Aliasalpha: Dragging it back to the game angle, am I the only one who'd love a close support chopper sim where you have to face choices like this? Stuff where its not just locating and shooting bad guys but where you have to actually act with greater care to avoid civilian casualties?

Arkose: Accidents like this happen in every war, it's just that they don't always become public knowledge.

Catshade: stonebro
Fearsome Viking

stonebro: Norway has the best special forces in the world, with the possible exception of Israel.

Krypsyn: Well, you know, I actually put in one of my posts that I was NOT comparing special forces. I was comparing basic enlisted troops, in terms of training. In terms of equipment, I was counting anything and everything that helps them do their job (e.g. satellites, UAVs, and other such technology).
As for special forces, I would put up the U.S. Delta Force boys against anything any other country has to offer. That goes double for operations in enclosed areas like office buildings and planes. However, since they exist outside the normal U.S. Military chain of command, whether they should be included for comparison is debatable.

Salsa_Shark: I bet you regret that best in the world remark.

Krypsyn: Well, you know, I actually put in one of my posts that I was NOT comparing special forces. I was comparing basic enlisted troops, in terms of training. In terms of equipment, I was counting anything and everything that helps them do their job (e.g. satellites, UAVs, and other such technology).
As for special forces, I would put up the U.S. Delta Force boys against anything any other country has to offer. That goes double for operations in enclosed areas like office buildings and planes. However, since they exist outside the normal U.S. Military chain of command, whether they should be included for comparison is debatable.

Cor: No body is mentioning that simply using a pair of binoculars would have prevented this. I bet they are standard issue on helicopters. I think they just wanted to shoot.
In another line of musing; reports like this have been streaming in since the begging of the war, I wonder why this caught such attention.

Wraith: Hard to say. I'd have to say British SAS, as well as a few other European units (German, Dutch, etc) have a bit more discipline, and I'd assume Israeli SF are pretty hardcore what with their having to be trained in an extremely hostile environment with training from some of the top nations special forces.
I've heard personal accounts from the Russian Spetznaz still being insanely good, but I don't know how accurate that is what with some of the absolute failures in anti-terrorism ops conducted there.

DarrkPhoenix: Apaches are manned by two people, the pilot and a co-pilot/gunner. However, binoculars would probably be rather redundant, as Apaches are also equipped with a high-resolution camera that feeds the images to the gunner. Remember that in this instance the helicopter was firing from over a kilometer away, and you don't hit things at that range unless you have the means to get a good look at just where you're aiming.

stonebro: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinejegerkommandoen
"MJK is believed to have been the only unit among the other Coalition special forces which has not been airlifted out of areas due to dehydration and/or altitude sickness in the extreme conditions in Afghanistan. MJK is also the unit with the highest number of operations among the other special operation forces of the Coalition in the area (2001-2005)."

Wraith: It would help if that article had some statistics to back it up. I can't help but take it with a grain of salt since it's on Wikipedia and there are absolutely no citations on it.