BTW, I was interviewed on R 5 Live shortly after 1200.

D.Y.

Exactly and as a result the law (should the military be above the law) says you have an inquest, learn to live with it.


I agree which is why I said open and honest, equally closed is not what we should do as a norm in a democratic society. I am not interested in the persecution of the pilots, that will not change what happened, rather that we use the experience to reduce the risks of this happening again. If it is kept closed and hidden you cannot learn from it, instead perhaps every ground support pilot should be shown that tape as part of their training.

This tradgedy cannot be undone, but if we do not use it to learn and be better then it really is a total waste.

Peter

Sickening……..

May god help the family and friends of Matty Hull

I find it disgusting that this information has been supressed for for years by our government (i expect it of the yanks) but how dare torry blair go on about OUR BOYS doing a good job, when things like this happen. And nobody can tell me he was not aware of this video. Somebody will be hung out to dry, but i suspect it will be the source of the leak of this video. Also apparently 32 british soldiers were killed by friendly fire in the first war, but no official records were kept.

There are a number of issues:

1. As often stated, information should not be leaked and those who leak should be prosecuted. Nevertheless, there are exceptions to every rule no matter how stringent and it can be judged as a matter of conscience and necessity. In this case, it is difficult not to conclude that this leak was in the public interest for reasons outlined below.

2. There was no reason to maintain the protective marking of the footage and the transcript. The transcript could easily have been released, redacted or sanitised, if there were issues with classified data on the footage. Operational air pictures are routinely classified but this classification is to protect current ongoing operations, ie. callsigns, unit dispositions, codewords. It is good security practice to review the classifications of PM material and to downgrade whenever possible. Remember the Apache gun camera footage that was released within the last month, days after the Afghan rescue op.

3. There appear to have been many faults. The aircrew and the ground controllers appear to be slapdash at least. The aircrew appear genuinely shocked and full investigation of the incident would perhaps help them to come to terms with their remorse. They are only the last line in the decision making chain, and should not be hung out to dry. There appear to be fundamental failings of doctrine, procedure, equipment, interoperability and training that are inexcusable. Not least, all UK AFVs should be fitted with IFF or similar secure position/identification equipment, regardless of the cost. Leaving aside the fact the MoD have sat on their hands since Granby, this should have been done as a UOR. I know from my own experience of other platforms that were hurriedly fitted with situational awareness equipment as part of the UOR programme, despite integration problems, at short notice.

4. It is difficult not to conclude that there was an institutional reluctance on the part of both MoD and DoD to suppress this information to avoid controversy. It is also difficult to avoid the conclusion that DoD said "no" and MoD said "thank you" as usual. So much for the relative values of past losses, respect for bereaved families and potential future losses over bad headlines.

5. I wonder what the respective chances are of US personnel facing extradition and charges vs UK journalists facing extradition and charges.

It seems that over the course of the thread that some of the vitriol directed against the pilots has dissipated. It seems to me that there must be a fine balance between investigation, appropriate action and support of your airmen (as alluded to by Blokeonabike). If, as Mister Angry says, we want to have air support in the future, whether from the US or the UK, we must ensure that airmen are not encouraged, through fear of reprisals, to be U3. The balance is that they must also be encouraged(hopefully through a sense of professionalism. ie carrot, not stick) to ensure that such mistakes do not occur. Of course, some always will, and they are always, particularly for the families of those involved, a tragedy.

The level of remorse that has been commented on appeared to be much greater than that of the US pilots, and in that case definitely National Guard (for Ancient Mariner), who engaged and killed 3 members of 3 PPCLI in Afghanistan in 2001. In that case, even during his court martial, one of the pilots insisted that he had done nothing wrong and never apologised or expressed any sorrow.

I seem to remember a number of Canadian soldiers being killed in Afghanistan a few years ago. Similar circumstances - A10s flown by USAF reservists attacked them.

Does anybody know what sort of training USAF reserve pilots receive? Are they commercial pilots who train at weekends like the TA or are they more like the full time reservists who take a career break to serve with the regulars for an extended period?

I am sure that anyone who has worked alongside american forces will not be suprised by the Attitude of these pilots. It is the gung-ho american way. Throughout history US forces have had a total disregard for civilian life, The ROE followed by them are, in reality non existant. I have Zero respect for our so called allies.

Nothing we can do will prevent this happening again, as pointed out earlier this was not a heat of battle decision, He had plenty of time to ID the C/S's, 5 times he questioned the orange panel yet he still made not one but 2 attacks. The minute he was told that there was friendlies in the area he knew what he had done. If, in his mind he was confident that he had attacked Iraqi's would the harse reality of what he had just done be so obvious.

Our youngest troops are continuously taught about ROE, geneva convention and the consequences of their actions. This is something that is severely lacking in the US forces. They believe that they are above any laws and the only way is the american way.

Hanging the pilots up to dry will not change anything, I am sure they have suffered enough. I would hope that that video is shown to ALL american troops, not just pilots. Perhaps in a decades time a new breed of american soldier will be born. My thoughts today are not just with the Hull family but also the relatives of the RRF & QOH's killed in 91, how must their families feel, knowing that 16 years later nothing has changed?


We must also blame our own MoD, We all know what the americans are like. yet they have failed to provide us with a suitable IFF system. In this Hi-tech world that we live in i am sure there must be a more effective alternative to an Orange marker.

Gosh well thats all right then, however judging by the blue on blue attack on Canadian SF in Afghanistan not so long ago prehaps these 'lessons' are not really being absorbed.

The poor, poor pilots have a big group hug after fessing up to having killed some non American allies and are told to avoid EVER going to the Country of the Service people they killed ie Canada, Italy ( the cable car) and maybe even the UK.

That was the chap with the call sign 'psycho', still flying I believe.

In this instance the language used in the transcript is more of personal anguish at what they have got themselves into not remorse as to the bloke they have just murdered through wilful negligence. Read their reactions carefully, they seem to believe that they cannot deny what they have done.

Given that this tape didn't exist until this morning, its highly likely that no action was taken against the Pilots.

Perhaps the way to stop Americans from killing Brits would be to prevent US aircraft from flying CAS for UK units. Let UK jets handle CAS for UK units and US jets handle CAS for US units this way you prevent these types of situation. I think it is fair to say from this thread that US CAS capability in support of British troops is not what UK troops want. I think British troops would be far more comfortable with UK air assets flying CAS for them.

L/Cpl Hull RIP.

Threads merged.

Not so - not enough aircraft don't you know old boy......

The CAS given by Marine Corps Pilots is second to none, I think the issue is using badly trained reservists who think they are in a video game, in this case 'reservists with no combat experience at the time - are identified only as POPOV36, a lieutenant colonel, and POPOV35, a major'.

and then the cover up, always the cover up.

Last edited by armchair_jihad on Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:24 pm; edited 1 time in total

LCoH (Cpl) Hull - pedantic maybe, but accuracy is a theme here....

Reply lost as threads merged! Start again:

In the Canadian incident the pilots were US Air National Guard, flying fast jets, F18s I think. I remember being surprised at the time that ANG flew fast jets at all. They were returning from a combat patrol over an area that should have been known to be in friendly hands and where they should have expected friendly troops to be exercising as 3 PPCLI were. They mistook a live firing exercise for incoming and mounted an attack.

In this case, the USAF released the name of both pilots and this information was in the public domain throughout the inquiry which was understandably followed very closely in Canada. One appeared to be deeply remorseful and was captured on the cockpit recorder saying "God, I hope we did the right thing" immediately after the attack. The other stuck to his line that he believed he was under attack and that he had done nothing wrong.

Last edited by Big_Duke_Six on Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

A couple of questions on the digital battlefield:

Do all US callsigns (eg vehicles etc) appear on a digital map of the battlefield?

Would it be correct to assume that all callsigns in the transcript would have access to that information?

Do British callsigns (especially vehicles) integrate into the US system?

There are some comments above concerning the Air National Guard versus USMC providing CAS. There are also some quotes from US press which seem to be drawn from this but with "Air National Guard " removed:

"The U.S. Air Force conducted its own investigation into the incident in 2003, but the results of that investigation were not publicly released, said 1st Lt. Tony Vincelli, spokesman for the Idaho Air National Guard’s 190th Fighter Squadron, where the A-10 jets were home based.

The investigation did not result in a court-martial. Vincelli did not identify the pilots involved."

www.airforcetimes.com/...ire070205/

So ANG again

Red -Shrek said
"Perhaps the way to stop Americans from killing Brits would be to prevent US aircraft from flying CAS for UK units. Let UK jets handle CAS for UK units and US jets handle CAS for US units this way you prevent these types of situation. I think it is fair to say from this thread that US CAS capability in support of British troops is not what UK troops want. I think British troops would be far more comfortable with UK air assets flying CAS for them"

I think that you will find that the Tom on the ground will take any CAS that is available and certainly the experience in Afg is that A-10's are the aircraft of choice (Maj Jamie Loden 3 Para e-mail refers).

Afg Blue on Blue was ANG F-16s.

SF

After seeing the video and reading the transcripts it really does appear that they talked themselves into it. The initial spotting of the recognition panels should have triggered an immediate hands off but it did not.
They slowly made sure that in their minds that things were all right to press on with an attack. This shows (I wish my wife was here, she's the psychologist) in my mind that they were eager for a kill and would do anything to get one. Freindly recognition panels then become a threat in the form of missiles and therefore ok to attack. The reliance on the FAC who would have been miles away does in now way forgive the total lack of skills, procedures and AFV recognition displayed by the two pilots, and after finding that the two in question were reletively senior begs me to ask the question that if two pilots of such experiance and seniority could make such basic errors then what about their subordinates?
A painfully shocking demonstration of poor training and personal dicipline. I wonder what verdict the coroner will give in March off the back of this evidance?

Where it does not breach OPSEC, can someone who knows tell us if our ground tps have means to talk to coalition aircraft? Sort of "Hello hovering shitehawk. See us, we're friendlies. Waggle your wings or speak"
Would our guys on the ground even have known about hovering shitehawks - in vision or info'd by others. We doubtless thought that orange panels were sufficient; now we know better. Is there no sort of beacon that gives out a signal that can be interpreted as foe or friend by aircraft?