Officials - U.S. missile battery shot down British fighter jet

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar -- Coalition forces suffered their first confirmed "friendly fire" deaths of the Iraq war Sunday, when a U.S. Patriot missile battery downed a British fighter jet near the Iraqi-Kuwait border, killing the two fliers on board.

Military analysts said the downing was rare, since the Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 would have been outfitted with a transponder -- an electronic signal device identifying itself as a coalition military aircraft.

The shootdown was a blow for Britain, which already suffered 14 dead in accidents: the crash Friday of a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter that killed eight and a collision Saturday of two British Royal Navy helicopters that killed six.

Five American servicemen were killed in those incidents as well.

The Tornado was returning from operations in Iraq when it was targeted by a U.S. Patriot missile battery, the British military said. The Royal Air Force base at Marham, in Britain, confirmed the two crewmembers were dead.

Over Iraq, the fighter had been taking part in strikes that destroyed Republican Guard forces outside Baghdad, U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said in Qatar.

"I have to say it is not the beginning that we would have preferred," Group Capt. Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Persian Gulf, said.

But, he said, "this is not training, this is war. And we expect tragically, occasionally that there are accidents."

In military parlance the phenomenon also is known as "blue on blue," or "fratricide" -- the mistake that sends missiles, bullets, bombs or artillery shells hurtling in the wrong direction, inflicting casualties or damage on noncombatants or one's own forces.

Every modern war has recorded its share of such incidents. In the 1991 Gulf War, the last time U. S. troops fought the Iraqis, 35 Americans were killed by friendly fire -- nearly one quarter of the total of 148 combat deaths. In that war, too, several British troops were killed by errant U.S. fire.

As warfare has become more reliant on precision-guided weapons, the likelihood of such incidents diminishes. But even if the technology were foolproof -- which it is not -- the humans who use it remain vulnerable to mistakes.

"There are so many layers of information on all the layers of the battlefield," said Michael Donovan, a research analyst with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. "Complex systems unfortunately tend to break down, you can count on it."

The most famous recent example of precision targeting gone wrong occurred during the Persian Gulf "tanker war" between Iraq and Iran on July 3, 1988, when the Navy cruiser USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian A300 Airbus over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 aboard.

The billion-dollar warship's sophisticated Aegis radar-weapons system misread the civilian jetliner's IFF signal as coming from an Iranian F-14 warplane, approaching the Vincennes in an attack mode. A Pentagon investigation found that the crew had been under "excessive stress" from combat with Iranian gunboats.

The Aegis system, redesigned as a result of the Vincennes incident, is aboard all U.S. cruisers and most destroyers now in the Gulf and Red Sea.

In a more recent incident of "blue on blue," two U.S. pilots mistakenly bombed a group of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, killing four, last April 17. The two pilots were charged with manslaughter and dereliction of duty.

On Thursday, an Air Force hearing officer ruled there was sufficient grounds to court-martial the pair, but recommended administrative discipline. The pilots, Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, said they didn't know allied troops were holding live-fire drills in the area and believed Taliban forces were shooting at them.

In Sunday's downing, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC television that "procedures and electronic means to identify friendly aircraft and to identify adversary aircraft ... broke down somewhere."

"Central Command is looking into that as we speak. Again, it's a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the crewmembers," Myers said.

Originally an anti-aircraft missile pressed into emergency service during the 1991 Gulf War -- and much criticized for failing to destroy Iraqi SCUD missiles fired at Saudi Arabia and Israel -- the Patriot has been redesigned to strike its targets directly, U.S. officials say.

Previously, like most air defense missiles, it used a "proximity fuse" that detonated close to the target rather than physically hitting it. That was effective against aircraft but not against the SCUDS, whose warheads frequently survived the blast intact and exploded on ground impact.

Paul Beaver, an independent military analyst formerly with Jane's Defense Group, said there was "ninety-nine percent no excuse" for shooting down a friendly aircraft.

Like all allied aircraft, the Tornados have an IFF, or "identification friend or foe" system compatible with all member countries of the coalition. The IFF, also used in civil aviation, sends an automatic response when a radar system queries it.

The Tornado's response "should be sufficient to stand down the (Patriot) system," he said. "The aircraft could have switched its IFF off if it had been returning, having been involved with some enemy action," or because of a technical failure, Beaver said. But in that case it should have been flying in a secret protective air corridor.

The commander of British forces in the Gulf, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, said relations with the Americans were as strong as ever despite the "mistake."

"A military campaign is probably the most intimate alliance you can implement," he told the BBC.

"You develop a bond of trust because you are taking on responsibility for each other's lives."