Sources: Military is investigating deadly Predator Hellfire strike on US troops in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military is investigating what appears to have been the first case of American troops killed by a missile fired from a U.S. drone.

The investigation is looking into the deaths of a Marine and a Navy medic killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator after they apparently were mistaken for insurgents in southern Afghanistan last week, two senior U.S. defence officials said Tuesday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because an investigation is under way.

ca.news.yahoo.com...

I'm not sure how these weapons, or soldiers themselves, are not equipment with "anti-drone radar" so they cannot be engaged. Surely it'd be an expensive roll out but if it's in the name of saving lives... it should be implemented.

I understand these fly themselves but missile command is at "human" level and all targets engaged must be authourized.. but still, stuff like this happens.

I read they fired based off of thermal imaging. Well if you have ever seen thermal imaging you couldn't possibly know is it was friend or foe. I personally think close air support show always be a manned platform I understand they were in a nasty fire fight were you have a split second to make a decision. Friendly fire has historically been all to common in combat. When I see people on here accusing our troops of murdering civilians it angers me because I know mistakes happen. Of course there are a few lunatics out there but normally it's friendly fire or more commonly a militant that has had his weapon removed and has instantly become a civilian. I hope we learn from this tragic incident and use our technology to decrease friendly fire casualties.

What I wanna know is why the hell don't these soldiers have IR strobes?

That would have prevented anything like this from happening.

This is very tragic. Jerry Smith who's son was killed by US predator drone doesn't blame the guy who pulled the trigger not knowing they just killed two friendlies. Mistakes happen and his son made the ultimate sacrifice for someone's mistake. My hat is off to the father and his attitude about this. I would feel nothing but honor to meet this man.

He said 'trying to put a bigger burden on that person who fired the missile is not something I would do.'"

"'I guarantee you if he was standing in front of me, he'd be asking for forgiveness, and I would give it to him,' Jerry Smith said."

If medals could be awarded for the families of military members, Jerry Smith would certainly deserve one. What a class act this man is. Just lost his son, but instead of lashing out in anger and paranoia, shows a calm, cool, rational mind.

That does suck. About having IR strobes wouldn't that make you visible to the enemy night scopes. I bought an IR capable night scope for a few hundred bucks, I am not sure if the enemy soldiers have such capabilities. Highly doubtful.

There are IR tags that can be worn on the uniform to prevent blue-on-blue. That combined with a BFT should have prevented this. I guess the next question is, how were these two far enough away from other friendlies to be determined as hostile targets and were they engaged at the time.

reply to post by Wildfire30


Two man sniper team on recon mission?

Or two soldiers that simply got too far from the pack.

It was A Doc and A Marine. Not a sniper team. So again, my question is, why were these guys far enough from friendlies to be targeted by a preddie?

Lets face it the americans are so triger happy that no one is safe.

Even what obama today is calling rebels in Lybia are being hit and lets forget they were bin-laden terrorists just a few months ago or so they told us.

for evey US service man that get killed by 'Friendly fire' we get something like 60 kids killed and not a word said.

Funney but the USA working for its zionist masters are in every part of the world killing people and talking about peace and now we are finding out about the secret jails in Egypt that were used to extract information from people that had been 'Exported' from the USA.

I don't know of many good service personal from the USA apart from Braddly Mannings who did what he signed up to do and if you think that holding him in a cell for 23 hours a day is not being done because he exposed a scam then to me you are not thinking straight.

"When I see people on here accusing our troops of murdering civilians it angers me because I know mistakes happen"

Yes like 9/11 and WMD lies so we go attacking people on the other end of the world with the body count being in the 100,000 ! Yes because mistakes happen and the funney thing is we are having another little mistake in Lybia because Gaddfi as evil as he is has about the same public suport as Obama has in the USA so the USA should use UN resolution 1973 to attack itself.

All is not as shown on Fox news and if 9/11 was just one big cock up as they say it was then how come those that were responsible for this cockup were given pay rises and not put in jail.

reply to post by Master_007


Asinine.

Yeah we're all just so trigger happy that we find pleasure in killing our own troops.