MoD slammed over friendly fire tech

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has failed to produce technology capable of protecting UK troops from 'friendly fire' incidents, according to MPs.

The Committee of Public Accounts (CPA) said in a report the MoD has made "little progress" in the five years since the committee made recommendations to the Ministry on how to improve its combat identification systems.

Edward Leigh, MP and chairman of the CPA, said in a statement: "Over half of the programmes promising technological solutions to the identification of friend and foe have been delayed, deferred or rescoped."

He added that the UK's forces are increasingly facing the rigours of real combat, alongside the forces of allied nations, and cannot wait year after year for the promised solutions to combat identification only to find that they are as distant as ever.

The main equipment project to improve combat identification - the Battlefield Target Identification System (BTIS) - has also suffered "considerable delays" as the MoD tries to find a solution to allow it to operate effectively with its allies, notably the US, according to the report.

A decision on the BTIS has still not been made despite assurances from the MoD and the development of a successful prototype in September 2001, the report added.

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The committee report said the MoD expects future operations to be conducted in coalition with allies and this makes combat identification more complex as it requires interoperability of equipment and harmonisation of tactics and practices.

Leigh added the MoD seems no further forward on co-operating with allies on developing a common BTIS and if an agreement is not reached "very soon" then an interim and more limited national system must be deployed.

Minister for the armed forces, Adam Ingram, said in a statement: "Combat identification is complex. No single piece of technology will resolve all the issues of combat identification completely."

Ingram added incidents of friendly fire are generally caused by a number of complex inter-related factors and not by the lack of a particular piece of equipment.

Nato's Operation Urgent Quest exercise (see photos here) tested a number of combat identification technologies - including the millimetre-based BCIS technology and RFID tags – in 2005 under battlefield conditions with 800 troops, 94 combat vehicles and nine aircraft putting a series of technologies through their paces.

The BTIS uses two parts and an interrogator - for example, mounted on a tank - sends an encrypted message to a vehicle it wants to identify. If the unknown vehicle has a BTIS transponder, this will unscramble the message and reply with its own encrypted message which will identify it as a friend.