I worked for a defense contractor when the mistargeted drone strike on Ahmadi occurred killing him and 9 family members (including 7 children). Based on internal information available at the time, there's a very good chance that the drone strike was mistargeted due to software bugs.
In particular, a "track this car" feature that worked against satellite and aerial surveillance was available in software used by those in the military's operations teams. I've poked around in that software to determine that it was definitely buggy, but this did not prevent the feature from being offered to users. I've been assured that users were essentially told "don't click this button that automates watching vehicles and instead do it yourself", but laziness and crisis crunch time of the American exit from Afghanistan makes it very realistic that users were overwhelmed and trying anything to stay on top of things.
I lay those deaths at least partially on software and the cavalier way that life-or-death circumstances are systematically ignored by the defense contractor software industry.
In particular, a "track this car" feature that worked against satellite and aerial surveillance was available in software used by those in the military's operations teams. I've poked around in that software to determine that it was definitely buggy, but this did not prevent the feature from being offered to users. I've been assured that users were essentially told "don't click this button that automates watching vehicles and instead do it yourself", but laziness and crisis crunch time of the American exit from Afghanistan makes it very realistic that users were overwhelmed and trying anything to stay on top of things.
I lay those deaths at least partially on software and the cavalier way that life-or-death circumstances are systematically ignored by the defense contractor software industry.