On a side note.  ABC did an interview with one of the Tank Killer pilots.
She was flying support for troops in Baghdad and came under heavy ground
fire.  Her plane was hit many times by AAA, causing severe damage to her
plane.  She told ABC she considered bailing out over Baghdad, but then
decided to try and return to base.  She made it back to base and had to
manually land the plane, which she did perfectly.  The interesting thing is
they only get one day of training on how to manually land the plane.

She goes by the call sign of "KC" for "Killer Chick"  !!

Way to Go KC !!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Ryan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 10:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Friendly Fire (Irrefutably)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Denys Beauchemin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 10:14 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: OT: Friendly Fire (Irrefutably)
>
>
> We heard a lot about the friendly fire incident in the North
> involving the Kurds.  It was horrible and inexcusable.  I saw footage
> of it on Foxnews some days ago.  So sad.
>

Incidents like this are a sad part of any major military operation.
Adrenaline flows, lack of sleep, communications are misunderstood or a pilot
misreads a combat situation which results in the deaths of his comrades in
arms. In many cases it is unlikely we will ever find out exactly what
happened to cause a friendly fire incident but I doubt any amount of
recrimination by those sitting safely at home will ever equal what that
pilot will put himself through over an event like this.

>
> It seems that many of the embeds are either ex Military or
> reserve and I am sure that helps a lot.  Greg Kelly, the one
> accompanying
> the US Army 3rd Infantry Division is actually a Marine.
> Oliver North, the ex-Marine, is accompanying the 1st Marine
> Expeditionary
> Force, which I believe has had the most combat casualties,
> doing the most difficult jobs.  There are many other embeds from
> different news organizations and I look forward to the
> stories they have when the operation is over.
>

Yes, it is an interesting exercise to look at the reporters who chose to go
along versus those that stayed in the rear to ask questions at the daily
briefings.

> A couple of weeks back, I posted a URL linking to an article
> written by a BBC reporter complaining about the slant the BBC was
> putting on the news.
> I reproduce it here once again for your edification.
> http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,922206,00.html
>

I also remember reading in a recent story that the BBC was thrown off their
own country's flagship and replaced by Skynews.

> I recently read a story that went into some of the friendly
> fire issues dealing with the current Satellite-Guided munitions.  In
> Afghanistan, the people on the ground directing the strike
> were bombed instead of the target a few hundred yards away.
> It seems the
> operator changed the battery in the unit and in doing so,
> reset the coordinates to his exact current location, just as
> the weapon
> was being delivered.
>
>
> Denys
>

It is amazing that with the number of missions flown by coalition pilots
that there have been so few mistakes. Particularly around Baghdad where
conditions were created by the Iraqi government, oil fires and guidance
jamming, with the explicit intention of causing weapons to go astray.

During my time in the military I was assigned to an artillery battery that
performed a large number of live fire exercises. Once, while visiting a
forward observation post at about 2am, an illumination round went off
directly over my head. Needless to say this caused some excitement, and
added speed to my work replacing the hydraulic cylinder on their SUSV, as a
result the observation team was ready to move to their next position 30
minutes earlier than expected.

This was a good thing since as we moved down the mountain a live round hit
directly on the spot we were standing a few minutes before.

During my tour of active duty I was run over by a tank (fortunately I was
able to dive into a small foxhole), almost blown off a mountain (by
artillery and by wind), shot at and had a few hundred pounds of rubber and
steel dropped on my back. And this was all in peace time.

Serving in the military in never 100% safe and it never will be. You are
dealing with fallible humans operating some of the most dangerous machinery
on the planet in conditions that have sent many home crying to momma. I can
only try and imagine adding to that the stress of war where lost time can
make the difference between life and death and those bangs you hear are not
blanks anymore.

Comments are my own, not my employer's... etc.





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