The Right Stuff?
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btw the part on the low accident rate..better not be so confident about it..things u see now its just the surface...imagine how many time my unit was turn out..becos of misadventure by some "competent" pilots...
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It is actually a safety pin that is pulled by the aircrewman when all is clear. When the pin is in, the pilot cannot pull the release lever. My company was the guinea-pig batch for testing the new system - I don't think anybody will admit to how nervous we all were!Originally posted by cavsg:that was a major accident, it was all over the press during that time, the pilot was charged in court. commandos lost confidence with sembawang. the co of sembawang went to hedon and learn helo rappeling and went up with the cco to rappel from a UH, that picture showing both of them on the starboard side of uh preparing to rappel can be found on old airforce brochures and the sembawang museum. the uh was modified with a latch over the handle that releases the ropes, the pilot needs to release the latch, then he can release the ropes.
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Are you insane? Have you not put more then a piscosecond of thought before you posted? The reason why friendly fire from the air now is so deadily is because the weapons and aircraft themselves are far, far better at getting their munitions onto the target then ever before. Even with unguided weapons, the CEP from aircraft can be as low as 20 feet.
Unlike you which can miss at 300 meters, a manverick can hit within a 3 foot circle from over 3km. Go figure. Precision? You have no idea what you are babbling about.
Those pilots misidentified what they were supposed to kill and they killed it. They were not imcompetent at their job of hitting targets, in fact, the truth is, they are so good at hitting and killing their targets, that when they aim at anything, be it enemy or not, it is as good as dead.
Precision and what target is actually killed are two different matters. I am amazed you could claim such a point.
And of course, if you would like to bring up these incidents, would you like to explain how the numbers of thousands of precision CAS sorties carried out in support of friendly troops happened without incident? Is friendly fire from the air as big as a problem as you are making it out to be? Or is it just an unfortunate, but ultimately unusual failure that happens in the fog of war that has little bearing on the precision of the weapons or the competence of the pilot?
Nathan DID say they have the precision to kill their own people. thats what u've REINFORCED.
anyway from what u've said above, that is called PILOT INCOMPETENCE.
u know what? a friendly life lost IS a life lost. can we stop talking in terms of percentages and start talking about needless deaths here? Those pilots should keep the blue on blue kills at 0%. and thats it. no compromise. -
My point was, precision or inprecision, is irrevelant to the issue of friendly fire. However, what I have been simply pointing out was that due to precision weapons, friendly fire incidents have gotten more deadly due to the increased lethality of these weapons in killing their target, and not because they have gotten more common.Originally posted by HENG@:Nathan DID say they have the precision to kill their own people. thats what u've REINFORCED.
In prespective, prevention of blue on blue incidents have made large strides since WW2.
Nathan's "point" was an irrevelant escapade pretty much scoffing the use of high tech precision weapons to kill friendly troops, which if you look at the issue, is pretty irrevelant. After all, once launched at a target, friendly or not, the bomb does not care a whit and will do what it was supposed to do, which is to explode.
It's amazing how you attempt to reconcile reason and rhetoric.anyway from what u've said above, that is called PILOT INCOMPETENCE.
No it is not. And to say so would be a irresponsible and dangerous ignorace of the real reasons that cause friendly fire, which range from a confused picture on the ground, friendly troops failing to identify themselves properly, lack of communciation, all of which hardly fall on the shoulders of the pilot. All these factors, added up, and finally causing the pilot to misidentify a target and engage it with precision firepower, is hardly a case of pilot incompetence, he was just doing what he was supposed to do.
He is not any more liable then the arty battery which shells friendly troops when supplied with misinformation.
In fact, in many of the blue on blue cases, the pilots themselves have taken every normal precaution to avoid them, and they still happen. Are they incompetent? I doubt it.
No, the true reason behind most blue on blue incidents is misinformation, lack of communication, and the fog of war, not pilot incompetence.
Blaming pilot incompetence is an illogical, and utterly irresponsible way of approaching the issue, because the real reasons do not get addressed and more men are still going to get torn up.
How can the pilot be held liable for many factors that are not within his control?
When can a pilot be considered incompetent? When every attempt has been made to inform him of the presence of ground troops and he still goes in to bomb them anyway.
Apparently logic has slipped from your grasp, to make such grandose claims that insult the airman as a crew.
That's because examining the precentages and numbers helps us to put the entire thing into prespective, if you have no prespective, you have no handle on the problem, without a handle, you cannot have a chance of solving it and all you have is a ton of hot air in your hot head which can spout a lot of rhetoric but little solid solutions.
u know what? a friendly life lost IS a life lost. can we stop talking in terms of percentages and start talking about needless deaths here? Those pilots should keep the blue on blue kills at 0%. and thats it. no compromise.
The first reaction when a friendly fire happens is to blame the pilot for dropping the bomb, but any rational head afterwards can see that most of these cases are due to failures on both sides, in many cases, that of the ground people who failed to take the necessary precautions or communicate their position properly to the aircraft.
In many cases, the pilot's only involvement in the FF was to engage the target, the mistakes made on the ground crew on their part already sealed their fates. That's why in many investigations of air-ground FF cases, the pilot is found to have little blame(as was the case when an A-10 exploded two British Warrior IFVs who failed to put their identification panels killing 12)
Keeping blue on blue kills as 0 percent is a wishful thing, prehaps as likely as thaking 0 percent losses in war. But what we can do is to try to reduce them as much as possible doing everything that is pratically sound.
Unfortunately, leaving the onus of preventing them on the pilot's hands, having examined the issue, is hardly the solution. They are already doing what they pratically can. (Want to have no risk of FF? Don't shoot anything) The main problem has always rested with ground crews not doing enough to provide the air crews with enough information or communicating properly. -
I "strayed" into it, because you started making childish scarstic remarks on the largely irrevelant role precision weapons play in fratricide. But I also stated their implications on modern FF incidents, which if are not obvious to you by now, means you haven't been reading much.Originally posted by NathanG5:the thing we debate on is the competence of the pilots..not on whether if precision weapon are really effective..i wonder what make u stray to it?
They obviously don't feel good, but was it the pilot's fault? Just because you don't feel good does not mean you can blame anybody you like... you have to find out the real reason behind the incident and work on that.
so what if the weapon is high tech..if you kill your own colour..[/quote]
Exactly the point I was trying to make, all that high tech stuff was ment to kill whatever is was aimed at... apparently you have mistaken:
High tech = less friendly fire
Which in actual case, the truth is:
High tech = vastly increased lethality
My point was, while FF incidents have become less in number and less likely to happen, the fact that these weapons are more lethal makes each individual case more serious.
u blame it on murphy's law..but not the one squeeze the trigger?
its all murphy's law..
If you knew murphy's law of combat, you would know that in actual fact, no fire is friendly.
Hence to protect yourself against "friendly" fire, you should take every single precaution as if protecting yourself against enemy fire. You don't dump your helmet in range just because people will not be intending to shoot at you.
And yes, if you had any sense, you would realize that the action of pulling the trigger is often precepitated by many other failures on the line of control and command leading up to the final action of friendly fire, which is in plently of the cases, the pilot simply acted as he usually did, competently, but on misinformation (in many cases thanks to the very people he was about to bomb) and friendly people died.
look at your part on cockiness n competence..
cockiness will get you kill or get someone kill...
i find it weird that u seperate the 2..
]/quote]
Yes, if you understood rudimentary military psychology, a degree of "cockiness" is required for combat troops in any vocation to function. For without it many people would be unable to fight. Go look at any outfit and you will find they all have their own brand of cockiness which they refer to as their ethos. Without it, the unit would not exist under pressure.
However the real issue is not if you are cocky or not, but if you are smart about it. Just because fighter pilots are "cocky" does not mean they take innane risks just for fun or to "show off". While it's easy to think they are crazy daredevils by viewing them from the ground, be up in the cockpit and you will see that every apparent crazy stunt is actually a greatly praticed and run through manuver.
A crazy pilot is a dead pilot, and a rapidly dead on at that. Unlike infantry, a slight miscalucution or bad risk taken would mean buying the farm.
The next time you think they are trying to scare you with their amazing flying skills, think again... they are in the same boat with you and all will die if they crash. Do you think they are doing anything they think is operationally irresponsible or dangerous? The only questionble thing is prehaps they are affecting morale among the more nervous troopers like yourself and embittering you to them.
[quote]seem that u think u know alot..guess u are in the service? longer then my acquaintance?a incompetent pilot arm with a precision munition...saw a convoy..think its enemy..drop the damn bomb...n kill everyone..
who to blame? the convoy? is the pilot under attack that he have the right to return fire? if he bother to radio back to indentify the convoy...will that happen? is that competent?
If that was what happen, pilot confirm court martial. But from what we see in most tribunals, they get off pretty easy, if not in many cases without liability... why?
Because is that what really happens in most FF cases? No. In most cases, precedure was followed down to the letter but somewhere inbetween, something screwed up. Something as simple as some joker giving the wrong grid to the convoy failing to inform command that they were in the area to crossing into a zone that has been marked "bomb anything that moves". In which some drivers who get lost end up in. The pilot's fault? I doubt it.
Ask yourself, in many cases has the pilot been incompetent in identifying his targets? If you read the cases one by one in detail, you will find out that many of the problems started way out of the hands of the pilots to be unfairly blamed on him by your little minded thinking.[quote]the above scenerio up there is crap..make up by me(obvious right)
but how do the spec op convoy feel in Iraq War feel?
And in the post mortem of that incident, was the pilot blamed entirely? I ask you that.
I urge you to be objective in regarding FF cases rather then "THEY BOMB US THEIR FAULT!" -
And sometimes I wonder what's up with all the whining about scary roller coaster rides... especially when the yanks are doing crazier things with their Black Hawks and the mounted ground troops don't seem to mind.
Ironic... para infantry with no air legs...
Prehaps the competence of our para infantry units need to be questioned as well? -
In the line of fire
In the line of fire - with John Simpson was broadcast on BBC One on Sunday, 9 November, 2003 at 21:00 GMT.
When BBC world affairs editor John Simpson and his team set out to northern Iraq it was to report on the looming war against Saddam Hussein.
What none of them knew was that in only a few weeks time they would find themselves at the centre of the most lethal recorded friendly fire incident of the war.
While filming at a cross-roads in northern Iraq on April 6, 2003, a US Navy jet launched a bomb into a crowd of US and Kurdish soldiers who the BBC team were accompanying.
The bomb killed at least 16 people, including a member of the BBC team. 45 were injured.
In the seconds that followed, BBC cameraman Fred Scott began to film the disaster as it unfolded. He filmed the dead and the dying and the desperate moments in which friends, colleagues and comrades tried to find out who was alive and who was dead.
His remarkable footage - and the footage of others who were also at the scene - provide a unique insight into the horror of war.
This special edition of Panorama tells the story of the dramatic battle on the northern front of Iraq as seen through the eyes of the people who became caught up in it.
Using the personal testimony of the journalists themselves, US pilots flying missions at the time and others touched by events - it documents a remarkable confrontation in which lightly armed Kurds aided by a few US Special Forces and US jets faced down a massive Iraqi force of well-armed soldiers.
It also tells the story of what can happen when such a high-risk strategy goes wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3216383.stm
transcript of the program
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/inthelineoffire.txt -
I "strayed" into it, because you started making childish scarstic remarks on the largely irrevelant role precision weapons play in fratricide. But I also stated their implications on modern FF incidents, which if are not obvious to you by now, means you haven't been reading much.
may i know which specific remarks on precision weapon?
i dun seem to find anything that im blaming precision?
pls quote it out..maybe too cork eye liao to see..
Exactly the point I was trying to make, all that high tech stuff was ment to kill whatever is was aimed at... apparently you have mistaken:High tech = less friendly fire
if FF happen on any current war situation..does it explain the competency of that pilot?
Which in actual case, the truth is:
High tech = vastly increased lethality
My point was, while FF incidents have become less in number and less likely to happen, the fact that these weapons are more lethal makes each individual case more serious.If you knew murphy's law of combat, you would know that in actual fact, no fire is friendly.
oic..the blame is on the ground troop..never never the pilot..
Hence to protect yourself against "friendly" fire, you should take every single precaution as if protecting yourself against enemy fire. You don't dump your helmet in range just because people will not be intending to shoot at you.
And yes, if you had any sense, you would realize that the action of pulling the trigger is often precepitated by many other failures on the line of control and command leading up to the final action of friendly fire, which is in plently of the cases, the pilot simply acted as he usually did, competently, but on misinformation (in many cases thanks to the very people he was about to bomb) and friendly people died.
i see..thats one of new murphy's law...if you're being bomb by your own fly boy..they are not to blame by any circumstances...u have to blame yourself..
nice one pal..its so nice of uYes, if you understood rudimentary military psychology, a degree of "cockiness" is required for combat troops in any vocation to function. For without it many people would be unable to fight. Go look at any outfit and you will find they all have their own brand of cockiness which they refer to as their ethos. Without it, the unit would not exist under pressure.
ahhh...i see..tryin to explain cockiness..
However the real issue is not if you are cocky or not, but if you are smart about it. Just because fighter pilots are "cocky" does not mean they take innane risks just for fun or to "show off". While it's easy to think they are crazy daredevils by viewing them from the ground, be up in the cockpit and you will see that every apparent crazy stunt is actually a greatly praticed and run through manuver.
A crazy pilot is a dead pilot, and a rapidly dead on at that. Unlike infantry, a slight miscalucution or bad risk taken would mean buying the farm.
The next time you think they are trying to scare you with their amazing flying skills, think again... they are in the same boat with you and all will die if they crash. Do you think they are doing anything they think is operationally irresponsible or dangerous? The only questionble thing is prehaps they are affecting morale among the more nervous troopers like yourself and embittering you to them.
nice one from you..
im dumbfounded...tryin very hard not to laugh..
dude..tell me that when u are on a chopper with a cocky pilot..then u come explain to me the meaning of cockiness..
if a person mind is so easily read n interprete..we dun need any shrink at all...think about it..If that was what happen, pilot confirm court martial. But from what we see in most tribunals, they get off pretty easy, if not in many cases without liability... why?
sorry dude...wrong answer!
Because is that what really happens in most FF cases? No. In most cases, precedure was followed down to the letter but somewhere inbetween, something screwed up. Something as simple as some joker giving the wrong grid to the convoy failing to inform command that they were in the area to crossing into a zone that has been marked "bomb anything that moves". In which some drivers who get lost end up in. The pilot's fault? I doubt it.
Ask yourself, in many cases has the pilot been incompetent in identifying his targets? If you read the cases one by one in detail, you will find out that many of the problems started way out of the hands of the pilots to be unfairly blamed on him by your little minded thinking.
the convoy was never in a danger zone or bomb anything that move zone...
the spec op have been going around the area for quite long time..
there no ordering of wrong grid..there was no communication in the 1st place..
dude..get this into your own sweet brain...if the pilot have coms back to identify the convoy..it will never happen..They obviously don't feel good, but was it the pilot's fault? Just because you don't feel good does not mean you can blame anybody you like... you have to find out the real reason behind the incident and work on that.
sori bro..its on spec ops convoy incident...
And in the post mortem of that incident, was the pilot blamed entirely? I ask you that.
I urge you to be objective in regarding FF cases rather then "THEY BOMB US THEIR FAULT!"
read it up..before telling me its always the ground troops fault causing the pilot to make a "honest" mistake.. -
I'd watch where the line is drawn if I were you.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:And sometimes I wonder what's up with all the whining about scary roller coaster rides... especially when the yanks are doing crazier things with their Black Hawks and the mounted ground troops don't seem to mind.
Ironic... para infantry with no air legs...
Prehaps the competence of our para infantry units need to be questioned as well?
I've had a couple of good gripe sessions with my US counterparts about the dumb stunts pilots pull, so even if in your ignorance the US troops don't seem to mind, my experience with them indicates that you are dead wrong.
You obviously don't have any experience of the difference 20 extra knots of airspeed makes when you're jumping, and an unnecessary and unauthorised 20 knots at that. I suggest you stick with what you know, rather than casting wild aspersions. -
ST: pls justify the case where the US jet cut the cables of the cable car in the Italian Alps(i think), and how about the one where our guys were dropped?
tell me that ain't pilot incompetence.
A helicopter or jet is a weapon. Used incompetently, its deadly to the users themselves. Pilot incompetence, even if its a single isolated case, should not be allowed. no compromise. these guys are supposedly to be very very highly trained. for what they're paid, they better make sure nothing goes wrong due to pilot incompetence. -
A crazy pilot is a dead pilot, and a rapidly dead on at that. Unlike infantry, a slight miscalucution or bad risk taken would mean buying the farm.
the US jet that cut the cable car line... the US jet that cut the cable car line...
The next time you think they are trying to scare you with their amazing flying skills, think again... they are in the same boat with you and all will die if they crash. Do you think they are doing anything they think is operationally irresponsible or dangerous? The only questionble thing is prehaps they are affecting morale among the more nervous troopers like yourself and embittering you to them.
im sure they weren't trying to scare us with their amazing flying skills...
I'd call it showing off instead. -
Yes I do know the difference a slight amount of speed do to the slipstream, and the pilots know it all the more better then you do.Originally posted by Gedanken:I'd watch where the line is drawn if I were you.
I've had a couple of good gripe sessions with my US counterparts about the dumb stunts pilots pull, so even if in [b]your ignorance the US troops don't seem to mind, my experience with them indicates that you are dead wrong.[/quote][/b]
I suggest you to go and take a helicopter view of the whole issue as a whole, rather then rely on your ignorace gleamed from a very small sample group of exchanges you had with our yank counterparts.
Given the soldier's ability to rapidly identify with common grouses, and the untendency to start talking when anything positively brain dead happens, along with a healthy appetite for exaggeration, not only tends to, but almost certainly distorts the view of the whole situtation.
The truth of the matter is, the only kind of useful information that does justice that is gleamed from grunts is not mess talk, but AAR interviews after combat when the true mettle of the forces have been revealed.
What does combat experience show of the competence of pilots in modern forces in general?
From interviews after the battle of Mogadishu, we know for a fact that there was a very high level of not only competence, but almost insane courage which would have been written off as cocky flying in peace time shown by the helicopter pilots during the whole cause of the battle, they range from:
1.Setting down in an area barely large enough for the rotors to insert medics.
2. Staying around taking fire and providing overwatch even when two of their number have been shot down.
3. In several cases, when the Rangers were about to be overwhelmed, in an act of "crazy" flying, the pilots actually brought their Black Hawks to the deck to literally scatter the crowds by blowing them back with rotorwash.
4. Strafing enemy positions with lethal accuracy and keeping an enemy city at bay all night many times only 30 feet away from friendly lines (so close that shell casings fell on friendly positions). Another few hundred incidents of reckless flying?
5. Hanging around to drop vital supplies under heavy fire to the point where their air crew were injured by enemy fire.
Was task force Ranger's overall review of the flyboys after the battle embittered by their imcompetence or gleaming?
Maybe you should think twice before sliming the people of another force who are equally as willing as you to shed their own blood in battle.
Note that this was a helicopter unit of which a large proportion of pilots never got any combat experience before the Battle of The Black Sea.
Cocky flying? If anything, most heliborn air units have in general, after all the bull is cleared out of the mess, a very strong bond between air and land crews who depend on each other for their survival.
[quote]You obviously don't have any experience of the difference 20 extra knots of airspeed makes when you're jumping, and an unnecessary and unauthorised 20 knots at that. I suggest you stick with what you know, rather than casting wild aspersions.
If you want to know, most paratrooper deaths and injuries are caused not by jumping too fast, but by jumping too heavy.
Anyway is this kind of flying endemic among our air force? Or is it a number of isloated incidents which have been amplified our of proportion by paranoia?
The truth is, almost all of our flyboys and chopper drivers are a good bunch who take their job probably even more seriously then you do yours. Is it fair to let a few black sheep (which are rapidly weeded out under a merciless system) spoil your impression of the whole lot?
Of course, there is the issue of grunts who expect SIA type of flights and are surprised when their ride in a chopper is bumpy. But I don't think you're one of them. -
Have I been trying to justify accidents? No! But I have been trying to put them into prespective.Originally posted by HENG@:ST: pls justify the case where the US jet cut the cables of the cable car in the Italian Alps(i think), and how about the one where our guys were dropped?
tell me that ain't pilot incompetence.
A helicopter or jet is a weapon. Used incompetently, its deadly to the users themselves. Pilot incompetence, even if its a single isolated case, should not be allowed. no compromise. these guys are supposedly to be very very highly trained. for what they're paid, they better make sure nothing goes wrong due to pilot incompetence.
Basically, what you are doing here is akin to a automobile driver ranting and raving about how air travel is so terrible and unsafe when at the end of the day, people are many, many times more likely to die or get seriously injured in an automobile accident and air travel (next to esclator travel), is the safest form of transport in the world.
The truth is, most modern air forces, at leas the ones we are discussing (RSAF/USAF) are extremely professional and do their job to the best of our ability. The RSAF itself is literally obessesed with safety. Go read their work mottos and observe how they work. At almost every step there is accountability to this and that person. Any mistake, even a slight one that may risk man or equipment affects the offender far more severly then if you were in land at sea.
Do US jets cut cables three or four times a month? Do they rake up over 100 road pizzas from speed drops every exercise?
Those who do such things dissappear from the force pretty fast and dishonourably, and there are plenty of checks in the system to weed out this kind of behaviour before it gets serious. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a perfect system, and some of these jokers will get through like the Commando Instr. who drowned that poor guardsman in POW training.
Are those jokers who cut the cable still flying navy jets today?
Basically what you are expecting is a 0 percent accident rate from human beings and their machines, any engineer can tell you that your aspirations are insane.
Highly trained or not, any high risk operation like that special ops one is very dangerous, and even the experts will mess up. To blame everything it on one force and expect them to preform perfectly everytime is a fool's errand.
In fact it's easy to see how even with perfect pilots who take every precaution, air to ground FFs will still happen as long as the ground troops don't take steps to overcome their part of the bargain. It takes two hands to clap. If you are just going to sit here and ask for perfect pilots, who can identify you, a single person in a littorial, target rich environment through the fog of war when you on your part do nothing to indicate to him you are friendly except blithely whine about bad pilots on your laptop in your foxhole. I'm afraid you're just gonna get bombed. -
"so much for precision affair during Iraq War..Originally posted by NathanG5:may i know which specific remarks on precision weapon?
i dun seem to find anything that im blaming precision?
pls quote it out..maybe too cork eye liao to see..
Exactly the point I was trying to make, all that high tech stuff was ment to kill whatever is was aimed at... apparently you have mistaken:
indeed they were precision enough to hit their own guy.."
[color=darkred]And for your information, you never attempted to make any point about high tech stuff ment to kill whatever it was aimed at until I pointed it out quite blithely for you.[/color]
In fact anybody could easily conclude from your words heavily laden with scarcasm, that you were implying precision weapons were hitting friendly units because of CEP and not deliberate, mistaken engagement.[/b]if FF happen on any current war situation..does it explain the competency of that pilot?
[/b]
No, if you have not yet realized, hitting a target with a precision weapon and deciding which target are two different affairs altogether. Because precision weapons weren't intended to eliminate or reduce FF from deliberate engagement. They were intended to kill whatever the computer tells them to steer towards.
What smart weapons do reduce is FF from CEP, which is an issue mainly out of hands of the pilot, unless he's really bad at bombing.
Therefore, a pilot that hits you with a LGB is no less, or more competent then one that hits you with a WW2 500 pound bomb.oic..the blame is on the ground troop..never never the pilot..
i see..thats one of new murphy's law...if you're being bomb by your own fly boy..they are not to blame by any circumstances...u have to blame yourself..
nice one pal..its so nice of u
By the way, if you have been even slightly well read, you will know that murphy's law is hardly new.
If wallowing in self pity or blaming innocent people appeals to you, so be it, but it isn't going to solve the problem. I prefer to see the facts for what they are, identify the real reasons, and work on them to save lives.
Sometimes it's the pilot's fault, who failed to follow SOP before releasing his bombs, or the ground units, who failed to identify themselves or worse, called in an air strike on friendly targets they thought were enemy and so on and so forth. If you look at the long list of problems that lead up to FF, the onus of blame normally hardly rests solidly on any party, let alone the pilot. In many cases the pilot followed SOP all the way to the letter and dropped the bomb, and still FF happened because a cock-up way out of his hands happened.
Our job is to identify these issues and address them, not go about saying "why always blame ground troops? those pilots are cocky people who are incompetent!" Which isn't even scratching the surface of the issue.
Your hot headed rhetoric based on highly "objective" personal views unfortunately, will not help solve things. Rational and unbiased analysis of facts of the issue will.ahhh...i see..tryin to explain cockiness..
nice one from you..
im dumbfounded...tryin very hard not to laugh..
dude..tell me that when u are on a chopper with a cocky pilot..then u come explain to me the meaning of cockiness..
if a person mind is so easily read n interprete..we dun need any shrink at all...think about it..
I let the cocky combat "antics" (refer to above post) of the Night Stalkers and Little Bird pilots speak for themselves, along with the lives of over 100 Rangers which they kept alive.
By the way, aggressiveness and risk analysis and taking are one of the citera that air forces testes in detail for as well. Unfortunately you can't go prone and take cover in the air and hide till the danger goes away. If you are in a troop helicopter with AA streaking all about, I wonder if their flying will be even more cocky then they routinely "scare" you with, and still despite all that, they have to get you to the LZ... hmmm...sorry dude...wrong answer!
the convoy was never in a danger zone or bomb anything that move zone...
the spec op have been going around the area for quite long time..
there no ordering of wrong grid..there was no communication in the 1st place..
dude..get this into your own sweet brain...if the pilot have coms back to identify the convoy..it will never happen..
sori bro..its on spec ops convoy incident...
read it up..before telling me its always the ground troops fault causing the pilot to make a "honest" mistake..
I suggest you read up the nice article posted and consider all the factors that played into the tragic incident rather then a simplistic "they never radio and bomb".
I sure a lot of simplistic soultions and blames could be created for Pearl Harbour as well... let's see:
Incompetent AA gunners
Incompetent radar opeators
Incompetent pilots (can't get their planes off the ground)
Incompetent ground troops, can't shoot at the japs properly
Incompetent ship builders, the ships all got bombed and sank.
Gee, I suppose any one of these obsqure reasons could be proposed to why Pearl Harbour happened, and heap it all on them.
Anybody can play the blame game, and offer a simplistic blame or solution to the whole issue. I suggest you factor everything in and then figure out if this is a real case of pilot incompetence.
As a matter of fact, it could be argued or blamed that the spec ops were incompetent for undertaking such a high risk operation, or being vague when giving instructions.
"After repeated
requests the Americans eventually gave us a briefing on condition we didn't say where it came from.
During it we were told that a member of the American special forces, seemingly under great stress, had
requested an air-strike on the Iraqi tanks a mile away from us. He told the pilot he didnÂ’t have time to give
him a grid reference; though looking back we still canÂ’t see why he was under such pressure. We were
given details of the exchange between the plane and the man on the ground. The pilot says: "I see a road, I
see an intersection, I see vehicles." The man on the ground says "Roger, thatÂ’s your target, youÂ’re cleared to
fire." But it was the wrong intersection; the vehicles were ours and those of the Kurdish and the American
special forces we were with. One of them radios up shortly afterwards: “Ceasefire. Ceasefire" he says.
"You’re hitting friendlies. We’ve taken casualties.” There may well have been recklessness on the part of
some of those involved. But the real problem seemed to be the particular system of close air support the
Americans were using. It meant they could drop a 1000 pound bomb on such inadequate information. No
co-ordinates No grid references."
Look at this transcript of the incident... and go figure if it's a case of pilot incompetence or bad SOPs in calling down CAS.
If you can still pin it all on the pilot, I applaude your sense of objectively and justice. -
Why don't I break it down further for you?
After repeated
requests the Americans eventually gave us a briefing on condition we didn't say where it came from.
During it we were told that a member of the American special forces, seemingly under great stress, had
requested an air-strike on the Iraqi tanks a mile away from us.
He told the pilot he didnÂ’t have time to give
him a grid reference; though looking back we still canÂ’t see why he was under such pressure.
We were given details of the exchange between the plane and the man on the ground.
The pilot says: "I see a road, I see an intersection, I see vehicles." The man on the ground says "Roger, thatÂ’s your target, youÂ’re cleared to fire." But it was the wrong intersection; the vehicles were ours and those of the Kurdish and the American
special forces we were with. One of them radios up shortly afterwards: “Ceasefire. Ceasefire" he says.
"You’re hitting friendlies. We’ve taken casualties.”
There may well have been recklessness on the part of
some of those involved. But the real problem seemed to be the particular[/colour] [color=red]system of close air support the Americans were using.
It meant they could drop a 1000 pound bomb on such inadequate information. No co-ordinates No grid references.
As you can see, there are multiple factors that led up to the unfortunate bombing of those hapless people. Does the blame rests soley on the shoulders of the pilot? Or does it lie in the system, a lax way of providing information to pilots in a combat situtation?
Viewed from any angle, not just your own myopic one, almost anyone could be blamed for this disaster. But at the end of the day, what did was done? Run lessons to increase pilot competence? Cease all air support? No, they now conducted CAS with a great amount of detailed information now, making sure good intel reaches the pilot before he is told to drop the bomb. And has it worked? Since that incident, aircraft now only bomb under detailed information and the final go-ahead now rests with the operator calling the airstrike. (read stragetypage.org on the AAR on FF incidents, despite a long list of things identified to cause FF, not once did they mention troop/pilot incompetency)
It has been estimated over 50 friendly fire incidents that would have happened on the old SOP were avoided. In any one of these changes did they increase pilot competence above a level then they already are in any way? No, it affected the entire force, both ground and air as a whole.
Avoiding FF is not about getting better pilots, especially in our context when we are already getting as good as we get. It lies in establishing proper procedures to minimise the risk of FF as much as possible. -
"so much for precision affair during Iraq War..
icic..my apology..i think u have misquote me..
indeed they were precision enough to hit their own guy.."
And for your information, you never attempted to make any point about high tech stuff ment to kill whatever it was aimed at until I pointed it out quite blithely for you.
In fact anybody could easily conclude from your words heavily laden with scarcasm, that you were implying precision weapons were hitting friendly units because of CEP and not deliberate, mistaken engagement.
i am not refering to the munition..i am talking about the pilots..
if u are not so narrow minded n focus blindly on short quote...im sure u can guess that im talking about the pilot..isnt it?
read that quote again..does it sound right to you? aint it obvious im refering to a human..unless u think the munition microchip A.I is just like A.I that he fly "his" own plane n boimb his own target..impressive indeed..No, if you have not yet realized, hitting a target with a precision weapon and deciding which target are two different affairs altogether. Because precision weapons weren't intended to eliminate or reduce FF from deliberate engagement. They were intended to kill whatever the computer tells them to steer towards.
ha! amazing this is coming from you..
What smart weapons do reduce is FF from CEP, which is an issue mainly out of hands of the pilot, unless he's really bad at bombing.
Therefore, a pilot that hits you with a LGB is no less, or more competent then one that hits you with a WW2 500 pound bomb
im beginning to blur away from the real world..
one using a highly tech munition..the other a low tech mother of all bombs..
read your own word again son..the pilot was giving a high tech weapon...hell of a machine he is controling(talking about the plane now not the munition yet) n yet he bomb his own colors?
make sense to you?By the way, if you have been even slightly well read, you will know that murphy's law is hardly new.
u are wrong here dude..u assume again..
If wallowing in self pity or blaming innocent people appeals to you, so be it, but it isn't going to solve the problem. I prefer to see the facts for what they are, identify the real reasons, and work on them to save lives.
Sometimes it's the pilot's fault, who failed to follow SOP before releasing his bombs, or the ground units, who failed to identify themselves or worse, called in an air strike on friendly targets they thought were enemy and so on and so forth. If you look at the long list of problems that lead up to FF, the onus of blame normally hardly rests solidly on any party, let alone the pilot. In many cases the pilot followed SOP all the way to the letter and dropped the bomb, and still FF happened because a cock-up way out of his hands happened.
Our job is to identify these issues and address them, not go about saying "why always blame ground troops? those pilots are cocky people who are incompetent!"; Which isn't even scratching the surface of the issue.
Your hot headed rhetoric based on highly "objective" personal views unfortunately, will not help solve things. Rational and unbiased analysis of facts of the issue will.
since when did i put all the blame on all pilots?
read the word "all" find me a quote in my post that ive this--->
"those pilots are cocky people who are incompetent!"
u come up defending your champions..claiming that i have push all the blame into the pilots..blind indeed blind indeed..
thanx for the murphy's law intro anyway...its so obvious im not that well read..that everything in this world is a little book...all war are fought on books..great!I let the cocky combat "antics" (refer to above post) of the Night Stalkers and Little Bird pilots speak for themselves, along with the lives of over 100 Rangers which they kept alive.
...
By the way, aggressiveness and risk analysis and taking are one of the citera that air forces testes in detail for as well. Unfortunately you can't go prone and take cover in the air and hide till the danger goes away. If you are in a troop helicopter with AA streaking all about, I wonder if their flying will be even more cocky then they routinely "scare" you with, and still despite all that, they have to get you to the LZ... hmmm
dude..i hope u realize here that im talking about peace time?
there are no bullets flying toward u when u are on the way to Sudong...we are not in Somalia..where skinny take shot at u for fun..
i have a dude next to me who just 19..who almost shit his pants..
dude..i will strongly advise u to think with your brain not with your books..I suggest you read up the nice article posted and consider all the factors that played into the tragic incident rather then a simplistic "they never radio and bomb".
haha..once again..u assume..your anger cloud u from thinking..
I sure a lot of simplistic soultions and blames could be created for Pearl Harbour as well... let's see:
Incompetent AA gunners
Incompetent radar opeators
Incompetent pilots (can't get their planes off the ground)
Incompetent ground troops, can't shoot at the japs properly
Incompetent ship builders, the ships all got bombed and sank.
Gee, I suppose any one of these obsqure reasons could be proposed to why Pearl Harbour happened, and heap it all on them.
Anybody can play the blame game, and offer a simplistic blame or solution to the whole issue. I suggest you factor everything in and then figure out if this is a real case of pilot incompetence.
As a matter of fact, it could be argued or blamed that the spec ops were incompetent for undertaking such a high risk operation, or being vague when giving instructions.
"After repeated
requests the Americans eventually gave us a briefing on condition we didn't say where it came from.
During it we were told that a member of the American special forces, seemingly under great stress, had
requested an air-strike on the Iraqi tanks a mile away from us. He told the pilot he didnÂ’t have time to give
him a grid reference; though looking back we still canÂ’t see why he was under such pressure. We were
given details of the exchange between the plane and the man on the ground. The pilot says: "I see a road, I
see an intersection, I see vehicles." The man on the ground says "Roger, thatÂ’s your target, youÂ’re cleared to
fire." But it was the wrong intersection; the vehicles were ours and those of the Kurdish and the American
special forces we were with. One of them radios up shortly afterwards: “Ceasefire. Ceasefire" he says.
"You’re hitting friendlies. We’ve taken casualties.” There may well have been recklessness on the part of
some of those involved. But the real problem seemed to be the particular system of close air support the
Americans were using. It meant they could drop a 1000 pound bomb on such inadequate information. No
co-ordinates No grid references."
Look at this transcript of the incident... and go figure if it's a case of pilot incompetence or bad SOPs in calling down CAS.
If you can still pin it all on the pilot, I applaude your sense of objectively and justice.
i wil absorb this into my brain..n thank for the info..
if its indeed the ground troop fault..i will pin solely on that stress out spec ops..so this incident is not the pilots fault?
so it means other incident that happen is always the sucky ground troop? enlighten me bro..u kept saying that we cant blame each others..blah blah blah...but in the end u hinted towards the G.Is?
so what do u think of this article? whats in your mind when u read it.. -
By the way it would be nice to aquiant yourself with the Murphy's Law of Combat:
1. No fire is friendly.
2. Recoilless rifles - aren't.
3. Suppressive fires - won't.
4. You are not Superman; Marines and fighter pilots take note.
5. A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.
6. If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
7. Try to look unimportant; the enemy may be low on ammo and not want to waste a bullet on you.
8. If at first you don't succeed, call for artillery. When that doesn't work, for an airstrike.
9. The further you are in advance of your own positions, the more likely your artillery will fall short.
10. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.
11. Never go to bed with anyone crazier than yourself.
12. Never forget that your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.
13. If your attack is going really well, it's an ambush.
14. The enemy diversion you're ignoring is their main attack.
16. "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy."- Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke [1990's version: No OPLAN ever survives initial contact.]
17. There is no such thing as a perfect plan.
18. Five second fuses always burn three seconds.
19. There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.
20. A retreating enemy is probably just falling back and regrouping.
21. The important things are always simple; the simple are always hard.
22. The problem with taking easy way out is that the enemy has already mined it.
23. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
24. Don't look conspicuous. In the combat zone, it draws fire. Out of the combat zone, it draws sergeants. [Corollary: For this reason, it is not at all uncommon for aircraft carriers to be known as bomb magnets.]
25. Never draw fire; it irritates everyone around you.
26. If you are short of everything but the enemy, you are in the combat zone.
27. When you have secured the area, make sure the enemy knows it too.
28. Incoming fire has the right of way.
29. No combat ready unit has ever passed inspection.
30. No inspection ready unit has ever passed combat.
31. If the enemy is within range, so are you.
32. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.
33. Things which must be shipped together as a set, aren't.
34. Things that must work together, can't be carried to the field that way.
35. Radios will fail as soon as you need fire support. (Corollary: Radar tends to fail at night and in bad weather, and especially during both.)
36. Anything you do can get you killed, including nothing.
37. Make it too tough for the enemy to get in, and you won't be able to get out.
38. Tracers work both ways.
39. If you take more than your fair share of objectives, you will get more than your fair share of objectives to take.
40. When both sides are convinced they're about to lose, they're both right.
41. Professional soldiers are predictable; the world is full of dangerous amateurs.
42. When your fear of the plane overcomes your fear of the ejection seat, its time to "punch out."
43. Military Intelligence is a contradiction.
44. Fortify your front; you'll get your rear shot up.
45. The more a weapon costs, the farther you will have to send it away to be repaired.
46. Weather ain't neutral.
47. If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.
48. Air defense motto: shoot 'em down; sort 'em out on the ground.
49. 'Flies high, it dies; low and slow, it'll go.
50. The Cavalry doesn't always come to the rescue.
51. Napalm is an area support weapon.
52. Mines are equal opportunity weapons.
53. B-52s are the ultimate close support weapon.
54. Sniper's motto: reach out and touch someone.
55. Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.
56. The one item you need is always in short supply.
57. Interchangeable parts aren't.
58. It's not the one [bullet] with your name on it; it's the one [bullet or shrapnel] addressed "to whom it may concern" or "occupant" that you've got to worry about.
59. When in doubt, empty your magazine.
60. The side with the simplest uniforms wins. [Corollary: The army with the smartest dress uniform will lose.]
61. Combat will occur on the ground between two adjoining maps...printed at different scales.
62. If the Platoon Sergeant can see you, so can the enemy.
63. Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, never stay awake when you can sleep.
64. The most dangerous thing in the world is a Second Lieutenant with a map and a compass.
65. Exceptions prove the rule, and destroy the battle plan.
66. Everything always works in your HQ, everything always fails in the Colonel's HQ.
67. The enemy never watches until you make a mistake.
68. One enemy soldier is never enough, but two is entirely too many.
69. A clean (and dry) set of BDU's is a magnet for mud and rain. -
70. The worse the weather, the more you are required to be out in it.
71. Whenever you have plenty of ammo, you never miss. Whenever you are low on ammo, you can't hit the broad side of a barn.
72. The complexity of a weapon is inversely proportional to the IQ of the weapon's operator.
73. Field experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
74. No matter which way you have to march, its always uphill.
75. If enough data is collected, a board of inquiry can prove anything.
76. For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. (in boot camp)
77. Airstrikes always overshoot the target, artillery always falls short.
78. When reviewing the radio frequencies that you just wrote down, the most important ones are always illegible.
79. Those who hesitate under fire usually do not end up KIA or WIA.
80. The tough part about being an officer is that the troops don't know what they want, but they know for certain what they don't want.
81. To steal information from a person is called plagiarism. To steal information from the enemy is called gathering intelligence.
82. The weapon that usually jams when you need it the most is the M60.
83. The perfect officer for the job will transfer in the day after that billet is filled by someone else.
84. When you have sufficient supplies & ammo, the enemy takes 2 weeks to attack. When you are low on supplies & ammo the enemy decides to attack that night.
85. The newest and least experienced soldier will usually win the Medal of Honor.
86. A Purple Heart just proves that were you smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.
87. Murphy was a grunt.
88. Beer Math -- "2 beers times 37 men equals 49 cases. "
89. Body count Math -- "3 guerrillas plus 1 probable plus 2 pigs equals 37 enemies killed in action. " -
90. The bursting radius of a hand grenade is always one foot greater than your jumping range. [Corollary: The effective radius of a hand grenade is greater the average grunt can throw it.]
91. All-weather close air support doesn't work in bad weather.
92. The combat worth of a unit is inversely proportional to the smartness of its outfit and appearance.
93. The crucial round is a dud.
94. Every command which can be misunderstood, will be.
95. There is no such place as a convenient foxhole.
96. Don't ever be the first, don't ever be the last and don't ever volunteer to do anything.
97. If your positions are firmly set and you are prepared to take the enemy assault on, he will bypass you.
98. If your ambush is properly set, the enemy won't walk into it.
99. If your flank march is going well, the enemy expects you to outflank him.
100. Density of fire increases proportionally to the curiousness of the target.15. The enemy invariably
101. Odd objects attract fire - never lurk behind one. [Corollary: Odd objects attract fire -- you are odd.]
102. The more stupid the leader is, the more important missions he is ordered to carry out.
103. The self-importance of a superior is inversely proportional to his position in the hierarchy (as is his deviousness and mischievousness).
104. There is always a way, and it usually doesn't work.
105. Success occurs when no one is looking, failure occurs when the General is watching.
106. The enemy never monitors your radio frequency until you broadcast on an unsecured channel.
107. Whenever you drop your equipment in a fire-fight, your ammo and grenades always fall the farthest away, and your canteen always lands at your feet.
108. As soon as you are served hot chow in the field, it rains.
109. Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do.
110. The seriousness of a wound (in a fire-fight) is inversely proportional to the distance to any form of cover.
111. Walking point = sniper bait.
112. Your bivouac for the night is the spot where you got tired of marching that day.
113. If only one solution can be found for a field problem, then it is usually a stupid solution.
114. The buddy system is essential to your survival; it gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at.
115. The Quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small.
116. If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap.
117. The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used on abandoned positions.
118. There is nothing more satisfying than having someone take a shot at you, and miss.
119. All battles are fought uphill.
120. All battles are fought in the rain.
121. "Logistics is the ball and chain of armoured warfare." -- Heinz Guderian
122. What gets you promoted from one rank, gets you killed in the next rank.
123. "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." -- General George Patton
124. If orders can be misunderstood, they have been.
125. "War is like love. To triumph, you must make contact." -- attributed to Napoleon
126. "Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank." -- Karl von Clausewitz
127. Never reinforce failure. Failure reinforces itself.
128. "Only 5% of an intelligence report is accurate. The trick of a good commander is to isolate the 5%." -- General Douglas MacArthur
129. When a front line soldier overhears two General Staff officers conferring, he's fallen back too far.
130. It isn't necessary to be an idiot to be a senior officer, but it sure helps.
131. "No captain can do very wrong who places his ship alongside that of the enemy." -- Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson
132. "Only numbers can annihilate." -- Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson
133. Always know when to get out of "Dodge". [Corollary: Always know how to get out of "Dodge".]
134. Priorities are made by officers, not God. There's a difference.
135. Always honor a threat.
136. The weight of all your equipment is proportional to the cube of the time you have been carrying it.
137. "Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant." -- Charles Edward Montague
138. Fighter pilots make movies; attack pilots make history.
139. There are two kinds of naval vessels: submarines and targets.
140. "A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost." -- Ferdinand Foch (Principles de Guerre)
141. "Surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of a commander." -- Jerry Pournelle
142. "All warfare is based upon deception." -- Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
143. "A little caution outflanks a large cavalry." -- Otto von Bismark
144. The enemy diversion you are ignoring is the main attack.
145. Radios function perfectly until you need fire support.
146. If you take more than your fair share of objectives, you will have more than your fair share to take.
147. Parade ground inspections are to combat readiness as mess hall food is to cuisine.
148. "Snow is not neutral." -- Frunze Military Academy Maxim
149. The tank is a monument to the inaccuracy of indirect fire.
150. "Diplomacy has rarely been able to gain at the conference table what cannot be gained or held on the battlefield." -- General Walter Bedell Smith
151. "War is the unfolding of miscalculations." -- Barbara Tuchman
152. "Perfect is the enemy of good enough." -- Soviet Admiral Gorshkov
153. "He who wants to defend everything defends nothing." -- Frederick the Great
154. If they're shooting at you, its a high intensity conflict.
155. Artillery add dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl.
156. Minefields are not neutral. They attack both enemies.
157. Your mortar barrage will put exactly one round on the intended target. That round will be a dud.
158. The mortar team will always have the correct number of safety pins to prove they armed all the rounds. [Corollary: To ensure this, the mortar teams always carry extra pins.]
159. More aircraft are incapacitated by a shortage of spare parts than by enemy action.
160. The enemy attacks on two occasions: 1) when they're ready, 2) when you're not. -
Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:
read up bro
Why don't I break it down further for you?
After repeated
requests the Americans eventually gave us a briefing on condition we didn't say where it came from.
[b]During it we were told that a member of the American special forces, seemingly under great stress, had
requested an air-strike on the Iraqi tanks a mile away from us.
He told the pilot he didnÂ’t have time to give
him a grid reference; though looking back we still canÂ’t see why he was under such pressure.
We were given details of the exchange between the plane and the man on the ground.
The pilot says: "I see a road, I see an intersection, I see vehicles." The man on the ground says "Roger, thatÂ’s your target, youÂ’re cleared to fire." But it was the wrong intersection; the vehicles were ours and those of the Kurdish and the American
special forces we were with. One of them radios up shortly afterwards: “Ceasefire. Ceasefire" he says.
"You’re hitting friendlies. We’ve taken casualties.”
There may well have been recklessness on the part of
some of those involved. But the real problem seemed to be the particular[/colour] [color=red]system of close air support the Americans were using.
It meant they could drop a 1000 pound bomb on such inadequate information. No co-ordinates No grid references.
As you can see, there are multiple factors that led up to the unfortunate bombing of those hapless people. Does the blame rests soley on the shoulders of the pilot? Or does it lie in the system, a lax way of providing information to pilots in a combat situtation?
Viewed from any angle, not just your own myopic one, almost anyone could be blamed for this disaster. But at the end of the day, what did was done? Run lessons to increase pilot competence? Cease all air support? No, they now conducted CAS with a great amount of detailed information now, making sure good intel reaches the pilot before he is told to drop the bomb. And has it worked? Since that incident, aircraft now only bomb under detailed information and the final go-ahead now rests with the operator calling the airstrike. (read stragetypage.org on the AAR on FF incidents, despite a long list of things identified to cause FF, not once did they mention troop/pilot incompetency)
It has been estimated over 50 friendly fire incidents that would have happened on the old SOP were avoided. In any one of these changes did they increase pilot competence above a level then they already are in any way? No, it affected the entire force, both ground and air as a whole.
Avoiding FF is not about getting better pilots, especially in our context when we are already getting as good as we get. It lies in establishing proper procedures to minimise the risk of FF as much as possible.
[/b] -
ST, granted that there have been instances where crazy flying has served its purpose. However, looking your examples, there is one common thread that runs through them: desperate times call for desperate measures.
Sure, I know how to perform emergency braking, but does that mean that I slam on the brakes 25 metres from every red light I come across? That would be plain stupid behaviour, would it not? If you were driving behind someone who does emergency braking unnecessarily, I put it you you that you would not be particularly impressed with his driving skills.
If I were flying over a hot DZ, I wouldn't mind jumping at too high a speed - the situation calls for it. Hell, I wouldn't even mind jumping in a non-DZ. However, if there's no such reason for doing that, I wouldn't care too much for dumb stunts, thank you very much. I've got a difficult enough job to do without some hotshot making sure I've got a whole lot of extra twists in my risers, and having them while I'm almost upside-down to boot. That is just plain uncalled for, and I reserve my right to opine that if the bugger at the wheel was any more of an arsehole, he'd collapse in on himself. If you want to acsribe that to the lack of air legs, I'd like to see that backed up by a pair of wings. In a position where you live with a reasonably high level of risk, such as being a paratrooper or, as in Heng's case, racing cars, the first thing you learn if you're going to be around to learn anything else is that you do not take any unnecessary risks. What you're doing is risky enough as it is, and you don't want to push your luck.
I hold your posting in high enough regard to keep from calling you an armchair Rambo, but I reckon that dog you got there just don't hunt. Your opinion is that a few black sheep are rapidly weeded out under a merciless system. Unfortunately, there are three fellows I know off who just happen to be too dead at this present point in time to heartily disagree with you. I myself happen to be alive enough to offer a different perspective, not gleaned from tidied-up written reports but from personal experience. I put it to you that the selection and training system has not weeded out idiots who cannot perform what every licensed driver is expected to do - monitor and control their speed.
I reiterate my original point: I hope that our CAS pilots are better than our chopper and C-130 pilots. Logically speaking, if a pilot were the best amongst his peers, it is unlikely that he would be flying a trash-hauler. Let's get one thing straight. I'm not saying that our air force is incompetent - I have not seen the best of the lot and as such cannot present an opinion of the overall situation. However, I do know the runts of the litter and their work, and the minimum standard that they represent is far from impressive. -
Originally posted by Gedanken:
As I said, are the three dead people a result of being unfortunate to have a sloppy chopper driver at their helm at that day, or is it the result of the general quality of the airforce? If the system did not weed out most of the pilots that were taking dumb risks or did not know to monitor speed, would there not be hundreds of dead people not able to agree with me, and not just three.
I hold your posting in high enough regard to keep from calling you an armchair Rambo, but I reckon that dog you got there just don't hunt. Your opinion is that a few black sheep are rapidly weeded out under a merciless system. Unfortunately, there are three fellows I know off who just happen to be too dead at this present point in time to heartily disagree with you. I myself happen to be alive enough to offer a different perspective, not gleaned from tidied-up written reports but from personal experience. I put it to you that the selection and training system has not weeded out idiots who cannot perform what every licensed driver is expected to do - monitor and control their speed.
I reiterate my original point: I hope that our CAS pilots are better than our chopper and C-130 pilots. Logically speaking, if a pilot were the best amongst his peers, it is unlikely that he would be flying a trash-hauler. Let's get one thing straight. I'm not saying that our air force is incompetent - I have not seen the best of the lot and as such cannot present an opinion of the overall situation. However, I do know the runts of the litter and their work, and the minimum standard that they represent is far from impressive.[b][/b]
From each accident the RSAF learns many lessons that it puts into application, can this be said to be the same of many accidents that happened in the army, of which have yet to be addressed?
I put it across from the high number of sucessful jumps and insertions we have had in proportion to the number of accidents, we are not having a more reckless air force then usual. Personal opinions on isolated incidents can lie, but numbers do not.
Granted, Nathan apparently fails to see this distinction. If our CAS pilots were as incompetent as he would like to see it as, he would have been a smoking bomb crater at a life fire exercise by now.
And of course, if you really think that our transport pilots are in general sloppy, and taking unnecessary risks it is always your responsibility to make your misgivings to make sure those jokers don't get away with it. After all, those craft and men are an expensive investiment and those who put them at risk will not get away with it.
I don't know about you, my guards friends don't seem to have any problem with the chopper drivers on their part. So is this endemic? I doubt it.
And what exactly is impressive work anyway? An SIA like flight as free of bumps as possible?
Of course, all I want is to get from point A to point B safely, and make sure they don't drop the ropes before I get off. If they can do that, I don't care what stunts they pull, as long as the bottom line is I'll get their safe and sound. -
If this is your brilliant response, that I assume that you have conceeded defeat.Originally posted by NathanG5:read up bro
While I have patently proven each and every one of your fallacies carefully and pointed out the real issue at hand, that FF is a result of large amount of factors, almost all of which have little, if anything to do with pilot incompetence at all, on the other hand, you have done quite a good job of repeating the same mantra of "It must be the pilot's fault for dropping the bombs." while completely ignoring all the facts that have been presented.
Of course, you quote the spec ops incident to death. It's amazing how you can contuine to cling to the "pilot never radio back" completely ignoring all that led up to the incident... which started with a spec operations operative on the ground who was too hasty to give specific coordinates, confirmed the fire mission and target type, and told the pilot to go ahead to bomb the target.
To insist on blaming the pilot come what may, is prehaps akin to blaming american WW2 tank commanders of being incompetent because they took heavy losses fighting German tanks in their inpotent M4 Shermans that had been designed by a compromise committe. And make grandose claims on how tank commanders should be more competent in fighting German armour. See the real issue here?
You have yet to produce any solid evidence supporting your case of pilot fault except from your vague, personal impressions of the whole incident gleamed from BBC. Ironically, even the BBC operators INVOLVED in the incident hold a far more rational, and objective view of the incident then you do. Just look at their report.
If you think I haven't been reading up, I urge you then, for my and everybody's benefit, post the links here. Other then that, your opinions of this incident and it's credibility as an argument is as thin as figurative paper. Airchair generals make hotheaded, simplistic claims, true soldiers acess the true, tatical picyure.
It would behoove you to stop shadow boxing, it's far more productive then posting irrational thoughts followed by more irrational reasons pulled out of thin air to support them. -
So what's the magic number for fatalities, ST? 100? 1000? How many deaths is it going to take to get your head out of the sand and see that idiots are still slipping through the net? If anything, it is the skill of the jumpers, and their ability to deal with less-than-optimal jumping conditions, that's keeping the accident rates down.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:As I said, are the three dead people a result of being unfortunate to have a sloppy chopper driver at their helm at that day, or is it the result of the general quality of the airforce? If the system did not weed out most of the pilots that were taking dumb risks or did not know to monitor speed, would there not be hundreds of dead people not able to agree with me, and not just three.
From each accident the RSAF learns many lessons that it puts into application, can this be said to be the same of many accidents that happened in the army, of which have yet to be addressed?
I put it across from the high number of sucessful jumps and insertions we have had in proportion to the number of accidents, we are not having a more reckless air force then usual. Personal opinions on isolated incidents can lie, but numbers do not.
Granted, Nathan apparently fails to see this distinction. If our CAS pilots were as incompetent as he would like to see it as, he would have been a smoking bomb crater at a life fire exercise by now.
And of course, if you really think that our transport pilots are in general sloppy, and taking unnecessary risks it is always your responsibility to make your misgivings to make sure those jokers don't get away with it. After all, those craft and men are an expensive investiment and those who put them at risk will not get away with it.
I don't know about you, my guards friends don't seem to have any problem with the chopper drivers on their part. So is this endemic? I doubt it.
And what exactly is impressive work anyway? An SIA like flight as free of bumps as possible?
Of course, all I want is to get from point A to point B safely, and make sure they don't drop the ropes before I get off. If they can do that, I don't care what stunts they pull, as long as the bottom line is I'll get their safe and sound.
And do you know numbers that the rest of us don't? Or are these the official pronouncements in the Straits Times? Teo Chee Hean himself said that there would be a new era of transparency in the SAF. The implication here is that this transparency was hitherto not present. Hell, you have just written yourself that many incidents in the Army have yet to be addressed - how could you blind yourself to the possibility that the same thing happens in the Air Force? Your so-called helicopter view is therefore likely to based on partial information. I'm under no illusions that my view from personal experience is limited in scope, but you seem to mistakenly think you have the big picture. Fine, you say that personal opinions can lie, but if I'm a liar, you're a fool.
I see in your statements that you use words like "most" and "usual". Such terms only appear adequate when you're in a comfortable position. When your life is on the line, relative terms like that don't count for much.
Maybe you're being deliberately obtuse, but which part of my post don't you understand? The pros don't need to get their jollies off by taking unnecessary risks.
I'm not sure if you recall the long debate on the drowning incident. I made the same point then as I do now, and it was directed at men from my own unit: being a professional means that you can do the job without having to be gung-ho about it. We leave the gung-ho antics to the amatuers who feel they need to prove something. A man who can do exactly what he is trained to do without creating extra drama is one I can respect. If a Charlie pilot can get me to the drop zone and keep his airspeed at 115 while he's dropping us, that's precision flying. If he goes to 135, he's just showing me that he doesn't know what he's doing.
If you're wasting time on the gung-ho antics, the only thing it means is that you're getting away from what your job is supposed to be. Our boys used to giggle ourselves stupid when we were doing OPs in BTEC exercises. The boys in the other units would make a big show on the approach to the target, and by the time the first shot was fired, they were too tired to put up a proper fight. All that Hollywood stuff is for amatuers - the guys who do the real work, you wouldn't know if you met them on the street. -
Exactly my point. The truth is, is the entire air force made out of jokers and is the air force actively condoning this mindset and behaviour?Originally posted by Gedanken:So what's the magic number for fatalities, ST? 100? 1000? How many deaths is it going to take to get your head out of the sand and see that idiots are still slipping through the net? If anything, it is the skill of the jumpers, and their ability to deal with less-than-optimal jumping conditions, that's keeping the accident rates down.[/quote]
Ahem, actually if you look at the most common cause of jumper injury, it usually stems from mistakes on their own part. Jumping too heavy and decending fast 23+ ft/sec,And do you know numbers that the rest of us don't? Or are these the official pronouncements in the Straits Times?
Actually to get a good grip on the paramilitary accident numbers, I advice you to read up the stats that can be easily obtained from the public domain, stragetypage is a good place to start.
Once you have the numbers, you'll know who to blame and what to fix, the problem here is that people who have no more understanding of the entire issue besides, as you have put it, "an armchair rambo" understanding of the issue gleamed from CNN, you're going to have a problem. Why? Because the real issue is completely missed and blame is heaped on the hapless recipent.
Consider the case of Nathan, after which even any half-blind person can see that the "spec ops" friendly fire incident was caused by a number of aggrivated factors, vauge information and just plain poor SOP, he can still come out and point fingers at the pilot, whoes actual involvement in the events that led up to the bombing is anything but comprehensive.
Unfortunately, hotheads with such a poor understanding of the issue such as himself are the ones who are going to get us killed in war.
Teo Chee Hean himself said that there would be a new era of transparency in the SAF. The implication here is that this transparency was hitherto not present. Hell, you have just written yourself that many incidents in the Army have yet to be addressed - how could you blind yourself to the possibility that the same thing happens in the Air Force?
If you have bothered to pull yourself out of viewing things in terms of "them and us", you would have grasped my point a long, long time ago, that this is not about changing things in the army or the air force piecemeal, the real solution to FF is to address it on the level of the entire SAF. The problem lies with you taking the myopic view of viewing each and every incident on the cellular level without having a real prespective on all the complex, interrelated factors that come into play.
Is it any surprise that your "soulutions" have been grandose, but ultimately ineffective? Diddling around with the vauge notion of "pilot competence" as a cure all for accidents?
If you want me to write on what can be addressed in the air force, no problem, they have just about as many things to fix in terms of SOP and chain of command. But pilot competence has yet to be a serious problem for them.Your so-called helicopter view is therefore likely to based on partial information. I'm under no illusions that my view from personal experience is limited in scope, but you seem to mistakenly think you have the big picture. Fine, you say that personal opinions can lie, but if I'm a liar, you're a fool.
Refer to my above point.
And yes, it would behoove you to base your case on actual information, partial as it might be, then to draw from your personal opinion and experience. For wars are won and lost in the big picture.I see in your statements that you use words like "most" and "usual". Such terms only appear adequate when you're in a comfortable position. When your life is on the line, relative terms like that don't count for much.
For your information, I do encounter a certain amount of risk to know about how to use these words.
Your life is on the line everytime you cross the road, would you still use the words "most" and "usual"
And my position is hardly relative, because it is a hard fact that troops who jump out of a C-130 or decend from a helicopter do so most of the time without incident. And when injuries do happen, a large proportion of it is due to factors that have little to do with piloting. This leaves a very small number of actual pilot causes, and out of these, we can split them up into, unintended human error, circumstances, and finally incompetence.
How much of it is actually incompetence?
The problem is, I see little reason to attack the issue of jump injuries by addressing pilot incompetence itself when spending a tons of time and resources just to completley patch up that area until you have infalliable pilots is nonsensical when it does not reduce the actual number of jump/rope fatalities by a lot. I would rather, as the SAF is doing, attack the problem as a whole by becoming more transparent, being merciless with jokers who play dice with people's lives and establishing better operating procedures to avoid such mishaps.
The fact that the rope incident does not happen every season means that this is a one-off incident, and not a problem we should split hairs over.
Maybe you're being deliberately obtuse, but which part of my post don't you understand? The pros don't need to get their jollies off by taking unnecessary risks.
Are they taking unnecessary risks? Why don't you ask them who know their stuff if they are taking unnecessary risks? Instead of blithely complaining from your prespective of a ground troop? If you know any air force friends, ask them about what would happen to the crew and their mates if one of them happened to mess up.
Unlike the commandos, the air force certainly does not have an atmosphere that encourages or condones mindless risk taking with lives and equipment.I'm not sure if you recall the long debate on the drowning incident. I made the same point then as I do now, and it was directed at men from my own unit: being a professional means that you can do the job without having to be gung-ho about it. We leave the gung-ho antics to the amatuers who feel they need to prove something. A man who can do exactly what he is trained to do without creating extra drama is one I can respect.
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Yes and I have no intention of contradicting myself.
The problem is that you are on the micro level, while I am addressing this issue on the macro level. Is the air force in general filled with gung ho jokers or with people who know their stuff? I leave that up to you.[b]If a Charlie pilot can get me to the drop zone and keep his airspeed at 115 while he's dropping us, that's precision flying. If he goes to 135, he's just showing me that he doesn't know what he's doing.
You have stated this time and again and I say for the multiple of a time that I agree with you. Such a pilot who does so on purpose against established procedure whould not be knowing what he was doing.
And by the way, have you considered why these pilots fly too fast at times when it is THEIR PERROGRATIVE to keep within the speed limit? Have you considered problems like tailwinds, thermals, and unseen air currents they have to grapple with when flying or do you automatically assume they are incompetent or trying to be funny?
By the way, I have no vested interest or bias in the air force to defend them.
[quote]If you're wasting time on the gung-ho antics, the only thing it means is that you're getting away from what your job is supposed to be. Our boys used to giggle ourselves stupid when we were doing OPs in BTEC exercises. The boys in the other units would make a big show on the approach to the target, and by the time the first shot was fired, they were too tired to put up a proper fight. All that Hollywood stuff is for amatuers - the guys who do the real work, you wouldn't know if you met them on the street.
I hardly think so. Most of the dudes in the air force are exactly the person next door who takes their job seriously, along with the responsibility they carry with them. It is no crime for a pilot to be cocky or take pride in his profession, or we should be condemming a lot of the 101st Airborne paratroopers. But while I he is cocky, he should and jolly well be knowing his stuff and living up to that reputation.
Do I have any respect professionally for pilots who fail that? Of course not. I am defending the large majority who do their job right, and on them should the reputation of the air force be based.
Seriously, the sentiment of the big bad air force versus the poor defenseless grunt who labours to protect his way of life is becoming ridiculusly overplayed here.