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Afghanistan Primer: fixing "We don't do mountains"
Lessons Learned: Put the "mountain" back in the 10th Mountain Division
PROBLEMS
OPERATION ANACONDA
by Cincinnatus for SOF magazine
AUTHORS NOTE: We know its easy to criticize and SOF certainly doesn't
want to appear to be a Monday-morning quarterback. However, information from
U.S. forces at Kandahar and Bagram Air Fields tells us that Operation
Anaconda mission planners violated just about every rule of the tactics
manuals: underestimating the enemys strength and capabilities, over-reliance
on air power for support, transport, and resupply in a high-mountain
environment, lack of adequate preparatory and supporting fires, separation of
forces, lack of mutual support between units well, the list is extensive.
As you'll see in this article the entire operation seemed in danger of
failure from the moment the troops loaded the helicopters. It was only the
determination and professionalism of the troops on the ground and the
leadership at the lower echelons that salvaged something from a flawed plan.
It is disturbing to SOF that the mission planners had to re-learn fundamental
tactical lessons. Company-grade and junior field-grade officers (the guys who
bite the bullet down in the platoons, companies, and battalions when the
colonels and generals screw- up) would have good reason to be very critical
of some of their commanders and especially the mission planners at Division-
and Brigade-level. Unfortunately, eight U.S. servicemen died and more than 40
were wounded executing a plan that initially just didnt work. The author,
long-known by SOF, has assumed a nom de guerre to protect his sources.
The mission of OP ANACONDA was to destroy the last identified concentration
of al-Qaeda and Taliban troops in Eastern Afghanistan. Intelligence
indicated that several hundred enemy had gathered around the town of
Sherkankel in the Shah-i-Kot Valley, an extremely mountainous region (Hindu
Kush mountain range) immediately west of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. The
operational area contained the town of Sherkankel in the valley, with a
10,000-foot feature dubbed the Whale's Back on the west side of the valley,
and the 10,000-to-12,000-foot Shah-i-Kot mountain range on the East side.
Intelligence based on overhead imagery and strategic reconnaissance (Special
Operations Forces) indicated that the enemy were located in the valley in and
around the town of Sherkankel.
Based on this intelligence, an operations plan was issued ordering two U.S.
battalions (2nd Battalion, 3nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division and 1st
Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division) to conduct an air assault to
occupy blocking positions in the Shah-i-Kot mountain passes and seal-off the
enemys escape routes east from the valley towards Pakistan. Once the
blocking positions were established, an Afghan force advised and supported by
special operations forces would sweep south down the valley into Sherkankel,
and drive the enemy east towards the U.S. battalions holding the high ground:
a classic hammer-anvil plan of attack. Unfortunately, it fell apart almost
immediately.
The U.S. intelligence estimates of the enemys strength, capabilities and
locations in the Shah-i-Kot Valley were inaccurate. Perceived rag-tag
remnants numbering in the several hundreds were actually about 1,000
determined and well-equipped al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters many of them
foreigners (Chechens, Uzbeks, Arabs, Pakistanis) with nothing to lose.
Furthermore, the main enemy positions werent in the valley town of
Sherkankel they were dug into caves and rock bunkers (sangars) along the
ridgelines of the Whale's Back and the Shah-i-Kot mountain range, both of
which overlooked the valley from the high ground in a classic horse-shoe
defense exactly where any novice tactician would have surmised the enemy
would be located (especially based on the historical precedence of basic
Afghan tactics).
Looked Good On Paper
The blocking battalions had to land on the forward slopes of the Shah-i-Kot
mountain range because there were no better helicopter Landing Zones (LZs).
This exposed the helicopters and their cargo of infantrymen to direct
observation and fire from the Whale's Back, the town of Sherkankel, and the
top of the Shah-i-Kot range itself. The planners of this mission expected the
troops to move uphill into their blocking positions while in full view of the enemy. Only two LZs were used one at the north end of the Shah-i-Kot range for the 2nd Bn, 3rd Bde, 101st Airborne and the other at the south end for the 1st Bn, 2nd Bde, 10th Mountain. The two LZs were separated by about 8
kilometers of steep, rocky, mountain ridgeline. If either battalion ran into
trouble on their LZ there would be little, if any, chance of link-up or
mutual support. Who came up with this brilliant scheme of maneuver?
To avoid collateral damage and maintain the element of surprise, there would
be no prior bombardment of the (incorrectly) identified enemy positions.
Instead, the air assault would go in cold. Not a good idea. When did they
start teaching this at Fort Benning or Command and General Staff College? Nor
would units deploy their battalion mortars for indirect fire support. No problem, said the head-shed, weve got eight Apache attack helicopters and Close-Air Support (CAS) for fire support. The operations order called for complete dependence on air assets for all fire support. The helicopters, at the limit of their operational ceiling, were flying in mountains with the possibility of imminent bad weather.
These fundamental planning and tactical errors alone paint a different
picture of Operation Anaconda than the Pentagon briefers and General Tommy
Franks have given the public.
On Day 1 of the operation, helicopters approached the LZs in the late
afternoon. There were no preparatory fires or airstrikes on the LZs. Upon landing on the two LZs on the exposed slope of the Shah-i-Kot ridge, they
came under immediate and intense enemy fire from prepared defensive positions
sited above and all around them. Incoming fire consisted of everything from
small arms to mortars and heavy machine guns, firing with interlocking arcs
from both the top of the Shah-i-Kot and across the valley from the Whale's
Back. The Apache attack helicopters attempted to suppress the numerous enemy
positions and four of the eight were immediately damaged by RPG and
machine-gun fire. The damaged aircraft flew back to the Forward Operating
Base (FOB) at Bagram Airfield (north of Kabul) an hour away. So much for
direct-fire support from aviation in Afghanistan. This is something the
Soviets learned the hard way and Major General Frank Hagenbeck should have
learned the easy way by studying the Soviet lessons learned. Didn't anyone read about the Air Cav in Vietnam?
Both battalions managed to land on their respective LZs, in the low ground,
thus exposed to direct- and indirect-fire from the surrounding enemy
positions on the high ground. The 2nd Bn, 3rd Bde, 101st Airborne secured
their initial objective at the north end of the Shah-i-Kot ridgeline, but
continued to take enemy fire from the Whale's Back across the valley, pinning
them down. They couldn't move south down the ridgeline to their assigned
blocking positions. The 1st Bn, 2nd Bde, 10th Mountain on the southern LZ had
a tougher time. One of their Chinook helicopters was hit and crash-landed
near the 2nd Bn, 3rd Bde, 101st Airbornes LZ. Pinned down in their LZ by
enemy fire, the battalion from the 10th Mountain declared its LZ "untenable"
and requested extraction. They occupied the LZ in a defensive perimeter under
heavy enemy fire throughout the night and were extracted the next morning
back to the FOB.
Day 1 was a failure, plain and simple. Neither battalion had occupied its
blocking positions. The anvil was not in position. The enemy escape routes
east through the Shah-i-Kot range to Pakistan were wide open. In addition to
the four damaged Apaches and a crashed Chinook, a second Chinook was shot
down at the southern LZ; eight Americans were killed in action and another 40
or so wounded. The weather turned bad, negatively impacting air support for
the next 24 hours. As one infantry officer involved in the operation
sarcastically remarked, "Bad weather in the mountains? Who would have
expected that?" The Allied Afghan movement-to-contact, south down the valley
into Sherkankel, went awry when they took heavy small-arms fire from the
village, suffered about 30 casualties, and immediately retreated. For
approximately the next 48 hours, Operation Anaconda ceased, as Brigade and
Divisional commanders and operations officers attempted to salvage what
appeared to be a complete disaster.
Grunts Save The Op, But Planners Lose The Enemy
When the weather cleared the mission planners reverted to their default
solution: Airpower will save the day. For approximately the next 24 hours
U.S. airpower carpet-bombed enemy positions on the Whale's Back and all along
the Shah-i-Kot mountain range with everything in the U.S. arsenal short of
cruise missiles. Eventually, it was decided to use the battalion position on
the north end of the Shah-i-Kot range as a firm base, push south down the
ridgeline to clear out the enemy positions, and try to occupy the original
blocking positions. The reconstituted battalion from the 10th Mountain
Division and a second battalion from 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne
Division were flown into what was termed the "firm base", and started an
advance down the mountain range assisted by heavy-air and attack-helicopter
support. Massive air support suppressing remaining enemy positions on the
Whale's Back across the valley, and the personal efforts of the infantrymen
on the ground in those maneuver battalions, overcame poor planning and
organization and got the job done. While the two infantry battalions were
seizing their original objectives, the Afghan forces, rallied by their SF
advisors, took the town of Sherkankel. Of course, the hammer and anvil
were too late.
Rather than sit still for a week and await certain defeat in a battle plan
implemented days before, most of the enemy had withdrawn east across the
Pakistani border. A small rear guard remained to delay. The blocking
positions eventually occupied by the three U.S. infantry battalions didn't
block anything the enemy was gone.
Observers on the ground, all infantry officers, say the air assault on Day 1
by 2nd Bn, 3rd Bde, 101st Airborne, and 1st Bn, 2nd Bde, 10th Mountain did
not go well. According to one field-grade officer, To be brutally honest,
the enemy gave them quite a spanking. I have to tell you, as the first
reports of casualties and downed helicopters were coming back to us from the
initial assault, all everyone could think about was BlackHawk Down! It
looked that bad.
On 9 March, a week after Operation Anaconda commenced, a Canadian battle
group, the 3rd Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry (3 PPCLI),
opconned to the 3rd Bde Rakassans 101st Airborne, received orders to join
2nd Brigade 10th Mountain Division for combat operations as part of OP
ANACONDA. The 3 PPCLI was ordered to clear the Whale's Back mountain on the
Western side of the Shah-i-Kot Valley of an estimated 60-100 enemy holdouts
dug-in or hiding in caves, and then conduct Sensitive Site Exploitation
(SSE), i.e. searches of all caves and enemy fighting positions. The SSE
tasking meant a detailed sweep over a linear mountain ranging in elevation
from 6,500 feet (at the base) to 10,000 feet at the spine; that is, 7
kilometers long and 2 kilometers wide. The final phase of Operation Anaconda
was to sweep the Whale's Back was named Operation Harpoon.
The 3PPCLI launched a battalion-strength air assault against the Whale's Back
shortly after first light (0730 hours local time) on 13 March, inserting via
CH-47 Chinook helicopter into a single-ship LZ at the northern end of the
mountain. USMC Super-Cobra attack helicopters, AC-130 Spectre gunships,
and Predator unmanned surveillance aircraft provided close air support.
F-18 Hornet and A-10 Warthog jets were available on stand-by. B-52s
conducted round-the-clock carpet-bombing of suspected enemy positions on the
eastern side of the valley.
There were few enemy left on the Whale's Back, and the aggressive Canadians
promptly engaged them with anti-tank rockets and small-arms fire, killing
three. Moving tactically at 10,000 feet with full combat loads through
mountain terrain, it was fortunate that the Canadians were veterans of
cold-weather and mountain training. They spent five days clearing enemy
positions and searching more than 30 caves; a dangerous business fraught
with booby-traps, mines, and possible ambushes on the Whale's Back. They found large caches of ammunition and equipment, collected intelligence documents and maps, and searched a few dead al-Qaeda killed in the airstrikes.
The Canadian infantrymen were extracted by helicopter on 17 and 18 March
bringing Operation Anaconda/ Operation Harpoon to a close.
In light of the self-congratulatory pronouncements made by Major General
Hagenbeck, General Franks, and others, its doubtful the full extent of the
ineptitude at Division- and Brigade-levels will ever be exposed fully (unless
one of the battalion commanders retires and writes his memoirs). The failure
to fully disclose the operations shortcomings and the predilection of the
senior leadership to paint a rosy picture of a great success has impacted
morale only slightly. The troops, NCOs, and lower-ranking officers are used
to such posturing and cover-ups by the upper echelons. Given the obvious
tactical blunders and poor planning, Operation Anaconda was a failure. Was it
a complete failure? Maybe not, but neither was it an unqualified success.
It was inevitable that some enemy would escape, but hundreds were KIA by
airpower over the eight-day bombing operation, while the infantry battalions
were trying to fight their way south along the eastern ridgeline of the
Shah-i-Kot to secure the blocking positions. The enemys combat power in the
region and his stockpile of arms was destroyed. The enemy personnel that
escaped were stragglers and small groups of disorganized survivors forced to
abandon most of their heavy weapons.
As one squad leader has said, "We didnt get em all, but we messed em up
good."
Cincinnatus is a former U.S. Army infantry officer with experience on
battalion and brigade staffs, and experience in Afghanistan.
"We don't do mountains": British officers will not criticise the U.S. forces,
but, discovers Julian Manyon, the GIs are full of surprises
Bagram airbase, Afghanistan
It is often by accident that one makes the most surprising discoveries. I
was driving with 'Bud', a slightly pudgy American Soldier, through the
Bagram airbase, now transformed from derelict battlefield into the
sprawling headquarters of the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. All around us
baggy-uniformed troops queued at meal tents or whizzed past in oversized
jeeps and vehicles that looked like militarised golf carts. Massively muscled Special Forces troops in designer sunglasses manned a heavy machine gun in front of the PX, while ferocious-looking female Soldiers with the build of prop forwards and carrying grenade launchers guarded the runway. Beside me, Bud grazed continuously on the half-empty packets of
barbecue-flavour crisps and honey-roasted peanuts which littered his
vehicle. On his shoulder he wore a patch which said "Mountain", the emblem
of the 10th Mountain Division, one of the first American units sent to
this extremely mountainous country. So to make conversation, I inquired
about his mountain-warfare training. "No sir, we don't do that", Bud
declared in a masticatory pause. "We don't do mountains".
I thought my hearing must be at fault, so I asked the question again but
received the same reply. The 10th Mountain Division is based at Syracuse,
New York, he told me, and normally never goes anywhere near mountains.
Still doubting this startling intelligence about a unit which has been
described in both the American and the British press as mountain-warfare
specialists, I sought out their press officer who confirmed that Bud's
account was correct.
U.S. over-reliance on airstrike Firepower
The division takes its name from a second world war unit that did 'do'
mountains, but such training was discontinued years ago. 'We've had a lot
of practice recently, though,' the press officer told me brightly. Indeed
they have. Troops from the Mountain Division bore much of the brunt of the
recent Operation Anaconda, in which, despite awesome U.S. firepower, the
assault troops ran into trouble on the ground. More than half the 47
wounded suffered by the Americans were from the 10th Mountain (the eight
who died were all Special Forces) and, according to one officer, troops
ferried by helicopter to a high ridge had to sit down for half-an-hour
before they could move in the thin air. For all the media hoopla, Anaconda
failed to encircle and crush the Islamic diehards who still infest the
mountain region straddling the Pakistan border, and who appear to nourish
hopes of mounting a long-term guerrilla war.
All this at least explains why the Pentagon is happy to see our Royal
Marine Commandos shoulder some of the burden. Despite debate in the
British press over whether our boys have trained at high enough altitudes
for a country in which the grandest peaks reach almost 25,000 feet
compared with 15,000 feet in the Alps, there can be no doubt that they do
"do" mountains. Physically, the contrast between the British and the
American troops is subtle but striking. The men of the 10th Mountain are
often big and seem more or less fit, but to my eye at least they lack the
honed edge of real combat troops. The Marines, by contrast, are sometimes
smaller men, but they have the rugged, self-confident sturdiness that
speaks of months of training in the most demanding conditions, and they
carry their weapons as if they mean business [Editor: infantry weapons will need to win the fight not firepower from someone else ie; air strikes].
British officers are at pains to cast no aspersions on the fighting
qualities of the American ally they have come to assist, though they do
hint at a slightly different tactical approach. U.S. bombing is lauded for its power and high-tech "accuracy". One British officer grinned with what appeared to be a certain relish as he told me that the Americans could, if required, land a bomb on the exact spot where I was standing next to my vehicle. But asked if the British troops will follow American doctrine and mount their assaults only after saturation bombing, the answer appeared to be no.
Maneuver needed to locate and destroy elusive enemies in mountainous terrain
"Remember Malaya," said the officer. "What we did there seemed to work,
and Northern Ireland too. We have a great tradition in this sort of
warfare". He was sphinx-like on detail but the reference appeared to be to
the careful collection of intelligence among the local population allied
with tactical surprise. Not far away RAF mechanics were working on the
small fleet of Chinook helicopters that will ferry the Royal Marines into
combat. They tested mysterious attachments designed to neutralise enemy
missiles, while the pilots waited to practise the low-flying skills on
which many operations will depend.
A long period of cat-and-mouse in the Afghan mountains may well be
required: both the future of the country and the final balance-sheet of
this campaign against terrorism remain to be defined. The Taleban have
been swept from power but still seem to command a residual loyalty in some
Pushtun areas. Indeed, the graves of some of the Taleban fighters who died
in Operation Anaconda have been turned into a local shrine. And what was
once the all-important objective of mounting Osama bin Laden's head on a
pole is these days scarcely mentioned. But, without that sort of symbolic
success, resistance by Taleban and al-Qa'eda ultras may persist and even
grow, while there remain strong doubts about the ability of the
warlord-riven interim government, or whatever succeeds it, to control a
unified country. The Americans can take some satisfaction in their choice
of interim Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, who cuts a plausible, even
sympathetic, figure. But one only has to look to either side of him at the
hardened, cynical faces of some of his Northern Alliance ministers to see
the mafiotic influences that are still doing their best to pull the
strings.
After the recent earthquake in northern Afghanistan, while international
aid workers appealed for helicopters to carry out the injured, Afghan
military commanders were touting their aircraft to foreign journalists,
offering trips to the disaster area for thousands of dollars a time.
Meanwhile, the efforts to form a national army - or, to give its preferred
title, a National Guard - has run into some telling difficulties. By the
time this article appears, the first 600-strong battalion of this force
will have held its passing-out parade after weeks of intensive training by
British troops from the Isaf peacekeeping force. But, according to an
Afghan source who has been closely involved in the training programme,
substantial numbers of them intend to quit the ranks as soon as they have
graduated. "Why should I stay in this army?" my source reported one of
them as saying. "Back home I am a commander. I have cars, I have
businesses and 100 men who follow me. I wouldn't stay in this army if you
paid me thousands of dollars a week."
The difficulties appear to stem from the feudal anarchy of Afghanistan
and, in particular, from the methods by which the 600 were selected. For
reasons that are not entirely clear, the Afghan ministry of defence, which
was responsible for recruitment, spread the word among its forces that the
600 would be flown to Britain for training. Such was the allure of this
idea that many local commanders - leaders of the countless armed bands
which make up the pro-government forces - decided to reserve this plum
assignment for themselves. The commanders duly assembled in Kabul, only to
be told that it had always been Isaf's intention to train them in the
Afghan capital. There was further dismay when the men realised that
British military training does not include the languid lunches and long
naps normally enjoyed by the Afghan condottieri but involves repeated
drill and such unpleasantnesses as crawling on one's stomach under barbed
wire. According to my source, disciplinary problems were resolved
skilfully and effectively by the British trainers, and the Afghans decided
to stay the course 'because otherwise we will be seen as failures in our
villages'. But it remains to be seen if Isaf has created the core of an
effective national army or merely a better class of cut-throat.
Meanwhile, I have been able to contemplate the recent, tragic history of
Afghanistan from the comfort of a former Soviet army interrogation centre
now converted by an enterprising businessman into a somewhat eccentric
guesthouse. The Hotel Mustafa in Kabul boasts bars on all doors and
windows, and barred partitions, fortunately left open, in the corridor to
the shared toilet. Who knows what atrocities took place here, though with
the spring sunshine streaming through the bars it is an oddly cheerful
place, and I may even miss it when I move to a tent in the alternate mud
and dust of Bagram to await the start of British military operations.
Julian Manyon is Asia correspondent of ITV News. This article is also
reproduced for ITV News online and can be seen in 'Location reports' at
news
Anaconda: Absolute Success, or Wake-Up Call?
By Gary R. Stahlhut
Now that the dust has settled with regards to Operation Anaconda, I
believe this is the time to start writing a truthful and detailed after
operations report. Since I was not directly involved in this operation I
can only write about what I have observed, read about, or been told
happened. We cannot only rely on official reports of the operation, since
the information was controlled and censored, thus making it imperative to
produce accurate and honest appraisals of what happened to our troops,
especially AARs from the 10th Mountain Division. The conclusions derived
from the lessons learned during this operation must be used to improve our
training and our command and control procedures.
Operation Ananconda was designed to encircle and destroy Al Qaeda and
Taliban troops who had been infiltrating in to the caves and valleys of
the mountainous region of Shah e Tot. Much like the mountainous area of
Tora Bora, this region was also being used to store weapons and hide enemy
troops in a multitude of caves and tunnels built into the mountains.
Operation Anaconda incorporated the use of blocking forces to avoid
repeating the mistake of leaving the back door open, as happened during
the Tora Bora campaign when most of the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters
infiltrated out of the area before being captured or killed. Operation
Anaconda was fought by 1,500 soldiers at altitudes of 10,000 feet and
more, making this operation one of the highest altitudes at which U.S.
combat forces have fought in since World War II. Infantry from the 101st
Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division, U.S. Special Forces, and Afghan
allies fought gut-busting infantry combat which has not been seen since
the war in Vietnam.
Operation Anaconda required infantry to pack in what they needed to fight
and survive, the use of helicopters was very limited in the mountains due
to the altitude and amount of ground fire thrown up against them.
The high altitude caused immense problems for the men of 10th Mountain
Division, which, despite its name, is not trained for mountain warfare.
Many Soldiers suffered from altitude sickness, cold weather exposure,
muscle failure, and weapons failures. To be fair, despite the 10th
Mountain Division's best efforts, they were not trained or prepared to
fight a prolonged mountain campaign. While division elements had earlier
seen combat most notably in support of the 1993 Task Force Ranger relief
in Mogadishu, most of the division's missions of the past decade were in
support of peacekeeping missions in Kuwait, Haiti and Bosnia.
I believe that the results of Operation Anaconda give strong support to
actually make the 10th Mountain Division, a true Mountain Division. The
"Mountain" tab should be a qualification tab, not just another shoulder
tab. Each Soldier should go through a mountain school (much like Ranger
School) and be awarded the tab only if they graduate, to be able to serve
in the division. This includes the division support troops. Operation
Anaconda will certainly not be the last time we will have to fight an
enemy in mountainous terrain.
The war in Afghanistan is fast becoming a guerilla war, which cannot be
measured by declaring each military operation an absolute success or by
how many enemy we kill. Reporting estimates of enemy dead makes good
headlines, but as we found out in Vietnam, our enemies are not only willing to sacrifice themselves in battle against us, their strategy is also to outlast our will to continue to fight them.
Success in a guerilla war is not won by any one battle or military
operation. Guerillas will seldom welcome pitched battles against a
superior enemy, but will use tactics that minimize the superiority of
their enemy and maximize their own strengths. They will strike when they
can achieve surprise, achieve a tactical advantage and inflict as much
damage as possible before retreating from the area before their enemy can
react against them. The guerilla will use hostile terrain against us,
including jungles, mountains and urban areas. The battles in Somalia
almost a decade ago, the battles we have recently fought in Afghanistan
and the Israeli punitive actions in Palestinian West Bank cities are a testament to the wars of the future.
Success at beating the guerilla was is not measured by how many of them
are killed, it is ultimately crushing the guerilla's ability to sustain
and wage a war without having any impact of the government, or the people
who live in the area of the insurgency. This takes time and it also takes
the will to fight the guerilla until he is defeated.
This is why I do not agree with the initial Pentagon and press assessment
that Operation Anaconda was the success it has been portrayed to be. As
enamored as we tend to be with our superior technology and firepower, we
completely underestimated the size of the enemy force at Shah e Tot and
their tenacity to fight, even when confronted by our overwhelming firepower.
As far as I am concerned, reports of the use of the use of 2,000-pound
"thermobaric bombs," (designed to deprive caves of oxygen) and many
hundreds of smart bombs, were over shadowed by the ability of the Al
Qaeda-Taliban ability to severely damage all the AH-64 Apache helicopter
gunships involved in the battle and to pin down large numbers of our troops.
Operation Anaconda not only identified our overconfidence in the
effectiveness of airpower and technology to break the enemy's will to fight, but it also showed our own short-sightedness to believe that the Al-Qaeda-Taliban forces would not be prepared to escape and evade the trap we had set for them.
The fact still remains that no matter how many bombs (smart or dumb) we
drop, no matter how many Apache gunships or predator UAVs we use, the outcome of these battles will still come down to the ability of our foot Soldiers to dig out the enemy fighters and kill them. This type of gut-busting infantry combat proved successful for Captain Kevin Butler of the 101st Airborne Division.
No matter how many air strikes he called in and how many smart bombs were
dropped, his company continued to receive incoming mortar fire and small
arms fire from caves hidden in the ridgelines above him. At times, the Al
Qaeda fighters would emerge from their caves and taunt our boys, making
fun of our inability to kill them with our smart bombs. Captain Butler
eventually killed a number of these jokers, using a dime store 60mm mortar
and timing an airburst above them as they emerged from a cave to taunt him
once again.
This is evidence that taking-the-fight-to-the-enemy with rifles, pistols,
grenades and mortars proved to be more effective in this terrain than the use of airstrikes.
Unfortunately, there is no hard evidence nevertheless to suggest that we
accomplished our original goal. At the end of Operation Anaconda, as well
as Tora Bora, the majority of the Al-Qaeda fighters escaped, leaving
behind a few bodies and many empty caves.
Of much greater significance is the fact that 10th Mountain Division units
involved in Operation Anaconda were pulled from the battle after two weeks
and then redeployed to Fort Drum, N.Y. Amid great pomp and circumstance
these units arrived back home to the cameras of ABC's Good Morning
America. Later in the broadcast, a news anchor reported that the first
elements of a 1,700-man strong British Royal Marine battle group began to
arrive in Afghanistan. It was also reported that no other U.S. troops were
planned to replace the Soldiers of the 10th, or in the words of the
division PAO, "we have the Brits now."
I truly wonder if the significance of this one broadcast was recognized
for the greater statement it made regarding the decline of our own combat
capabilities. A country with one of the smallest armies in the world was
formally asked to pick up the ball from the country with the largest and
best financed military in the world. This indeed can qualify as an
unqualified Wakeup Call.
Gary R. Stahlhut is an Army Reserve officer and combat veteran with 26
years of active and reserve duty. He can be reached at Gary.R.Stahlhut@
The following is an unvarnished report from a Senior NCO who fought in Anaconda. I made some punctuation and spelling corrections. Clarifications in brackets [ ].
Rakkasan lessons learned
By a 187th Regiment 1st Sergeant
"I would like to pass on a few things learned during our recent deployment. It
won't be in a specific order so bare with me.
I guess the biggest lesson I learned is nothing changes From how you train at
jrtc. We all try to invent new dilemmas and hp's because it's a real
deployment but we end up out-smarting ourselves. Go with what you know, stick
with how you train.
Some of the things in particular were Soldier's load, because you're in the mountains of Afghanistan you try to invent new packing lists, or new uniforms. Some units went in with gore-tex and polypro only, when the weather got bad they were the only ones to have cold weather injuries that needed to be evaced. We've all figured out how to stay warm during the winter so don't change your uniforms. It was never as cold as I've seen it here or Ft Bragg during the winter.
Because of the high altitude's and rough terrain we all should have been
combat light.
That's the first thing you learn at jrtc [Joint Readiness Training Center,
Fort Polk, Louisiana], you can't fight with a ruck on your back.
We packed to stay warm at night. Which was a mistake; you take only enough to survive until the sun comes up.
We had extreme difficulty moving with all our weight. If our movement would have been to relieve a unit in contact or a time sensitive mission we would not have been able to move in a timely manner. It took us 8 hours to move 5 clicks. [Editor that's less than 1 mph]
With just the [Interceptor hard body armor] vest and [Enhanced Tactical Load
Bearing Vest or the MOLLE vest] lbv we were easily carrying 80 lbs. Throw on
the ruck and your sucking.
We out-smarted ourselves on how much water to carry. We took in over 12 quarts per man on our initial insertion, which greatly increased our weight. In the old days you did a three-day mission with 6 quarts of water, and that was on Ft Campbell in the summer. Granted we were all heat exhaustion [casualties] at the end but it's more than do-oable. I say go In with six quarts, if your re-supply is working than drink as much as possible keeping the six quarts in case re-supply gets weathered out. We also over tasked our helicopter support bringing in un-needed re-supply because we've lost a lot of our needed field craft.
We didn't even think to take iodine tablets [to purify water from melted snow
etc.] until after we got on the ground.
If you're in a good fight your going to need all your birds for medevac and ammo re-supply.
Bottom line is we have to train at the right Soldiers load, relearn how to
conserve water. [Editor: CARRY THE DAMN AMMO YOU WOULD IN COMBAT NOW IN PEACETIME!]
How many batteries does it take to sustain for three days etc.? Take what you
need to survive through the night and then wear the same stuff again.
The next day, you can only wear so much snivel gear it. Doesn't do any good
to carry enough to have a different ward robe [set of BDUs] every day. Have
the bn invest in gore-tex socks, and smart wool socks; our battalion directed
for every one to wear gore-tex boots [Intermediate Cold Weather Boots] during
the mission, you can imagine how painful that was. 71 gave up my boots to a
new Soldier who didn't have any so I wore jungle boots, gore-tex socks and a
pair of smart wool socks and mv feet never got wet or cold even in the snow.
You need two pairs [of boots] so you can dry them out every day.
All personnel involved hated the lbv its so constricting when you wear it
with the vest, then when you put a ruck on it cuts off even more circulation.
I would also recommend wearing the body armor during all training, I doubt if we'll ever fight without it again.
It significantly affects everything that you do.
Equipment wise, our greatest shortcomings were optics and organic or direct
support long-range weapons. After the initial fight all our targets were at a
minimum of 1500m all the way out to as far as you could see. Our 60[mm] and 81[mm]'s accounted for most of the kills. Next was a Canadian Sniper team with a MacMillian .50 cal [sniper rifle]. They got kills all the way out to 2500m.
The problem with our mortars was there as a 24 hour [Close Air Support] cas cap. And they wouldn't fly near us if we were firing indirect. Even though our max ord[nant: how high mortar rounds arc into the sky] was far beneath their patterns. Something for you and your alo [Air Liaison Officer] to work out. The other problem was the Air Force could never fly in small groups of
Personnel, I watched and called corrections on numerous sorties and they could
never hit the targets. My verdict is if you want it killed use your mortars.
Pay close attention to ti-hz direction of attack your ALO is bringing in the CAS. Every time it was perpendicular to us we were hit with shrapnel. Not to mention the time they dropped a 2,000 lbs [bomb] in the middle of our company, it didn't go off by a sheer miracle I'm sure. [Marine] Cobras and 2.75" [rockets] shot at us. Also, once again, they were shooting perpendicular to our trace. Aviation provided the most near misses of all the things we did.
I recommend all sl's [Squad Leaders] and pus [Platoon Sergeants] carry binoculars with the mils reticle. Countless times tl's [Team Leaders] and sl's had the opportunity to call in mortars. More importantly is leaders knowing how to do it. Our bn has checked all the blocks as far as that goes. Guess what they still couldn't do it. Especially the pus contrary to popular
belief its not the pl [Platoon leader] who's going to call it in its the Soldier in the position who will. If you don't have the binos guess what? You have to wait for somebody to run to the M240[B Medium Machine Gun] position to go get them. Also same goes with not knowing how to do It, you have to wait for the FO [artillery or mortar Forward Observer] to move to that position.
Plugger [AN/PSN-11 Global Positioning System] battle drill is the way to go,
even with the civilian models [Signals are unscrambled now thanks to
President Clinton]; the contour interval on the maps is outrageous so terrain association was difficult. Range Estimation was probably the most important or critical thing you do. If you close on your estimation you'll get the target. We all carried in 2 mortar rounds apiece and that was more than enough. We took mix of everything; the only thing we used was wp [White Phosphorous] and he [High Explosive]. All together we took in at least 120 rounds as a company
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