the airpower of anaconda - air force magazine

HEN American soldiersand their allies came un-der intense enemy fire inthe mountains of easternAfghanistan, it took air-

power to save the day. OperationAnaconda was for US troops the big-gest ground battle of the war on ter-rorism in Afghanistan. Beginning onMarch 1, 2002, US forces, their Af-ghan allies, and other coalition forcesincluding Canadians and Australianstook a beating in the rugged moun-tains near Pakistan. After initial con-tact sparked heavy fighting, airpowerwas called in to provide close airsupport and later to herd and poundthe enemy.

Ultimately, Operation Anacondawas a success, due in no small part tothe contributions of airpower andthe bravery and heroism of those onthe ground and in the air alike. “Theydefeated an evil enemy under hor-rendous conditions,” said one mili-tary official after it was all over. YetAnaconda—boldly named for thesnake that crushes its prey—was alsoan object lesson in using airpower tostifle enemy resistance.

No More Tora BorasOperation Anaconda was born out

of a plan to trap al Qaeda fightersregrouping in the mountains. Thequick collapse of strongholds likeKandahar compelled surviving alQaeda fighters to move back toward

The Airpower of Anaconda

By Rebecca Grant

Strangling the enemy required more than encirclement andmovement to contact; it took solid pounding from airpower, too.

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caves and 10,000-foot mountainpeaks on the Pakistani border.

In December, at Tora Bora, al Qaedafighters escaped bombing of the cavecomplex and fled into the mountains.Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chair-man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saidon Dec. 12, “There are multiple routesof ingress and egress, so it is cer-tainly conceivable that groups of two,three, 15, 20 could, walking out ofthere, in fact, get out.” US troops onthe ground did not engage directly;according to Pace, their role was tosupport the Afghan fighters and “todirect the bombing that’s taking placein support of the opposition forces.”When Afghan forces encountered alQaeda, surrender negotiations tookplace. Although the US tried to moni-tor the border with Pakistan, Paceconceded it was “not a perfect pic-ture.” The net result was that many alQaeda fighters slipped away. Thesame thing happened when US air-power hit a camp complex at ZhawarKili in January.

Frustration was building in Cen-tral Command, and clustering Tali-ban and al Qaeda offered a temptingtarget. Near the town of Shah-e-Kot,in the Arma mountains, a group of alQaeda reportedly paid villagers touse their homes. Al Qaeda fightersalso took up residence in the warrenof caves built after the Soviet inva-sion more than 20 years earlier.

The failure to catch all the dis-persed al Qaeda fighters was vexing,and when they began to mass again in

the east, they presented a threat to theshaky peace and Afghanistan’s newgovernment. Retired Army Gen. Wes-ley K. Clark, the former SupremeAllied Commander Europe, in an in-terview with London’s Daily Tele-graph described it this way: “Youcan’t win a war simply by being thereand reacting.” He said, “You have todo some information building andthen you have to have a strong fight-ing force ready to follow it up.”

In February 2002, Central Com-mand watched closely as the clot ofal Qaeda near Shah-e-Kot morphedfrom a force on the run to a concen-

trated threat. Satellites and Un-manned Aerial Vehicles trackedforces on the move. US teams wereinserted to watch them more closely.They “started to get together in aplace where they could have enoughmass to be effective,” said Gen. Rich-ard B. Myers, Chairman of the JointChiefs of Staff. “And we’ve beenfollowing that, allowing it to de-velop until we thought it was theproper time to strike.”

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rums-feld described the danger al Qaedastill posed. “Their goal is to recon-stitute, to try to throw out the newinterim government of Afghanistan,to kill coalition forces, and to try toregain the ability to use Afghanistanas a base for terrorist operations.”

“We intend to prevent them fromdoing that,” he added.

There was another objective. AsMyers delicately worded it in an inter-view on CNN, “One of the reasons wewant to go in here is not just to eradi-cate the Taliban and al Qaeda, but alsoto gain information … that might haveimpact on future operations somewherearound the world.” Ideally, “we’d likesome of them to surrender so we canget our hands on them and interrogatethem,” said Myers.

Part of the preparation includedschooling selected Afghan soldiersin infantry tactics at a base near Khost,east of Gardez. Special forces trainedperhaps as many as 1,000 Afghansoldiers in basic infantry techniquesdesigned to improve their staying

A-10s deployed to Bagram air base, near Kabul, Afghanistan, have been flownby both active duty and reserve pilots. A-10s provide close air support forground troops ferreting out al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the mountains.

A B-52 from the 2nd Bomb Wing, Barksdale AFB, La., returns from a missionover Afghanistan. B-52s equipped with JDAMs provided close air support—arole for the heavy bomber that many call transformational.

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power and ability to fit in with acoordinated offensive. The idea wasto break the pattern of advance andretreat and teach the Afghan soldiersto take and hold ground. In additionto the Afghans, 200 highly trainedspecial forces from Australia, Canada,Denmark, Germany, and Norwayjoined in, while French strike aircraftsigned on for coalition air duty.

CENTCOM’s plan for eliminatingal Qaeda pockets would be a “move-ment to contact” as Army Gen. TommyR. Franks, CENTCOM head, latertermed it. Instead of a single, tradi-tional front line, the objective was totake key positions and form a screenaround several known caves, com-pounds, and other al Qaeda strong-holds. “This is a sizeable pocket of alQaeda that needs to be dealt with,”Central Command spokesman RearAdm. Craig R. Quigley told the NewYork Times. “We have studied thisplace for some time.”

When al Qaeda fled in front of theAfghan troops, US and coalitionforces would be there to catch them.One former 10th Mountain Divisioncommander in an interview with theWashington Post said that pushingan enemy into a preplanned block-ing force was a classic light infantrytactic. In Afghanistan, it came with ahelpful twist. Since airpower wasfar more precise than in the past,air–ground coordination could bemore effective.

In concept, Operation Anacondawas designed to let al Qaeda buildup. Then coalition forces would strikeand eliminate them. Maj. Gen. Frank-lin L. Hagenback, who planned andled the operation, originally con-cluded it would take about 72 hoursto complete.

Two things went wrong. First, theUS, Afghan, and coalition troops didnot know how much resistance theywould face because estimates on thenumber of al Qaeda in the area var-ied widely. “We’ve been watchingthe area for several weeks now,”Maj. Ralph Mills, a CENTCOMspokesman, said in a statement at thestart of the operation. However, as atTora Bora, it was difficult to gaugethe level of resistance. “This enemyhas learned how to conceal them-selves from the things that we haveat our disposal to look for them,”one senior military official familiarwith special operations tactics laterexplained.

Three weeks before OperationAnaconda, Myers visited Afghani-stan. He was briefed on the plan, butno specifics on the level of resis-tance were available. “Before wewent in there, we heard everywherefrom 200 to several thousand [alQaeda troops],” Myers said on CNN.“We think there were hundreds.”Myers told CNN that he concludedafter he was briefed by Hagenback:“I don’t think there was any doubt inhis mind that this was going to be atough fight.”

Not knowing the exact number orlocation of al Qaeda fighters was nota recipe for disaster by itself. DuringOctober and November, estimates ofresistance were uncertain, but theclose coordination of ground teamswith the air component helped iden-tify targets quickly when needed andforestalled ambushes.

Operation Anaconda’s second flawwas that the plan was not tightlycoordinated with the air component.The emerging plan for Anaconda hadall the earmarks of an operationplanned almost exclusively withinthe Army component and specialforces. What Myers, in his discus-sions with Hagenback, could not haveknown was that the plan for Ana-conda had not been fully coordinatedwith the joint air component. Ac-cording to one officer, the CombinedAir Operations Center staff did notlearn of Anaconda until a day beforethe operation was due to start.

Still, the operation went forward,

after weeks of planning, with Rums-feld’s personal approval.

Anaconda UnfoldsThe assault began early on Satur-

day, March 2, as trucks carried Af-ghan troops plus US and coalitionspecial forces toward the small townof Sirkankel. The Afghan com-mander, Gen. Zia Lodin, reportedlyhad 450 soldiers with him. Heavyfire stalled the convoy, and oneAmerican soldier was killed by amortar shell that hit his truck. USArmy AH-64 Apache helicoptersjoined the fray, taking a number ofhits. “There were many bad peopleshooting very big caliber weapons atthem,” said Maj. Bryan Hilferty, a10th Mountain Division spokesman.

South of Sirkankel, a unit of the101st Airborne Division also metopposition. Its commander, Col.Frank Wiercinski, said: “We sur-vived three mortar barrages duringthe day and at one point we had nineor 10 al Qaeda coming to do us, butinstead, we did them.” Nearby inMarzak, elements of the 10th Moun-tain Division were pinned in an-other 12-hour battle, with mortarrounds and Rocket-Propelled Gre-nades taking a toll of 13 Americanswounded. Apache helicopters doveinto the fray taking multiple hitsfrom RPGs and small arms.

The encirclement was not goingas smoothly. Al Qaeda fighters weredispersed in small groups sized from

A crew loads 105 mm rounds into the powerful Howitzer carried by the AC-130gunships. In Operation Enduring Freedom, the AC-130 has proved valuable forits long loiter time over target.

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as few as three men to as many as ascore. Some sheltered in the cavesystem while others occupied pre-pared positions on the mountainridges. As coalition forces laterfound, the strong points were well-supplied with weapons brought inover the preceding months. Al Qaedawere indeed herded together—butthey were ready for a fight.

Worse, coordination with the Af-ghans was not working. One US de-tachment poised near a small al Qaedacompound expected a supporting at-tack from Lodin, but it called inairpower instead. Al Qaeda “kind ofhit us by surprise at first, south ofthe compound, and moved up,” ArmyLt. Charles Thompson told the LosAngeles Times. “But aircraft blewup about a platoon-sized element.”

Takur GarFor US forces, the worst was yet

to come. Seven Americans died infierce fighting during attempted he-licopter insertions near a mountaintopcalled Takur Gar on March 4.

The ridge at Takur Gar commandeda view of the entire valley—15 milesof visibility in the clear weather ofOperation Anaconda’s first week. Partof the plan for Operation Anacondacalled for US forces to take ObjectiveGinger, a little below the top of theridge, giving coalition forces thesweeping strategic view of the val-ley. But above the ridge, on its shadedside, three feet of new snow maskedhardened bunkers where al Qaeda

Crippled by rocket fire, an Army Chinook helicopter landed just yards from anenemy bunker, just below the Takur Gar ridgeline. A USAF combat controllercalled in F-15s to fire on the bunker—a precision bomb collapsed it.

fighters were ready to put up deadlyresistance. The snow canopied on apine tree, making the cover even moreeffective. The snow filled in foot-prints that might have revealed thepresence of the enemy force.

First to discover the al Qaeda nestwas a Navy SEAL team trying toinsert troops under cover of dark-ness. The SEALs’ MH-47 helicopterwas hit through the hydraulic linesand withdrew hastily. Petty Officer1st Class Neil C. Roberts fell fromthe back of the helicopter and laterdied of a bullet wound he sufferedwhile fighting. An AC-130 and then,as daylight neared, a pair of F-15sflew combat air patrol in the area.The special forces did not take heli-copter firepower of their own for themission. “This was a stealthy infil[tration] to an outpost. And you don’twant to put a whole lot of stuff inthere to tell the enemy you’re com-ing,” explained a military official,an Army aviator later commissionedby Franks to report on the battle.

Tactical surprise was gone. TheSEALs’ helicopter crash-landed 4.3miles away, while a second helicop-ter picked up the team and took themback to save Roberts. Now it was arescue—not a long mission—andthey needed to move fast. To getback to Roberts, the SEALs “droppedmuch of their equipment to lightenthem up” and returned to the ridgetaking just their combat gear andadditional ammunition, said the se-nior military official. After reinser-

tion, the SEAL team on the groundpicked their way forward over twoand a half hours to reach Roberts. Inthe process they called on an AC-130 and two F-15Es for support andone unleashed a 500-pound Laser-Guided Bomb on the ridge.

While one F-15E refueled on anaerial tanker track 20 miles away, twomore helicopters were on their way tothe scene. A quick reaction unit fromBagram Air Base with combat searchand rescue specialists and 10 Armyrangers was summoned to aid the SEALteam. The SEALs trying to get to Rob-erts relayed coordinates to them viaanother platform—most likely an air-borne control element—that filled inthe communications gaps created byinterrupted line of sight in the moun-tainous terrain.

As one of the MH-47s prepared toland “about 165 feet from that bunkerat the top,” said the military official,a Rocket-Propelled Grenade took offthe tail rotor, dropping the Chinookonto the mountain. Another RPGkilled the right-side gunner. Four diedinstantly, and several more werewounded. Surviving aircrew and theArmy rangers set up defensive posi-tions 150 feet from one of the snow-concealed bunkers. But the downedhelicopter, now a refuge for thewounded, made a fat target. An at-tack by the rangers on the bunker—uphill, in snow—failed, leaving airas the only immediate recourse.

With the team was a USAF com-bat controller, SSgt. Gabe Brown.“All I kept thinking was we neededclose air support, and we needed itnow,” Brown recalled. “My job wasto concentrate on bringing in thebombs to knock out the enemy, andI knew I needed to do it fast.”

After getting communications upand speaking with a fellow control-ler two miles away, Brown contactedthe F-15Es. When Brown saw theenemy fire, he realized they weretoo close to risk using LGBs. “If wecouldn’t kill the bunker, we weregoing to be surrounded,” said Brown.

Even with common visual refer-ences, the F-15E’s job was tough.One pilot made a low sweep over thearea, popping off rounds at the en-emy troops. Brown said, “You couldsee the snow flying off the groundnear the bunker, and I knew he washitting it.” The F-15E made severalmore passes, then the pilot indicatedhe was out of ammunition.

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The enemy was still firing. It wastwo hours into the fight, and Brownsaid he knew it would only get worse.He called for a bomb drop.

It worked. The bombs were righton target and collapsed the bunker.“The noise was just like it sounds inthe movies,” Brown remembered.“You could smell the burning pineoff the trees and see the snow kick-ing off the ground.”

Brown then told the F-15Es theenemy troops were too close and touse only guns again. No F-15E hadever used its gun in combat forclose air support. All Brown andthe F-15Es could target was a singlepine tree, the lone visual referenceboth could sight. Brown called it thebonsai tree.

Throughout the day USAF aircraftprovided close air support as the teamon the ground held off al Qaeda for14 hours before darkness fell andanother helicopter extracted them. Itwas close air support at its best, butthe overall cost of the mission washigh. The ridge at Takur Gar claimedseven American lives.

Franks praised the individuals whofought. “It is the stuff of which he-roes are made,” Franks said of thebattle. “We needed to have some-body on that hill,” he said. “That’sthe mission that these young peopletook in stride.”

Al Qaeda’s concealed bunkers andcommand post changed the equa-tion from a stealthy infiltration to astruggle to survive under fire. How-

ever, Franks speculated that, hadRoberts not been left behind, theforces would have simply backedoff and called in an air strike. As itwas, the battle on the ridge took theutmost finesse in close air support.

Stacked UpFor Operation Anaconda as a

whole, contact with the enemy dem-onstrated the need for more airpower,far exceeding the plan for a 72-hourcampaign. By Sunday, bombers,fighters, and gunships were stackingup in the area estimated by the Pen-tagon to be only about 70 square

miles—about the size of the Districtof Columbia.

The plan to flush out al Qaeda withAfghan troops while the Americansheld blocking positions was also crum-bling. Coordinating action with theAfghan troops remained a weak link.In the November offensives, timingfor the Afghan advances had rarelybeen precise, making US Army–stylecoordinated offensives more a dreamthan a reality. Yet Anaconda was torely heavily on coordination. Sgt. Maj.Frank Grippe of the 10th MountainDivision told the New York Timesthat his mission was to set up a block-ing position to kill or capture al Qaedadriven out by advancing Afghantroops. But the new training in infan-try tactics the Afghans had receivedwas not watertight. On March 3, afterinitial resistance, Lodin pulled backhis 450 men to regroup and did notrejoin the fight until Wednesday,March 6. One senior officer told theNew York Times, “This plan changed180 degrees.”

The new heading relied far moreon US forces and on airpower to helpdraw out al Qaeda. A senior defenseofficial told the Washington Post,“The original plan was supposed tobe Afghan led and US supported.After the early difficulties, it endedup becoming US led and Afghan sup-ported.” The other change was fight-ing al Qaeda in place, instead ofblocking and trapping them fleeing,as expected from their behavior atTora Bora. “We ended up having to

An F-15E from the 366th AIr Expeditionary Wing, loaded with 500-pound laser-guided bombs, prepares for a mission over Afghanistan. US aircraft haddropped more than 2,500 bombs in the Takur Gar area by March 12, 2002.

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F-15Es flying close air support at Takur Gar put munitions on target using asingle pine tree for visual reference. Precision bombing took out the al Qaedabunker, but spared US personnel fighting only yards away.

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Rebecca Grant is a contributing editor of Air Force Magazine. She is presi-dent of IRIS Independent Research, Inc., in Washington, D.C., and hasworked for RAND, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Chief of Staff of theAir Force. Grant is a fellow of the Eaker Institute for Aerospace Concepts, thepublic policy and research arm of the Air Force Association’s AerospaceEducation Foundation. Her most recent article, “Osirak and Beyond,” ap-peared in the August 2002 issue.

fight the war in the area where theenemy was, rather than get them torun into choke points,” the seniorofficial added.

Revised tactics called for employ-ing ground forces plus PredatorUAVs and satellites to locate theenemy. With US ground forces pin-ning al Qaeda, precise air strikesdelivered heavy blows. Those notkilled by the bombing could be pickedoff as they emerged from caves andhideouts. Not only did the initialcluster of al Qaeda come under at-tack, but the battle drew in more alQaeda fighters. “We caught severalhundred of them heading with RPGsand mortars toward the fight,” Hagen-back told reporters on March 5. “Webody-slammed them.”

A-10s from Pope AFB, N.C.,moved forward on March 10, flyingcombat sorties within 15 hours afterreceiving mission notification. TwoA-10 pilots, Lt. Col. Edward Kos-telnik and Capt. Scott Campbell, werecredited with killing more than 200al Qaeda and Taliban in a singlemission, according to Lt. Col. ArdenDahl. “After that night, all al Qaedaand Taliban and their buddies wereon the run,” Dahl said. “They justgot swacked.”

Those in action praised the airsupport they got. Army Lt. ChrisBeal said after seven days in battle:“We were hailed on, snowed on,shot at, and mortared at, but we didthe right thing at the right time.After a lot of close air support came

in, anything that moved was killedby our birds [helicopters] or snip-ers.” Testimony to the impact ofairpower painted a vivid picture ofthe real tactics of Operation Ana-conda. Marine Capt. Brunson Howard,an AH-1 Cobra pilot, describedseeing one al Qaeda fighter comeout of a foxhole with an RPG, onlyto face three helicopter gunships.“He never got the chance to put iton his shoulder,” Howard said.

Strategic SuccessStrategically, the plan worked.

American fighters and bombersdropped more than 2,500 bombs inthe area by March 12. As more alQaeda positions were located anddestroyed, the operation began in itssecond week to focus on smaller andsmaller pockets. By mid–March,news reports cited about 500 al Qaedaas dead.

The secondary objective, findingout more about al Qaeda operations,was also met. US forces found a mail-bomb factory and a hoard of techni-cal manuals on microelectronics anddigital technology in one house aban-doned by al Qaeda during the fight-ing. “I was awestruck by the minute

detail and ingenuity” of the materi-als, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bond,one of the combat engineers at thehouse, told USA Today.

Franks claimed afterward on ABC’s“This Week” that he was not sur-prised by the intensity of the battle.“I think anytime you have a wholebunch of people in uniform movinginto an enemy area in order to attackobjectives, there will certainly beplaces within this area where we’llencounter very, very substantial re-sistance.” As Franks explained it,troops had to be inserted to gaugethe strength of al Qaeda. Franks said,“We will almost never have perfectintelligence information, and so whatwe do is we take the information thatwe have and we move in to confirmor deny the presence of the enemyforces that we suspect.” Franks ad-mitted he “would not downplay thepossibility” that his forces “got intoa heck of a firefight at some pointthat they did not anticipate.”

Clark, the former SACEUR, evincedthe same tactical proclivities when hesaid in the Daily Telegraph interviewabout Anaconda, “The thing we musthave is intelligence domination on thebattlefield, and that means human in-telligence and that means boots on theground.”

Strangling al Qaeda strongholds tookmore than ground encirclement andmovement to contact—it took a solidpounding from airpower, too. One clearlesson was that air–ground coordina-tion—a stunning success in the earlierphases of Operation Enduring Free-dom—was given short shrift in theoriginal planning for Operation Ana-conda. The 72-hour operation stretchedover more than two weeks, demandedintense air support, and might wellhave had seen higher casualties hadthe joint air support—from B-52s toF/A-18s to Apaches—not been therewhen needed.

“This will not be the last suchoperation in Afghanistan,” Rums-feld said March 4. But it may be thelast one fought without proper plan-ning that includes the joint air com-ponent from the start. ■

Northern Alliance members inspect the remnants of bunkers in the mountainsnear the Shah-e-Kot Valley. Such Taliban and al Qaeda redoubts were poundedhard from the air.

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