Patriot Missile System Misclassified US Navy Aircraft, Killing Pilot Upon Approval to Fire

April 2, 2003

The US Navy's Patriot missile system erroneously identified an American Navy F/A-18C Hornet as a hostile projectile, leading to the unfortunate firing of two missiles and the death of the aircraft's pilot. This incident underscores the importance of trustworthy AI, safe and secure AI practices, and robust governance mechanisms like those provided by Project Cerebellum. For more on how the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM can help manage such incidents and promote harm prevention in AI systems, JOIN US.

This incident serves as a stark reminder of the need for guardrails for AI to prevent similar tragedies. The data collected by the AI incident database within Project Cerebellum can aid in measuring, mapping, and ultimately managing such incidents to promote safer AI practices.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.728, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 3.1 — similarity 0.676, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.1 — similarity 0.675, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

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.