A rchive Date
[ 05-08-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Britain ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/01/06/8996-ap.html
Retired officer says British soldiers at risk from `friendly' fire in combat
Mon, January 6, 2003
LONDON (AP) - A retired British army officer who lost nine soldiers to U.S. gunfire during the Persian Gulf War on Monday accused the government of failing to protect its troops from "friendly fire" in a possible conflict against Iraq.
The retired officer, Lt.-Col. Andrew Larpent, said British soldiers should not fight alongside U.S. forces unless "urgent attention" was given to supplying British front-line vehicles with identification systems.
"We knew 12 years ago that it (friendly fire) was an acute threat to our troops," Larpent told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "The best we could do was to put fluorescent markers on the tops of vehicles in the hope that pilots will identify them as friendly vehicles.
"It seems incredible that 12 years on the only solution we can offer to our troops is probably the same thing," Larpent said.
In a letter published in Monday's edition of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Larpent said the failure to introduce a more advanced protection system "smacks of serious negligence."
"The Ministry of Defence answer - `We are working on it' - is unacceptable," Larpent wrote.
A ministry press official said Monday that "combat identification is an issue that we take very seriously and are always trying to improve. Communications technology is now very much better than in 1990, 1991."
But the official said he didn't know if the ministry had developed technology specifically designed to identify friendly vehicles.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's government is expected to make an announcement this week on what military deployments it plans to increase pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Published reports in British and American newspapers last weekend said Britain will soon send thousands of troops.
In February 1991, nine British soldiers were killed when two U.S. air force A-10 attack aircraft fired on their armoured personnel carriers in southern Iraq. They had mistaken them for an Iraqi target the Americans were trying to destroy 21 kilometres to the east.
Larpent said a brother of one of the soldiers killed is among the troops likely to be deployed if Britain sends forces to the Gulf.
"I think there is a lot of unhappiness among commanders that they have nothing better to offer troops to protect them," Larpent told the BBC.
In the Daily Telegraph, he wrote: "It is essential that urgent attention is given to providing an effective `identification friend from foe' (IFF) system for front-line vehicles as a precondition to the commitment of British forces to close combat operations involving the U.S. air force."
Two U.S. pilots are facing a possible court-martial for accidentally killing four Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan in April.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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