Posted on 06/18/2002 5:12:18 PM PDT by pa_dweller
AUTHOR’S NOTE: We know it’s 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 enemy’s 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 didn’t 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 Afghan-istan. 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 enemy’s 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 enemy’s 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 weren’t 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, “we’ve 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 Airborne’s 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 Black Hawk Down. It looked that bad.
On 9 March, a week after Operation Anaconda commenced, a Canadian battle group, the 3rd Princess Patricia’s 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, it’s 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 operation’s 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 enemy’s 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 didn’t 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.
What the heck do we have a war college for?
The pentagon seems to have lost sight of the fact that balance is needed. Yes, you need air power. But you need more than that.
This is what really pisses me off.
The military never changes.
Yes, it is unpleasant to read but, not nearly so much as the article about the First Wave at Omaha Beach.
After reading that I realized "Saving Private Ryan" was the sanitized version.
Thanks. I am constantly amazed at the things I learn here.
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