his family AND the pilot. This wasn't some hopped up Air National Guard wannabe warrior. He was a veteran of 60 CAS missions and a flight leader. Even professionals make mistakes from time to time.
And from the sounds of things, the poor AC was overloaded with no sleep and pulling double duty for the artillery as well.

As unfortunate as this accident was, there really is no single place to lay the blame.

[ridenrain]

I agree with most of what you said PublicAnimalNo9 but that air controller should not have called in support if his position was not marked and their target wasn't clear to the pilot. Same goes for the pilot pulling the trigger, he had to know the taget was clear.

My question is how much training do Canadians get with US pilots and maybe it's time to increase the ammount or attach US controllers, directing US aircraft in with Canadian troops.

[Bacardi4206]

Well from what I can read, it's not the pilots fault.

"The only thing he could see through the windscreen and dull glow of his cockpit display was the garbage fire lit by soldiers, who huddled around it for warmth."

If he couldn't see anything and all he could see is the garbage fire than not really his fault. However I think he should have checked where the friendly position was before he made a strafe run at the enemy. I mean the Canadian troops have been fighting for over 72 hours with little more than 4 hours sleep. They wern't thinking as clearly as they could have been but the pilot doesn't have that excuse. If the report is right and the Canadian troops diddn't have proper identification markers. He knew there were friendlys down there and should have checked where there POS was before attacking. Instead of shooting at any guessed location he could see.

I mean I saw a documentry about I believe some U.S. Rangers in I believe the first Iraq war or another one in the middle east who were stuck trapped in this ditch fork in the middle of nowhere near this high-way surounded by enemy troops coming from this high-way with enemy armor. They called in air-support but they either lost or destroyed there equipment because of there situation and diddn't want it to fall in enemy hands and all they had was radios and weapons. There original one to coordinate attacks was broken or something but one of the soldiers kept a portable older radio with him and attempted to coordinate attacks but they diddn't have any identification markers. The pilots had to guess but even those pilots did everything in there power to get the location of those Rangers before taking out the armor and infantry.

However the U.S. Military blaming the Canadian soldier and questing our training and calling us incompentant to save there ass? Wow, never thought the U.S. would be so quick to sell out there allies. Straight from there start focused on pinning everything away from there pilot.