A week or so ago I recieved an item in the mail with the following questions attached, and a link to a site called “Out Of The Dark”.
The writer also included a National Post item from April 16th, titled Friendly Fire’s Pain Endures”, about the incident that claimed 4 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. There was a hand written note that asked;
The photos in the paper are not the greatest, either. One can’t see any glowing, shining, light of any kind. So did the government forget to buy the right equipment again??
warrior “glolatce” [sp??] IR chem lights phoenix ir strobes battle reference marking system thermal identification panels
This is way over my head (and not within my time constraints to follow up) …. if nothing else, perhaps some of our military readers can help shed light on this question for a reader.
this is an article from the “Infantry Journal” . . . the website http://www.ducimus.com is the Canadaian Army Infantry site. Ducimus = “follow me” the Cdn Infantry motto.
In very brief summary it says that Canadian soldiers, especially the Infantry, are compromised in doing their jobs because their night vision equipment is old & obsolete.
If there is a link to the bombing accident it is tenuous at best . . .
Still means that Liberals have and are still depriving our troops of proper equipment.
That $4.6 Billiion could have helped out a lot
Cheers . . . Paul
I may be completely misunderstanding the question, but I thought it might relate to a lack of proper devices to mark the field as a night-time exercise.
If the training area wasn’t marked with something a pilot could see, that would be a mistake – but nowhere near as significant as the pilot not knowing he was over a training area. With a pilot like that, I’m not sure marking devices would have helped.
there is part of the article that dicusses the uses (pros & cons) of various marking types, but the link to the Tarnak Farm accident is very stretched.
If some kind of strobes had been used, if the area was marked by IR sensitive tape ( can’t recall if the F16’s involved were LANTERN/FLIR equipped) if . . so many if’s
Not the root cause of the Tarnak Farm accident. Pilot error was the big reason – he broke all the engagement rules.
The article does point out clearly that $ & resources for BASIC equipment are not available for our troops.
Maybe we could get Bombardier to buy back those two Challengers that Cretin scammed the system into buying. $100 million would buy a lot of night vision equipment.
Yeah, I’d forgotten about that part – he was under standing orders to fly away and he said to hell with that idea.
He was previously informed of active training on going in the area and to NOT fire on the target that he requested clearance to fire on. His immediate response after he fired on the target that he was told not to fire on was something like I hope I didn’t f’up.
Egomaniac Tom Cruise wannabe opereating in the fog of war.
Yeah, I remember the f’up part (forgot the part about him being told beforehand about training). I was referring to their standing order to fly away from any area with firing that wasn’t their assigned target.
Can’t say I’d go so far as to convict him of murder or anything along those lines, but he definitely isn’t somebody we want in a cockpit anymore (or for that matter, even behind a desk).
SOP was/is to NOT go below 10000 ft (Safe AAA altitude) and ONLY attack under direct AWACS control. This pilot went very low and ignored AWACS and his Flight commander on the radio to stop . . . he wanted to attack something, anything, although in his mind I am sure he “knew” he was right.
The pilot may have been fatigued, may have been using amphetamines “Go-juice” but regardless, he broke every rule of engagement and Canadain Infantry died.
A tragic mistake, but not an accident.
There have been cases were the equipment hasn’t helped. The first gulf war had a case of an Apache friendly fire incedent were he overrode the equipment to take the shot. He was scared, stressed, and wanted to make sure he took out the target(He was also off course and didn’t realize it). Since then the ROE has been changed, so the markings may, I repeat may, have helped.
Ok I think I’ve got it the Cdn military is recommending this stuff called Glow tape or glint tape, apparently it well glows with a distinct color when viewed through NVG’s, and sounds damn handy for canadians to assume the identity of american soldiers during night fighting exercises. Cynically speaking of course. The other recommendation is a special type of strobe light that also projects in the IR range of light and could be used to identify at longer ranges,several kilometers, friendly locations. This might have helped with preventing the friendly fire incedent, if the pilot was equipped with an NVD. It would have also completely buggered the night fighting exercise, as all night vision devices would have been affected not just the ones looking down from the sky.
D
59 years ago over 100 canadians were killed in a bombing accident in the normandy bridgehead where Americans dropped short.
We wern’t the whiners then we are now. So the pilot screwed up. Yes we should make sure it doesn’t happen again. However it is 4 people who knew the risks when they signed on like I did.
If we were worried about the military we would replace the seaknigs wouldn’t we.
The only thing sadder than the loss of those four Canadians has been the reaction of the country in descending to victimhood. The Canadian killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul?
Not a word about him. Now, if he’d been run over by an American Humvee, that would have been a different story. His mother would have been front and center on parliament hill for remembrance day ceremonies.