Gulf War: They Didn't Have to Die

By Bruce van Voorst/Washington

The death of a soldier is always tragic, but never more so than when he is mistakenly cut down by his own comrades. Last week the Pentagon confirmed that 35 of the 145 Americans killed in action during Operation Desert Storm, and 72 of the 467 wounded, were victims of "friendly fire." Moreover, U.S. fire destroyed seven M1A1 tanks and 20 of the 25 Bradley Fighting Vehicles lost in battle, and even raked the battleship Missouri. All told, the rate of so- called fratricidal casualties among U.S. troops was 10 times as high as in any other battle recorded during this century.

How could the same high-tech fighting force that plucked enemy missiles out of the sky and sent smart bombs down the Iraqi Air Ministry's ventilation shaft also inflict such carnage on its own troops? The answer lies partly in the circumstances of this particular campaign and partly in the nature of modern warfare. In the words of Marine Corps Lieut. General Martin Brandtner, the Pentagon briefer, the abnormal level of friendly-fire incidents was due to "a combination of featureless desert terrain; large, complex and fast- moving formations; fighting in rain, darkness and low visibility; and the ability to engage targets from long range."

Visibility was a key factor. Not only were there more critical nighttime encounters than ever before, but during heavily overcast days troops relied on infrared heat-sensitive imaging devices that provide only a fuzzy image at great distances. Though the M1A1's new 120-mm cannon was found to be lethal at 3,500 yds., for example, targets were difficult to identify at that range through the infrared optics. Paradoxically, the very effectiveness of America's modern precision-guided munitions made them far more murderous than Iraqi fire when aimed at the wrong target. On one occasion, a depleted-uranium 120-mm cannon round penetrated and exited an Iraqi tank chassis and still had enough power to inflict casualties on a nearby American unit. The laser guidance system on the Hellfire missile, fired from Apache helicopters, almost never missed and accounted for one of the killed Bradley vehicles.

A more basic explanation for the friendly-fire accidents, however, is the failure of all the military services to come to grips with the Identification Friend-or-Foe problem. In 1980 the Pentagon established a joint-services IFF development program at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton; a decade later, there is not much to show for it.

The Desert Storm casualties give these efforts a new urgency. After Army helicopters fired on Marine vehicles in the Khafji battle early in the gulf war, American forces resorted to crude measures like taping inverted V's on friendly vehicles and installing tiny transmitter beacons. But the U.S. has yet to meet the technical challenge of deploying an IFF system that cannot be emulated or neutralized by enemy forces.