subject: What Causes Military Fractricide? [print this page] For those of you who dont know the word fratricide is a military term which refers to the accidental killing of your own troops or innocent civilians. The military works hard to prevent this from occurring because it just isnt good for anyone at all. Nevertheless it does happen despite the best efforts to control it. Incidents of fratricide do not occur as frequently as they used to but yet they happen. Before I give you the causes of fratricide let me give you some terms of some of the measures that the military uses to try to control it.
There are numerous methods which local commanders put in place to try to prevent fratricide. They are called command and control measures because that is what they are designed to do. Many of these measures are called Fire Support Coordination Measures. These are built in measures used to allow or to prevent soldiers from using certain types of ordinance at certain times. The most permissive of all of these measures is called a Free Fire Area. A FFA is a designated area on the ground where any type of ordinance can be expended at any time. The FFA is always well behind enemy lines and is located far away from towns and population centers. FFAs are used mainly by pilots when they need to dump their extra bombs. No Fire Areas are on the other end of the spectrum although there are many other types of measures in between these two. The NFA is just what the name implies. You cant fire anything into these areas regardless of the circumstances. These areas are mainly used to protect population centers or historic places
Individual soldiers are given orders as to when and why they can discharge their personal weapons or use artillery, or mortar fire. The instructions depend on the situation and the targets that they will likely face. There are many factors which cause fratricide to occur even in the face of all of the coordination measures that are put into use. The main cause of fratricide is confusion. The troop has confused the enemy with friendly most times when this has happened. The problem is that in combat it is counterproductive to the survival of the men and equipment to mark them so as to be easily identified. Identifying marks also function to make it really for enemy forces to identify you also.
Troops and units will frequently become intermingled in close combat and there are many times that you will kill friendly troops if you use area weapons such as artillery, mortars, and bombs. Civilians too can get caught in the middle of a battle. One of the favorite tactics of al-Qaeda and the Taliban is to use innocent people as human shields in order to protect themselves. I think that this is the major cause for the high civilian casualty rate in Afghanistan.
Forward observers or commanders will sometimes overkill a target. They do this by asking for much more ordinance than is really necessary to eliminate the target. This can result in collateral damage. Collateral damage is damage caused by too much force on the target. The extra explosive power may go beyond the intended area and hurt innocent people.
Fratricide has many negative undesirable effects. It is bad for the morale of friendly troops. Who wants to fight when there is a good chance that you will be blown up by your own people? There are also negative political effects. One of the biggest problems that we are having with the leadership in Afghanistan is that the population is upset about the number of innocent civilians who have been killed in the action. Each time there is an incident there is a large public outcry. This also leads to negative propaganda or publicity for the United States and our troops. Terrorist organizations very quickly capitalize on this negativity to use for propaganda purposes. Military Ring Express
