The Israeli Air Force “revealed on Tuesday that it had prevented a severe disaster” when it stopped an armed drone that was “shooting at Israeli troops.“
“A senior Air Force officer said that the UAV opened fire on ground troops operating in Bint Jbeil after receiving the coordinates from the Golani Brigade,” according to the Jerusalem Post. “The fire was stopped when the IAF realized the mistake. No one was wounded in the incident.“
This is the first time I’ve heard of a UAV attacking friendly forces. There’s no word on what kind of drone was being used. But I’ve seen at least one Israeli-designed unmanned plane — the Hunter — rigged up with high explosive Viper Strike anti-tank rounds.
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sounds fun. so, howz this: our own longer range, loiter capable, UNMANNED, nuke hauling future bomber that is being hyped.…..making just one small mistake and taking out a civilian population instead of its supposed military target, neh?
to, to funny
OOPS!
Was there any indication on why the drone started shooting at Israeli troops? It seems to me that friendly fire is a non-zero risk that’s present in any close-air support mission, but unless there’s some drone-specific factor involved, then I wouldn’t chalk this up to anything much more than human error. If this was the first test flight of a drone that will identify and destroy targets autonomously, or the drone operator got too disoriented due to the remote piloting of the vehicle, then I’d be concerned for what it means for drones in particular. The mistake campbell mentions could happen with a manned bomber as well, for instance.
Too bad people don’t spend the same amount of attention on human error as autonomous errors.
Ouch, friendly fire burns all. How sad, no collateral damage AKA no dead innocent women and children!
Anti-semitic drone? I guess the israleis couldn’t even design a robot that would like them, so very sad .
On a more serious note, the idf doesn’t deploy cuavs with autonomous attack routines; there was some trailer jockey behind the joystick of that donut. After he/she started their attack run on the idf dismounts, his superior probably recognized the aerial cue marker of friendlies, in the u.s. military that would be the thermal marker in the no-starchers, i don’t what that would be in the idf but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was something similar. After the superior officer recognized what was happening he probably put down his ice-coffee walked over and smacked the ranking upside his head and smattered off some curses in heb-talk; blue on blue averted.
Israelis have a logistical reason to defend themselves and have done so since resolution was passed by the United Nations.