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Friendly Fire

Whether called friendly fire, fratricide, or amicicide, the problem of engaging one’s own forces on the battlefield is an old one. Long familiar to soldiers and students of military affairs, friendly fire became a hot public issue only during the Persian Gulf War of 1991, when 35 U.S. soldiers and marines were killed and 72 were wounded in 28 friendly fire incidents. Just more than 23% of all U.S. personnel casualties and about 77% of all U.S. combat vehicle losses in the Gulf were due to friendly fire, and other coalition forces suffered similar losses. This entry discusses aspects of friendly fire such as accountability, costs, causes, and prevention.

Accountability

Most military personnel understand that friendly fire is an unfortunate but natural part of warfare, but the media has a tendency to blow such incidents out of proportion, and an ill-informed public, increasingly isolated from the realities of war, reacts with distrust, demanding retribution and proposing remedies that may be counterproductive. The families of the victims of friendly fire display excusable anguish and suspicion that is often translated into demands for explanations that cannot be provided with any degree of speed or accuracy and thus often provoke unwarranted charges of cover-up and malfeasance.

During the Persian Gulf War, an exception to the usual practice of not bringing formal charges against personnel involved in committing friendly fire incidents was the case of Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Hayles, an AH-64 Apache helicopter pilot who fired a missile that hit a Bradley infantry fighting vehicle on February 17, 1991, killing two and wounding six. Hayles was charged with disobeying an order and subsequently retired from the army. The public identification and punishment of a soldier responsible for a friendly fire incident was very rare. The only previous case arose from the bombing of Zurich, Switzerland, by six U.S. Eighth Air Force B-24s on March 4, 1945, that killed five civilians, wounded 12, and left 22 families homeless. The pilot and navigator of the lead plane were subsequently acquitted in a June 1945 court-martial presided over by Colonel James M. (Jimmy) Stewart, the famous movie actor.

Costs

While fratricide often extracts a high price in terms of death, suffering, and bereavement, the direct effects of friendly fire incidents on the outcome of military operations is usually negligible. Even in the worst case in World War II, the July 1944 Operation Cobra bombings that resulted in 111 killed and 647 wounded, the operation was delayed only by 2 days and was ultimately successful. From a purely operational standpoint, the psychological effects of friendly fire incidents are perhaps more important than the physical effects. Troops under friendly fire are almost certain to lose confidence in their supporting units, and overall cohesion is likely to be reduced. The current emphasis on accountability and punishment also raises the question of whether or not infantrymen, gunners, and pilots will delay employing their weapons out of fear of hitting friendly troops. In an intense combat situation, getting off the first shot may be the key to survival and victory.

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