Another Accident Report?
 

Local news here is reporting that the US has shot down a British jet with a Patriot missile.

Any reliable sources confirming this fuckup yet?

Just hit cnn...I don't know how reliable that is ;)

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...ane/index.html

Yup..it's been confirmed..2 RAF pilots are dead..

i thought the British were on our side? :helpme

we are our own worst enemy when it comes to wartimes... all these 'friendly-fire' incidents are inexcusable... sympathy to the families of the fallen pilots..

2/3 of all reported allied casualties have been the result of friendly fire, accidents and one crazed loon traitor. So far...

fuck me.

I am British and have been following the reports closely. Yes it is sad that the US has shot down one of our fighters (Tornado), but these things will happen, and i'm sure they will happen again but there is a goal to be achieve and in war there are casulties. We can only hope that we learn from these mistakes and make it a beeter place to live in. My deepst syspathies are with thier families at this tragic time, they gave thier lives to make other lives better.:(

A machine is a machine and it CAN fail..... there are several systems in place to prevent such events though.
First there is a system in every friendly jet that let's every radar post know it's not an enemy aircraft, also to the patriot and other rockets launch and guidence systems. Secondly there is a system that will have a signal to every air command post (something like the regular civilian air traffic control) that also states it's not an enemy jet. Third, control knows where every jet is and this imformation is passed to every launch system with "snap shots" every second or so. Fourth all the jets itself have systems that will detect any missile heading it's way so the pilot can take action or redirect his heading/speed/altitude.
Alot of actions are taken to prevent these incidents from happening.

My best guess is that the jet had an electrical failure and his systems where down causing it to by way of it's track, have no radio to talk to control and have no friendly jet warning systems online.

or human incompetence or error.

don't forget pilots on amphetamines..

i heard somewhere that the coalition aircraft have identification codes, and that these codes change regularly, and that there may have been some mixup with them.

Practicly all these systems runs automaticly, there is only one thing..... the jet's system have to send out those signals. Only human error here could be that the pilot did a very short and fast turn and hit the patriot so it didn't have time to avoid the collision with the friendly jet wich i don't think is the case. I ask myself what is a patriot rocket doing in the nofly zone over Baghdad? My best guess? Again.... the jet was misstaken for an enemy jet in the nofly zone becasue the pilot failed (or was unable to) contact control and his systems where offline.

i think it was shot down over kuwait on the way back from a bombing mission.

Even if there is an error in the transponder codes there still are three other systems that should have prevented this. And uhm..... kinda hard to believe that transponder codes get mixed up. I'm not gonna explain how this works because it's kinda complicated but believe me, it's nearly impossible to mix them up.

I bet the british pilot was giving the BP4L hand sign when he flew overhead...that's what did him in.


Unfortunate mishap though

:(

I heard it was in hte middle of Baghdad and some Iraqi people where searching the pilot in the Baghdad river.

I thought the Patriot system for over there was just for taking down scuds? Iraqis don't have any aircraft left do they?

Can the operator not tell the difference between a scud missile and a Tornado?

If the Tornados systems are offline all he and control knows it's an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO)... He can however see from the speed/altitude and movements it makes if it is and aircraft or missile but it could take a long time to figure it out. Iraqis still might have jets, that's why the nofly zone has been brought to live.

different pilot(s)

From what I'm reading, it seems that both the US and UK are blowing this one off.

there saying an iraqi SAM has hit "something" over baghdad. lets hope it's a cruise missile and not another plane.