[Clive]

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[Enchante]

"In the Gulf War, it is thought to have accounted for almost 25 per cent of American combat deaths and wounds."

Of course that figure is quite high because Saddam's mighty army and (dead) airforce were so ineffectual (fortunately). If they hadn't had their butts kicked so massively then they could have inflicted a higher % of the coalition casualties.

[naturalman1975]

The military is adding to its stocks of special marker systems to reduce the risk of friendly-fire casualties, even though its own studies conclude there's no perfect solution to the problem.

This type of reporting baffles me - it's almost as if they are saying that because there's no perfect solution, it's not worth trying a less than perfect solution.

A 100% solution would be great - but even if it only reduces the chances of being killed by 10% a few strobe lights would be worth having - and I assume it's higher than that.

[river rat]

Question:

If our guys can "see" the infrared markers and strobes to prevent targeting our guys ---- can't the enemy "see" them to locate and target our guys?

Sort of like tracer rounds -- they're visible to both side.

Semper Fi

[AlaskaErik]

Our crew medivaced a couple of those wounded Canadians out of Kandahar earlier today. It just sickens me whenever I hear about friendly fire. At least the Canadian medical team was professional and didn't seem to harbor any resentment against us. I hope those guys recover soon and I definitely hope we never have to do another friendly fire medivac or any other kind of medivac again.