Friendly Fire from aircraft

[Pyros]

PlasmaKrab said:

Nope, that is when you have GPS + instant tactical network + everyone with a computerized interface. There is no advantage in knowing where everyone is, but having to tell them on the radio each time!
You need something more like the navigational aids you get in cars these days (or in SP howitzers), only networked.
Most of all, you need data transfer. Ask the US guys in Western Asia who have to buy off satellite band from private comm satellites!

I know but I just want to generalize the basics...
First time I read articles concerning the command & control battlefield of the future was back in 1996 (reading JANES) while going on a mission to the Aegean sea

[narwan]

Ahhhh, Heinlein, I have a whole row of them in my bookcase.... Startship troopers is one of my favourites.

But the starship troopers view of soldiering doesn't really change the problem. If the trooper only carries the smart weapons, there's still the question where he carries them, what targets he picks, and to what degree he can trust his sensors. It is sometimes surprisingly easy to fool these.
During the Kosovo campaign for example NATO used technology that could identify the shapes of tanks and other AFV's (as opposed to humans having to poor over the pictures). To verify that these were actual vehicles and not decoys they verified it with heat sensing data to see if the vehicle had an actual engine (different signature from the rest of the vehicle). Then they had a smart missile (worth hundreds of thousands) fired at the target. Which often was nothing more than the silhouette of a tank painted on the road with a big container of water placed on the area where the engine would be.

narwan