Word: piloting
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...make a moral, life-or-death decision while streaking across the Lebanese sky at twice the speed of sound? That is the excruciating dilemma that Israeli pilots say they face dozens of times every day during air raids over Lebanon. If a fighter pilot sees the fiery blob of rockets being launched toward Israeli cities, should he go ahead and blast the target - even though it might kill Lebanese women and children near the site where Hizballah militiamen are launching their rockets...
...says that in every mission, a pilot tries to check and double-check that a target is free of civilians before he presses the trigger on his weapons. Before firing, the pilot must first get clearance from a superior officer tapped into intelligence data and in radio contact with ground troops. Still, the decision to fire ultimately rests with the fighter pilot. "We've had many cases of canceling missions, returning with our bombs, because at the last minute the pilot saw people who weren't Hizballah," says Col. A, who points out that in the dozens of daily sorties...
...very cautious - for moral reasons and because we know the strategic consequences," he says referring to the tragedy in Qana, which raised an international outcry against the Israelis. He recounted one incident in which a fighter jet hit a rocket launcher once, but the pilot wasn't sure that the launcher was destroyed. When he put his jet into a dive for a second attack, he pulled out at the last second when he saw that many civilians had come running to the target after his first attack. The strike was called...
...about Jimmy's motivation and the influence he may have felt from his family, McCain doesn't want to play. "He's an 18-year-old kid," he says, and he no doubt remembers what that means. The Senator was such a hell-raiser as a plebe and a pilot that he was nearly forced out of the academy...
...maps used by field officers and pilots, according to the source, the U.N. positions in south Lebanon are clearly marked in blue, which makes it harder to understand why the error occurred. It's common, especially when the suspected enemy target is stationary, that a dialogue ensues between the fighter pilot and his commander to double-check that the coordinates are correct. This is especially true in air strikes on Gaza, where the suspected target is often in densely populated areas. In the heat of battle, it's possible that this dialogue never happened, resulting in a tragic mistake...