#Afghanistan Predator drones: Despite high-tech tools, a fatal error - latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan-drone-20110410,0,2818134,full.story
At 5:37 a.m., the pilot reported that one of the screeners in Florida had spotted one or more children in the group.
“Bull—. Where!?” the camera operator said. “I don’t think they have kids out at this hour.” He demanded that the screeners freeze the video image of the purported child and email it to him.
“Why didn’t he say ’possible’ child?” the pilot said. “Why are they so quick to call kids but not to call a rifle.”
The camera operator was dubious too. “I really doubt that children call. Man, I really … hate that,” he said. “Well, maybe a teenager. But I haven’t seen anything that looked that short.”
A few minutes later, the pilot appeared to downplay the screeners’ observation, alerting the special operations unit to “a possible rifle and two possible children near the SUV.”
The special operations unit wanted the drone crew and screeners to keep tracking the vehicles. “Bring them in as close as we can until we also have [attack aircraft] up,” the unit’s radio operator said. “We want to take out the whole lot of them.”