A Friendly Fire Accident

The goal of STAMP is to assist in understanding why accidents occur and to use that understanding to create new and better ways to prevent losses. This chapter and several of the appendices provide examples of how STAMP can be used to analyze and understand accident causation. The particular examples were selected to demonstrate the applicability of STAMP to very different types of systems and industries. A process, called CAST (Causal Analysis based on STAMP) is described in chapter 11 to assist in performing the analysis. 

This chapter delves into the causation of the loss of a US. Army Black Hawk helicopter and all its occupants from friendly fire by a US. Air Force F-15 over northern Iraq in 1994. This example was chosen because the controversy and multiple viewpoints and books about the shootdown provide the information necessary to create most of the STAMP analysis. Accident reports often leave out important causal information (as did the official accident report in this case). Because of the nature of the accident, most of the focus is on operations. Appendix B presents an example of an accident where engineering development plays an important role. Social issues involving public health are the focus of the accident analysis in appendix C. 

After the Persian Gulf War, Operation Provide Comfort (OPC) was created as a multinational humanitarian effort to relieve the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees who fled into the hills of northern Iraq during the war. The goal of the military efforts was to provide a safe haven for the resettlement of the refugees and to ensure the security of rehef workers assisting them. The formal mission statement for OPC read To deter Iraqi behavior that may upset peace and order in northern Iraq.  

In addition to operations on the ground, a major component of OPC s mission was to occupy the airspace over northern Iraq. To accomplish this task, a no-fly zone 

Thrkish, British, and French fighter and support aircraft patrolled the no-fly zone daily to prevent Iraqi warplanes from threatening the relief efforts.The mission of the Army helicopters was to support the ground efforts the Army used them primarily for troop movement, resupply, and medical evacuation. 

---

Finally, about three-quarters through the game, we learn the secret he s been hiding He used to be a commander with a platoon of his own. In fact, he once even outranked you. But he caused a friendly fire accident and killed some of his own men. He was demoted to his current rank—a punishment that, obviously, he doesn t feel was harsh enough because he s full of guilt and self-loathing. This is why he has a taste for suicidal missions. 

---