Call Sign Extortion 17 (13 page)

 

So how does the mission commander's assessment (high risk based on low illumination levels and on crew chief's relatively low experience level) square with General Mattis's conclusion that “I specifically agree that the Army aviators flying this mission were fully qualified to perform all required tasks, that the aircraft was mission capable”?

It doesn't square well at all with the mission commander's deep concerns about using this old helicopter, and using this Air National Guard crew with US Navy SEALs on such a high-­risk mission.

Risk Assessment:

Chinooks versus Apaches

In the same paragraph as the warnings about the Chinook, Colt reports that the Apache (AH-64D) helicopters were better equipped for this dangerous mission because of superior aircrew experience and superior equipment. Here is the risk assessment for the Apaches presented to General Mattis:

 

The AH-64D Air Mission Commander also completed an independent risk assessment for his element and determined their risk to be moderate because of crew experience, and because the AH-64D aircrews used the Modern Target Acquisition and Detection system, which mitigated the low illumination.

 

Now note the contrast in risk levels given to the different helicopters on the mission. For the old Chinook, which was shot out of the air and on which thirty Americans died, the pre-­planning risk assessment was “high risk.” For the more modern Apaches, with more experienced crews and superior equipment on the aircraft, the risk assessment was deemed to be only “moderate.”

Think about this. A “high risk” assessment from the very beginning, based upon an inferior aircraft and a flight crew not trained for this type
of mission, meant that the SEAL team, and indeed, the entire complement of Americans, including the flight crew, were in danger the moment they embarked on their mission.

That's worth repeating. With the high risk assessment assigned to this mission from the beginning, based upon inferior aviation equipment and a crew not adequately trained for this type of mission, the SEAL team and flight crew were probably doomed to die before Extortion 17 ever lifted off the ground.

Someone higher in the chain of command was playing Russian roulette with a US Navy SEAL team and the entire flight crew. Even if the unidentified Afghans were not Taliban sympathizers, the calculus for this mission meant probable death for every American serviceman aboard Extortion 17 from the beginning.

General Mattis may have chosen to whitewash the story, to author a conclusion chock-­full of revisionist history, making it appear that the mission planning was sound, that the aircraft was adequate, and that the flight crew was adequately trained for this highly risky and dangerous mission. However, his local commanders on the ground and Special Forces operators, that is the men whose necks were actually on the line, begged to differ.

Chapter 17

Task Force Commander Concerns: Conventional Aviation with Special Forces

As part of his investigation, General Colt heard some blunt and compelling testimony about the perils of using general aviation pilots and antiquated aircraft on Special Forces missions.

These excerpts of testimony began at page 41, Exhibit 48 of the Colt Report, in which Colt and his team were interviewing the Task Force commander, a Special Operations officer who oversaw deployment of the SEAL team from Base Shank.

In this exchange, the serviceman being primarily interviewed was the Special Forces Ground Force commander, whose name was not identified for security reasons, but who was most likely a US Navy SEAL or an Army Ranger. The Task Force commander is noted below as “TF-­CDR.”

In this exchange, the acronym SME-­GFA stands for “Subject Matter Expert—Ground Forces Army Advisor.” So this officer, again whose name is not identified for security purposes, was an Army officer, assigned to Colt's team as an expert, asking questions of the Special Forces Task Force commander about the SEAL's comfort level in working with general, as opposed to special aviation crews.

The acronym “ARSOA” below is crucial, because it refers to Army Special Operations, or the Night Stalkers that Special Forces such as the SEALs are accustomed to operating with.

 

SME-­GFA:
What's your comfort level of flying with these guys? Is there any friction points, or issues that come to mind besides just the
normal three-­hour timeline, and trying to get out the door quickly and they can't do it still?

TF CDR:
I would say, you know, we train in everything always with ARSOA. So comfort level is low because they don't fly like ARSOA—They don't plan like ARSOA. They don't land like ARSOA. They will either, you know, kind of, do a runway landing. Or if it's a different crew that trains different areas, they will do the pinnacle landing. So we are starting to understand different crews landed differently and needed different set ups for exfils and pick-­ups.

TF SEA:
It was a popular topic of discussion.

TF CDR:
It's tough. I mean, and I gave them guidance to make it work. And they were making it work. But it limited our effectiveness. It made our options and our tactical flexibility [sic]. Our agility was clearly limited by our air platform infill—where we could go. How quickly we could get there. So when I talk about it, I briefed the boss and he knew it that, Hey,[
sic
] we're missing the enemy sometimes because we just can't get there. We can't adapt fast enough.

 

The Task Force commander goes on, at page 45 of Exhibit 48, to explain that the Special Forces comfort level in flying with conventional helicopters was “very low.” Consider this equally blunt testimony, in which he said that the SEAL's comfort level in flying with conventional helos was “low”:

 

TF CDR:
But the bottom line is their comfort level is low. If we don't train with conventional helos, we learn to plan with conventional helos here. They brief us in on the process. It's very different than any SOF process that we've been in. Because it's not a SOF process. It's conventional planning to a SOF mission.

 

Again, one must ask how this very blunt testimony squared with General Mattis's hunky-­dory conclusion that the general aviation Army National Guard aviators were fully qualified to conduct the mission.

The testimony speaks for itself. There was evidence that the Chinook was at high risk because of its lack of equipment and crew experience
level, and because of the frequency of attacks against choppers over the Tangi Valley, and there was very clear evidence that US Special Forces operators were only comfortable operating with Army Special Operations aircraft.

As a matter of fact, Extortion 17 was executing one of those slow “runway landings,” as described by the Task Force commander, when it was blown out of the sky—coming in slowly, with no pre-­assault fire, like a sitting duck floating upon a pond.

One SEAL officer at DEVGRU (SEAL Team Six), Commander Howard, made this comment to family members: “If the MH-47 had been hit in the same spot, the results would have been the same. The question is . . . would it have been hit?”

The question remains unanswered, and thirty-­two children who lost their fathers deserve this answer: Why was CENTCOM (General Mattis) trying to whitewash the very clear defects in the poor mission planning that led to their deaths, and why did they not acknowledge the very clear warnings of Special Forces in the field?

But the facts raise more questions. Why subject the SEAL team to a high-­risk aviation situation that was probably going to fail from the beginning? Why not paint a full and accurate picture in the Colt Report of the risky history involving the CH-47? Why include only three reports of helicopter attacks over the Tangi Valley, none of which actually brought choppers down, but leave out documented reports where the CH-47s were actually shot down by Taliban RPGs?

And why, when this was clearly not the case, would General Mattis conclude that “I specifically agree with the conclusions that the Army aviators were fully qualified to perform all required tasks, that the aircraft was fully mission capable, and that loading the Immediate Reaction Force [SEAL team and SOC operators] onto one aircraft was tactically sound”?

Only the general or others higher in the chain of command can answer this question.

Whoever insisted on this mission combination signed the death warrants for the SEALs, the Air Force SOC operators, and the National Guard flight crew.

Chapter 18

Pre-­Flight Intelligence: Taliban Targeting US Helicopters

Colt Report testimony revealed that the Taliban was specifically targeting US helicopters in the Tangi Valley, and that in the ninety days prior to the Extortion 17 flight, and since the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban had moved an additional one hundred fighters to the Tangi Valley, specifically for the purpose of shooting down Coalition helicopters.

Whether this increased determination to shoot down a US chopper was in retaliation for the death of Osama Bin Laden was unclear. What was clear, however, was that US military intelligence knew about these maneuvers ahead of time, which made the decision to order the SEALs on board the National Guard chopper even more foolish.

This stunning testimony was in Exhibit 89, pages 6 and 7 of the Colt Report, taken during an August 16, 2011, examination of the Task Force chief intelligence officer, a US Air Force Officer whose name was withheld for security purposes. The Air Force officer was being questioned by only one person in this case, the lead intelligence investigator for General Colt's investigatory team.

On page 6 the intelligence investigator asked about the threat to Coalition aircraft over the Tangi Valley in the ninety days leading up to the Extortion 17 shoot-­down.

 

Q.
Okay. Now, let's go even further back and, kind of, describe what the threat to aircraft or even coalition forces was in the Tangi Valley. Give us a snap shot of that up to the last six months or so.

A.
Exactly. The last six months or you want to go 90 days?

Q.
About 90 days. If you have got anything more past that, we will see where we are at?

A.
And that actually puts some truth to this. It says Din Mohammad, so we are just talking about Din Mohammad, who is objective Dunlap, was killed on 6 June [2011] in Tangi Valley, Sayyidabad District, by coalition forces after he was trying to attack coalition force helicopters in the Tangi Valley. So that's what we had coming out at that IIR.

 

At least one Taliban commander was killed on June 6, 2011, sixty days before Extortion 17 and five weeks after Bin Laden's death, for trying to lead attacks on Coalition helicopters.

But the intelligence reveals even more danger to US helicopters on page 7, stating that the Taliban had put increased effort into achieving its goal of shooting down a Coalition helicopter, by bringing in an additional one hundred fighters into the valley specifically for that purpose [author's emphasis].

 

A. The next piece of reporting that I have that fits within that timeframe comes from May 11 [2011] and it [
sic
] late May [
sic
] [2011] . . . . It's very brief. Again, it's out of Task Force.
And it says something to the effect that over 100 Taliban plan to travel from Province through Tangi Valley to possibly shoot down the coalition force aircraft
.

 

Ten days after the Bin Laden killing, the Taliban seemed bent on retaliation in the Tangi Valley, so much so that they brought in an additional one hundred insurgents with weapons into the valley to go hunting for an American helicopter.

The Army had the intelligence about the one hundred insurgents at its disposal, and it was aware of the concerns expressed by Special Forces operators about general forces aviation. The Joint Command knew about the other aforementioned CH-47 shoot-­downs in the months leading up to the Extortion 17 disaster. They knew pilot Bryan Nichols was
inexperienced in combat situations, and yet Colonel Mattis called him “fully qualified” in the aftermath of the Extortion 17 incident, ignoring the kind but candid words of Nichols's former commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Richard Sherman, who told the Associated Press that Nichols was a “young pilot” who was “getting better all the time” and was “going to improve.” And yet someone still ordered that SEAL team on board a National Guard helicopter for their mission, putting them into an unconscionably dangerous environment.

Chapter 19

Chaos in the Air: The Lost Minutes

The CH-47D Chinook helicopter is a valuable tool in the US military arsenal and has been for over fifty years. It has been called the “helicopter version” of the workhorse C-130 fixed-­wing cargo plane, and when operating within its proper role, the CH-47 has proven to be an invaluable asset.

The CH-47 is a twin-­propeller, heavy-­lift chopper that first saw action in 1962. It has been around a long time, and of course, has gone through upgraded designs over the years, increasing tremendously the chopper's lift capability, but the basic air platform remains the same, going back to the early 1960s.

The chopper can, for example, haul 19,500 pounds of cargo, or two Humvees, or thirty-­three battle-­ready soldiers for deployment. Its versatility as a cargo, heavy-­lift, and transport chopper is invaluable.

The chopper was not designed, however, and never has been designed, for flying troops into a heated battle zone full of antiaircraft rockets or small weapons capable of taking it out, and especially not without pre-­assault fire—a topic covered in later chapters.

But that is exactly what this CH-47, call name Extortion 17, was asked to do the night the SEAL team members died.

On the night that it was shot down, Extortion 17, with thirty Americans and eight Afghans aboard (seven Afghan commandos and one interpreter), was loaded to the max, and was flying into a very hot airspace, with no real antiaircraft protection.

The CH-47 was flying into “hot” airspace, meaning airspace where hostile rockets and RPGs were likely to fly, and one of the problems with
the Chinook CH-47 as a battle wagon is that it is thunderous and loud upon approach. If the enemy is in the area, there is no surprise. Even in the dark of the night, the noise level alone provides a target for RPGs, small arms fire, and missiles. A Taliban insurgent, even if he cannot see the chopper, need only point toward the noise and fire. It is that simple to shoot it down, if the Taliban can get close enough, which is one of the many reasons Special Forces choppers should be selected for missions in high-­risk areas.

In the dark morning hours of August 6th, as Bryan Nichols attempted to guide Extortion 17 toward the landing zone to unload, or “exfil” the SEAL team, there was a period of fourteen lost minutes in the air, when communication was lost with the chopper, when it did not call in to air traffic control on time, and when it was late for landing. The fourteen-­minute period ended with the chopper being blown out of the air.

Had the mission been executed to razor-­sharp precision by a Special Operations flight crew, the chopper would have been on the ground, would have unloaded the SEAL team, and would have been on its way back to Base Shank with fourteen minutes to spare.

But on the night of its destruction, there was an unexplained delay in the air and an unexplained lapse in radio communications.

And no one knows why.

The confusion in communications between the aircraft and military air traffic control started when Extortion 17 moved to within six minutes of landing. At that point, the chopper called in and announced that it was six minutes out from the designated landing zone, meaning that it should have been on the ground within six minutes from that call.

This recitation of the chronology of Extortion 17's last minutes will use Zulu time, because that is what was used in the Colt Report, but will also include local (Afghanistan) time to make it easier for civilian readers to follow the timeframe and sequence.

By protocol, the pilot was to call in at the six-­minute mark before landing. As shown by Exhibit 50 of the Colt Report, that call came in
from the chopper at 2156 Zulu time (2:26 a.m. local time). The mission appeared clearly on track, headed toward its last minutes before landing.

Based on the timing of that call, Extortion 17 should have been on the ground unloading the SEAL team at 2202 Zulu time (2:32 a.m. local time).

By protocol, another call was due from the helicopter at the three-­minute mark before landing, at 2159 Zulu time (2:29 a.m. local time).

But there was no call from the chopper. Air traffic control could not raise the chopper by radio.

One minute passed. Still no three-­minute call in.

Another minute passed. It was now 2201 Zulu time (2:31 a.m. local time) and still, there was no three-­minute call.

By now, concern was setting in at military air traffic control. Why wasn't Extortion 17 calling in? What was going on up there?

The chopper was due to be on the ground in one minute, at 2202 Zulu time (2:32 local time), but in the early, moonless hours of the morning, over airspace where a hundred extra Taliban fighters had come to shoot down an American helicopter, it had not called in to announce “three minutes to landing.”

Something wasn't right.

Another minute passed. Where was the three-­minute call-­in?

At this point, the tension level at base command rose to near-­panic levels. The chopper appeared to be simply hovering in the air.

The slow speed and delay was a major concern. The chopper was simply hanging out there in the air too long, thundering in the night for the enemy to hear, making itself a target with its slow hover and high noise level.

Finally, at 2203 Zulu time (2:33 a.m. local time) the three-­minute call came in.

It was still hovering in the air, at least three minutes from landing, when it was supposed to already be on the ground. The recalculated landing time would now be 2:36 a.m. local time, four minutes after the originally projected landing time of 2:32 a.m. local time.

Four minutes overtime in a loud, thundering helicopter is a long time, and, like an alarm clock going off early, gives the enemy extra reaction
time to gather weaponry and be ready, eliminating any semblance of an element of surprise.

Extortion 17 was now in a dangerous race against the clock. For the mission planners back at flight control, monitoring the progress of the chopper and the SEAL team, the tension-­filled atmosphere was not all that different from what had occurred at Mission Control in Houston, Texas, some forty-­two years earlier, when NASA controllers nervously monitored the
Eagle
's descent to the lunar surface. On that night, with the tension already thick in the air, a sick feeling of near catastrophe had set in when Neil Armstrong suddenly overrode the lunar module's automatic pilot and took control when it became obvious that the spacecraft was about to land in an unsafe area with dangerous boulders.

Just as mission controllers in Houston in July of 1969 understood that delay in landing a spacecraft could mean certain death for their crew, the military controllers in Afghanistan tracking Extortion 17 knew that every second's delay in landing increased the chance the Americans aboard the chopper would never return alive.

In their battle against the clock, the enemies facing Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, lunar boulders and evaporating fuel, were lifeless, natural conditions. But from the surface of the Tangi Valley, the enemies facing Extortion 17 were angry and belligerent. Every second of delay in the air would swing the momentum in favor of the enemy on the ground, giving them time to recover, giving them time to prepare, giving them time to load their rocket-­propelled grenades and train them on the approaching chopper.

Perhaps the Taliban still wasn't aware of their presence. Despite the delay, perhaps the Taliban was not hearing the thundering rotors from the ground.

Now, t-­minus three minutes and counting. Tensions back at flight control riveted up a notch, and then another notch, as controllers monitored their instruments and followed the progress of the aircraft.

Remember that the new updated landing time was 2206 Zulu (2:36 a.m. local). Under pre-­established protocol, the chopper was to call in once more, at the one-­minute mark before landing, at 2205 Zulu (2:35 a.m. local time).

As controllers nervously monitored the clock and the radar position of Extortion 17, one minute passed. It was now 2204 (2:34 a.m. local), two minutes from the readjusted landing time.

No one knew exactly what was going on aboard, but on radar, at times the chopper seemed to be in a hovering position.

Military flight controllers and mission controllers were anxiously watching the clock on the wall. There was no call from the chopper at the one-­minute mark, 2205 Zulu time (2:35 local time). Moreover, the chopper was still hovering, making no meaningful move toward an actual landing.

The clock continued to tick, and now a feeling of panic was beginning to set in at flight control. Mission planners anxiously monitored their headsets, awaiting the one-­minute call, hoping to hear news that Extortion 17 was on its final descent, that it would be setting down in a matter of seconds, unloading the SEAL team as planned.

Once again, there was nothing.

What's going on? Why the delays?

Another minute passed. Now the new readjusted landing time of 2206 Zulu Time (2:36 a.m. local time) approached. Remember that the originally designated landing time was 2:32 a.m. The chopper had now hung in the air four minutes after it should have been on the ground.

The next communication from the chopper, the one-­minute call, would come thirty-­nine seconds later, at 22:06:39 (2:36:39 a.m. local time). This call was not a “one-­minute” call at all, but rather, was a request for one of the Apache helicopters to provide a “sparkle,” that is to illuminate the ground with light. Testimony from the Task Force senior enlisted advisor (acronym TF-­SEA) in Exhibit 48, page 23, gave insight into the state of mind of the flight controllers:

 

TF SEA:
Sir, I specifically remember going and I'm pointing with this green [Afghan military member], XO [executive officer] was there. I go, “That's the HLZ,” [helo landing zone] he said, yes. And they were scanning the area. And I was like, it looks pretty quiet. We got the three-­minute call, and then they were just—six minutes later, I was going, what's up with the infill, did they go in already.

 

Some mission controllers wondered if the SEALs were rappelling down to the ground with ropes after the three-­minute call, which might explain why the chopper had been hovering so long. The rappelling theory was a hopeful theory which, of course, turned out not to be true. But it does show how flight controllers were grasping, almost desperately, for a belief that something positive was happening aboard the chopper in its final few minutes.

In reality, delay and confusion marked the flight's final minutes. The request for a “sparkle” was Extortion 17's final transmission.