An airman left for dead, but signs indicate he fought on

Honor, the military’s highest award, after new technology used in an examination of videos from aircraft flying overhead helped officials conclude the sergeant had killed two fighters with al-Qaida before dying in an attempt to protect arriving reinforcements.

If approved by the president, the award will be the first of more than 3,500 Medals of Honor given since the Civil War to rely not on eyewitness accounts but primarily on technology.

Soon after the incident, the military opened an investigation to determine what had gone wrong. The chief investigator, Lt. Col. Andrew Milani of the Army, wrote later that an Air Force gunship had failed to detect the militants on the mountaintop and the SEALs had “violated a basic tenet of reconnaissance” by landing directly on their observation post instead of hiking up to it.

Milani also looked into footage captured by a Predator drone about 50 minutes after the SEALs had left the mountaintop. The grainy images showed someone in the bunker defending himself against two attackers and killing one with a rifle shot, prompting the question: Who was that?

Milani’s investigation remains classified, but an unclassified paper he wrote in 2003 offered two possible explanations: The al-Qaida fighters had become confused and were firing at one another, or Chapman, still alive, had resumed fighting.

A briefing prepared by Air Force special operations officials dismisses as “not viable” Milani’s suggestion the gunfight caught on video by the CIA Predator might have involved militants fighting one another, according to people who have received it. That the airman was alive and fighting “is fully supported by the evidence,” the briefing slides state.