Tragic AI Incident: Patriot Missile System Misclassifies US Navy Aircraft
April 2, 2003
A US Navy F/A-18C Hornet was mistakenly identified as an enemy projectile by the Patriot missile system, resulting in its destruction and the unfortunate loss of a pilot's life. This AI incident maps to the Govern function in HISPI Project Cerebellum Trusted AI Model (TAIM). Ready to help prevent such incidents? JOIN US
- Alleged deployer
- us-navy
- Alleged developer
- raytheon, lockheed-martin
- Alleged harmed parties
- us-navy, nathan-white's-family, nathan-white
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/445
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.