US Pilot achieve a whole new level of fail

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The USAF and it's parent service the USAAF have always been feared for their ability to deliver destruction on a massive scale but all their best work is for their friends.

They managed to half-deafen John Simpson, they have destroyed British and even American armoured vehicles but now a new level of achievement...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34435238

They hit a hospital they had the GPS co-ordinates for, not once but multiple times.

That's just a special kind of fail, it really is, and I am genuinely disgusted by the loss of life caused by American stupidity and incompetence.

[Montmorency]

One has to note the style of your post.

Are you making up for Kadagar's departure or something?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

One has to note the style of your post.

Are you making up for Kadagar's departure or something?

I feel it's more that my acidic side is no longer overshadowed by Kadagar's

I mean, come on.

This really is a special kind of stupid, if it weren't so distasteful I've actually put money on this being an American pilot.

[Hooahguy]

A tragic mistake. But its war, mistakes happen. I will wait for the details of the investigation to be released before passing judgement. Not the first time either: last year, a bomber accidentally dropped a bomb on a special forces team and killed 5 Americans, and the bomber had their coordinates with marking devices too. I highly doubt it was malicious. The city, Kunduz, is currently being contested by Afghan and Taliban forces. According to the Afghan interior ministry, per your link, there were Taliban who went into the hospital. Most likely the coordinates were given to the pilots who probably didnt think to check if there was a hospital there or not, setting the stage for this tragedy.

[Husar]

Well, I doubt the pilot has all the coordinates for everything. The general involved apparently said the airstrike was called by U.S. service members assisting nearby Afghan forces, I also read somewhere that Afghan security forces insisted there was a fight around the hospital with fighters inside it while doctors said there was no fight in or around the hospital. Apparently the Afghan forces are also not very fond of the hospital as it treats all wounded people equally, including Taliban it seems. There is a severe lack of details, but to blame it all on the pilot alone might be a bit much, he probably just received some coordinates and couldn't make out the details of what was going on himself. There are usually a lot more people involved than just the pilot. And even if the first hit was a pilot error, why was it not corrected after the hospital notified the US military? Or are you saying the base told the pilot that he just hit a hospital and then he intentionally dropped more bombs onto it? Surely there were more issues.

[Strike For The South]

It's sad but not surprising. The tech has outstripped USAF personnel

[Veho Nex]

It's a war and to call out a single pilot as "a whole new level of fail" just... doesn't work. There are scores and possibles hundreds of factors that come into play with what happened and placing the entire level of blame on one man who is doing his job is just wrong.

Do people point a finger at terrorist when they blow people away and say wow look at that big ol' fail right dar. No, they don't. They say it's a tragedy and that something must be done then if a country goes to do something it becomes a big deal. Look at this super power putting . America put its fist into a hornets nest when they went into the middle east. The whole thing is a fuster cluck.

Hating America or it's service men and women gets no where. I wouldn't put it past guerrilla fighters to fight near schools and hospitals in the hopes they can use it as propaganda when something goes wrong. Which always happens in battle and war. This is a lose-lose situation. That's what I would do in a war of popularity. If America pulls out, they are condemned for destabilizing a section of the globe. If they stay in they are an imperialist state bent on destruction.

You come up with a way to get American troops out of the middle east and back home where they belong without throwing a wrench into global politics and I guarantee you a Nobel peace prize. When the middle east falls there is going to be a bigger war. When that war starts there is going to be some serious consequences as our paper and matchstick house falls down.

[a completely inoffensive name]

US pilot hits hospital while trying to fight Islamic extremists: fail.

UK gives free room and services to Islamic extremists that make the boat trip: Major Fail

[wooly_mammoth]

They probably did it on purpose anyway for some dark & secretive reasons.

[Fragony]

Can't blame the pilot, he probably feels very bad right now, he got the coordinates and did what he does.

[Gilrandir]

The same goes for Russian planes:
http://home.bt.com/news/world-news/r...11364008741005

in which

The Observatory said that Russian warplanes struck a hospital in the mountains of the coastal province of Latakia causing damage but no casualties.

International charity group Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, said the hospital was formerly run by the group but has since been handed over to local medical groups.

"What we can confirm is that the hospital has been damaged by strikes, but the staff has been able to evacuate safely and there are no causalities," said Yazan Al-Saadi, MSF's spokeswoman in Beirut.

[Fragony]

Odd job, I wonder how they deal with these mistakes, I would be devestaded if I was the one who pressed the button, knowing that I could also be killing innocent people. I couldn't do that I am much too much a pancy for that. I am a total hypocrate though, I am to soft to do it myself but I am glad some aren't.

[Gilrandir]

Odd job, I wonder how they deal with these mistakes, I would be devestaded if I was the one who pressed the button, knowing that I could also be killing innocent people. I couldn't do that I am much too much a pancy for that. I am a total hypocrate though, I am to soft to do it myself but I am glad some aren't.

Russian military seem to have little scruples about such things, think of MH-17.

[Fisherking]

The USAF and it's parent service the USAAF have always been feared for their ability to deliver destruction on a massive scale but all their best work is for their friends.

They managed to half-deafen John Simpson, they have destroyed British and even American armoured vehicles but now a new level of achievement...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34435238

They hit a hospital they had the GPS co-ordinates for, not once but multiple times.

That's just a special kind of fail, it really is, and I am genuinely disgusted by the loss of life caused by American stupidity and incompetence.

Ask US combat veterans what they think of the Air Force and why they often refer to it as the Air Farce. The only ones who will generally get a positive response are the A-10 jockeys. The ones the Air Force is trying so hard to get rid of. Other than the A-10s they much prefer when Navy or Marine air support is available.

In their long line of mistakes, how does this stack up next to bombing the Chinese Embassy?

This was Afghanistan, the Air Campaign in Iraq has not gone much better. Their supply drops to resistance fighters all seem to land on IS positions and friendly fire incidents are high. As usual their claims of destruction are wildly exaggerated and can not be substantiated.

Not that it would help much but I would just roll them back into the army and try to start anew.

[Fragony]

Russian military seem to have little scruples about such things, think of MH-17.

That was probably a clusterfuck of mistakes and neglect of warnings, I suspect no intentional harm myself but I could be wrong of course. Fact is, the Dutch government never warned anyone that it wasn't safe to fly there. The minister who was responsible fled to a fake-job in the EU the second he could. Don't want to patt myself on the back but I was really suspicious about the stories of the rebels looting from the start, they were actually just as amazed as we were and they returned almost everytihing. I don't understand what's really is going on, disclaimer de moi

Give this man an Oscar, great acting if you already knew these anti-aircraft systems were there. This open-solicitian wasn't enough for a job at the UN, but the EU will do, he gets to shake hands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eok2sWgMcV4

He even lied about oxigyne-masks being found, total narcism and complete nonsense

[Crandar]

It's ok guys, just an accident. Nothing to see, here, so let's all refocus on how ruthlessly Russia bombs the poor moderate salafists.

[Fragony]

But it probably was just a mistake, from the footage of the rebels ariving at the crashsite you can only conclude that they never wanted to shoot down a passenger-plane. I am a bit dissapointed really, everybody drawed conclusions, the guy who was holding a toy couldd have also meant 'look ai this' instead of 'look at what we just did'. I must be the only idiot on the world. Whoever did it, I think it was just a mistake. That plane shouldn't have been there, that's the real mistake.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I've seen documentaries about the air force. They practically use Xbox controllers for planes and drones nowadays. The pilot may have just been a PlayStation fan boy all his life.

[Brenus]

Yeap. And forget about former colleague of Médecins Sans Frontières. Who will call the families?

And if MSF decided to stay t is probably because NO insurgents no in the neighborhood.
By experience, I know this organisation evacuates when real big danger is coming close, and Talibans are fulfilling the description.
I can't find which MSF was there? Some articles point to MSF USA.

By experience I in a very good place to say it doesn't always avoid casualties.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I was pretty angry last night, so angry I couldn't write a coherent thread title - I have calmed slightly now.

You're right - we can't blame just the pilot, unless he's the Squadron leader who really SHOULD know all the areas not to bomb in his area of operations.

This actually isn't all that hard - throw up a map on the projector of the local area - mark the bits not to bomb like hospitals, embassies etc - give everyone the GPS co-ordinates.

So, actually, I feel like the pilot should have twigged and this wasn't one bomb, they made multiple runs so it wasn't "collateral damage" this was a deliberate attack which means someone picked the wrong target.

Anyway, for the USAF this is a new level of fail because with all the money spent on hi-tech gear this shouldn't be possible.

[Hooahguy]

This actually isn't all that hard - throw up a map on the projector of the local area - mark the bits not to bomb like hospitals, embassies etc - give everyone the GPS co-ordinates.

Unless you are experienced in the world of combat aviation and the things that go along with it I think we shouldnt really be saying what would be easy or not. Maybe they have a system like that in place but something went wrong. I will wait for the investigation.

Also a wonderfully relevant satire piece: ISAF Drops Candy To Afghan Children, Kills 51

they made multiple runs so it wasn't "collateral damage" this was a deliberate attack which means someone picked the wrong target.

Collateral damage doesnt mean that the attack itself wasnt deliberate its that certain casualties from the attack were. So for example if a plane dropped a bomb on a Taliban target and the blast killed a nearby civilian, the civilian would be collateral damage.

[rory_20_uk]

It could be tougher to complain about Russia in Syria and how they kill civilians and destabilise the area when they are committing war crimes (if anyone else did it would be open and shut case - let's wait for the excuses to try and wriggle out of this)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Unless you are experienced in the world of combat aviation and the things that go along with it I think we shouldnt really be saying what would be easy or not. Maybe they have a system like that in place but something went wrong. I will wait for the investigation.

No, I think we can say that's easy - the plane has a programmable computer and afaik runs on Linux - the plane has GPS which is doubtless linked into its computer and is the basis of its precision targeting that isn't laser based. One simply writes an app which flags a warning on the pilot's HUD if the plane targets certain GPS co-ordinates. You could get slightly more advanced and have the computer programmed with the blast radius of the plane's weapons, then it could tell the pilot if his attack was likely to cause collateral damage based on whether those GPS coordinates fell within the blast radius.

That's all extremely basic, it doesn't require anything external other than GPS positioning data and relative targeting data.

I know enough about British military operations to know that part of the briefing even for ground forces will include "this is a hospital, do not shell it". To suggest that American briefings do not include a similar section on civilians in the area is to suggest that the American forces have no situational awareness.

Now, to be fair, I've never encountered a British serviceman who would agree with that last proposition - in Iraq they even had a T-shirt "I'm with stupid" and it had UK and US flags on.

Collateral damage doesnt mean that the attack itself wasnt deliberate its that certain casualties from the attack were. So for example if a plane dropped a bomb on a Taliban target and the blast killed a nearby civilian, the civilian would be collateral damage.

Collateral damage means something that was not the target was within the target area, historically "collateral damage" was restricted to damaged buildings and then you tallied the "civilian casualties" separately.

Accidentally attacking a hospital and mistaking it for a legitimate target is gross incompetence and someone should be receiving a dishonourable discharge - either the pilot or the squadron commander.

Deliberately attacking a hospital, even one held by the enemy, is a war crime and everyone who knew it was in hospital should go to prison.

[rvg]

That's just a special kind of fail, it really is, and I am genuinely disgusted by the loss of life caused by American stupidity and incompetence.

Mea culpa. We screwed up real bad this time. I do expect to see someone demoted over this.

[Hooahguy]

No, I think we can say that's easy - the plane has a programmable computer and afaik runs on Linux - the plane has GPS which is doubtless linked into its computer and is the basis of its precision targeting that isn't laser based. One simply writes an app which flags a warning on the pilot's HUD if the plane targets certain GPS co-ordinates. You could get slightly more advanced and have the computer programmed with the blast radius of the plane's weapons, then it could tell the pilot if his attack was likely to cause collateral damage based on whether those GPS coordinates fell within the blast radius.

That's all extremely basic, it doesn't require anything external other than GPS positioning data and relative targeting data.

I know enough about British military operations to know that part of the briefing even for ground forces will include "this is a hospital, do not shell it". To suggest that American briefings do not include a similar section on civilians in the area is to suggest that the American forces have no situational awareness.

Thank you, expert on GPS and targeting practices, it truly must be that simple!

Collateral damage means something that was not the target was within the target area, historically "collateral damage" was restricted to damaged buildings and then you tallied the "civilian casualties" separately.

I literally just said that, no need to clarify.

Accidentally attacking a hospital and mistaking it for a legitimate target is gross incompetence and someone should be receiving a dishonourable discharge - either the pilot or the squadron commander.

Deliberately attacking a hospital, even one held by the enemy, is a war crime and everyone who knew it was in hospital should go to prison.

No argument here.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Thank you, expert on GPS and targeting practices, it truly must be that simple!

Please, find a way to make it more complicated - then you can become a defence contractor.

Think about it - your computer can do this in a virtual world using internal positioning data - a computer can't tell the difference between "real" and "virtual" it just runs the numbers, the only limit to the effectiveness of the system is the accuracy of GPS data (not a problem) and the accuracy of intel (often a problem).

However, in this instance it seems pretty clear that, actually, the Coalition must have known there was a hospital there.

There's the further question of why they're destroying buildings in a friendly city

[Hooahguy]

Please, find a way to make it more complicated - then you can become a defence contractor.

Think about it - your computer can do this in a virtual world using internal positioning data - a computer can't tell the difference between "real" and "virtual" it just runs the numbers, the only limit to the effectiveness of the system is the accuracy of GPS data (not a problem) and the accuracy of intel (often a problem).

However, in this instance it seems pretty clear that, actually, the Coalition must have known there was a hospital there.

Well considering neither of us are programmers for military jets (we dont even know what kind of plane it was, it could have been an older one with older targeting software), I will leave this up to the experts. Which neither of us are.

There's the further question of why they're destroying buildings in a friendly city

You clearly havent been reading any news reports about the conflict until now, have you? Kunduz was recently taken by the Taliban after the Afghan army (expectedly) ran away from the fight. Now the Afghan army (with coalition help) are trying to retake it. The city is far from peaceful at the moment.

[CrossLOPER]

“essentially a 360 degree anti-personnel mine full of chocolate flechettes.”

Brilliant, delicious bodily harm.

[Montmorency]

Brilliant, delicious bodily harm.

Following the press conference, Col. Marshall tried to exit the podium, but tripped and crashed into a group of civilians, killing 9.

Similarly:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well considering neither of us are programmers for military jets (we dont even know what kind of plane it was, it could have been an older one with older targeting software), I will leave this up to the experts. Which neither of us are.

I don't claim to be an expert but I know enough to understand that GPS is data you can always get to inform your targeting.

Re age - I dug this up from 1999:

http://www.navsys.com/papers/9906003.pdf

Wikipedia is also helpful here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missil...#GOLIS_systems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision-guided_munition

"The precision of these weapons is dependent both on the precision of the measurement system used for location determination and the precision in setting the coordinates of the target. The latter critically depends on intelligence information, not all of which is accurate. According to a CIA report, the accidental United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during Operation Allied Force by NATO aircraft was attributed to faulty target information.[13] However, if the targeting information is accurate, satellite-guided weapons are significantly more likely to achieve a successful strike in any given weather conditions than any other type of precision-guided munition."

So you have a GPS guided system where human operators, in the air or on the ground, are inputing the wrong co-ordinates. At whatever stage you are inputing said co-ordinates it would be trivial to insert a stage which checks against a list of "invalid" targets, taking into account munition type and blast radius, and returns a red flag.

That's really basic computing.

You clearly havent been reading any news reports about the conflict until now, have you? Kunduz was recently taken by the Taliban after the Afghan army (expectedly) ran away from the fight. Now the Afghan army (with coalition help) are trying to retake it. The city is far from peaceful at the moment.

No - I have, and it's a valid question. Why are we destroying infrastructure in a friendly city we are trying to recapture?