Call Sign Extortion 17 (15 page)

Chapter 23

Extortion 17's Bizarre Behavior

The Apache pilot seemed disgusted that Extortion 17 was requesting the sparkle prematurely. He chided the Extortion 17 pilot in no uncertain terms: “Not even a minute out and you're requesting a damn sparkle.”

Based upon a review of the flight transcript, there seemed to be a certain disgust in the Apache pilot's tone here, because he understood that a sparkle requested prematurely and outside of a minute from landing could alert the enemy on the ground and prove unnecessarily dangerous.

Even Brigadier General Colt raised this question himself, at Exhibit 53, in the transcript of his team's interview with both Apache pilots after the shoot-­down. The general's comments were captured at page 32 of Exhibit 53, as follows:

 

BG COLT:
. . . sparkle? I believe that there was commentary about “I don't know why he's asking for it so soon.”

. . . it sounded like [it] was an incredulous comment that he just asked for the burn at three, why did he do that? I mean normally, he calls at one. We're not even clear if there was even a one-­minute call, or if that was the moment that he was struck.

 

The AC-130 pilot, in his testimony at Exhibit 40, page 22, noted that, “We had coordinated with the Helos that we were going to the burn down at H minus one so we had one of our sensors on the HLZ.” This testimony confirmed the original plan to do a brief burst or “burn down” at less than one minute before landing.

Why does Extortion 17 request the premature sparkle, more than one minute from landing? Perhaps to help the pilot visibly find the landing zone if, in fact, he was not able to find it. But that doesn't make a lot of sense, because with GPS navigation, Extortion 17 should have been able to fly directly to the landing zone, without confusion. The AC-130 overhead was able to sparkle it with a laser beam with no problem. In fact, per the testimony of the AC-130 aircraft commander, it was able to keep sensors on the landing zone the whole time.

The next chapter explores the second segment of the final three minutes of the life of Extortion 17, with the next transmission coming some two minutes later.

Chapter 24

The “Two-­Minute Burn” and the “One-­Minute Call” That Wasn't

Extortion 17's confusing and contradictory actions in the air were compounded not only by the odd request for a sparkle, when that was never part of the battle plan, but also in continuing to make targeted timeline calls that never materialized. There was apparently an odd and long two-­minute burn from the AC-130, perhaps even longer. If that happened in response to the sparkle request, and it apparently did happen, the chopper could have been painted, or “lit up” with ultraviolet light, making it a target for any Taliban within range with night vision goggles. That odd, “two-­minute burn” was followed up by a “one-­minute call,” from the chopper, indicating that it was one minute from landing.

But Extortion 17 was not one minute from landing. It still hung in the air beyond the one-­minute call, when it should have been on the ground, and was then blown out of the sky by the enemy.

The sequence on the gun tape is as follows [author's emphasis]:

Second Segment

 

At thirty-­four seconds past 2:38 a.m., local time, Bryan Nichols (or someone pretending to be him) said “One minute. One minute.”

The actual one minute call, which was the call saying, essentially, that “we are one minute from landing,” was over three minutes delayed. The last communication from the chopper had been over two minutes before the one minute call, at 22:06:39 (236:39).

Once the one-­minute call was made, the pilot of the Apache, Gun 1, acknowledged with, “Copy 1 minute. 1 minute.”

The next transmission was the most significant in the sequence.

At 2:38:37, three seconds later (three seconds after the one-­minute call), the Apache pilot said “burn's out.”

That's significant, because this apparently marked the end of the duration of the infrared burn that had been shooting down on the landing zone from the AC-130.

Remember in the first of the three transmissions, the announcement that “burn's on” came at 22:06:56. Now at 22:08:37, “burn's out.”

That meant that for a period of one minute and forty-­one seconds, there was not only a sparkle, but
a continuous burn on the landing zone
.

Understand the difference. A sparkle is a brief nighttime flash that is turned on for a second, and then turned off. But a burn is more of a continuous illumination, like taking a giant flashlight and leaving it on for almost two minutes, and then turning it off.

However, despite the Apache pilot announcing that “burn's out” at the 22:08:37 mark, there was testimony from the AC-130 gun crew, circling
overhead, that the burn was not out before the shoot-­down, but in fact, that the burn was still on at the time of the shoot-­down!

There was a bright burn from the sky to the ground, illuminated from the AC-130 overhead, which was nineteen seconds short of two minutes, if the “burn's out” call by the Apache was accurate. Or if the testimony of the AC-130 gun crew, the aircraft initiating the burn, was accurate, the burn was still on at the time of the shoot-­down, making the Apache's announcement that “burn's out” apparently in error.

If the burn was still on at the time of shoot-­down, this would mean that the burn actually exceeded two minutes, and put Extortion 17 in the enemy spotlight, making it an easy, visible target, up to the very moment of the shoot-­down.

So just how large of an area was being illuminated? And just how bright was the burn?

Colt and his team examined these questions when they interviewed the four Apache pilots from Gun 1 and Gun 2 on August 18, 2011, Exhibit 53 in the Colt Report.

At page 18 of Exhibit 53, the co-­pilot of Gun 1 explained the difference between a short-­burst sparkle which illuminated only for a brief second or so, and a longer-­term burn.

The co-­pilot went on to explain that a burn was better for a landing zone—as opposed to a sparkle to follow enemy combatants on the ground—because “a burn is better because it allows them to see a whole lot more.”

General Colt then asked about the size of the ground area being illuminated: “And how big is the box when they are doing that?”

To that, the co-­pilot of Gun 2, the second Apache, replies, “A football field.” And then the pilot of Gun 1, the first Apache, chimes in. “I would say 500 meters or so. It's pretty big.”

So both the co-­pilot of one Apache and the pilot of the other Apache testified that a very large area of ground was being illuminated on the ground at the landing zone.

Moreover, at page 33 of the same exhibit, Colt came back to the difference between the use of short-­burst sparkles and the “burn that is placed on the landing zone.” Both co-­pilots explained that the AC-130
was using periodic sparkles to illuminate the movement of enemy insurgents, called “squirters,” on the ground.

General Colt then asks if a sparkle had been placed on the landing zone where Extortion 17 was trying to set down. The answer given by the co-­pilot of the second Apache helicopter, Gun 2, is significant. The co-­pilot's acronym is “PB70FS.”

 

PB70FS (Co-­Pilot Gun 2): I couldn't tell you if the sparkle hit it. The burn was so bright.

 

In other words, the co-­pilot of the second Apache was saying that the two minute burn was “so bright”—i.e., blinding—that it would have flooded out any sparkle that was shot into the landing zone.

So an area the size of a football field or larger was lit for an extraordinarily long period of two minutes, showing the precise spot that the chopper was about to land, right before it landed.

The length, duration, and size of that illumination were more than enough to scream to the enemy, especially if the enemy had NVGs, “get ready, here we come.” In the weeks after the shoot-­down, military briefers told family members that the Taliban might have seen dust that was being blown up from the ground, dust generated by the Chinook's powerful twin rotary blades. Under the theory proffered by the military briefers, as the dust was blown up off the ground on approach to landing, a dust cloud swirled up around the rotary blades, which could have cast a glow, making a visual target for the Taliban firing RPGs.

This theory is plausible, but most likely, the “glow” from the dust swirling around the blades came from the burn being lit from the AC-130 circling 7,000 feet above.

With the landing zone having not been cleared out by pre-­assault fire, dust or no dust, anyone in the area with night goggles and an RPG, and within range, needed to do nothing more than wait and aim, because the long, bright burn marked the exact spot where Extortion 17 was about to land. And that is exactly what happened.

It appears that when the request for “sparkle” was initiated by Extortion 17, the AC-130 thought the chopper was about to land, and consequently flooded the area.

When the actual “one-­minute” call came almost two minutes later, the gunship realized that the chopper was still in the air and cut the burn.

This brings us back to the question: Why did the request for the sparkle come so prematurely, and not within the one-­minute timeframe according to the plan? Also, why did the AC-130 burn the landing zone, instead of only briefly sparkling it?

The air traffic transcripts between the Apaches, the AC-130, and the Chinook (Extortion 17), in the minutes leading up to this request for a “sparkle,” repeatedly made it clear that the operational plan called for a burn and not a sparkle at the one-­minute mark prior to landing.

A sparkle is a brief flash, far more difficult for an enemy to track to its source than a longer burn.

The transcript for Exhibit 53, page 17 showed that all pilots, including the Extortion 17 pilots, had been briefed to expect a burn—not a sparkle—and this was drilled into them during pre-­flight briefings.

Here, the questioning was being conducted by an officer on Colt's staff who was part of the Airworthiness Directive Support Action Team. The acronym for this officer in the transcript was “ADSAT4.”

This officer was an expert whose job was to explore any airworthiness issues, or lack thereof, of the aircraft. Although the military obviously is not part of the FAA, this officer—one of at least four expert advisors Colt used—was on the team to ask questions similar to what the FAA mandates during investigations of crashes—i.e., was something wrong with the aircraft? Or was there pilot error? Or both?

The ADSAT advisor questioned the Apache pilots about whether they expected a pre-­landing burn or a pre-­landing sparkle.

Remember that PB70FS was the co-­pilot of Gun 2, the second Apache, and PB65FS is the co-­pilot of Gun 1, the first Apache:

 

ADSAT4:
Going into, what was the interpretation between your crews and 17? How were they expecting the LZ to be marked?

PB70FS (Co-­pilot Gun 2):
is the one [inaudible] going to the crash. It marked by burn.

ADSAT4:
I understand what it was marked by. What did they believe how it was going to be marked?

PB65FS: (Co-­pilot Gun 1):
Every brief we do, now that we've—with being able to burn, we have always told them that we had preferred they take burn rather than illume. So we have talked to them every time.

 

It seems from this excerpt, that for nighttime landing ops involving the CH-47 that the Apache pilots prefer to see a final burn on approach to landing rather than an illume [sparkle], and that they had communicated this preference to the CH-47 flight crew. Remember that Extortion 17 was not requesting a burn, but was requesting sparkles, which meant that the doomed chopper was, oddly, in contradiction to the normal, preferred procedure. This is one of several factors suggesting that something abnormal was happening aboard the CH-47 prior to its shoot-­down.

Chapter 25

Was Bryan Nichols Trying to Tell Us Something?

Based on the clear testimony of the two Apache co-­pilots who were in the air with Extortion 17, the plan all along was not to sparkle, but to burn the landing zone within the one-­minute mark.

Why did Bryan Nichols ask for a sparkle instead of a burn? He very clearly knew that the plan was to burn within the last minute of landing, because he had been briefed on it.

Was it possible that Nichols simply got confused, and mixed up the terms “sparkle” and “burn,” and the AC-130 commenced the burn because that was the predetermined battle plan?

That is possible, but because there is a double-­oddity about this request, that is, both the premature timing of the request and the request for the sparkle instead of the burn, the “Bryan Nichols was confused” theory does not seem plausible. Nichols may have been a younger National Guard pilot, but it seems unlikely that he would make such a (1) premature timing mistake and (2) a nomenclature mistake, all wrapped together, and especially not with a more experienced pilot, CW04 David Carter, sitting in the cockpit beside him.

We do not hear a follow-­up call from Extortion 17 stating, “correction requesting burn not sparkle.” Nor do we hear a follow-­up call even when the Apache pilot seemingly chided Extortion 17 with his comment of incredulity, “Not even a minute out and you're requesting a damn sparkle.”

Could it be that (a) Bryan Nichols actually wanted a sparkle instead of a burn, because of information he had received from someone inside the chopper that the chopper would be targeted on the ground, knowing that the sparkle would make him a more elusive target?

Could it be that (b) he was being ordered by someone inside the chopper to prematurely request the burn so that the landing zone would be pinpointed by the enemy?

Could it be that (c) someone else had taken control of the helicopter and was flying it at this point, and that whoever was flying the chopper as it approached the landing zone did not know that all pre-­flight briefings had repeatedly called for a burn and not a sparkle?

Could it be that (d) someone else had taken control of the helicopter and was flying it at this point, and that whoever was flying the chopper did not know the difference between a sparkle and a burn?

Could it be that (e) by requesting such a premature illumination of the landing zone and by using the wrong phrase, which didn't match the pre-­mission planning, that Bryan Nichols was trying to tell us something?

The questions being raised herein are not to suggest one scenario over the other. Rather, these questions are being raised because General Colt's team should have raised them, and did not raise them.

One thing seems indisputable. Something odd was happening inside that helicopter.

The third and final segment of the transcript breaks down the last three minutes of the flight of Extortion 17.

In this section, there weren't any broadcasts from the helicopter.

Still, timing is crucial in analyzing this section. Remember the “two-­minute burn” from the second segment, referring to the beam flashed down onto the landing zone from the AC-130 gunship, which actually lasted 22:06:56 to 22:08:37, or a period of one minute and forty-­one seconds.

Pay attention to the ending time of the burn in the second segment 22:08:37 (2:38:37 a.m.), and the beginning of the shoot-­down at 22:09:46 (2:39:46).

There was a period of one minute nine seconds (22:08:37 to 22:09:46) between the ending of the “two-­minute burn” and the beginning of the
shoot-­down sequence—that is if the “burn's out” call from the Apache was correct at the 22:08:37 mark. But if the burn was not out, as was suggested by the AC-130 gunship crew in testimony at Exhibit 40, this effectively means the chopper was spotlighted from the burn initiation point, at 22:06:56, all the way up to the shoot-­down, at 22:09:46.

In that case, if the burn did not go out until after the RPGs started flying, then the burn would have lasted ten seconds short of three minutes, illuminating the chopper all the way up to shoot-­down! This would in effect have made it a three-­minute burn instead of a two-­minute burn.