Jerry Pournelle commented on the friendly fire problem in the Thursday, Dec. 6 entry on his web site:

I have this comment on friendly fire:



It was a maxim in artillery that if troops weren't taking casualties from our own fire, the fire support wasn't close enough. But that was long ago, when we didn't have the accuracy, and is one of the reasons they shifted to mortars and abolished cannon company in infantry regiments.

Today it remains true that calling in air support has considerable risks.

BUT: why must the air support be from a B-52 at 40,000 feet?

USAF has deliberately put itself in a situation in which it can't support the field army without putting the ground observers at a far higher risk than they would be at if we had weapons platforms working more closely with the troops, and flying at altitudes from which they could see what is going on. It isn't the fault of the B-52 pilots, and God knows we need more heavy bombers in the inventory: it's the fault of the USAF generals who hog the close support and interdiction missions, but will not devote significant resources to doing them right.

I would be pleased to see arguments against this view: but for me, I'd find the USAF people who set up this easily forseen situation, and cut off their pensions. It was predictable, it was predicted, and it was pure service turf war that caused it. The US troops killed yesterday were victims of interservice rivalry: done in by Air Force generals who won't let the Army have close suppose weapons platforms but won't fulfill the mission they have kept for political purposes. I have put this as strongly as I can: I wait for counter arguments.



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I have no background to comment effectively on this. What do you think?