During the 1982 Falklands War one of our Rapier missile detachments accidentally fired a missile at a friendly Harrier jet, luckily they missed. The Harrier was at extremely low level and the operator only had a split second to decide if it was hostile or friendly. Aircraft recognition was something we learnt for hours on end and had frequent tests to keep us up to speed on our recognition skills. Reports from Libya suggest that a Government jet has been shot down. My concern would be that the Rebel fighters would be much more likely to make the same mistake professional British air defence soldiers made in the Falklands War, with the result of one of our RAF pilots being shot down. Unless we have special forces soldiers embedded with the rebels using SAMs this is a very likely scenario, unless we stay much higher. The Libyan jet may have even had a malfunction and had nothing to do with Rebel ground fire? In any case it’s a concern as is War in general.
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