Bad intel, human error led to mistaken U.S. attack on Syrian force

A deadly combination of human error, bad intelligence and an increasingly complicated battlefield led to the mistaken bombing of Syrian government troops by American and coalition aircraft in September, according to the findings of a U.S. Central Command investigation.

Misidentifying Syrian forces for Islamic State fighters, American and coalition warplanes dropped more than 30 bombs and fired more than 300 rounds for nearly a half hour during the Sept. 17 attack near the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour before Russian commanders alerted their U.S. counterparts to their mistake.

Russian military advisers have been working with Syrian government forces battling rebel groups fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad. In the end, 60 government troops were killed and 100 were wounded, according to figures from Moscow.

The findings of the command investigation, however, showed that only 15 Syrian government fighters were killed in the attack.

The inquiry also showed that U.S. and coalition forces followed the necessary protocols in planning and executing the airstrikes, investigating officer Air Force Brig. Gen. Richard Coe told reporters during a teleconference from command headquarters in Florida on Tuesday.

The decision to positively identify the Syrian forces as members of Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, “was both reasonable and supported by the weight of the information available” to coalition commanders at the time, according to a redacted version of the command’s findings, also released Tuesday.

“There was no malice here,” Defense Department press secretary Peter Cook said during a Tuesday briefing at the Pentagon. “This was what they believed to be an appropriate target. We’ve now learned since that that was not the case.”

While U.S. and coalition forces did plan and carry out the strike in accordance with the rules of engagement, the baseline intelligence that prompted the strike — particularly how it was interpreted and built into the battle plan — was fatally flawed.

U.S. and European commanders planned the strike based on a blend of two disparate strategies — one based on pre-planned airstrikes and one based on time-sensitive targets of opportunity, Gen. Coe said.

The former allows for more time to gather, analyze and confirm raw intelligence used to plan and carry out airstrikes, while the latter provides a much smaller window for such work.

The blended approach taken by coalition commanders planning the Sept. 17 attack resulted in bad intelligence making its way into the strike plan, Gen. Coe said.

At one point in the process, a U.S. intelligence analyst informed mission planners the target may not be Islamic State fighters.

“This can’t be ISIS,” the analyst reportedly wrote on an classified online chat room used by coalition commanders to coordinate the operation, Gen. Coe said.

That message only reached mission commanders after the operation was given the green light, and just before the first bombs began to fall on Syrian forces.

“The timing was a bit unfortunate,” the one-star general told reporters at the Pentagon.

The situation was complicated even more by the fact the Syrian forces were neither wearing standard military uniforms nor any patches or insignia indicating they were government troops.

“They looked and acted like the forces that coalition [strikes] had been targeting” in previous missions against ISIS, Gen. Coe said.

Even efforts to avoid any miscalculations during the operation with Russian forces in the country were botched, according to the investigation’s findings.

For the first time, American commanders took the extraordinary step of warning their Russian counterparts of the coming attack, providing coordinates for when and where the operation would take place.

“This was a unique instance in which the sheer number of aircraft involved, [and] … they did it out of an abundance of caution,” Mr. Cook said of the notification.

But the coordinates relayed to Russian forces were incorrect, identifying an area outside of Deir al-Zour that was actually miles from where the attack actually took place.

Coalition planners said the strikes would take place five miles south of the city’s airport, while the attack actually took place five miles from the city’s southern borders — a difference of about three miles.

If Russian commanders had the right coordinates, “they could have had the opportunity to warn us before the [initial] strikes started,” Gen. Coe said.

Mr. Cook said it will be up to military commanders whether any disciplinary action will be taken against American service members involved in the strike. In response, Gen. Coe declined to comment on whether such action will be taken as a result of the investigation.