A tragedy of drone warfare

[Thanas]

LA times.

Anatomy of an Afghan war tragedy
U.S. Predator teams and a special operations unit on the ground studying a suspicious convoy make a series of fateful missteps as they try to distinguish friend from foe.


By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times

April 10, 2011
Nearly three miles above the rugged hills of central Afghanistan, American eyes silently tracked two SUVs and a pickup truck as they snaked down a dirt road in the pre-dawn darkness.

The vehicles, packed with people, were 3 1/2 miles from a dozen U.S. special operations soldiers, who had been dropped into the area hours earlier to root out insurgents. The convoy was closing in on them.

At 6:15 a.m., just before the sun crested the mountains, the convoy halted.

"We have 18 pax [passengers] dismounted and spreading out at this time," an Air Force pilot said from a cramped control room at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, 7,000 miles away. He was flying a Predator drone remotely using a joystick, watching its live video transmissions from the Afghan sky and radioing his crew and the unit on the ground.

The Afghans unfolded what looked like blankets and kneeled. "They're praying. They are praying," said the Predator's camera operator, seated near the pilot.

By now, the Predator crew was sure that the men were Taliban. "This is definitely it, this is their force," the cameraman said. "Praying? I mean, seriously, that's what they do."

"They're gonna do something nefarious," the crew's intelligence coordinator chimed in.

At 6:22 a.m., the drone pilot radioed an update: "All … are finishing up praying and rallying up near all three vehicles at this time."

The camera operator watched the men climb back into the vehicles.

"Oh, sweet target," he said.

---

None of those Afghans was an insurgent. They were men, women and children going about their business, unaware that a unit of U.S. soldiers was just a few miles away, and that teams of U.S. military pilots, camera operators and video screeners had taken them for a group of Taliban fighters.

The Americans were using some of the most sophisticated tools in the history of war, technological marvels of surveillance and intelligence gathering that allowed them to see into once-inaccessible corners of the battlefield. But the high-tech wizardry would fail in its most elemental purpose: to tell the difference between friend and foe.

This is the story of that episode. It is based on hundreds of pages of previously unreleased military documents, including transcripts of cockpit and radio conversations obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the results of two Pentagon investigations and interviews with the officers involved as well as Afghans who were on the ground that day.

The Afghan travelers had set out early on the cold morning of Feb. 21, 2010, from three mountain villages in southern Daikundi province, a remote central region 200 miles southwest of Kabul.

More than two dozen people were wedged into the three vehicles. Many were Hazaras, an ethnic minority that for years has been treated harshly by the Taliban. They included shopkeepers going for supplies, students returning to school, people seeking medical treatment and families with children off to visit relatives. There were several women and as many as four children younger than 6.

They had agreed to meet before dawn for the long drive to Highway 1, the country's main paved road. From there, some planned to go north to Kabul while others were headed south. To reach the highway, they had to drive through Oruzgan province, an insurgent stronghold.

"We traveled together, so that if one vehicle broke down the others would help," said Sayed Qudratullah, 30, who was bound for Kabul in hope of obtaining a license to open a pharmacy.

Another passenger, Nasim, an auto mechanic who like many Afghans uses one name, said that he was going to buy tools and parts.

"We weren't worried when we set out. We were a little scared of the Taliban, but not of government forces," he said referring to the Afghan national army and its U.S. allies. "Why would they attack us?"

---

American aircraft began tracking the vehicles at 5 a.m.

The crew of an AC-130, a U.S. ground attack plane flying in the area, spotted a pickup and a sport utility vehicle with a roof rack converge from different directions.

At 5:08 a.m., they saw one of the drivers flash his headlights in the darkness.

The AC-130 radioed the Predator crew in Nevada: "It appears the two vehicles are flashing lights, signaling."

With that, the travelers became targets of suspicion.

At Creech Air Force Base, 35 miles northwest of Las Vegas, it was 4:30 p.m., nearly dinner time.

A few hours earlier, a dozen U.S. special operations soldiers, known as an A-Team, had been dropped off by helicopter near Khod, five miles south of the convoy. The elite unit was moving on foot toward the village, with orders to search for insurgents and weapons.

Another U.S. special operations unit had been attacked in the district a year earlier, and a soldier had been killed. This time the AC-130, the Predator drone and two Kiowa attack helicopters were in the area to protect the A-Team.

The Predator's two-man team — a pilot and a camera operator — was one of the Air Force's most-experienced. The pilot, who had flown C-130 cargo planes, switched to drones after 2001 and had spent more than 1,000 hours training other Predator pilots. (The Air Force declined to name the crew or make them available for interviews.)

Also stationed at Creech were the Predator's mission intelligence coordinator and a safety observer.

In addition, a team of "screeners" — enlisted personnel trained in video analysis — was on duty at Air Force special operations headquarters in Okaloosa, Fla. They sat in a large room with high-definition televisions showing live feeds from drones flying over Afghanistan. The screeners were sending instant messages to the drone crew, observations that were then relayed by radio to the A-Team.

On the ground, the A-Team was led by an Army captain, a veteran of multiple tours in Afghanistan. Under U.S. military rules, the captain, as the ground force commander, was responsible for deciding whether to order an airstrike.

At 5:14 a.m., six minutes after the two Afghan vehicles flashed their lights, the AC-130 crew asked the A-team what it wanted to do about the suspicious vehicles.

"Roger, ground force commander's intent is to destroy the vehicles and the personnel," came the unit's reply.

To use deadly force, the commander would first have to make a "positive identification" that the adversary was carrying weapons and posed an "imminent threat."

For the next 4 1/2 hours, the Predator crew and the screeners scrutinized the convoy's every move, looking for evidence to support such a decision.

"We all had it in our head, 'Hey, why do you have 20 military age males at 5 a.m. collecting each other?' " an Army officer involved in the incident would say later. "There can be only one reason, and that's because we've put [U.S. troops] in the area."

---

The Afghans greeted each other and climbed back into the two vehicles, heading south, in the general direction of Khod.

At 5:15 a.m., the Predator pilot thought he saw a rifle inside one of the vehicles.

"See if you can zoom in on that guy," he told the camera operator. "Is that a …rifle?"

"Maybe just a warm spot from where he was sitting," the camera operator replied, referring to an image picked up by the infrared camera. "Can't really tell right now, but it does look like an object."

"I was hoping we could make a rifle out," the pilot said. "Never mind."

Soon, a third vehicle, waiting in a walled compound, joined the convoy.

At 5:30 a.m., when the convoy halted briefly, the drone's camera focused on a man emerging from one of the vehicles. He appeared to be carrying something.

"What do these dudes got?" the camera operator said. "Yeah, I think that dude had a rifle."

"I do, too," the pilot replied.

But the ground forces unit said the commander needed more information from the drone crew and screeners to establish a "positive identification."

"Sounds like they need more than a possible," the camera operator told the pilot. Seeing the Afghan men jammed into the flat bed of the pickup, he added, "That truck would make a beautiful target."

At 5:37 a.m., the pilot reported that one of the screeners in Florida had spotted one or more children in the group.

"Bull—. Where!?" the camera operator said. "I don't think they have kids out at this hour." He demanded that the screeners freeze the video image of the purported child and email it to him.

"Why didn't he say 'possible' child?" the pilot said. "Why are they so quick to call kids but not to call a rifle."

The camera operator was dubious too. "I really doubt that children call. Man, I really … hate that," he said. "Well, maybe a teenager. But I haven't seen anything that looked that short."

A few minutes later, the pilot appeared to downplay the screeners' observation, alerting the special operations unit to "a possible rifle and two possible children near the SUV."

The special operations unit wanted the drone crew and screeners to keep tracking the vehicles. "Bring them in as close as we can until we also have [attack aircraft] up," the unit's radio operator said. "We want to take out the whole lot of them."

---

The Predator video was not the only intelligence that morning suggesting that U.S. forces were in danger.

Teams of U.S. military linguists and intelligence personnel with sophisticated eavesdropping equipment were vacuuming up cellphone calls in the area and translating the conversations in real time. For several hours, they had been listening to cellphone chatter in the area that suggested a Taliban unit was assembling for an attack.

"We're receiving ICOM traffic," or intercepted communications, the A-Team radioed the Predator crew. "We believe we may have a high-level Taliban commander."

Neither the identities of those talking nor their precise location was known. But the A-Team and the drone crew took the intercepted conversations as confirmation that there were insurgents in the convoy.

At 6:54 a.m., the camera operator noted that the drone crew and screeners had counted at least 24 men in the three vehicles, maybe more. "So, yeah, I guess that ICOM chatter is great info," he said.

The screeners continued to look for evidence that the convoy was a hostile force. Even with the advanced cameras on the Predator, the images were fuzzy and small objects were difficult to identify. Sometimes the video feed was interrupted briefly.

The Predator crew and video analysts in Nevada remained uncertain how many children were in the group and how old they were.

"Our screeners are currently calling 21 MAMs [military age males], no females, and two possible children. How copy?" the Predator pilot radioed the A-Team at 7:38 a.m.

"Roger," replied the A-Team, which was unable to see the convoy. "And when we say children, are we talking teenagers or toddlers?"

The camera operator responded: "Not toddlers. Something more towards adolescents or teens."

"Yeah, adolescents," the pilot added. "We're thinking early teens."

At 7:40 a.m., the A-Team radioed that its captain had concluded that he had established "positive identification" based on "the weapons we've identified and the demographics of the individuals plus the ICOM."

Although no weapons had been clearly identified, the pilot replied: "We are with you."

The pilot added that one screener had amended his report and was now saying he'd seen only one teenager. "Our screener updated only one adolescent, so that's one double-digit age range."

"We'll pass that along to the ground force commander," the

A-Team radio operator said. "Twelve or 13 years old with a weapon is just as dangerous."

---

At 8:43 a.m., Army commanders ordered two Kiowa helicopters to get into position to attack.

By then, though, the convoy was no longer heading toward Khod. The three vehicles, which at one point were within three miles of the A-Team, had changed direction and were now 12 miles away. The drone crew didn't dwell on that news, thinking the convoy probably was trying to flank the A-Team's position.

The Predator crew began discussing its role in the coming attack. The drone was armed with one missile, not enough to take out a three-vehicle convoy. The more heavily-armed Kiowa helicopters, using the call sign "BAM BAM41," would fire on the vehicles; the Predator would target any survivors who tried to flee.

"We're probably going to be chasing dudes, scrambling in the open, uh, when it goes down," the pilot told his camera operator, whose job was to place the camera cross hairs on insurgents, so the pilot could fire the missile. "Stay with whoever you think gives us the best chance to shoot, um, at them."

"Roger," came the reply.

A little before 9 a.m., the vehicles reached an open, treeless stretch of road. The A-Team commander called in the airstrike.

"Understand we are clear to engage," one of the helicopter pilots declared over the radio.

Hellfire missiles struck the first and third vehicles; they burst into flames.

Qudratullah, one of the Afghan travelers, recalled, "The helicopters were suddenly on top of us, bombarding us."

Dead and wounded were everywhere. Nasim, the 23-year-old mechanic, was knocked unconscious.

"When I came to, I could see that our vehicles were wrecked and the injured were everywhere," he said. "I saw someone who was headless and someone else cut in half."

The Predator crew in Nevada was exultant, watching men they assumed were enemy fighters trying to help the injured. " 'Self-Aid Buddy Care' to the rescue," one of the drone's crew members said.

"I forget, how do you treat a sucking chest wound?" said another.

Soon, however, the crew in Nevada and the screeners in Florida realized something was wrong.

"The thing is, nobody ran," one crew member said.

"Yeah, that was weird," another replied.

At 9:15 a.m., the Predator crew noticed three survivors in brightly colored clothing waving at the helicopters. They were trying to surrender.

"What are those?" asked the camera operator.

"Women and children," the Predator's mission intelligence coordinator answered.

"That lady is carrying a kid, huh? Maybe," the pilot said.

"The baby, I think, on the right. Yeah," the intelligence coordinator said.

The Predator's safety coordinator, cursing in frustration, urged the pilot to alert the helicopters and the A-Team that there were children present. "Let them know, dude," he said.

"Younger than an adolescent to me," the camera operator said.

As they surveyed the carnage, seeing other children, the Predator crew tried to reassure themselves that they could not have known.

"No way to tell, man," the safety observer said.

"No way to tell from here," the camera operator added.

At 9:30 a.m., the pilot came back on the radio.

"Since the engagement," he said, "we have not been able to PID [positively identify] any weapons."

---

U.S. and Afghan forces reached the scene 2 1/2 hours after the attack to provide medical assistance. After 20 minutes more, medevac helicopters began taking the wounded to a hospital in Tarin Kowt, in Oruzgan. More serious cases were later transferred to Kabul.

"They asked us who we were, and we told them we were civilians from Kijran district," said Qudratullah, who lost a leg.

By the U.S. count, 15 or 16 men were killed and 12 people were wounded, including a woman and three children. Elders from the Afghans' home villages said in interviews that 23 had been killed, including two boys, Daoud, 3, and Murtaza, 4.

That evening, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, went to the presidential palace in Kabul to apologize to President Hamid Karzai. Two days later, he went on Afghan television and promised "a thorough investigation to prevent this from happening again."

The Army and the Air Force conducted their own investigations, reaching similar conclusions.

The Army said evidence that the convoy was not a hostile force was "ignored or downplayed by the Predator crew," and the A-Team captain's decision to authorize an airstrike was based on a misreading of the threat when, in fact, "there was no urgent need to engage the vehicles."

The Air Force concluded that confusion over whether children were present was a "causal factor" in the decision to attack and, in an internal document last year, said drone crews had not been trained to notice the subtle differences between combatants and suspicious persons who may appear to be combatants.

The military has taken some steps to address these problems. Screeners now have access to radio traffic, so if a drone pilot makes a mistake, the screeners can correct it. Drone crews and screeners are now trained to use more precise descriptions in radio transmissions. And, shortly after the incident, McChrystal banned the use of the term "military age male," saying it implied that every adult man was a combatant.

Some officers in the Pentagon drew another lesson from the incident: An abundance of surveillance information can lead to misplaced confidence in the ability to tell friend from foe.

"Technology can occasionally give you a false sense of security that you can see everything, that you can hear everything, that you know everything," said Air Force Major Gen. James O. Poss, who oversaw the Air Force investigation. "I really do think we have learned from this."

McChrystal issued letters of reprimand to four senior and two junior officers in Afghanistan. The Air Force said the Predator crew was also disciplined, but it did not specify the punishment. No one faced court-martial, the Pentagon said.

Several weeks after the attack, American officers travelled to the villages to apologize to survivors and the victims' families.

They gave each survivor 140,000 afghanis, or about $2,900.

Families of the dead received $4,800.

...jackass, killhappy operators.

[bobalot]

By now, the Predator crew was sure that the men were Taliban. "This is definitely it, this is their force," the cameraman said. "Praying? I mean, seriously, that's what they do."

"They're gonna do something nefarious," the crew's intelligence coordinator chimed in.

Are these guys fucking retarded? It sounds like all their knowledge about Afghanistan and the Taliban come from an episode of The Glenn Beck show. Don't these guys have to go through courses explaining the customs and traditions of the local people before they start blowing up shit?

[mr friendly guy]

I remember the first mistake way back in the war of terror when they bombed some Afghans celebrating by firing bullets into the air. The right wing hacks typically said its an unfortunate accident, but next time celebrate by throwing confetti (or something to that effect).

That being said, how good vision can you get from these type of surveillance? I have seen pictures of Hazaras from refugee camps and doco's about them coming into Australia. IIRC they are descendent from Mongols and they clearly don't look like Pashtuns.

[Zaune]

Are these guys fucking retarded? It sounds like all their knowledge about Afghanistan and the Taliban come from an episode of The Glenn Beck show. Don't these guys have to go through courses explaining the customs and traditions of the local people before they start blowing up shit?

I can only assume their chain of command credited them with having picked up on the fact that Islam requires five daily prayer sessions a day, a fact that any schoolchild should have learned at some point. Or does the US curriculum not offer Religious Studies?

[Sarevok]

Wow !

Let's disregard the innocent deaths for a moment. Reading the article it seems like anyone who is a muslim male between 18-50 is fair game. No effort is made to learn identities of those who have just been sentenced to death. It seems the military forces in Afghanistan operate under "all suspects are guilty until proven innocent". I understand this is military and not law enforcement but it is chilling thing to realize.

[Alyeska]

What the US military is still having a hard time learning is that Peace Keeping missions (which Iraq and Afganistan qualify as) operate under different rules than war. Rules that keep soldiers alive also kill innocent people. And killing innocent people makes the mission much more difficult.

[Simon_Jester]

I remember the first mistake way back in the war of terror when they bombed some Afghans celebrating by firing bullets into the air. The right wing hacks typically said its an unfortunate accident, but next time celebrate by throwing confetti (or something to that effect).

To be fair, celebratory gunfire is something that a military force might sanely mistake for an attack- they'd be wrong, but it wouldn't be pure batshit insanity.

This is worse than that, because the guys in the trucks didn't do anything.

That being said, how good vision can you get from these type of surveillance? I have seen pictures of Hazaras from refugee camps and doco's about them coming into Australia. IIRC they are descendent from Mongols and they clearly don't look like Pashtuns.

All men look alike on infrared camera. Remember, they couldn't tell an automatic rifle from a warm spot where a guy was sitting.

[Thanas]

To be fair to the US service members, it looks more like a heavy case of confirmation bias. I think the persons who should be blamed primarily is the ground team, which did not manage to get close enough to identify the persons involved at any time, but nevertheless radioed a positice confirmation as Taliban.

The predator crews sound trigger-happy and it seems to me there was a failure of command in that the officer in charge let his men get that hyped up for a kill. The US apparently took steps to reform things and I hope this was one of the issues addressed.

I also wonder what exact nature the punishments were - letters of reprimand strike me as a bit less considering this was a huge messup on part of the A-team and the Air Force even declined to name the punishments.

[Sarevok]

To be fair, celebratory gunfire is something that a military force might sanely mistake for an attack- they'd be wrong, but it wouldn't be pure batshit insanity.

This is worse than that, because the guys in the trucks didn't do anything.

Why were the military planners unaware that people in that part of the world shoot in the air to celebrate ?

The military surely does not ignore any bits of information they can get on Chinese stealth planes or Russian tanks. They should do the same for the human element. This is extremely vital in current wars America is involved in. Because Afghanistan will not be won by how stealthy a F-22 is or the awesome range of the SPY-1 radar; but by how well American forces understand Afghan people. Understanding local mores and customs should not be merely a feel good PR exercise but a vital part of war planning. These are what wins allies and deals effective damage against insurgent type enemies.

[Simon_Jester]

Why were the military planners unaware that people in that part of the world shoot in the air to celebrate ?

Even if you know this, it is still possible to mistake a hail of gunfire coming from a hilltop for something other than a wedding. Because while yes, Afghans are prone to firing machine guns into the air to celebrate a wedding, they are also prone to firing machine guns for other reasons, many of which involve trying to kill someone.

I do not condone this; it's simply that I think, in all sanity, we can understand how such a thing was possible without any of the military figures involved being super-triggerhappy or careless. Whereas this incident is worse, because the Afghan civilian convoy was bombed without having done anything at all that anyone might interpret as aggressive- they did not fire any weapons. They were, in essence, bombed on the off chance that they might be guerillas.

Nor do I deny the importance of understanding the local population in this kind of protracted counter-insurgency warfare. If you're going to fight that way at all, yes it is totally vital.

[TheHammer]

What the US military is still having a hard time learning is that Peace Keeping missions (which Iraq and Afganistan qualify as) operate under different rules than war. Rules that keep soldiers alive also kill innocent people. And killing innocent people makes the mission much more difficult.

The term "peace keeping" generally implies third party intervention where you keep two or more other groups from killing each other and a larger outbreak of violence. Not that I'm justifying the poor judgement shown in this instance, but I don't think you can really qualify Afghanistan as a "peace keeping mission" at this time. The Taliban never surrendered are still an active threat. It is a similar misnomer to calling Vietnam a "police action".

[Thanas]

What the US military is still having a hard time learning is that Peace Keeping missions (which Iraq and Afganistan qualify as) operate under different rules than war. Rules that keep soldiers alive also kill innocent people. And killing innocent people makes the mission much more difficult.

The term "peace keeping" generally implies third party intervention where you keep two or more other groups from killing each other and a larger outbreak of violence. Not that I'm justifying the poor judgement shown in this instance, but I don't think you can really qualify Afghanistan as a "peace keeping mission" at this time. The Taliban never surrendered are still an active threat. It is a similar misnomer to calling Vietnam a "police action".

Does this in any way invalidate the content of the article? If not, hooray for another pointless nitpick and/or thread derail. I will be happy to show you where these will go in the future. Unless you want to argue that Alyeska's general point is inaccurate, which you have to do a lot better than "I do not think it qualifies as peace-keeping".

[TheHammer]

What the US military is still having a hard time learning is that Peace Keeping missions (which Iraq and Afganistan qualify as) operate under different rules than war. Rules that keep soldiers alive also kill innocent people. And killing innocent people makes the mission much more difficult.

The term "peace keeping" generally implies third party intervention where you keep two or more other groups from killing each other and a larger outbreak of violence. Not that I'm justifying the poor judgement shown in this instance, but I don't think you can really qualify Afghanistan as a "peace keeping mission" at this time. The Taliban never surrendered are still an active threat. It is a similar misnomer to calling Vietnam a "police action".

Does this in any way invalidate the content of the article? If not, hooray for another pointless nitpick and/or thread derail. I will be happy to show you where these will go in the future. Unless you want to argue that Alyeska's general point is inaccurate, which you have to do a lot better than "I do not think it qualifies as peace-keeping".

Alyeska seemed to imply the situation is the same as in Iraq which it clearly is not. The implication that it is a "peace keeping mission" is incorrect. The U.S. is fighting against the same active enemy that the war started with - The Taliban. The mission they were on was a combat mission. If the soldiers are behaving as if they were in a war zone then that's because they are exactly that - in a war zone. As per the article itself, I feel that the soldiers in question showed poor judgement and a lack of training in this case.

It was not the goal of my very small comment to validate or invalidate the article, merely respond to the comment. If you consider that to be a "thread de-rail" then Alyeska's original point was the site of the derail. If you feel the need to moderate it, then that's up to you.

[Elheru Aran]

I can only assume their chain of command credited them with having picked up on the fact that Islam requires five daily prayer sessions a day, a fact that any schoolchild should have learned at some point. Or does the US curriculum not offer Religious Studies?

Honestly? Most don't; separation of church and state, and all that, though it's bogus as I don't see an issue with a public school teaching a comparative religions class. Or if they do, the whole semester it's Christianity and the Bible; shoehorned in there are a few days on what the funny people that aren't Americans bow down in front of. It's no wonder at all that these guys didn't really realize, or care, that just praying regularly isn't a Taliban-exclusive thing.

Their error is more in being too eager to make the hit than anything else, though...

[Shroom Man 777]

If these "accidents" happened to American citizens or whatever, you'd see stupid fat hypocritical parathyroid conservative Americans calling for those responsible to be hanged for the murderous liberal journo-student-union-protesters they are while jokes about bayonets and white phosphorus and other tough guy acts are thrown about. But as these are just merely Afghans and Muslims, and since we know that the world is in danger of the evil Muslims uniting into a caliphate of nefarious Arabs, then... well... good! The airstrikes definitely sent some supersonic shrapnel ripping through their hearts and minds, mission accomplished!

Man, I wish these real-life wars were just as simple as having the enemy assemble a massive army of demonic warriors, so the military can just bomb them with impunity, and after the enemy leader takes a cruise missile to the chest, the occupation will go off without a hitch because the military will be so competent while the locals will be so incompetent and practicing thousands of years old beliefs and thinkings that will contribute to their utter defeat and conquest with no difficulty and only glossed-over inconvenience for the American-led coalition of the world. Then the leaders and generals can have lots of meetings and talk at length about their military hardware and stuff.

[Broomstick]

I can only assume their chain of command credited them with having picked up on the fact that Islam requires five daily prayer sessions a day, a fact that any schoolchild should have learned at some point. Or does the US curriculum not offer Religious Studies?

Religion is pretty much banned from US schools, period. It's one reason the Fundies hate public schools. It's a rare school that has ANY sort of religion in the curriculum, even comparative religion, below the level of a college. Most school districts interpret the relevant statutes and the doctrine of division of state and religion as banning religion in public schools. Kids might be allowed to follow religious customs in dress and diet, or be excused for religious observations, but it never enters the curriculum.

So no, US schools do not offer "religious studies".

[Alyeska]

Iraq and Afganistan are both Peace Keeping missions. Or Nation Building. Whatever the fuck you want to call them. It is not a war. We are trying to win the hearts and minds of the citizens of those countries. Thats not some nebulous statement. To have any semblence of victory we need the support of the local people.

Military tactics are designed to keep soldiers alive and kill the fuck out of the enemy. But when your task is the support of the people, those tactics are the exact opposite of what your mission is.

Over kill against an enemy tank formation? Great. Over kill against a suspected mortar position? Really fucking stupid. Every innocent person killed sets back the goal of the mission.

Operating with a military mind set in an insurgent environment is going to make things worse, not better. Its not the soldiers fault, not really. Its the fault of the military leaders for failing to adapt to the situation, and the fault of the civilian over sight for not mandating the military learn to deal with these situations. Then the poor grunt on the ground trained to react the way he does gets the shit for doing what he was told.

[Broomstick]

That being said, how good vision can you get from these type of surveillance? I have seen pictures of Hazaras from refugee camps and doco's about them coming into Australia. IIRC they are descendent from Mongols and they clearly don't look like Pashtuns.

It depends on the cameras, whether the images are infrared or visible light, distance, weather....

From the altitudes drones operate at I'd have a hard time distinguishing people different ethic groups from each other with the naked eye, even if I am use to flying. Oh, sure, I could probably tell a Nigerian from an Irishman... if they weren't bundled up in too many clothes and the light was on them and they were facing me... Mongol vs. Pashtun would not be so clear cut.

So... if the cameras were as good as human vision I could see problems with establishing certainty. Maybe that's why we invented "zoom" - and when flying as a pilot's second I've used my camera's zoom feature to pick out things on the ground with more accuracy. But with the normal vibration of flight there are issues with that, like keeping the image in frame and focused. Naturally, trained military operators would be far better at these skills than civilian me, but that doesn't mean their view of the situation is perfect. And of course they'd be missing all the information conveyed by words and tone of voice.

Some of the comments make me think at least part of the time they were relying on nightvision and infra-red. Those aren't, so far as I know, as clear and unambiguous as normal daylight vision.

Of course, that's why they have more than just two people, the drone operators in the loop, and ground teams, and listen to radio/phone chatter, and so on. Clearly, it's not enough to rely on just the visual images, there needs to be confirmation and backup.

From the article in the OP (emphasis added):

The Army and the Air Force conducted their own investigations, reaching similar conclusions.

The Army said evidence that the convoy was not a hostile force was "ignored or downplayed by the Predator crew," and the A-Team captain's decision to authorize an airstrike was based on a misreading of the threat when, in fact, "there was no urgent need to engage the vehicles."

I think this is a huge factor here - confirmation bias, as Thanas called it.

Look, the military is trained to kill people and break things. At the end of the day, although we might prefer not to use them, that's what the bullets, guns, bombs, and other stuff is FOR - to kill people. They are NOT a police force (at least in the US the distinction is pretty sharp), which is more what some of these situations need. Asking soldiers to be police doesn't seem to work out well.

The Air Force concluded that confusion over whether children were present was a "causal factor" in the decision to attack and, in an internal document last year, said drone crews had not been trained to notice the subtle differences between combatants and suspicious persons who may appear to be combatants.

Again, that's more something I'd associate with police - analyzing a situation to determine who is an actual threat vs. innocents acting in ways that may appear suspicious but are perfectly legitimate. Police deal daily with situations where the bad guys are mixed in with the civilian population. Soldiers... I don't know, my impression is that they aren't as trained in this, but I don't really know for sure.

The military has taken some steps to address these problems. Screeners now have access to radio traffic, so if a drone pilot makes a mistake, the screeners can correct it. Drone crews and screeners are now trained to use more precise descriptions in radio transmissions. And, shortly after the incident, McChrystal banned the use of the term "military age male," saying it implied that every adult man was a combatant.

All probably very good steps.

Some officers in the Pentagon drew another lesson from the incident: An abundance of surveillance information can lead to misplaced confidence in the ability to tell friend from foe.

"Technology can occasionally give you a false sense of security that you can see everything, that you can hear everything, that you know everything," said Air Force Major Gen. James O. Poss, who oversaw the Air Force investigation. "I really do think we have learned from this."

In other words, more and more bad quality information does not magically morph into good quality information.

I wonder if the trigger-guys in this scenario felt under pressure to ACT, do DO something, rather than confess they weren't sure and hold back. Wouldn't that be a factor to consider here?

Is being at a remove from the area - looking through a camera and not actually in the aircraft that's there - make it easier to kill? This has been a concern for some time, that distance from effect makes it easier to pull the trigger, the act more abstract, than standing mere paces away from someone who is looking directly at you when you pull the trigger. If so, it may be necessary to impose controls on predator/drone teams that mitigate the ease of killing.

This is not a new discussion, actually - back in WWII there was discussion that being in an aircraft dropping bombs from above made it easier to kill than if you were on the ground firing at human beings you could see up close. Would the bomber crews dropping napalm on Europe and Japan have found it harder to do their jobs if they were able to see the men, women, and children they bombed crushed by falling debris or burning to death?

Drone aircraft steps the soldier one step farther back from the killing field. Are there additional safeguards that need to be installed in the process?

[Zaune]

Religion is pretty much banned from US schools, period. It's one reason the Fundies hate public schools. It's a rare school that has ANY sort of religion in the curriculum, even comparative religion, below the level of a college. Most school districts interpret the relevant statutes and the doctrine of division of state and religion as banning religion in public schools. Kids might be allowed to follow religious customs in dress and diet, or be excused for religious observations, but it never enters the curriculum.

So no, US schools do not offer "religious studies".

For once I find myself feeling that the fundies sort of have a point. It wouldn't be bending the rules too far to have a few semesters on "this is what [major world religion] believes, this is how it started and this is what they do in church", surely?

[Block]

It's not a minor nitpick. These are still wars, they're low intensity and do operate under different rules, , but they're not peace keeping missions. To call them that is to not understand what's really going on, because peace keeping missions operate under a completely different set of rules from counter insurgency.

edit: This is directed at Thanas and Aleksya

[lazerus]

I'm going to come down on the side of the drone crew, actually.

This is not to say that this isn't a regrettable incident, that more training to avoid confirmation bias isn't required, and that the military officers and pilots here couldn't have acted better then they did. But I think this thread is coming down far too hard on them.

The soldiers on the ground here are in a situation where the enemy forces that are likely to attack them are not easily distinguished from civilians up until the moment they attack. The enemies willingness to hide amongst group of civilians only exacerbates this problem. Standard military practice, designed for warfare, directs that when you have a probably hostile target closing towards friendly forces, you destroy it with whatever firepower you have on hand, because its statistically favorable to do so. Reading the dialogue amongst the operators, I get the feeling that they are in that mindset, and very awkwardly trying to adapt to the peacekeeping mission mindset.

Put simply, being a solider and being a peacekeeper are not the same job, and give their skills and training, they were trying to do the best job they could. This is a case if incompetence as a result of training induced excessive caution, rather then outright malice.

[Thanas]

It's not a minor nitpick. These are still wars, they're low intensity and do operate under different rules, , but they're not peace keeping missions. To call them that is to not understand what's really going on, because peace keeping missions operate under a completely different set of rules from counter insurgency.

Really? Not peace-keeping missions? You mean the USA is not engaged in nation building in those nations? Then what is the USA doing over there, in your opinion?

[Bakustra]

Religion is pretty much banned from US schools, period. It's one reason the Fundies hate public schools. It's a rare school that has ANY sort of religion in the curriculum, even comparative religion, below the level of a college. Most school districts interpret the relevant statutes and the doctrine of division of state and religion as banning religion in public schools. Kids might be allowed to follow religious customs in dress and diet, or be excused for religious observations, but it never enters the curriculum.

So no, US schools do not offer "religious studies".

For once I find myself feeling that the fundies sort of have a point. It wouldn't be bending the rules too far to have a few semesters on "this is what [major world religion] believes, this is how it started and this is what they do in church", surely?

No, it wouldn't, but the most common scenario is that the conservative religious community would demand that it favor Christianity, and generally their type of Christianity, rather than treat religions fairly, which they see as lying to children. The sheer headache involved and likelihood to offend keeps public schools from doing so. Private and parochial schools do have religious studies classes, and they can be and are a lot more equitable because they have less to worry about.

[Broomstick]

Religion is pretty much banned from US schools, period. It's one reason the Fundies hate public schools. It's a rare school that has ANY sort of religion in the curriculum, even comparative religion, below the level of a college. Most school districts interpret the relevant statutes and the doctrine of division of state and religion as banning religion in public schools. Kids might be allowed to follow religious customs in dress and diet, or be excused for religious observations, but it never enters the curriculum.

So no, US schools do not offer "religious studies".

For once I find myself feeling that the fundies sort of have a point. It wouldn't be bending the rules too far to have a few semesters on "this is what [major world religion] believes, this is how it started and this is what they do in church", surely?

Well,I'm on board with that, but no one asks me to set school curriculums.

The biggest obstacle to doing that, of course, is that the Christians will try to hijack it and turn it into an "all about Christianity and how wonderful Jesus is" class. The only way it could work is if you have a large enough block of people who are not only secular but comfortable enough to be secular in public to counter the crazies that come out of the woodwork. That might be possible in some areas, but in far too much of the US the Fundies have too much of a foothold for that to work.

[Alyeska]

It's not a minor nitpick. These are still wars, they're low intensity and do operate under different rules, , but they're not peace keeping missions. To call them that is to not understand what's really going on, because peace keeping missions operate under a completely different set of rules from counter insurgency.

edit: This is directed at Thanas and Aleksya

Your mission is to protect and win the loyalty of the civilians. Its still a peace keeping mission. Ask the Brits how well heavy handed tactics of using the Military in Northern Ireland worked out. Counter Insurgency still operates under Peace Keeping rules.