The Collaborative International Dictionary
friendly fire \friend"ly fire`\, n. (Mil.) Weapons fire[9], such as artillery or aerial bombardment, from one's own forces; -- used mostly when troops do damage or cause casualties among their own forces; as, the tank was hit by friendly fire.
Wiktionary
n. Weapons fire from allied or friendly forces, as opposed to fire coming from enemy forces or enemy fire.
WordNet
n. fire that injures or kills an ally [syn: fratricide]
Wikipedia
Friendly fire is an attack by a military force on non-enemy, allied or neutral, forces while attempting to attack the enemy, either by misidentifying the target as hostile, or due to errors or inaccuracy. Fire not intended to attack the enemy, such as negligent discharge and deliberate firing on one's own troops for disciplinary reasons, is not called friendly fire. Nor is unintentional harm to non-combatants or structures, which is sometimes referred to as collateral damage. Training accidents and bloodless incidents also do not qualify as friendly fire in terms of casualty reporting.
Use of the term "friendly" in a military context for allied personnel or materiel dates from the First World War, often for shells falling short. The term friendly fire was originally adopted by the United States military. Many North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO) militaries refer to these incidents as blue on blue, which derives from military exercises where NATO forces were identified by blue pennants and units representing Warsaw Pact forces by orange pennants.
Friendly Fire is the second studio album by Sean Lennon, released on 3 October 2006 by Capitol Records in the US, and Parlophone in the UK. It reached #152 on the US Billboard 200 chart and #5 in the Top Heatseekers chart. It stayed on the French album chart for 43 weeks and was certified silver.
Friendly fire is the inadvertent firing towards one's own or otherwise friendly forces.
Friendly Fire may also refer to:
Friendly Fire is a 2006 film written and directed by Sean Lennon and Michele Civetta. It accompanies Sean Lennon's 2006 album of the same name (as a DVD). The film comprises 10 music videos, one for each song on the album (with non-album tracks and dialog used during intermission scenes). Friendly Fire stars Lennon himself, playing a wide range of roles along with various friends and actors such as Bijou Phillips, Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Fisher and Jordan Galland. The project is dedicated to Lennon's late friend, Max Leroy (1975–2005).
Friendly Fire was shown publicly during the album's release in the United States at various independent screenings. Occasionally screened with Beck's album-film, The Information (which was released on the same day).
Friendly Fire is an American television movie first broadcast on the ABC network on April 22, 1979. Watched that night by an estimated 64 million people, Friendly Fire went on to win four Emmy awards, including Outstanding Drama Special.
The movie tells the real-life story of Peg Mullen (played by Carol Burnett), a woman from rural Iowa who works against government obstacles to uncover the truth about the death of her son Michael, a soldier killed by American " friendly fire" in the Vietnam War in 1970. Mullen's husband Gene is played by Ned Beatty.
Friendly Fire is based on the 1976 book of the same name, written by C. D. B. Bryan, which in turn was adapted from a series of New Yorker magazine articles Bryan had written about the Mullens and their ordeal.
Friendly Fire is the second solo album by the British singer/songwriter Shara Nelson, released in 1995 on Cooltempo Records.
The album contains Nelson's UK Top 30 hit, " Rough with the Smooth".
Friendly Fire is an album by the American jazz saxophonists Joe Lovano and Greg Osby recorded in 1998 and released on the Blue Note label.
Friendly Fire (; literally "justice attack") is a 2012 Hong Kong legal drama television series produced by TVB under executive producers Tommy Leung and Man Wai-hung and starring Michael Tse, Tavia Yeung, Sammy Leung, and Sharon Chan.
Usage examples of "friendly fire".
So they'll be safe enough from friendly fire, since those warheads really aren't that powerful.
And now, unless the D Minus 1 assault on the channel islands was called off, the national police were going to get blown away by a phrase Zimmerman confessed he never understood: friendly fire.
Bullets can ricochet, and wed just feel better if we knew you were safe from friendly fire.
Troops are complaining that the mines weren't supposed to detonate, and some of them are unhappy about taking friendly fire.
Someone out there must have ordered a limited response to the attack, to keep Deep Space Three from falling victim to our own friendly fire.