I'm going to assume (very much so) that the Apaches are answering to whomever is commanding the ground column. So permission to fire will come from him. They a

I'm going to assume (very much so) that the Apaches are answering to whomever is commanding the ground column. So permission to fire will come from him. They actually ask twice for permission to fire on the van. The first time with some detail about the target and the second without. Did the person who granted them permission to fire have another source of information about the situation, or was the decision based entirely on the crew's description of the situation? The latter. Although being that authority to fire is in the hands of the ground commander, he should have asked what the heck they were firing on. From the sounds of it, I think he was tied up with other things at the time he gave said permission, which doesn't absolve him from his role.