Comment by oooyay
6 hours ago
I'm not sure if it was any kind of official rule, but I worked at times in a JTAC capacity for troops in contact. I mention the last bit because it's very high stakes where seconds and minutes count a great deal more than when you do coordinated tactical strikes against strategic objectives like weapons caches. When I did that kind of work we had to have three eyes-on forms of contact. Often that was the calling troops, the observer (like an Air officer), and an air asset like a drone. They all had to independently describe the target, its orientation, and surrounding activity.
However you sourced your target is irrelevant to the activity at hand. When I first heard of this news I knew immediately someone skipped target verification or that it was simply no longer a policy of the DOD.
Famously, the last 'enemy' we killed in Afghanistan, alongside the 7 children and others surrounding him, was somebody who was working for a US aid organization. [1] A drone operator saw him putting bottles of water into his trunk, and somehow thought they were bombs, so they tracked him for 8 hours, then killed him and his family.
[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58604655
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> I worked at times in a JTAC capacity
glad to see you're alive and functioning