"FRIENDLY FIRE" AS A PHENOMENON, A PRACTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM: HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE AND SOLUTION WAYS

The article examines the essence of the “friendly fire” phenomenon, its causes and consequences, its place in the history of wars of the 20th century and modern times. It was found that the phenomenon of the firing of weapons from one’s own forces is a characteristic and integral feature of war. “Friendly fire” is a term that refers to fire contact against one’s own troops or those of an ally that results in military casualties. It is shown that “friendly fire” was and remains a common phenomenon and an inevitable problem of wars of different eras and of almost all armies of the world. This problem has haunted armies since ancient times, regardless of their equipment, the type of war and its moral and ethical assessment. It has been established that incidents related to fire “friendly fire” can have different causes, scales and consequences. Sometimes they do not lead to victims and material losses, but in most cases, human losses and damages from “friendly fire” are significant, often the severity of the consequences even outweighs the losses from the enemy’s actions. The relevance of this problem has increased even more with technical progress and the appearance of new high-tech means of armed struggle, according to logic, it seems that its severity should decrease, but the opposite is happening – this problem has a clear tendency to worsen, it is becoming more and more urgent. At the same time, the acuteness and seriousness of the given problem in modern conditions and in the near future are outlined, as well as possible ways of solving it or reducing negative consequences