Читать книгу Weapon of Choice: The Operations of U.S. Army Special Forces in Afghanistan - Combat Studies Institute - Страница 36

LTC Brinks, the JSOAC commander, had been told on 12 October to begin planning air infiltrations into Afghanistan. This order expanded his mission from CSAR support to inserting Special Forces teams into Afghanistan to advise and assist anti-Taliban leaders in conducting UW. Coordinated through diplomatic and military channels, the first ARSOF aviation mission was to insert an eight-man pilot team at night south of Mazar-e-Sharif to establish contact with General Dostum.

CWO Roger Charles (pseudonym), the MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator (DAP) flight leader, received the mission. Originally deployed to Uzbekistan to provide armed escorts to MH- 47Es performing air rescue of downed aircrews in northern Afghanistan for the air campaign, the DAP would demonstrate what it was designed to do—conduct independent long-range penetrations into hostile environments to insert special reconnaissance (SR) teams. Although the DAP had weapon systems and the 160th SOAR relied heavily on the cover of darkness for protection, CWO Charles’ main concern was the incomplete antiaircraft artillery (AAA) threat picture in Afghanistan. Overhead cover of the helicopter mission by Air Force combat air patrol fighters was not an option. Thus, in an abandoned Soviet concrete building, the JSOAC staff worked feverishly to collect data from alternate sources because the SCAMPI system (secure intelligence reachback) was temporarily down and access was restricted to national intelligence sources.

CWO Charles’ second concern was weather that potentially was an even greater threat than the enemy. Poor visibility masked terrain, and a 10,000-plus-foot mountain range controlled access to Afghanistan from K2. Sand or dust storms constantly obscured the high desert plains beyond them. Visibility routinely dropped to less than one-eighth of a mile in the plains region. When the dust storms slammed into the mountains, visibility limitations reached as high as 10,000 feet, and the associated air turbulence was lethal.

Figure 56. MH-60L DAP. Winter operations in high mountainous terrain posed major challenges.

Adhering to Night Stalker tradition, “Alone and unafraid,” the 160th DAP pilots prepared their insertion plan with the information available and what the pilot team could tell them. On 14 October, Charles did the mission brief in an old Soviet aircraft bunker where the crews slept because there was more room than in the JSOAC building. The two DAP crews, the Chinook crew carrying emergency contingency fuel, the MC-130P tanker crew providing primary fuel by aerial refuel, and the JSOAC staff principals received the mission briefing huddled in a small circle around a map of the area of operations. The flight route was long, requiring two aerial refuels. The plan was simple but had several key elements for success; fuel and weather headed the list. Barring poor weather, the mission could be executed the next night. However, CENTCOM bumped the mission several days for diplomatic considerations, weather, and reservations. Finally, on the night of 16 October, the execute order was given.

Under the cover of darkness, a flight of DAPs, configured more like Black Hawk assault helicopters with their armor stripped off, and an MH-47E Chinook took off from K2 headed to the south and Afghanistan. The two DAPs rendezvoused with an Air Force MC-130P Hercules tanker orbiting above southeastern Uzbekistan to refuel. After the DAPs had refueled from the tanker, the MH-47E Chinook helicopter returned to K2. It would meet the returning DAPs at the scheduled border-crossing time in the morning darkness. They were carrying an internal fuel bladder to refuel the DAPs on the ground if needed.

Shortly after the DAP flight crossed the border just east of Termiz, Uzbekistan, around midnight, it hit an unforecasted sandstorm in the northern plains where earlier satellite imagery had shown clear weather. Undeterred, CWO Charles led his flight onward as visibility shrank to less than one-half mile. While the pilots could see stars above through their night vision goggles (NVG), providing the illusion of a possible escape, the sandstorm rose to 10,000 feet. The helicopter’s forward-looking infrared radar (FLIR) helped the pilots maintain proper obstacle clearance altitude, especially as the flight reentered mountainous terrain to the south of Mazare- Sharif. Relying on instruments, the pilots adroitly flew their helicopters “nap of the earth” (NOE), following the terrain down steep valleys and then climbing the rugged terrain before they broke out of the sandstorm at approximately 8,000 feet mean sea level (MSL). When the weather cleared, the moonless night challenged even the latest-generation NVG as the pilots flew into the central mountain region. They were looking for landing zone (LZ) Albatross, a cleared plateau in the bottom of a canyon, close to General Dostum’s headquarters.

After flying for two and one-half hours, the DAPs neared their objective. Expecting the LZ to be marked with some lights, CWO Charles was slightly taken aback when he discovered the landing area surrounded by more than 100 armed Afghans carrying AK-47s and rocketpropelled grenade (RPG) launchers. Just before takeoff, SSG Michael Stark (pseudonym), the crew chief on the lead DAP, had put an infrared chemical light on the right shoulders of the pilot team to track the ground force once they disembarked the helicopters. This was to help identify the U.S. personnel among the Northern Alliance forces in the event something went wrong on the ground. En route to the LZ, the pilot team had radioed Dostum’s forces and had been assured that everything was looking good. Still, prudence dictated caution.

Thus, CWO Charles in the lead DAP landed first in the dusty LZ, while the second DAP circled overhead maintaining visual contact with the other aircraft. After circling the area twice, the second DAP landed behind the first. Once both helicopters were on the ground, the pilot team pulled their equipment off the aircraft, gave the aircrews a “thumbs up,” and disappeared into the crowd of Northern Alliance troops. While the DAP crew chiefs manned miniguns on each side of the helicopter, a young Afghan boy filmed the whole activity with an 8-millimeter (mm) movie camera. The threat of being shot down had been greatest when the helicopters flared on short final approach to the LZ. It seemed unlikely that they would have been attacked on the ground in a group of people. Confident that the team had found its contacts, Charles gave the order for the DAPs to depart.

Figure 57. Identifying the good guys from the bad guys.

Figure 58. Preflight check included attaching glint tape to identify friendlies on the night battlefield.

Tactics dictated that the DAPs return on a different route, but the sandstorm dominating the northern plains had not abated and visibility had deteriorated even more as the pilots flew to their 0400 refuel rendezvous point. A unique phenomena associated with flying in a sandstorm is the ability to see lights below clearly. Thus, DAP aircrew members reported seeing obvious lights going on near populated areas to mark their flight path as they flew over. It seemed that people on the ground were signaling or tracking their advance in the middle of the night. This primitive tactic was later discovered to have been developed by the mujahideen to track Soviet helicopters. Like clockwork, the DAP flight crossed the border and hit the 9th Special Operations Squadron (SOS) MC-130P tanker on schedule. Once refueled, the Chinook with emergency fuel joined the two Black Hawks for the return flight to K2 as the tanker sped away. The 9th SOS tanker crews quickly established a reputation with the 160th SOAR for always being at the right place at the right time to refuel the ARSOF helicopters.

Unbeknown to many, this mission paved the way for the UW campaign in Afghanistan. It was a historic night. Army special operations aviation had achieved Night Stalker standards— time on target, plus or minus 30 seconds at night—under extreme weather conditions with aerial refuels and penetrated some of the highest and most rugged mountains in the world to deliver a team, on time and on target.

COL Kisner, deputy JSOTF commander, asked CWO Charles to carry an American flag on this first combat mission into Afghanistan. Charles said that “he would be honored.” What he did not know was that Kisner planned to present the flag to the president. Afterward, Charles wrote a letter to accompany the flag, assuring the Commander in Chief that his orders had been executed with honor and dedicated to the nation. So it was with great pride that TF Dagger and the Night Stalkers sent President Bush the flag and letter as tokens of appreciation for his leadership.

Organizing two joint special operations tactical headquarters—JSOTF-North or TF Dagger and the JSOAC—in the midst of establishing a joint FOB in Uzbekistan was a significant accomplishment. More important, these fledgling joint tactical staffs met the CENTCOM mission for CSAR in northern Afghanistan before the air campaign date was moved forward and conducted a successful long-range helicopter penetration deep into Afghanistan to insert a team responsible for coordinating the UW campaign with anti-Taliban war leaders. This was all done in less than two weeks.

Success must be attributed to the junior special operations leaders and soldiers who accepted responsibility for the myriad tasks that needed to be accomplished. They often learned as they did and persevered in the face of obstacles. Another critical element was the maturity and flexibility of the SOF leaders who responded professionally to new command arrangements, who took mission changes in stride, and who had confidence in their subordinates’ ability to get the job done well and on time, regardless of the difficulty.

The preceding stories describe some of the preparations for the war on terrorism by ARSOF stationed throughout the United States; the movement of troops overseas into combat; standing up Stronghold Freedom at K2, Uzbekistan; and initial combat missions. These should have conveyed the quality of the soldiers in ARSOF, the wide spectrum of ARSOF capabilities, the different components of ARSOF—Special Forces, PSYOP, CA, aviation, Rangers, signal, and support—the importance of USAR and ARNG units and individual augmentees to ARSOF, and what is involved in training Army soldiers for SOF assignments.

Having set the stage for the UW campaign in Afghanistan with the final story about the DAP long-range penetration to General Dostum’s mountain redoubt near Mazar-e-Sharif, the soldier stories in the next chapter will chronologically cover the war that leads to the Taliban government’s collapse in late November 2001.