Why is this movie rated so low

Fair enough. It's been months since I've seen this film so I'll write regarding what I can remember.

But first, I would disregard whatever selfserving remarks the film makers made about all the research they put into being as accurate as possible in the making of the film. This is the kind of fluff film makers always say to lend credibility to their work in behind-the-scenes featurettes. For example, even the Michael Bay film "Armageddon" boasts how closely they worked with NASA to be as authentic as possible yet wound up dsregarding physics and natural law. The makers of "Courage Under Fire" could claim to have done mountains of research but it doesn't mean they let reality get in the way of what they wanted to shoot. And military advisors are only there to answer questions for the film makers, not to correct them.

My gripes with the inaccuracies weren't the fact that they didn't have authentic equipment and had to rely on mock ups. I understood that. I also didn't mind the slight errors regarding some of the uniforms. I wrote my initial comment shortly after having seen the film so this is from what I can remember...

Lou Diamond Philips plays a SAW gunner from the 82nd Airborne who just happens to be hanging out with the medics (from a completely different division) playing cards and goes along for a ride with them. He abandoned his unit in the middle of a war? He just decided to go along for the ride and they let him? This is not how things work... but this was just a little thing.

When they come up on the battle scene to rescue wounded Americans, the Iraqis and Americans are all out in the open fighting in the most cartoonish keystone cops non tactical way possible. I guess the director wanted to see them all on camera.

During the day and night that the helicopter crew are on the ground fending off Iraqis while waiting for rescue they are set up in a small five meter perimeter, bunched together, all facing the same direction. This was absurd. They should have been over run in seconds. They were bunched up presumably because, on camera, they needed to have them all in frame at the same time for some of the arguments. That looks good on camera but was tactically retarded and narrowed down their fields of fire and the ground they could defend making it incredibly easy for even the most untrained enemy to advance on their flank... especially since the film makers have the chopper crew all defending in the same direction. Throughout the entire night, the Iraqis could not think to go around them and kept assaulting from the same direction?

But these are only minor quibbles. There are two scenes in this film that I recall vividly as being among the most logic defing scenes I'd ever seen in a war movie.

First was the scene where they destroy the Iraqi tank with a fuel blivet and a flare. That a huey would be that close to an Iraqi tank without having been shot down before it got within 500 meters is ridiculous, but okay, they had to be filmed that close together to be on screen. The crew inside a helicopter can not disconnect a fuel blivet from within like that... no way. So they magicaly unattach it. A fuel blivet dropped on a tank would not burst... they are tougher than that. But let's say it did burst and some fuel got on the tank. Let's also say the fuel could be ignited by a flare gun. At worst, the tank would find itself in a puddle of burning fuel with some burning fuel on top of it. The tank would simply drive off the burning puddle and whatever burning fuel was on the tank would continue to burn until it burned itself out. The tank would be unharmed. In this movie, however, the tank explodes when there is fire on it. This defies logic, reason... and, of course, physics.

The most absurd logic defying moment, however, goes to the final tank battle scene with Denzel Washington, where to avoid further incidents of fratricide, he orders all the tanks under his command to turn on their headlights and instructs his gunner to fire on any tanks with their headlights off. This just showed the film makers could care less about authenticity, did zero research, and ignored any military advisor they had. His gunner accidently fired on a friendly tank because he did not take the time to identify it. So instead of ordering his other tanks to make sure they identify their targets before firing (see the special markings that are illumintaed through the night vision scopes) Denzel Washington's character orders his men to turn on their headlights in the middle of a battle... giving away their positions to every Iraqi tank and dismounted infantryman with antitank weapons in the area. Their nightvision capabilities were what gave the the greatest edge over the Iraqis, and not only did they throw that away in this film, but they illuminated themselves, marking themselves as giant targets. This defies all logic and reasoning and, had a commander actually done this during the Gulf War, not only would he have been courtmartialed, he would have suffered heavy losses from the enemy.

There is also anther basic rule of logic that makes this plan of shooting tanks with no headlights so stupid in the film...
Denzel orders his gunner, and all other tanks, to fire on any other tanks with no headlights on. In fact a scene plays out with the gunner saying he sees a tank... Denzel asks if he sees headlights... the gunner responds "no." Without checking the tank type or looking for markings, Denzel gives the order to fire. Hmmmm... let's see how this would play on a real battlefield... There would be even more fratricides then before because not only would they shoot every American tank with its headlights out, but every American tank with its headlights obscured by obstacles in front of it... and of course (here's where the film makers put no thought into this) every American tank that was not facing each other would also be fired on... you can not see the headlights if you are looking at the back or a rear angle of the tank. Thanks to Denzel's "shoot anything without headlights" order, unless all the American tanks were in a circle, facing each other, there would be countless friendly fire accidents as advancing tanks shot each other in the back.

You asked for examples. These are just what I could remember off the top of my head.