The Curse of Friendly Fire

Here's the bit that blew my mind:

The GPS-guided weapon struck the Americans because the controller on the ground who called in the airstrike changed the battery on his GPS device in the middle of the bombing run. But he didn’t realize that once the unit rebooted, the aim point it began transmitting to the B-52 bomber far above wasn’t the enemy’s location. It was his.

This sounds like the most horrifically awful bug imaginable. Can anyone confirm that this is true, and explain how it might have come to be?