Some interesting information on friendly fire.
"The rate of friendly fire deaths for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is substantially lower than in other major military conflicts, a decline that Army officials attribute to better training and high-tech equipment.
Over the past four years, 17 soldiers have died in friendly fire incidents such as the one that killed former professional football player Pat Tillman, according to Army data.
The 17 soldiers felled by friendly fire incidents are about 1 percent of the 1,575 soldiers who have died overall. More than 2,500 Americans from all services have died in the two conflicts.
The 1 percent rate is well below that of Operation Desert Storm, when 17 percent of all service members who died were killed by friendly fire. Rates for World War II, Vietnam and the invasions of Grenada and Panama also were higher than the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
So far, the 2004 death of Tillman, an Army Ranger and corporal, during a firefight near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has been the only one in the war to trigger a formal criminal investigation. Army officials said its Criminal Investigation Command has reviewed other incidents, and some reprimands or administrative punishments have been handed out.
Officials said they could not provide details on those reprimands, including how many there have been.
Of the 17 deaths caused by U.S. or other coalition allies, 10 were in Iraq and seven in Afghanistan. They occurred in 11 incidents.
Pentagon spokesman Paul Boyce said friendly fire deaths have decreased because of increased training, better leadership and new technology that makes it easier to identify forces."
from AP:
http://www.newsobserver.com/689/story/417179.html
In CBC.ca regarding the recent Canadian soldier killed by US Warthog:
"NATO spokesman Mark Laity said the force's soldiers flew in roughly 800 missions during the past month and used their weapons in about 450 of them — without killing any allies until now.
"It shows you how rare [friendly fire] is," Laity said.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/09/04/afghanfriendly.html?print
Given the thousands of sorties flown by USA and high reliance on airpower in nearly every contact with the enemy, the rates are low and getting better all the time.
