Friendly_Fire

Murphy’s Law Activated in a Mission-Critical Exercise In this assignment, I demonstrate how anything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong within the Friendly Fire case. My analysis leads me to the conclusion that there were errors at the individual, organizational, technological and communications levels and those resulted in the deaths of 26 passengers. The cross-team operations and tasks in the OPC were designed to be mechanistic in nature but in reality were organic. I believe that each team had their own coordination mechanisms but those weren’t integrated with each other. Additionally, local practices became the norm and they become the Standard Operating Procedures disregarding the global directives. Last but not the least, the AWACS crew on the day had a weak team with diffused responsibilities. OPC Organization The mission had a flawed organizational structure: - OPC was setup to be a temporary assignment with no specific end date. It lasted for more than 3 years. - F15 pilots reported to Pilkington in a dotted line fashion and he had no direct control over them - There was no unity of command – rules of authority were ambiguous AWACS The team central to the entire mission of OPC had a lot of problems that day. Some of them were: - Lt. Ricky Wilson was an inexperienced controller and had no prior real-world flights. He didn’t know how to react to things outside of his limited training. - The team was put together in an adhoc manner and had no team dynamics. - The shadow crew consisting of Instructors led to a false sense of security for the rookies and as a result nobody felt responsible for taking any action. - The crews worked long hours, were strained and had low morale. Local Practices - Blackhawk Helicopters developed the habit of not changing frequencies and controllers. - AWACS Controllers had developed informal procedures to hand-off aircraft responsibilities and when things went south (screen not working), there were no guidelines to deal with those scenarios because the procedures were never written down or analyzed for inefficiencies. - AWACS controllers considered tracking of Army helicopters as more of a courtesy than official duty Training Although Airforce and Military personnel are considered some of the the best-trained people, there were huge errors in the training aspect: - F15 pilots were trained to recognize helicopters by looking at their pictures instead of real world practice or simulation. - The pictures were taken from ground, which is not the vantage point that F15 pilots had so their perspective was skewed. - The silhouette of pictures didn’t have any photos of the Blackhawk helicopter so F15 pilots couldn’t recognize them. - F15 pilots were not trained to fly under 1000 feet - Several leaders of the AWACS crew had missed predeployment training Inconsistent Language In a cross-team operation, one would expect that different teams spoke the same language but that wasn’t the case: - The Commander of AWACS, Duke, didn’t know the meaning of the word “engage” - Enroute controller didn’t understand the code “Lima” and didn’t bother asking someone or looking it up - The term “aircraft” meant different things to different teams Technology Problems The best equipped teams had tons of technology related issues: - The radios used by F15 and Helicopters were totally different and incompatible and so they couldn’t talk to each other - The equipment used on AWACS was old and prone to issues Communication Issues - Minimum Communication (MINCOM) was the ultimate directive that hindered AWACS from checking the accuracy or understanding of the information with F15 pilots - New IFF codes weren’t sent from Airforce to the Army in the last 2 years. - Directive that prevented Blackhawk Helicopters from entering the No Fly Zone prior to the completion of F15 sweep was never shared and/or implemented at AWACS. Airforce Culture - Airforce culture appreciated pilots for number of kills, so they are trigger happy - F15 pilot Captain Eric Wilson avoided questioning his superior Colonel May out of respect - Airforce lead all it’s missions by the book and the pilots weren’t equipped or trained to handle unknown scenarios. Power Dynamics of F15 pilots and AWACS AWACS was supposed to control the operation at all times but: - F15 pilots considered themselves to be higher on the food chain and didn’t let controllers “control” the situation. - As a result, controllers had accepted a supporting role and didn’t bother recommending any action or intervening.