Trial in Fatal Downing Has Wide Impact for Military : Defense: Friendly fire deaths of 26 in Iraq haunt the armed forces. Many say the Pentagon is being overzealous.

For Lt. Col. Randy W. May, a career U.S. Air Force pilot, who in the flicker of a moment made a tragic mistake and shot down a U.S. helicopter over Iraq last spring, the legal case that opened in Germany on Monday could mean dismissal from the service and 26 years in prison.

For American servicemen and women around the globe, the case carries equally profound consequences.

May, a decorated Air Force flier with almost 20 years of service to his country, is charged with 26 counts of negligent homicide for mistakenly blasting one of two helicopters in the no-fly zone over Iraq earlier this year. Twenty-six people were killed.

Public outrage was intense. The Pentagon vowed to bring those responsible to justice, arguing that such strong measures were necessary to uphold the high standards of military professionalism.

With the armed forces continuing to shrink, competition for military jobs is growing fierce. Like many private businesses, the Pentagon is seeking to show that it has no room for incompetence and will no longer tolerate those who blunder, no matter how innocently.

But many in the military believe that May is being overzealously prosecuted by a Pentagon too eager to boost its public image. They worry that if the military continues to take such unprecedented hard lines against friendly fire mistakes, troops will be reluctant to take risks or act aggressively in combat situations for fear of being second-guessed. Their hesitation, in turn, could lead to loss of life from enemy fire.

“Combat fighter pilots are a very close group,” said John Norton of Las Vegas, a retired Army pilot from the Vietnam War era who is trying to raise a legal defense fund for May. “And if you see somebody get creamed for a mistake such as his, you’re going to be hesitant in everything you do in the future.”

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Mark McMonagle, a former soldier imprisoned for more than three years for mistakenly shooting a civilian during the 1989 invasion of Panama, said that military leaders are eager to pass the buck.

“When someone makes a mistake anymore, they put it on the lowest ranking guy,” McMonagle said. “Someone has to be the scapegoat. They know the American public will be outraged over what happened, so they just throw it on somebody else. It shows they are cowards.”

Retired Gen. David Brahms, once the Marine Corps’ top attorney, said that the harsh penalty May is facing is indicative of a new “zero-defect mentality” in the military.

As the armed services grow smaller, he said, Pentagon leaders expect the caliber of its members to rise. They also are pushing a public persona of being tougher on soldiers who trip up.

The term “friendly fire” is becoming an oxymoron, he said. “I’m absolutely certain that in the 1990s, if they find any reasonable basis for faulting anyone, they’re going to do it.

“It takes a lot of guts to stand up and say to the next of kin that, ‘look, there are mistakes and problems, but this is the price of freedom.’ ”

Instead, he said, mid-level military commanders, concerned about their own career advancement, are less willing to defend subordinates, and that in turn creates a “chilling effect” on the rank and file.

“More and more you see that every minor mistake tends to be magnified and memorialized,” he said. “People who make mistakes in today’s Army don’t stay around.”

No one, least of all May, is dismissing his case as minor.

On April 14, he and another pilot, Capt. Eric A. Wickson, shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters that they thought were Iraqi Hinds violating a no-fly zone over Iraq. Killed were 15 U.S. citizens, five Kurds working for the United States and six military officials from Britain, France and Turkey.

Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall, the service’s highest civilian authority, said in an interview that May is not being singled out.

“I have faith in the people making these calls,” Widnall said. “They hold to a high state of professionalism. And the decision to shoot down any aircraft at any time is always a very serious matter.”

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She also said that she does not believe “this has a chilling effect” on others in the military. Rather, she said, the accident will get a full public airing, and others in the armed forces will be able to decide for themselves whether any of the accused were being prosecuted unfairly.

Ivan Oelrich, a national defense consultant in Washington who last year wrote a report for Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment on friendly fire cases in the Persian Gulf War, said that military leaders handling friendly fire cases are correct in weighing their potential for undermining public goodwill.

“The American public is extremely cautious about military intervention,” he said. “So you can imagine how tough they’re going to be on mistakes. One accident and public support can vanish.

“Walk the halls of the Pentagon. Talk to officers. They know how thin public support for military intervention is and how it can evaporate very quickly if there are unnecessary losses.”

In addition to May, five members of a U.S. Airborne Warning and Control System crew were charged with various counts of dereliction of duty and could be dismissed if convicted.

Last month, three of the AWACS crew members were given hearings at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, and a decision is pending on whether they should be tried.

Two others waived their rights to preliminary hearings.

Wickson, who has not been charged in the incident, testified against the AWACS officers and bolstered the Air Force’s allegations that they failed to properly notify the F-15 pilots that the helicopters were friendly aircraft.

May’s preliminary hearing began Monday at the U.S. Air Force base in Sembach, Germany. Unlike the Tinker hearings, May’s proceedings are closed to the public.

Air Force prosecutors declined to comment, but May’s defense attorney, Capt. Earl Martin, said in a telephone interview that he does not expect the hearing to lead to a court-martial.

Martin suggested that the AWACS crew sent erroneous information to May that the Black Hawks were hostile aircraft.

“We’re going to try to put the case and the event itself in its proper perspective,” Martin said. “We’re going to show that the mistake made by Col. May and the flight lead (Wickson) was indeed the final mistake in a long line of errors. And each of these errors played a very significant role in this event.”

For May’s part, the mission was one of more than a dozen he has flown over the no-fly zone.

Indeed, during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, he downed an Iraqi Hind in the same area and received a Distinguished Flying Cross for his “professional competence, aerial skill and devotion to duty.”

May declined to be interviewed about the pending charges. But in a statement, he strongly denied any purposeful negligence.

“The mission we flew was not conducted haphazardly but was performed in a disciplined manner as planned and briefed,” he said. “Human error did occur and it resulted in a fatal mistake which will never leave my thoughts.”