Canadian Press, HALIFAX — It will likely be at least 2010 before the Canadian Forces can deploy improved, high-tech devices to prevent friendly fire deaths like the ones that happened two years ago in Afghanistan.
Many of the gadgets are stuck on the drawing board, or have had trials interrupted by the U.S.-led war in Iraq, says Captain Mark McNeil, who is in charge of an army project looking to prevent similar tragedies.
“We have made significant progress over the last two years, but [the delay] is definitely a technology issue,” he said in a recent interview from Ottawa.
However, critics disagree, saying the federal government has not put enough emphasis on or funding behind the military's efforts to find a solution to the problem.
Ottawa owes it to the four soldiers who were killed outside of Kandahar and to the troops serving overseas now to speed up the development and introduction of the new technology, said John Harrison, a retired major and a member of the Royal United Services Institute in Nova Scotia.
“We actually put them there and didn't equip them as well as we should have,” said Major Harrison, a 35-year veteran of the Canadian army, who served as an infantry officer in trouble spots around the world. “We'll be sending more troops to Afghanistan. There are still American and other aircraft in that area. [The troops] appear to be moving further and further out from Kabul and as you do, it gets more dangerous.”
On April 18, 2002, a U.S. pilot mistook the nighttime firing of Canadian troops on a training exercise outside of Kandahar for Taliban fighters. Major Harry Schmidt and his fellow Air National Guard pilot Major William Umbach dropped a 225-kilogram bomb on the position, killing four members of the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and wounding eight others.
Right now, Canadian soldiers patrolling the dusty streets of Kabul or the rocky slopes of Afghan mountains are protected from friendly fire by equipment labelled as Identification Friend or Foe — or IFF.
The package consists of small infrared red strobes, reflective markers and other flashes meant to ward off accidental attack from “friendly” helicopters or jets.
Many of the technical solutions the military is seeking can be found in the private sector and probably with Canadian high-tech firms, Major Harrison said.
Capt. McNeil conceded Canadian companies are probably capable of solving the technical puzzles, but said a Canadian-only option wasn't being pursued. Much of the development of the systems is being done by other countries, such as the United States, Britain, France and Germany.
“You can't have Canada going off and developing its own system,” that may not mesh with our coalition partners, Capt. McNeil said.
“Whenever they come to an agreement, we will follow suit.”
Major Harrison believes that approach is a mistake.
“If you rely on other folks, they will get it ready when they get it ready,” he said. “We're basically second cousins, way down the line in priority, and that's not very fair to our servicemen in the field.”
One of the most promising and perhaps least expensive replacements involves a device known as radio-frequency tags — or RF-Tags.
The army envisions equipping soldiers on the ground with tags, much like magnetic swipe cards that office workers currently use to get into locked buildings.
The tags would send out a warning beep if an aircraft radar locked onto them.
In conjunction with the U.S. army, the Canadian Forces have been testing a laser-tagging system that would help prevent soldiers from shooting each on the ground in close quarters, such as a city street. But the evaluation of the usefulness of that system has been held up because of the ongoing war in Iraq.
As well, research is under way to develop a specialized radar tracking system that would stop tanks and mobile artillery from shelling their own vehicles.
Documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act show the Defence Department believes that protecting individual soldiers can be “done relatively easily with coded lasers and coded signal returns” — RF-Tags. But the real challenge is with vehicle-to-soldier or aircraft-to-vehicle identification.
