John Nichol: Human element means 'friendly-fire' casualties cannot be eliminated

The myth of "precision-guided weapons" has been exploding alongside the weapons themselves. The majority of attacks are carried out flawlessly, but when things go wrong the images of shattered bodies, whether civilian, friend or foe, fill our newspapers and television screens.

In yesterday's tragedy a convoy of Kurdish and American forces came under "friendly fire", resulting in even more death and destruction to our own side. But how do these mistakes happen?

The problem is that there are humans in the loop. Aircrew might misidentify the target itself, or be ordered to attack a target thought to be the enemy. This occurred with terrible results during the bombing campaign in Kosovo when refugees fleeing on tractors were mistaken for a column of Serbian soldiers.

The other sort of human error happens when intelligence assets get the wrong information, which is what happened when an RAF Tornado was wrongly targeted recently by the system operator of a Patriot missile.

The military spokesmen are at pains to emphasise that we would never "target" civilians. I spoke to an RAF navigator a couple of weeks ago who had been involved in the bombing of targets in Iraq before the current conflict started. He told me that on one occasion he deliberately forced his bombs to miss the target, a surface-to-air missile site, when he saw what might have been civilians approaching the area. He would rather have had his own life in danger from Iraqi missiles than the prospect of innocent deaths on his conscience.

The truth is that there's a monumental difference between deliberately targeting and accidentally hitting a building that was never intended as your target. The reality of these bombing missions is that there is a long chain of events, with many agencies, systems and operators involved in getting the bombs and missiles on to the enemy targets. If just one part of that chain is flawed or broken the results can be catastrophic. Despite the appearance of an attack being a computer game, it is anything but.

Another problem is that the blast and debris from a 2,000lb PGM hitting a building could cause casualties for hundreds of yards around. Whilst I was held as a PoW in Baghdad we were bombed on a number of occasions and the carnage had to be seen to be believed.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, PGMs can go wrong.An accuracy of a couple of feet is regularly quoted, but these are statistics from weapons testing in perfect conditions – conditions which are rarely met in war. For instance, a laser-guided bomb can be thrown off its course by smoke from other attacks.

And of course, a PGM is guided by a computer and computers can go wrong. If the guidance system fails the bomb still falls, and it explodes wherever it lands.

Even our most sophisticated weapons can still not tell apart a Republican Guard, a British pilot or an Iraqi child.

John Nichol is a former RAF navigator. He is now an author and military analyst for ITV News. His latest book, 'The Last Escape', is published by Penguin, £20.