History v Hollywood

What always struck me as BS in this movie is the helo was a Red Cross wearing aircraft. As such, according to the Geneva Convention, no one one the chopper is supposed to fire unless they are fired upon AND they are carrying patients/trying to protect their patients. If they do fire (een to return fire), then they are essentially flying under false colors and are now combatants rather than enjoying any non-combatant status that medics normally claim. This is technically equivalent to a spy wearing anything other than a uniform - that is partly why spies are considered "so heinous"; they aren't "playing by the rules" of warfare where one can identify the combatants and the non-combatants by the uniforms.

Meg Ryan's character also really screwed the pooch here as she is the one who instigated the "bomb drop" of the "improvised molotov cocktail" (auxiliary fuel bladder ignited by a flare fired from at least 100 feet above the tank) - something that she, as an officer, should really have been concerned with in terms of Articles of War/Geneva Convention violations.

Speaking of which, that bomb drop was just ridiculously unbelievable. When they dropped it, they were no more than fifty feet above the tank and they weren't shot to pieces by all the infantry on the ground there? Kind of stretches the bounds of credibility for me. Not to mention the flare gun shot - from a moving helo at a distance of at least 100 feet and a with 3-D altitutde calculation thrown in (plus the swirling downdraft of the chppoer wash). But it's Hollywood.