Friendly Fire in Ukraine - How Can a Patriot Shoot Down an F-16?
Aren’t there guardrails in place to ensure this doesn’t happen? Like Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) Interrogators?
Last week, a Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet crashed during a Russian missile attack, resulting in the tragic loss of its pilot.
Ukraine's military confirmed the crash on Thursday, following a period of lost communication with the aircraft.
The F-16, part of a mission intercepting Russian cruise missiles, went down under circumstances yet to be fully explained. However, the Telegraph is reporting that the Ukrainian F-16 was brought down by a friendly Ukrainian Patriot air defense system.
Despite the loss, the F-16s managed to down four Russian missiles during the operation.
The pilot, Oleksiy Mes, was declared killed in action and will, no doubt, be remembered along with the other Ukrainian heroes who sacrificed their lives in defense of their home over the past two and a half years.
Mes, known by his callsign "Moonfish," was a respected figure in Ukraine’s air force and a prominent advocate for acquiring these advanced fighter jets.
He once traveled to Washington to advocate for the F-16s alongside another pilot known as "Juice," and by all accounts, Moonfish was celebrated as a patriot, a skilled pilot, and a beloved figure in both military and civilian circles.
I should note that we don’t yet have a complete picture of what brought Mes’s aircraft down.
But there are only so many ways to lose a jet – including mechanical failure, enemy fire, or pilot error. The most egregious loss would be from friendly fire, technically called fratricide, as that loss would be the most preventable.
Unfortunately, I’m getting signals from my contacts in the US intelligence community that the Telegraph may be correct – a Patriot air defense system may have shot down Mes and his F-16.
Unlike the US, which uses the Army to operate the Patriot system, in Ukraine, the air force is responsible for the country's air defense, including the deployment and operation of advanced missile defense systems like the Patriot.
The fact that President Zelensky sacked the head of the country’s air force, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, just days after the incident further fuels the ‘friendly fire’ narrative.
So how does a friendly air defense system shoot down a friendly aircraft?
Aren’t there guardrails in place to ensure this doesn’t happen? Like Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) Interrogators?
Let’s analyze.
First, the Patriot has a sad history of shooting down friendly aircraft.
During the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Patriot systems shot down two friendly aircraft and almost downed another…
The third US fighter only survived because he fired an anti-radiation missile at the Patriot battery before it could fire on him! The missile hit the radar of the Patriot and no US Army soldiers manning the system were killed.
The first friendly-fire incident occurred on March 23, 2003, when a British Tornado GR4 fighter-bomber was shot down by a Patriot battery protecting an airfield in northern Kuwait. Flight Lts. Kevin Barry Main and David Rhys Williams were killed.
A week later, a US Navy F/A-18C Hornet was shot down by a Patriot missile over central Iraq, killing the pilot, Lt. Nathan D. White.
The third incident involved an F-16.
On March 24, a Patriot battery locked its radar on a USAF F-16 Falcon in preparation for firing a missile. The plane’s pilot, flying about 30 miles south of the Iraqi city of Najaf, averted disaster by firing first, disabling the battery with a HARM missile.
The F-16 pilot knew he was being painted by a surface-to-air missile radar system, but likely didn’t know it was a friendly Patriot when he fired his HARM at it.
The Patriot attacks on allied planes were particularly puzzling given that throughout the war, no Iraqi aircraft were aloft – the US owned the skies.
In 2003, the US Army found that the Patriot had difficulty distinguishing between an aircraft and a missile. It would be shocking if it were discovered that the Patriot still suffers from the same issue in Ukraine after twenty-plus years of incremental upgrades.
A 2005 Pentagon report (that’s still classified – I was able to get my hands on an unclassified summary) looked at the 2003 friendly fire incidents involving the Patriot and discovered that the system itself had too much autonomy in target selection, saying the troops operating the Patriot should have played a greater role in choosing targets.
In addition, the report found that the combat identification systems, like IFF, performed poorly – the friendly aircraft were broadcasting properly but the Patriot – choosing targets in automated mode – had some sort of technical issue.
Finally, the report found that the Army failed to combine data from the Patriot radar with other sensors on the battlefield – but the idea of “data fusion” wouldn’t fully mature for another fifteen years, so I don’t fault the Army for this one.
These incidents show how decision-making in the heat of the moment, especially in the fast-paced environment of modern war, can have deadly consequences.
But compounding the issue is the fact that the Patriot system itself is notoriously (and some might say needlessly) complex – which makes it vulnerable to mechanical, computer, and human error.
In the realm of military hardware, you want to make the system – whether it’s a tank, a jet, or a Patriot – as “soldier-proof” as possible. Soldiers are hard on stuff – I know from experience.
So how does the Patriot identify its targets?
The Patriot system uses powerful radar, the AN/MPQ-53 or −65/65A Radar Set, to detect and track aircraft within its range. These radars can detect objects at long distances and supposedly differentiate between various targets based on their speed, altitude, and trajectory.
Once a target is detected, the tracking radar locks onto it to provide continuous updates on its position, speed, and direction.
If there is an issue with the Patriot’s radar, like not having the computational power to distinguish between a slow-moving aircraft and a supersonic missile, this could be disastrous.
Next, the IFF system is a critical component that helps differentiate between friendly and enemy aircraft. Friendly aircraft are equipped with transponders that emit a coded signal when interrogated by the Patriot system's IFF interrogator.
Friendly aircraft should respond with a correct identification code, indicating they are not hostile.
If an aircraft does not respond, or if the response is incorrect, the system may classify it as unknown or potentially hostile.
An issue with the Patriot’s interrogator could have deadly consequences for friendly aircraft.
What’s more, the Patriot system is usually integrated into a larger air defense network that includes data from other radar systems, satellites, and command centers. This networked approach provides a comprehensive situational awareness picture.
Information from various sources is correlated to improve identification accuracy. For example, known flight plans of friendly aircraft are cross-referenced with radar tracks to prevent misidentification.
This is where command and control comes in. Information needs to be communicated so that friendly fighters can avoid a particular area.
In a perfect world, this would further inform the Patriot system’s rules of engagement.
These predefined rules of engagement take into account factors such as location, known threats, and the overall tactical situation.
One of the issues found in the classified 2005 report was that the Patriot operators appeared to have too much confidence in the system’s ability to choose targets on its own.
While the system can autonomously identify and track targets, human operators should typically review the data before engaging a target, especially in complex or ambiguous situations – like a Russian missile barrage when you know you have friendly jets in the air.
This human oversight helps prevent friendly fire incidents. Therefore, the rules of engagement need to dictate that a human has final say before releasing the weapon.
It might sound like I’m being somewhat hard on the Patriot system… I just despise friendly fire incidents, so this topic gets me angry.
But we also can’t ignore the fact that the Patriot has saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives over its lifetime – both in US operations in the Middle East and Ukraine.
As more details come to light in Ukraine, I will be very interested to see if Ukraine’s Patriot systems suffer from the same issues identified nearly twenty years ago. If so, it would be a shocking lapse in communication – at least warning the Ukrainians that the Patriot is prone to misidentifying friendly aircraft.
Again, we still don’t know for sure if it was a Patriot, as of this writing on September 1, 2024, that shot down Mes and his F-16.
President Zelensky had expressed high hopes for the F-16s, seeing them as pivotal in bringing about Ukraine's victory.
These aircraft are part of a broader commitment from NATO allies, including Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway, to supply 80 F-16s to Ukraine over the coming years, with about 20 expected this year.
Losing one F-16, and its expert pilot, is a hard pill to swallow for those of us who support Ukraine’s struggle.
If there is a persistent issue with the Patriot, despite years of constant upgrades, I hope that Moonfish’s death brings about change to the system, or changes in battlefield communications, in a way that prevents this from happening again.
Until then, keep up the fight.
To pilot Oleksiy Mes, callsign Moonfish: Blue skies and tailwinds.
Stay strong.
Слава Україні!
UPDATE at 17:24 Eastern: An unnamed “US official” just told European Pravda that friendly fire was “probably not” the cause of the F-16 crash. It’s worth noting that this is contradictory to what other US military officials are saying.
I say, let Ukraine perform their investigation and then we’ll see.
You write so that this interested Liberal Arts major can actually understand what’s going on. Thank you!