Call Sign Extortion 17 (12 page)

On September 9, 2011, as a follow-­up to the 1,250-page Colt Report, Brigadier General Colt prepared a memorandum for General Mattis, with the subject line, “SUBJECT: Investigation Findings and Recommendations (Crash of CH-47D Aircraft in Wardak Province, Afghanistan on 06 August 2011). That memorandum, attached to the Colt Report as Enclosure B, was used, at least in part, as a basis for General Mattis's final findings of no-­fault by the military.

Even though Mattis hid certain bits of evidence, such as the infiltration of the Afghans on board the chopper, certain factors were obvious and needed to be addressed.

One of these factors was the “threat assessment,” and thus, the wisdom of sending a highly trained SEAL team on board a defenseless Air National Guard chopper into a hot zone where there had been multiple recent attempts to shoot down Coalition helicopters, with a hundred Taliban operatives in the area vowing to shoot down Coalition choppers, and with rules of engagement that prohibited pre-­assault fire.

At page 6 of Colt's memorandum, the general authors a section entitled “Threat Assessment.”

As that “Threat Assessment” is reprinted here, with the dates of most recent attacks bolded, bear in mind that an Army Air National Guard aircrew, with a lead pilot who had never flown in combat before and who had been a pilot only three years, was being asked to fly a highly trained US Navy SEAL team into a high-risk zone. Again, this language is directly from the Colt Report [author's emphasis]:

 

The Tangi Valley was assessed as a moderate to high threat to coalition forces based on reported enemy activities, historical surface-­to-­air fire reports by coalition forces aircraft, and the lack of coalition forces presence in the valley. On 5 August 2011, 10th Combat Aviation Brigade (10th CAB)
intelligence analysts assessed the threat in the valley as high risk
due to: historical enemy activities including RPG and small arms fire, an assessed early warning network, the lack of coalition force presence in the valley, the significance of the target (Qari Tahir) and the corresponding actions the Tangi Valley Taliban would likely take to prevent his capture.

Taliban insurgents operating in the Tangi Valley maintain an early warning network in order to detect coalition forces' ground and air movements within the valley.
Forty-­five days prior to the EXTORTION 17 shoot-­down, coalition forces aircraft reported three surface-­to-­air incidents within the Tangi Valley. On 06 June 2011, two CH-47D Chinook helicopters aborted a mission
to insert a strike force into Tangi Valley after they were engaged with multiple RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) from several locations in the valley, the helicopters returned to Forward Base (name redacted) without further incident.
Later that evening, an MH-47F Army Special Operations Aviation (ARSOA) Chinook helicopter was engaged with RPGs
from multiple locations while inserting the same strike force for the same mission; no damage to the aircraft was reported.

Seventeen days prior to the shoot-­down of EXTORTION 17, another MH-47G was engaged by small arms fire
and two RPGs and reported small caliber bullet damage to the aircraft. These surface-­to-­air fire events indicated insurgent capability and intent to engage coalition forces operating in the Tangi Valley.

 

Note that these three incidents were shoot-­down
attempts
. Nothing was mentioned about the shoot-­down of the Chinook on July 25th, 2011.

Each omission from the Colt Report raises yet another question. Why was the nighttime shoot-­down of the Chinook CH-47D on July
25th not mentioned in the risk assessment? Because it technically wasn't over the Tangi Valley but was 100 miles away? If that's the case, the reasoning for omitting this shoot-­down is poor. The July 25th shoot-­down was further evidence of how vulnerable these big, slow, poorly defended CH-47Ds were to RPG attack from the ground.

The Colt Report also failed to acknowledge that the Chinook CH-47D had been by far the most vulnerable aircraft in the American fleet during the Afghan war, a popular shoot-­down target for the Taliban.

While the Colt Report did note that three helicopters had been shot at by Taliban forces in the forty-­five days prior to the Extortion 17 mission, and it also reported that the Task Force commander assessed the risk in using the CH-47 and this flight crew as being a “high risk,” the report still does not go far enough in revealing the real danger, of using the CH-47 Chinook on missions such as the one demanded of the SEALs and the flight crew of Extortion 17.

Statistically, in Afghanistan, the CH-47 Chinook was by far the most dangerous chopper to fly in, and there's not even a close second. This was especially true when it was misused as it was in the Extortion 17 mission, when someone came up with the idea of using the CH-47 with a National Guard crew as a platform for delivering US Navy SEALs on a dangerous and covert mission.

As of February 2014, Coalition forces—primarily from the United States—had seen a total of twenty-­seven helicopters shot down during the Afghan war.

Of those nearly half, a total of thirteen, were CH-47D Chinooks. Bear in mind that Coalition forces had used at least twenty-­three different types of helicopters in the war effort.

In fact, three and a half times as many CH-47 Chinooks have been shot down than the next largest total, the UH-60 Black Hawk, of which five have been shot down. Other shoot-­down losses in the ten-­year span include 3 OH-58 Kiowas, 2 HH-60 Pave Hawks, 1 AH-1W Supercobra, 1 CH-53 Sea Stallion, 1 Mil Mi-24, and 1 Westland Sea King. None of these statistics appear in the Colt Report.

And here is yet another statistic that was also notably absent concerning the MH-47 Special Forces chopper, the type of Special Operations
Aviation chopper that the SEALs use for training purposes. As of February 2014, not one single MH-47 had been shot down in Afghanistan.

A retired US Army Ranger who was at the Extortion 17 crash site in Afghanistan but who for his own personal safety asked that his name not be used, made this comment about Special Forces being forced to fly in the CH-47: “We were scared to death every time we had to go out in those choppers. Everyone knows they're not safe. They can't avert attack like the MH-47Gs. We knew our lives were in danger every time we stepped into one . . . The MH-47 flies low and fast, like a roller coaster ride, due to its quick, agile abilities in air. The conventional CH-47Ds fly really high and slow with no evasive maneuvers. They're a huge target up there, like a train coming in for landing. They do 6–8 push-­ups before landing, while the MH-47 burns straight in.”

The words of this Ranger are poignant in describing the CH-47's flight path into the landing zone. “CH-47Ds fly really high and slow with no evasive maneuvers. They're a huge target up there, like a train coming in for landing.”

Given this, is it any wonder that the CH-47 accounted for virtually half of all the Taliban shoot-­downs since the beginning of the Afghan war?

Why weren't the SEALs allowed to carry out this mission in the chopper they were trained in? And why were no MH-47s pre-­deployed at Forward Operating Base Shank? Had the order been given to use an MH-47, instead of a CH-47, based upon the statistics alone, there's a good chance that those SEALs and the Extortion 17 flight crew would have lived.

Here is the unfortunate historical timeline of CH-47 shoot-­downs in Afghanistan, most of which was left out of the Colt Report, and unfortunately, which did not deter the very foolish decision to order the SEAL team aboard the CH-47D Chinook in the early morning hours of August 6, 2011:

 

September 11, 2012 (same day of Al Qaeda attack on US embassy in Libya):
A NATO official said that three members of the Afghan National Security Forces have been killed after a
CH-47 Chinook
helicopter was hit by munitions fired into Bagram Airfield. An investigation was under way to establish the details of what happened.

August 6, 2011:
A NATO
CH-47 Chinook
(Extortion 17) helicopter being flown by the
7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment
and
2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment
was
shot down
by the Taliban using an RPG with thirty American and eight Afghan casualties (seven unidentified commandos and one interpreter), as well as a dog.

Documented Shoot-­Downs Prior to Extortion 17

July 25, 2011:
A
CH-47F Chinook
was shot down by an RPG near Camp Nangalam in Kunar Province. Two Coalition service members were injured.

October 12, 2010:
A US Army
CH-47 Chinook
helicopter had just landed and had been off-­loading when an RPG was fired into the cargo bay. An Afghan interpreter was killed and seven ISAF service members and an Afghan Border Police officer were injured.

August 5, 2010:
A Canadian
CH-47D Chinook
was shot down in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. It made a hard landing and burned out on the ground, wounding eight soldiers.

August 20, 2009:
A British
CH-47 Chinook
(S/N ZA709) was shot down in the Sangin area of Helmand Province. The crew survived.

January 17, 2009:
A US CH-47 made a hard landing in Kunar Province after being hit by small arms fire and an RPG. CH-47 was struck in the left main fuel tank by an RPG causing left side to become engulfed in flames and #1 engine failed due to fuel starvation. Upon landing, A/C rolled onto its right side and was destroyed in post-­crash fire.

May 30, 2007:
A US
CH-47 Chinook
was shot down, in the upper
Sangin
Valley, killing five American, one British, and one Canadian soldier.

December 4, 2005:
A
CH-47 Chinook
helicopter 91-00269 was struck by small arms fire. There were two injuries and the aircraft was consumed in the post-­landing fire.

September 25, 2005:
Five US soldiers were killed when a
CH-47 Chinook
helicopter crashed in
Zabul Province
while returning from an operation. Though initially reported as an accident, the crash was later confirmed to have been caused by hostile fire.

June 28, 2005:
A US
CH-47 Chinook
helicopter was shot down in
Kunar Province
by Taliban commander
Qari Ismail
, killing all sixteen US Special Operations servicemen on board. The US military says it was shot down by a rocket-­propelled grenade.

March 4, 2002:
Two
CH-47 Chinook
helicopters were hit by RPGs and gunfire during
Operation Anaconda
. Two were killed in the first helicopter, which was dropping off a SEAL team. The second Chinook came in later that day to try to rescue the crew of the first CH-47, and subsequently was shot down, killing four.

 

Of the thirteen CH-47 shoot-­downs documented above, all by the Taliban, eleven occurred prior to Extortion 17. While the three incidents in the Tangi Valley were cited in the Colt Report, not a single one of these eleven pre-­August 6th shoot-­downs were cited, including the July 25th shoot-­down of the National Guard Chinook in Kunar Province that nearly killed Staff Sergeant Crozier.

The Colt Report did not come even close to painting the full picture of the CH-47's dangerous record in combat situations. But it's no wonder that the Task Force commander deemed the use of the CH-47D and this aircrew to be a “high risk.”

Note also some of the very pointed language from the one-­star general (Brigadier General Colt) to his four-­star boss (General Mattis), in which Colt uses phrases such as “the threat in the valley as high risk,” and
warns of three shoot-­down attempts of American helicopters in the last ninety days, and “intent to engage coalition forces operating in the Tangi Valley” (Colt Report, Enclosure B—Investigation Findings and Recommendations—Threat Assessment Section).

But Brigadier General Colt was not finished with his assessment. At page 7 of the same document, Colt begins another assessment under a subcategory entitled “Risk and GPF Aviation Support.”

GPF in this case stands for “General Purpose Forces” Aviation. In other words, aviation that is not designated as “Special Forces,” would fall under “General Purpose Forces.” The Chinook and the National Guard aircrew fall under this category. Once again, the threat was clearly high. Here are Colt's warnings to Mattis [author's emphasis]:

 

The TF (meaning “Task Force”) Commander was responsible for the initial risk assessment for the CH-47Ds (Extortion 17 was a CH-47D) and AH-64Ds in direct support of [redacted–but referring to Special Forces]. He assessed all missions with a
high risk based on the compressed planning timeline required to support their high pace of operations.

His TF (Task Force) helicopters had conducted missions in support of [redacted–but referring to Special Forces] over the previous 10 months,
all of which were assessed as high risk for CH-47D aircrews.

 

Now we see a specific warning of
high risk
not only because of the dangerous area in which the CH-47 would be flying, but also because of the very high tempo of the operations. Put another way, general forces aviators simply are not trained to operate at the same quick tempo of air operations, nor with the same speed and daring approach.

But General Colt's revelation gets even more pointed. Again, in the same document, in the next section entitled “Risk Assessment, Risk Management,” Colt reveals the much greater risk that this mission was to the ill-­fated Chinook helicopter than it was to the Apache attack helicopters. Consider this warning [author's emphasis]:

 

The CH-47D Air Mission Commander completed an Electronic Risk Assessment Worksheet (ERAW) and determined the mission to be high
risk based on low illumination condition and one crew chief's relatively low experience level.