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Charges laid in U.S. bombing of Canadians
By Allan Thompson
Ottawa Bureau
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OTTAWA — Four Canadian soldiers killed by an American bomb in Afghanistan would still be alive if the U.S. pilot had followed the rules and waited just 32 seconds for more information, retired Canadian Gen. Maurice Baril said yesterday.
"This is the sad explanation that we had to give to the families, that there should not have been any loss of life there," Baril said in an interview.
His full report on the April 18 "friendly fire" incident near Kandahar that killed four and injured eight other Canadian soldiers was released yesterday. The U.S. defence department announced yesterday that the Illinois National Guard pilot who dropped the bomb, Maj. Harry Schmidt, 37, and his flight commander on the mission, Maj. William Umbach, 43, were both charged by the U.S. military with criminal offences on Sept. 11.
The full transcript of radio conversations between the pilots and air controllers, released for the first time yesterday, shows that only 32 seconds after Schmidt took the hasty decision to drop a 227-kilogram laser-guided bomb, the controller overhead sent back the urgent message to "disengage, friendlies Kandahar," meaning that there were "friendly" forces on the ground.
By then it was too late.
"There were circumstances that put the pilot into a situation that he did not know that there were friendlies on the ground," Baril said. "But it did not give him the right to engage without following the rules of engagement that he was given by his commander, unless he can stand up and explain that he was in mortal danger. And that's not the conclusion of our board."
The two F-16 pilots each face four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of assault. Schmidt is also charged with failing to exercise appropriate flight discipline and not complying with the rules of engagement in Afghanistan. Umbach also faces charges that, as flight commander, he negligently failed to exercise appropriate flight command and control and to ensure compliance with the rules of engagement.
The two pilots were recalled to active duty Wednesday in order for the charges to be laid.
The report of the U.S. military inquiry conducted alongside Baril's probe found the pilots acted with "reckless disregard for the foreseeable consequences" of their actions.
And Baril said the fact the Canadian deaths were preventable makes them harder to accept.
"If you have a blow-out at 75 miles per hour and someone gets killed, you kind of blame it on fate. But if you have a head-on collision with a drunk, that's hard to understand," Baril said. "It's preventable."
Killed that night were Sgt. Marc Léger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green and Pte. Nathan Smith, all soldiers with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
In brutal detail, Baril's 88-page report lays blame squarely on the two American F-16 pilots, and finds that they didn't follow their orders and rules of engagement, gave incomplete information to air controllers and took hasty and imprudent actions that unnecessarily led to the Canadians' deaths.
Baril's report also casts doubt on the pilots' claim that they were acting in self-defence and feared a threat from ground fire.
"Neither aircraft was flown as if there was any threat below," Baril's report said. Instead, the pilots flew "in a calm and relaxed fashion" as they circled the area.
"A longer, more patient look from a safe altitude and range, combined with a good knowledge of the airspace and the threat in the area, should have confirmed that the event observed was neither a direct threat to their formation or enemy activity," the report said.
Baril's report also makes clear there were serious shortcomings in the communications system that night, that the pilots weren't properly briefed and that the mission control crew in the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft overhead were also unaware that Canadian troops were conducting a live-fire exercise on the ground.
But the communications breakdown does not shift blame away from the pilots, because if they had simply followed the standard procedures — by flying away from the threat and waiting for instructions — they would eventually have received information about the presence of the Canadian troops.
Baril said the evidence makes clear the pilots broke the rules. "The procedure was if you see SAFIRE (surface-to-air fire), you mark it, report it, move away from it and evaluate what it is and then you are going to receive instruction as to what to do with it: leave it alone or come back the next day and blow it up.
"If you see something that is not normal, that you don't have a plan for, you just back off safe, mark it, report it and somebody is going to tell you what to do with it."
Baril said he is satisfied that the pilots will now have to explain themselves in the justice system.
"In our profession we're not trigger-happy," he said. "We follow orders and when we don't follow orders, we have to stand up and answer for it. So the expression trigger-happy is not in our vocabulary.
"The only two people who could have stopped the chain of events were the two pilots (and) the pilots have now been asked to explain themselves in the justice system of the United States," Baril said.
Defence Minister John McCallum said he was satisfied with the U.S. report.
"From a Canadian standpoint, those charges indicate that the Americans have taken this very seriously," he said.
Baril's report makes crystal clear that Canadian and American soldiers on the ground followed all of the rules to the letter in terms of booking the firing range and giving proper notice — one week ahead of time — of their plans for a training exercise that night using live ammunition.
The inquiry found shortcomings in communications on the air force side that resulted in the pilots not being personally briefed prior to takeoff about the presence of Canadians on the ground. And even though detailed information about the Canadian exercise was registered with the Combined Air Operations Centre, that information had not been forwarded to the AWACs crew in the air that night.
Baril said pilots, during the operation in Afghanistan, would receive complex piles of data before missions and that not all information about what was happening on the ground would be included. For that reason, precise information about the Canadian exercise that night was not included in the briefing package given to the pilots.
He said mission staff assumed that if pilots ran into circumstances of surface-to-air fire, they had clear instructions for how to deal with it.
By coincidence, the mission commander of the AWACs aircraft that night was a Canadian major on exchange in the U.S. military, a witness who gave two hours of testimony to Baril's inquiry.
"It quickly became evident to the Canadian board that AWACS and F-16 aircrew knowledge about the presence of the Tarnak Farm Range near the Kandahar airport was lacking," the report concluded.
The system for preparing the briefing material for pilots resulted in "critical mission data" being deleted in an attempt to make the massive package of information manageable, the report found.
But another section of the report, entitled "disturbing contradictions," lists damning observations about the conduct of the pilots.
For example, four minutes before invoking the right to act in self-defence, the pilots notified controllers that they had weapons aboard they could use — a message described as "inappropriate." Despite reporting that they saw a threat on the ground, neither pilot took appropriate evasive action to counter the perceived threat.
Schmidt described significant rapid fire activity on the ground, but actual ground fire at the time consisted of anti-tank rounds being fired every 30 to 45 seconds — a total of six rounds, supported by small arms fire and tracers.
Schmidt not only remained in the immediate vicinity of the perceived threat, but increased the risk by descending lower.
And throughout the entire four-minute period prior to invoking self-defence and dropping the bomb, neither pilot's voice reflected any concern for their safety, and they didn't take defensive manoeuvres with their aircraft.
Investigators said it was "particularly alarming that neither of these experienced fighter pilots ever initiated a defensive reaction after the bomb had impacted, but rather continued to circle within the perceived threat area."
Despite the communications shortcomings in command and control, the board concluded that the actions of the pilots were the primary cause of the deaths and injuries. "Highly qualified and experienced pilots, in continuous contact with an airborne controller, made the fateful decision to escalate an essentially benign but ambiguous situation to the point that a weapon was released and Canadian troops were killed," the report concluded.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
2. Remind me Bombing Chinese Ambassy in Nan2 Lian2 Meng2.
3. I don't know how to express my feeling.
Charges laid in U.S. bombing of Canadians
By Allan Thompson
Ottawa Bureau
Advertisement:
OTTAWA — Four Canadian soldiers killed by an American bomb in Afghanistan would still be alive if the U.S. pilot had followed the rules and waited just 32 seconds for more information, retired Canadian Gen. Maurice Baril said yesterday.
"This is the sad explanation that we had to give to the families, that there should not have been any loss of life there," Baril said in an interview.
His full report on the April 18 "friendly fire" incident near Kandahar that killed four and injured eight other Canadian soldiers was released yesterday. The U.S. defence department announced yesterday that the Illinois National Guard pilot who dropped the bomb, Maj. Harry Schmidt, 37, and his flight commander on the mission, Maj. William Umbach, 43, were both charged by the U.S. military with criminal offences on Sept. 11.
The full transcript of radio conversations between the pilots and air controllers, released for the first time yesterday, shows that only 32 seconds after Schmidt took the hasty decision to drop a 227-kilogram laser-guided bomb, the controller overhead sent back the urgent message to "disengage, friendlies Kandahar," meaning that there were "friendly" forces on the ground.
By then it was too late.
"There were circumstances that put the pilot into a situation that he did not know that there were friendlies on the ground," Baril said. "But it did not give him the right to engage without following the rules of engagement that he was given by his commander, unless he can stand up and explain that he was in mortal danger. And that's not the conclusion of our board."
The two F-16 pilots each face four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of assault. Schmidt is also charged with failing to exercise appropriate flight discipline and not complying with the rules of engagement in Afghanistan. Umbach also faces charges that, as flight commander, he negligently failed to exercise appropriate flight command and control and to ensure compliance with the rules of engagement.
The two pilots were recalled to active duty Wednesday in order for the charges to be laid.
The report of the U.S. military inquiry conducted alongside Baril's probe found the pilots acted with "reckless disregard for the foreseeable consequences" of their actions.
And Baril said the fact the Canadian deaths were preventable makes them harder to accept.
"If you have a blow-out at 75 miles per hour and someone gets killed, you kind of blame it on fate. But if you have a head-on collision with a drunk, that's hard to understand," Baril said. "It's preventable."
Killed that night were Sgt. Marc Léger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green and Pte. Nathan Smith, all soldiers with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
In brutal detail, Baril's 88-page report lays blame squarely on the two American F-16 pilots, and finds that they didn't follow their orders and rules of engagement, gave incomplete information to air controllers and took hasty and imprudent actions that unnecessarily led to the Canadians' deaths.
Baril's report also casts doubt on the pilots' claim that they were acting in self-defence and feared a threat from ground fire.
"Neither aircraft was flown as if there was any threat below," Baril's report said. Instead, the pilots flew "in a calm and relaxed fashion" as they circled the area.
"A longer, more patient look from a safe altitude and range, combined with a good knowledge of the airspace and the threat in the area, should have confirmed that the event observed was neither a direct threat to their formation or enemy activity," the report said.
Baril's report also makes clear there were serious shortcomings in the communications system that night, that the pilots weren't properly briefed and that the mission control crew in the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft overhead were also unaware that Canadian troops were conducting a live-fire exercise on the ground.
But the communications breakdown does not shift blame away from the pilots, because if they had simply followed the standard procedures — by flying away from the threat and waiting for instructions — they would eventually have received information about the presence of the Canadian troops.
Baril said the evidence makes clear the pilots broke the rules. "The procedure was if you see SAFIRE (surface-to-air fire), you mark it, report it, move away from it and evaluate what it is and then you are going to receive instruction as to what to do with it: leave it alone or come back the next day and blow it up.
"If you see something that is not normal, that you don't have a plan for, you just back off safe, mark it, report it and somebody is going to tell you what to do with it."
Baril said he is satisfied that the pilots will now have to explain themselves in the justice system.
"In our profession we're not trigger-happy," he said. "We follow orders and when we don't follow orders, we have to stand up and answer for it. So the expression trigger-happy is not in our vocabulary.
"The only two people who could have stopped the chain of events were the two pilots (and) the pilots have now been asked to explain themselves in the justice system of the United States," Baril said.
Defence Minister John McCallum said he was satisfied with the U.S. report.
"From a Canadian standpoint, those charges indicate that the Americans have taken this very seriously," he said.
Baril's report makes crystal clear that Canadian and American soldiers on the ground followed all of the rules to the letter in terms of booking the firing range and giving proper notice — one week ahead of time — of their plans for a training exercise that night using live ammunition.
The inquiry found shortcomings in communications on the air force side that resulted in the pilots not being personally briefed prior to takeoff about the presence of Canadians on the ground. And even though detailed information about the Canadian exercise was registered with the Combined Air Operations Centre, that information had not been forwarded to the AWACs crew in the air that night.
Baril said pilots, during the operation in Afghanistan, would receive complex piles of data before missions and that not all information about what was happening on the ground would be included. For that reason, precise information about the Canadian exercise that night was not included in the briefing package given to the pilots.
He said mission staff assumed that if pilots ran into circumstances of surface-to-air fire, they had clear instructions for how to deal with it.
By coincidence, the mission commander of the AWACs aircraft that night was a Canadian major on exchange in the U.S. military, a witness who gave two hours of testimony to Baril's inquiry.
"It quickly became evident to the Canadian board that AWACS and F-16 aircrew knowledge about the presence of the Tarnak Farm Range near the Kandahar airport was lacking," the report concluded.
The system for preparing the briefing material for pilots resulted in "critical mission data" being deleted in an attempt to make the massive package of information manageable, the report found.
But another section of the report, entitled "disturbing contradictions," lists damning observations about the conduct of the pilots.
For example, four minutes before invoking the right to act in self-defence, the pilots notified controllers that they had weapons aboard they could use — a message described as "inappropriate." Despite reporting that they saw a threat on the ground, neither pilot took appropriate evasive action to counter the perceived threat.
Schmidt described significant rapid fire activity on the ground, but actual ground fire at the time consisted of anti-tank rounds being fired every 30 to 45 seconds — a total of six rounds, supported by small arms fire and tracers.
Schmidt not only remained in the immediate vicinity of the perceived threat, but increased the risk by descending lower.
And throughout the entire four-minute period prior to invoking self-defence and dropping the bomb, neither pilot's voice reflected any concern for their safety, and they didn't take defensive manoeuvres with their aircraft.
Investigators said it was "particularly alarming that neither of these experienced fighter pilots ever initiated a defensive reaction after the bomb had impacted, but rather continued to circle within the perceived threat area."
Despite the communications shortcomings in command and control, the board concluded that the actions of the pilots were the primary cause of the deaths and injuries. "Highly qualified and experienced pilots, in continuous contact with an airborne controller, made the fateful decision to escalate an essentially benign but ambiguous situation to the point that a weapon was released and Canadian troops were killed," the report concluded.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net