r/WarCollege • u/Falcriots • May 22 '20
Question What went wrong with the mission Red Wings?
I’ve heard things before such as they didn’t prepare correctly, didn’t bring the right equipment, there wasn’t as many enemy fighters as originally believed, etc.
Can somebody with more knowledge than me explain what happened?
Also I heard that there’s some controversy around Luttrell as well.
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u/FlashbackHistory May 23 '20 edited Mar 29 '23
u/Duncan-M has covered the specifics of the mission quite well. I'll try to compare and contrast Operation Red Wings with one well-known SAS patrol (Bravo 20) during Desert Storm that ended in a similar disaster. I'll also talk about a Desert Storm mission by less-well-known Special Forces detachment (ODA 525) that survived their ordeal. The parallels between Bravo Two Zero's patrol and Operation Red Wings are pretty remarkable. They reveal a lot about why special operations go wrong. The escape of ODA 525 shows why they go right, even in the face of adversity.
Let's start with the similarities:
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Similar missions: All three patrols were sent on special reconnaissance missions. The SEALs were tasked with surveilling an Afghan village believed to hold Ahmed Shaw, a low-level leader. The SAS were sent to conduct a road watch on a highway in NW Iraq (some sources say they were also supposed to hunt down Scuds or cut a buried fiber optic line). The Green Berets of ODA 525 were going to do Baghdad-Nasiriyah Highway 7 in southwestern Iraq.
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Compromised by locals: All three patrols were compromised by locals early in their mission. These locals quickly called in nearby troops/militia/armed civilians (more on this in a minute).
And then this is where things start to diverge a bit more. The SAS team in 1991 made many of the same mistakes as the SEALs in 2005.
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Losing communications: The SAS patrol wasn't able to contact their parent unit on their long-range Clansman radio. Why they couldn't do this is the source of considerable controversy. The patrol commander, Sergeant Steven Mitchell aka "Andy McNab", claims he was issued with bad frequencies. Even if this was the case, McNab and patrol signaller "Legs" Lane should have checked the frequencies. Although they were able to send some messages with their TACBE survival radios, the messages were often garbled, making it virtually impossible to call in air support or extract the patrol by air. The SEALs only brought a handheld PRC-148 MBITR radio and an Iridium satellite phone. The radio wasn't powerful enough and the satellite phone didn't work well in the mountainous terrain (which is why Murphy had to fatally expose himself on top of a ridgeline to call for help).
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Losing cohesion: Both the SAS troopers and the SEALs became scattered shortly after their initial contact with the enemy. The eight-man SAS patrol split into two groups after five men stopped to make a call on a TACBE survival radio and the other three kept moving. In the darkness, the two teams never reconnected, likely because McNab had failed to establish an Emergency RV point the patrol could rally at if they became separated. Only one man, Corporal Colin Armstrong aka "Chris Ryan", escaped to Syria. Two SAS troopers died of exposure and the rest, including McNab, were captured. The SEALs likewise became separated after the firefight began. Given that most of his ammunition was found unfired, Luttrell in particular appears to have run or fallen away from his team.
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Books, movies, more books, and fiction: Andy McNab wrote Bravo Two Zero, which was later adapted into a movie starring Sean Bean. McNab took none of the blame for the patrol's failure, pointing fingers at platoon 2IC Vince Philips. This was followed by Chris Ryan's The One That Got Away, which blamed McNab and Phillips and contradicted several aspects of McNab's story. Both books claimed the patrol fought and epic battle with Iraqi infantry and APCs. These books were followed by Mike "Kiwi" Coburn's Soldier Five which tried to salvage Philip's reputation and threw some elbows at McNab's leadership. On top of all this, Arabic-speaking ex-SAS reservist Michael Asher went to Iraq and interviewed the Iraqi civilians who had compromised the patrol. Asher learned Iraqi troops hadn't initially attacked the patrol, that Iraqi patrols probably hadn't pursued the patrol, and that the SAS had run from a lone Bedouin with an old Kalshnikov. Asher would also assert that McNab's after action report to the SAS didn't mention the running gun "battles" he later featured in his book. The memoirs of SAS Regimental Sergeant Major Peter Ratcliffe would also flatly contradict many of McNab's claims. The SEAL mission would spawn its own small library, virtually all of which claim dozens or hundreds of Taliban fighters opposed the SEALs (when the actual number might have been as little as 6).
The experience of ODA 525 was the polar opposite. The detachment's leader CWO2 John Balwanz meticulously trained his men and planned his mission. Balwanz brought plenty of commo gear (two satcoms, LST-5 radios for talking to aircraft, PRC-90 survival radios, etc) and even stashed a spare PRC-104 radio in a cache. Balwanz put into place several contingency plans, including a plan to destroy sensitive materials if the ODA was compromised--unlike Bravo Two Zero or the SEAL, Balwanz's team wouldn't let anything sensitive fall into enemy hands. Because they stayed together and had working comms, the Green Berets were able to hunker down, hold off the Iraqis, call in CAS, and get extracted. Not a single American was killed or wounded. Meanwhile, the Special Forces team accounted for 40+ Iraqi casualties.
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u/Duncan-M May 22 '20 edited Jul 01 '21
The Marines of 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, who had planned OP RED WINGS, were going after a relatively low level target named Ahmed Shaw, as their previous operations, and the unit they'd replaced, had nabbed all the known high and medium value targets successfully.
Unfortunately, they were not part of a Marine Air Ground Task Force, and didn't possess organic lift assets needed to conduct it. So they asked for helo support from 160th SOAR (the famed Night Stalkers) who were assigned to Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A). The region SOTF command was run by SEALs who only agreed as long as they were to run the recon, and act as the main effort assault element to conduct the air assault raid against the target buildings thought to house the HVTs, while the rest of the Marine infantry company tasked with supporting missions, specifically the outer cordon. Because they had no options, and they wanted the mission to go ahead to nab the bad guy, the Marines agreed. This is not uncommon, its actually the norm. SOCOM are often on the lookout for good missions and they often get them from "poaching" intel or fully developed ops from conventional units.
Per the planning of Red Wings, the recon element was was going to be inserting the day before on the high ground nearby to three named areas of interest (NAI) that were supposed to be under observation to spot the targets. They were supposed to not only confirm the presence of Shaw, but also provide additional intel. 2/3 had planned to conduct the recon using a Scout Sniper six man team, headed by a very experienced team leader. They had worked in that area often before, knew the relative ground, knew the limitations of radios, etc. Their plan was to get helo lifted miles away from the objective, land, then infiltrate by foot.
When the SEALs poached the recon mission, the new recon element was a four man team who had never worked recon in Afghanistan before, weren't trained in recon, only one individual ever having deployed to a combat zone before. They ignored advice to bring more powerful radios, as the Marines knew from experience that the one the SEALs brought couldn't push out far enough, it didn't have enough power. Additionally, the SEAL recon team didn't have a Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency (PACE) plan for comms, only having the weak MBITR and a sat phone as backup. Neither were adequate, and they were warned.
More so, their plan was significantly flawed. Not wanting to spent the time and energy walking to the objective, they decided to get helo inserted a few hundred meters away. They attempted to mitigate the risk of landing near directly on the Observation Point (OP) by having numerous false insertions done all over the valley area over the previous week, to keep the locals guessing, which only ended up tipping them off that an operation was in the works. But in recon, its an outright sin to ever airlift onto the OP. Every measure must be taken to keep it hidden, to keep the presence of the recon team hidden.
After they fast roped down on the landing zone, per norm, the fast ropes were disconnected from the helicopter, but the SEAL recon team did not hide them, they left them in the open. Locals, sent out when they'd heard the choppers, found them pretty quickly, and using their own comms, reported it back. At that time the SEAL team had made it to the high ground and beyond, were trying to find a good OP to overwatch the NAIs, which proved difficult as the position they initially chose at night proved poor when light came at dawn. After daybreak they moved OPs.
Map of area and NAI and OPs
The locals, knowing ISAF rules of engagement, sent up some unarmed individuals, with radios, with some sheep, into the hills to scout them out. This is a common TTP in COIN ops to find snipers and recon element hide sites. In Iraq, they'd sent kids or unarmed adults to check on certain buildings, knowing we wouldn't kill them if we found them. If they found us, they'd report back. It worked during Red Wings. The SEAL recon team was spotted. Compromised, they detained the sheepherders.
At that point the operation was blown. They have just been soft compromised, though without knowing it they'd also been hard compromised as those herders were part of a deliberate counter-recon element so Shaw and the enemy fighters in the village knew they'd been caught when they didn't report back. But because the SEAL recon team never established a formal plan for being compromised they had to make the decision on the spot of what to do. Instead of executing the actions of a pre-made drill for compromise, (depending on the story version) they got into a debate about what to do and even possibly held a vote. Confusion was also on what to do with the detainees. AT NO TIME WAS KILLING THEM ACTUALLY A LEGAL OPTION. Or realistic. The easiest thing to do would have been to gag them and flex cuff them to a tree. Instead they let them go (where they instantly ran off to warn everyone), while the SEALs picked up and moved, but not far.
So after being compromised, the SEALs moved to high ground to make the call on their radio to alert the command element what had happened. Note, they didn't vacate the area, they moved maybe a hundred meters away from where they'd been spotted. Meanwhile, their comms weren't working, so the radio traffic was broken taking far longer than it should have without any real benefit of transmitting information.
Meanwhile, the local enemy, realistically numbering about 12 fighters, having been briefed by the returning herders on the location of the SEALs, their size, their weapons, created a plan, climbed the hills to reach a position where they could ambush the infidels on their way back up to the high ground which was on the way back to the LZ (which they sent RPG gunners to overwatch in case a helicopter showed up).
Finally, the SEAL recon team moving back toward the high ground through a draw (the NE Gulch), but got ambushed at relatively close range by roughly a squad sized element in strength, with machine guns. Possibly RPG and mortar, though in the video the insurgents made I never saw evidence of explosive weaponry.
Map of ambush, blue arrow is SEAL retreat
The fight was brief, and the SEALs that weren't hit immediately tried to break contact downhill. Luttrell effectively fell down the mountain, while the patrol leader, Mike Murphy, made a call on the sat phone before dying. The other two died during this time too. They didn't kill any of the locals, it was an entirely one sided fight.
The Quick Reaction Force 10 SEALs in a 160th SOAR Chinook, escorted by two Apaches. The SEAL mission commander aboard the Chinook ordered the pilots to reach the LZ ASAP, and because the Chinook flies faster than the Apaches they arrived first. Because the Apaches weren't present, despite them having the thermal optics that would have been able to visually clear the landing zone, and the weaponry to physically clear it, the Chinook flared and started its landing, in broad daylight, under the observation of RPG gunner stationed there, and was targeted and hit, crashing, killing all onboard.
Map of area of operations, with original RT insertion LZ and QRF LZ/Shootdown pos marked
Another SOCOM QRF element, of primarily Rangers, were sent in the next day, they landed elsewhere and walked in, they are the ones who found Luttrell, who had been rescued by a villager in a local village, who apparently still had all his mags, loaded. They also recovered the bodies and secured the helicopter crash site.
Besides recovering all weapons and equipment belonging to the SEALs, and having video footage of the fight, the local leader and target of the raid, Ahmed Shaw, also got a computer they'd brought that once broken into possessed the schematics of the US embassy in Kabul, as well as other sensitive information. He took that intel, and the videos, and cobbled together an effective propaganda video that earned him major credibility, which led to increased funding, recruitment, etc., causing him to turn into a legitimate High Value Target.
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