(Canadian) Officer: 'I Didn't Know the American Regulations' (Re: friendly-fire deaths)

The deputy commander of the Canadian army brigade that was mistakenly bombed by a U.S. fighter pilot was unaware of American regulations that required him to display blinking red warning lights that could be seen from the sky, a military investigator heard yesterday.

Captain Joseph Jasper, in charge of co-ordinating the fateful drill, also said he did nothing to try to remedy communications breakdowns in the weeks leading up to the incident, even though he knew of two previous occasions in which U.S. fighter planes nearly bombed Canadian troops.

Capt. Jasper was testifying yesterday at a military hearing that will help determine whether Major Harry Schmidt and Major Bill Umbach, two U.S. fighter pilots, should be court martialled for the April 17 bombing, in which four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight others injured.

Maj. Schmidt has said he dropped the laser-guided, 250-kilogram bomb only because he thought the ground troops were firing at Maj. Umbach's plane.

Capt. Jasper said he had never heard of the U.S. protocol regarding blinking lights, which are meant to warn pilots that friendly forces are on the ground.

"I didn't know the American regulations and we weren't following them," said Capt. Jasper, the first witness to testify at an Article 32 hearing at the Barksdale Air Force Base. "If I had known about the regulations, I wouldn't have ignored them."

Capt. Jasper said though his brigade was under the command of a U.S. army task force, he organized the drill according to Canadian regulations, which require only that neon flares be laid out.

Capt. Jasper tried to explain that the glow sticks "matched the equivalent" of the red lights, but Charles Gittins, one of the lawyers representing the pilots, brushed him aside.

"Was a blinking red light operating at Tarnak farm on the night of the accident?" Mr. Gittins asked.

The pilots' lawyers also attacked the captain for other apparent inconsistencies.

For example, a corporal stationed in the Kandahar air tower told investigators that an order to hold fire had been issued in the minutes leading up to the bombing so that an unidentified aircraft could land, but the order never reached the soldiers on the ground.

Although the directive was not related to the F-16 Vipers being flown by Majors Schmidt and Umbach, their lawyers said the accident may have been avoided if the command was followed.

"You agree that it would have been an embarrassing fact for your unit to have been firing under a check fire?" Mr. Gittins asked Capt. Jasper.

"I think there was a breakdown in communication between air and ground [forces]," he said. "I don't think pilots flying in the area would have known that troops were on the ground."

Capt. Jasper also said he had heard of two previous incidents in which U.S. jets nearly bombed his comrades, but he said he did nothing to try to improve the way his brigade communicated with his superiors, and consequently, with the Air Force.

Canadians Had Two 'Near Misses'
Soldier tells friendly fire hearing troops were 'nearly strafed before'

A Canadian Armed Forces officer testifying before a hearing into the friendly fire deaths of four of his comrades said he was aware of another incident in which Canadian soldiers were nearly shot at by coalition aircraft.

On the first day of hearings, Capt. Joseph Jasper was asked by a defence lawyer if he had been told about a near miss in March in which members of his unit were almost strafed by a coalition aircraft. Capt. Jasper said he had heard about the near miss and later said he was aware of another similar incident, but he did not give further details.

"There were two incidents that happened on operations that I was aware of," he said. An air force lawyer called reports of the incidents "hearsay."

Defence lawyer Dave Beck said the captain's testimony is further evidence that Operation Enduring Freedom was fraught with communications problems between air and ground forces. Mr. Beck said he was unable to get further details about the incidents because he wasn't allowed to interview the Canadians involved.

"They were nearly strafed before, but there was a Canadian liaison officer on the ground who prevented it from happening," Mr. Beck said after the hearing, adding that he was surprised to hear Capt. Jasper refer to a second incident.

Capt. Jasper, 32, was the safety officer on the Tarnak Farms firing range on April 17, the night the U.S. F16 pilots mistook an exercise for anti-aircraft fire and dropped a bomb in self defence.

The bomb killed four members of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and injured eight.

The pilots, Maj. Harry Schmidt and Maj. William Umbach, are charged by the U.S. air force with involuntary manslaughter and assault.

They could be court martialled depending on the outcome of the hearings at the Barksdale Air Force Base.

The pilots' lawyers also questioned Capt. Jasper about reports that the range was under a "check fire" order to stop shooting at the time of the bombing because of incoming aircraft at the nearby Kandahar airport.

As first reported in the Citizen on Nov. 19, a Canadian sentry on duty in the airport control tower that night has testified he gave the "check fire" order five to 10 minutes before the bomb blast.

Cpl. Cheyenne Laroque told a U.S. board of inquiry into the accident that the order was still in place at the time of the accident.

But Capt. Jasper insisted yesterday that the check fire order had been lifted about 15 minutes before the bomb blast.

The pilots' lawyers entered a transcript of Cpl. Laroque's testimony into evidence yesterday, along with statements from two others who also told the board that the check fire was still in place.

Lawyer Charles Gittins, who represents Maj. Schmidt, told reporters it was inexcusable for both the U.S. and Canadian boards of inquiry to omit details of the check fire order.

"That's criminally negligent conduct by two generals, one American and one Canadian," he said, referring the U.S. air force Lt.-Gen. Stephen Sargeant and retired Gen. Maurice Baril, who led the inquiries last year.

Capt. Jasper also admitted that he was unaware of a U.S. requirement to have a blinking red light on range to indicate to friendly aircraft an exercise was underway.

Instead, the unit placed a line of four or five infrared glow sticks on the range and equipped soldiers with infrared strobes on their helmets. They were following Canadian procedures, but did not stick to the rules "by the letter," he said.

-snip-

(Glen McGregor in the The Ottawa Citizen, January 15, 2003)
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I don't think these guys should go to jail, but I sure hope they never fly another combat mission.

I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. However, during Desert Storm, a USAF A-10 launched an AGM-65D Maverick missile that hit a Marine Corps armored vehicle and killed six U.S. Marines. The families tried to sue Hughes Aircraft Company and the Air Force did everything they could to get the judge to throw out the suit.

I am familiar with that missile and a software error may have caused the missile to hit the wrong target. I am saying the pilot probably locked onto the correct target and the software error caused the missile to break lock and hit the Marines.

The Air Force Secretary, the manager of the Air Force's program office for the missile and two Marine Generals wrote letters to the judge asking him to make a "State Secrets Declaration" and throw the case out. I know at least one of those letters contained a lie.

Now, if the Air Force was so anxious to protect the contractor, why are they not willing to at least protect someone who voluntarily risks his life for the Air Force?

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