(Operational legal advice, technicalities and the law.
It might sound a bit technical at first, but I strongly believe that if you do not know how your forces operate, (for example how this bomb may be used with an arrival angle to be chosen from 45 to 90 degrees, (how this pod recovers uneasily from the flash effect of a burst and prevents the pilot from being able to identify a target in the infra red for a half hour period) truth is you are not able to provide operational legal advice that can be acted upon. You may have a very strong academic knowledge of the law of armed conflicts, but all you may obtain, that at best, from the crews that you brief is polite and distract attention. What they need is matrixes showing them decision paths, briefings offering RoEs quizzes, and generally explaining the extent to which a crew has in defined circumstances Target Engagement Authority. Danger though resides in staying at this level of reflection without looking closely at operational documents that you may or may not be satisfied with, having in mind the fact that in a coalition, not every nation has the same constraints, or the same legal culture. I was thus surprised to have to come back recently to explaining Positive identification (PID) which is how the military generally calls the fact for a targeter to distinguish between a military objective and a civilian object. As a matter of fact, distinguishing is operationaly difficult, you may have to put yourself in danger to do so, your pods may not be as precise as you would like them to be. That is why PID is often discussed and the degree of certainty required found too demanding. Pilots may ask “what if I am certain at say 90 percent what I see is a legitimate target under the law of armed conflicts? And what about 75 percent?" And the instructions given to them often mention a reasonable degree of certainty but not a one hundred percent of mathematical certainty.
We think and brief the opposite. If you PID an objective, it means you are being one hundred percent sure it is a legitimate one. If you have any doubt with regard to the nature of the target suspend or cancel the attack, it is the law or it is the law for French pilots, France having signed and ratified the Additional Protocol I to the GC with the articles 48, 52 and 57 which may or may be not customary international law now. By the way I think it is the law for other nations who have only signed but not ratified the AP I (pacta sunt servanda). Any thoughts?
It might sound a bit technical at first, but I strongly believe that if you do not know how your forces operate, (for example how this bomb may be used with an arrival angle to be chosen from 45 to 90 degrees, (how this pod recovers uneasily from the flash effect of a burst and prevents the pilot from being able to identify a target in the infra red for a half hour period) truth is you are not able to provide operational legal advice that can be acted upon. You may have a very strong academic knowledge of the law of armed conflicts, but all you may obtain, that at best, from the crews that you brief is polite and distract attention. What they need is matrixes showing them decision paths, briefings offering RoEs quizzes, and generally explaining the extent to which a crew has in defined circumstances Target Engagement Authority. Danger though resides in staying at this level of reflection without looking closely at operational documents that you may or may not be satisfied with, having in mind the fact that in a coalition, not every nation has the same constraints, or the same legal culture. I was thus surprised to have to come back recently to explaining Positive identification (PID) which is how the military generally calls the fact for a targeter to distinguish between a military objective and a civilian object. As a matter of fact, distinguishing is operationaly difficult, you may have to put yourself in danger to do so, your pods may not be as precise as you would like them to be. That is why PID is often discussed and the degree of certainty required found too demanding. Pilots may ask “what if I am certain at say 90 percent what I see is a legitimate target under the law of armed conflicts? And what about 75 percent?" And the instructions given to them often mention a reasonable degree of certainty but not a one hundred percent of mathematical certainty.
We think and brief the opposite. If you PID an objective, it means you are being one hundred percent sure it is a legitimate one. If you have any doubt with regard to the nature of the target suspend or cancel the attack, it is the law or it is the law for French pilots, France having signed and ratified the Additional Protocol I to the GC with the articles 48, 52 and 57 which may or may be not customary international law now. By the way I think it is the law for other nations who have only signed but not ratified the AP I (pacta sunt servanda). Any thoughts?