[09.01.02]
Chopper in the Coils
Operation Anaconda was a back to basics campaign for US combat helicopters
by Dodge Billingsley

(Published in The Journal of Electronic Defense (JED), September 2002.)

It was 4:30 am, March 2, D-Day of Operation Anaconda, when the pilots of the 159th Aviation Brigade and the 7th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) started their pre-flight checks and began to turn the rotors of their CH-47 Chinook troop-transport helicopters. Behind them, infantry from the 101st Airborne and the 10th Mountain Divisions waited for the word to load. They carried food, water, cold-weather gear, and night-vision and communications equipment in addition to a variety of weapons and ammunition. Some soldiers carried a hundred pounds or more. A rear gunner on a Chinook, having checked his pintle-mounted M-240 machine gun, stood outside talking to his pilot on the intercom as he watched the rotors begin to spin up. At last, he walked back to the rear door of his helicopter and motioned the troops forward.


US soldiers prepare to board the CH-47s for
the objective area. Elements of the 101st
Airborne, together with elements of the 10th
Mountain Division, were tasked with
occupying a number of blocking positions in
the Shah-e-Kot Valley east of Gardez, near
the Pakistani border.
Grayden Ridd, Combat Films

Captain Frank Baldazar of the 101st led his men onto the helicopters. Over the noise of the aircraft, a platoon sergeant yelled, "Let's go, let's go, get in there. Get that shit off your back - sit on it, make some room, let's go!" The men filed onto the birds. In total, eight Chinooks, in two serials of four, prepared to leave for the Shah-e-Kot Valley. A halo of light began to form on the outer edge of the turning rotors as the speed of the blades increased. Finally, the CH-47s lifted off and into the night sky, visible momentarily by the static on the blades but disappearing as they reached flight speed.

Colonel Frank Wiercinski, with the radio call sign "RAK 6," and the rest of the Brigade Tactical Command Post (TAC) surveyed the horizon from two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters above the objective area. He knew that the operation was most vulnerable to serious reversals during the first twenty minutes. The troops had to get off the choppers successfully in order for the plan to work. Anxiously, he waited for the first CH-47s to reach their designated landing zones (LZs).

Apache Team Leader Chief Warrant Officer 3 Rich Chenault and his front-seater, Captain Joe Herman, of the 3rd Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment of the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) surveyed the ridgelines and hilltops as they streaked above the Shah-e-Kot Valley in their AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. Armed with a formidable array of weapons -- including a 30mm chain gun, Hellfire missiles, and 70mm rockets -- their aircraft was one of five Apaches to enter the valley in the pre-dawn hours of March 2. Their aircraft, paired with another Apache crewed by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Keith Hurley and Warrant Officer Stew Content, scanned the horizon around them in the early morning light, surveying each pre-designated landing zone. They could see nothing out of the ordinary. The village of Sherkhankhel looked deserted below them, and the ridgeline framing the valley to the east was only sparse vegetation and a blanket of snow. The whole valley was asleep.

The Chinooks were only ten minutes out when CW3 Chenault relayed the go code "Ice" (no sign of enemy on or near the landing zone), and the larger, slower CH-47s punched through the cloud layer and entered the valley en route to their respective LZs. Chenault and his wingman, CW3 Hurley, watched as elements of the 101st (Task Force Raider) exited their CH-47s into the northern half of the valley while the other three Apaches of Team Two flew over-watch on the rest of the 159th Aviation Brigade helicopters as they dropped off elements of the 10th Mountain Division (Task Force Summit) to LZs in the vicinity of Blocking Position GINGER to the south.

H-Hour, wheels down on the first aircraft, had come and gone without incident. All troops from the first lift were safely on the ground, with no enemy contact, as the CH-47s pealed away. So far the mission was going as planned. COL Wiercinski was relieved, unaware that all hell was about to break loose.

Reaching Far and High

The preparations for Operation Anaconda had begun weeks before D-Day. US intelligence had determined that there were a significant number of Taliban and al Qaeda personnel operating in the Shah-e-Kot Valley east of Gardez, near the Pakistani border. Within the valley lay three villages: Sherkhankhel, Babukhel, and Marzak. Anaconda was designed to block Taliban and al Qaeda forces from escaping the valley.


A soldier gets off a CH-47 in the Shah-e-Kot Valley.
Although Apaches relayed the go-code "Ice,"
meaning that there was no sign of the enemy on or
near the landing zones, many dismounting soldiers
came under fire almost immediately.
Grayden Ridd, Combat Films

The mission called for a main effort by Afghan anti-Taliban forces led by Colonel Zia Lodin and supported by Coalition Special Forces that would provide communications for air- support were to invade the Shah-e-Kot Valley from the west, where the terrain was dominated by a ridgeline referred to as "the Whale." Regular troops from the 101st Air Assault and 10th Mountain Divisions, two halves of Task Force Rakkasan, would support the main effort by dropping into blocking positions in the eastern part of the valley. The 101st was to occupy the northern half of the blocking positions: AMY, BETTY, CINDY, and DIANE; the 10th would take the positions in the southern portion of the valley: EVE, GINGER, and HEATHER. COL Wiercinski's Brigade TAC would also be located in the southern half of the valley, near blocking point GINGER. Coalition Special Forces teams (Task Force KBAR), would conduct special reconnaissance in the outlying areas, while Australian Special Forces (Task Force 64) would create a screen to the south of the valley to interdict al Qaeda attempts to escape in that direction.

D-Day had initially been planned for February 25, but bad weather and consideration for Islamic holidays pushed it back to March 2. The Coalition airmobile soldiers would hit the ground just after sunrise. This was a topic of much discussion as the mission planners weighed the options of attacking under the cover of darkness or during daylight hours. It was finally decided to insert at sunrise to catch the enemy asleep yet provide optimal vision for the forces entering the valley. According to COL Wiercinski's executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Larson, "This is because we determined that the most dangerous and critical part of the operation was getting the force on the ground. We knew we could kill the enemy if they showed themselves, so we thought the greater risk was crashing a helicopter in the unfamiliar and harsh terrain at 9,000 feet of altitude."

Enter the Apaches

Even before H-Hour, Colonel Zia's troops' and the accompanying Special Forces' mission began to unravel. One group was pinned down by mortar fire southwest of the valley, while another group was being engaged from the northeast side of the Whale. Apache Team One, CW3 Chenault's and CW3 Hurley's helicopters, broke from its over-watch position with the 101st in the north sector of the valley and headed southwest. Hurley noticed soldiers from Colonel Zia's forces already retreating towards Gardez. Chenault also listened to the description of the target as the two Apaches over-flew the Special Forces position to get a positive identification on friendly forces.

"They gave us a grid coordinate of their present location," Chenault said. "We left our loitering location and went over to where they were on the ground and did a positive identification of them by flying over the top of them. Then they gave us the direction and the distance where they were taking fire from. We flew into that area once to try to get a visual ID on the enemy, and once we identified their position, we circled back around and did two engagement runs with both aircraft." Chenault fired a barrage of rockets at the mortar on his next turn. Hurley's Apache followed, covering Chenault, and then Hurley made his own pass on the mortar position. Enemy fire stopped, but they overflew the position once more to be sure.


Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, Task Force
Summit, take cover against Taliban/al Qaeda fire on
D-Day at Blocking Position GINGER.
Michael Peterson, HHC Mortars, 10th Mountain Division

The radios began to get very busy. CPT Herman, Chenault's front-seater recalled: "Radios were pretty hectic. We were talking; our teammates were talking to two different elements on the ground as well; and the team of three Apaches in the south were talking to elements in their area. The terrain blocked some of the radio transmissions because of the high terrain, but sometimes there was bleed-over so you were hearing both ends of the battle at once."

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Bob Carr, who later joined Chenault's team, added, "The traffic on the radio was tremendous as far as everybody want-ing fire missions, and it was hard to get a hold of and determine where the enemy was."

Chenault's team next responded to the other Special Forces group under mortar fire on the northeast part of the Whale. The mortar pit was on CW3 Hurley's right beam, very low on the horizon, and he could not bring his weapons to bear. Hurley then saw a single man aiming a RPG at his helicopter. The warhead erupted from the shoulder-fired rocket launcher and streaked towards the aircraft, detonating behind it. Hurley came in hard right and targeted the mortar position, though by then there were only two or three enemy personnel manning the tube. Chenault rolled into his own run, pulled the trigger, and six 2.75mm rockets streaked towards the position. He could see men running in vain to get away from the incoming fire. As Chenault's aircraft exited the run, Hurley rolled in firing 30mm cannon rounds at five individuals running right to left (north to south) across his horizon. The 30mm began running out of ammo, so he fired multiple rockets.

Hurley's aircraft rocked abruptly after taking a direct hit from a RPG, which struck the left-wing ordnance stores and took off three Hellfires missiles. More than a dozen small-arms rounds also penetrated the aircraft. Tracers zipped around the two Apaches, and both took multiple hits from incoming fire. A single round then shot through Hurley's cockpit and lodged in the front console of the aircraft, sending a piece of the equipment into the leg of WO1 Content in the front seat.


An Apache over head above Blocking Position
GINGER on D-Day. Said one Apache gunner: "They
gave us their position, and we flew over them to
positively ID where the friendly forces were. Then
they gave us the direction and distance to where the
enemy fire was coming from."
Michael Peterson, HHC Mortars, 10th Mountain Division

Both aircraft were supposed to break right, but Hurley, hit by small arms and a RPG, banked left and disappeared over the ridgeline. He explained: "As I was moving down towards the south side of the Whale to try to get out of the hot zone, I couldn't make contact with my lead guy [Chenault], because he had jumped to the other side of the ridge, so line of sight was lost."
Chenault and Herman searched the sky in a panic and tried to raise their wingman on the net. They had lost situational awareness of his aircraft, and CPT Herman worried that they might have been shot down over hostile territory. "It took us a couple of minutes to sort out exactly where they were," he said. "Obviously we were trying to get his location so we could help him in case the airframe ended up going down, which it did not."

During Anaconda, communications between the Apaches and ground units primarily was accomplished using secure FM radios. The FM radio has two layers of security, as it is tied into a secure crypto device and is also a frequency-hopping radio. Also, the Apaches talked to each other (air to air) via their standard VHF radios. Both types of radios are limited by line of sight, so if an aircraft ducked behind a mountain during a gun run, the wingman may lose contact if he isn't close by. And there were lots of mountain ridges and plenty of ducking going on during Anaconda.

Heating Up

Meanwhile, near blocking position GINGER, 2nd Platoon, 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, led by Sergeant Darren Amick, part of Task Force Summit, had barely gotten off the helicopter before they came under attack from a machine-gun position on the ridgeline to their east. They dropped their rucksacks and established a perimeter and fire positions. Close air support (CAS) was already being called in, and US jets began to pound the offending ridgeline with JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack Munitions]. For a moment, the enemy was silenced. Amick and his men picked up their rucksacks and began to move north again under the cover of the bombing. They got only fifty meters before the world again erupted around them, with machine-gun and sniper fire assaulting them from multiple positions.

SGT Amick moved his men to an intervening ridgeline to the east to provide support for 1st Platoon and Battalion HQ. As they moved forward, Apaches streaked overhead, launching Hellfire missiles on the ridgeline. Amick's men were too close. A Hellfire slammed into the mountainside less than 100 meters from their positions sending shrapnel in every direction. One of his men felt a sharp pain in his chin and found that he had been struck by missile debris. Hastily, Amick called his squad off the ridgeline, and they retreated to let the Apaches go to work on the enemy positions -- and to avoid another friendly- fire casualty.

The fire in the airspace above Amick's position was equally fierce. The three Apaches in Team Two had taken multiple hits to their aircraft and were running low on fuel. RPGs zipped below, above, and in front of them on every turn. One scored a direct hit on Chief Warrant Officer 4 Jim Hardy's Apache, knocking out its entire weapons system. The aircraft was able to hover and act as an observation platform but was otherwise out of the fight. The remaining two Apaches continued to lay fire on enemy positions. Suddenly, a surface-to-air missile (SAM), probably a Strela-2 (SA-7 Grail), erupted out of the mountainside toward a fighter-bomber high overhead. Although the missile missed its target, the launch added to the sense of drama.

CPT Baldazar led his men off the Chinook and into their own firefight. CW3 Chenault responded to their call for assistance. CW3 Hurley's damaged Apache had linked up with CW4 Hardy's damaged Apache from Team Two, and both exited the valley for the Forward Air Refueling Position (FARP), a half-hour flight from the valley. Although there was no other option, Chenault worried that if he were shot down, Task Force Raider would be left without close air support (the team's third Apache had not joined at that point), and there would be no one to find him and cover his position at the crash site. By the time they arrived at Baldazar's position, there was a flurry of mortar and RPG fire on the ground below them. Although Chenault couldn't see the enemy, he laid down suppressing fire on suspected positions, and it seemed to be effective, enabling Baldazar and his men to keep moving.


Soldiers with 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment,
101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), near the town
of Sherkhankhel, scan the nearby ridgeline for enemy
movement during Operation Anaconda on D+2. Five
out of seven Apaches committed to battle on D-Day
were put out of action, and reinforcements had to be
called in.
US Army

According to Captain Butch Whiting, the Attack Aviation Liaison Officer to the Task Force Rakkasan HQ, the Apaches "had to push in very close to the enemy - 200-300 meters at some points - not only to acquire and engage the targets, but also to prevent fratricide. The enemy was very well camouflaged, and he was also very well protected by hiding in the crevets and other rocks. But we were able to get pinpoint accuracy from the guys on the ground. They were able to vector us in onto the target, which allowed us to rapidly destroy the enemy with precision."

CPT Baldazar and his men were now taking fire from both the east and west of their position. They were in a fishbowl, similar to Task Force Summit's dilemma to the south. CW3 Chenault was conscious of the danger of inflicting friendly-fire casualties, so providing fire support went slowly as the Apache crew tried to sort out the friendlies from hostile parties. He was also beginning to run low on ordnance, and there were still multiple targets to engage. His on-station time nearly expended, Chenault linked up with the two remaining aircraft from Team Two, which had been operating over Task Force Summit, and all three exited the valley for the FARP.

With the Apaches out of the fight, Task Forces Summit and Raider were left to rely completely on air support from Air Force and Navy bombers and attack aircraft flying high above the valley floor, in a battle that was growing, not diminishing.

Round Two: Four Down, Two Up

Back at the FARP, CW3 Carr listened to the radio chatter of the engaged Apaches and awaited his turn to enter the battle. He had been scheduled to retire in February but was put on "stoploss" after September 11. He hadn't gone in with the first five Apaches, because his 30mm gun was leaking hydraulic fluid. Now, gun fixed, he waited and watched as the crippled Apaches returned from the valley. Four of the five were so shot up they could not return to the fight, so a new two-ship team was assembled that consisted of CW3 Chenault's and Carr's Apaches.

"If you hover, you will die, so move and shoot," Chenault told Carr. Carr had never trained for running fire tactics, and now his life and those of the soldiers on the ground depended on it. Moreover, he would have to engage targets on his own from the back seat because the standard coordinated front-seat/back-seat approach to engagement required more time than he would have in this battle. He had never fired a rocket from the back seat before. En route to the valley he "wazzed up" his rockets, but for some reason, he couldn't get a steering cursor. After a few unsuccessful attempts, he pulled the trigger in frustration. He didn't notice that his rocket pods were pointing down. The rocket shrieked from the pod and hit the ground below, then ricocheted up right in front of the cockpit. Shit - I almost shot myself down , he thought anxiously. He continued to manipulate the controls and at last was able to get a steering cursor.

RAK 6 (COL Wiercinski) and his staff were monitoring the fight from their Brigade Tactical Command Post aboard their two UH-60 Black Hawks, a thousand feet above the valley. He listened to several different radio nets and was in communication with his commanders on the ground, the Apaches, and even Air Force and Navy bombers high overhead, allowing him to control the battlefield from his mobile position. RAK 6 also had a predesignated LZ, and he swung around to deploy.

It was going to be a tight fit, and there was only room for one Black Hawk on the LZ. One would touch down, deposit its human cargo and take off before the second bird could come in on a similar run. On the second turn of the approach, the lead helicopter began to take rounds from small-arms fire: Kalishnakovs and PK machine guns. Tick, tick, tick was all that could be heard against the noise of the rotor blades and the radio squawking out the status of the fight below. Then, just before touch down, a RPG exploded below the lead Black Hawk and sent shrapnel into the airframe directly under the pilot's seat. The pilot managed to continue the approach and safely deposit half the Brigade TAC before departing. The second aircraft immediately followed with the rest of the TAC.

There was a steady stream of fire on the Brigade TAC from the moment they landed, and RAK 6 and the others found cover behind a rock outcropping from which they had a vantage point reaching from block position GINGER all the way to the town of Marzak. Bullets whizzed and cracked overhead, and TAC began to return fire. The intensity of enemy fire increased, and they called in the Apaches to suppress it. In the eighteen hours that would follow, the TAC would relocate several times to avoid being overrun.

As the reorganized Apache Team entered the valley, CW3 Carr, in the lead, was immediately tasked to suppress enemy fire on RAK 6 and the Brigade TAC, who still pinned down by machine-gun and RPG fire. Carr could not determine who was friendly and who wasn't, so RAK 6 put out an orange VS-17 panel indicating their position. At that moment, Carr noticed a smoke trail moving towards his aircraft. They were taking RPG fire. Carr turned the aircraft towards the position and lit up the ridgeline with 30mm fire. The fire decreased for a moment, but the two aircraft would have to make more than seven attack turns before enemy fire on the Brigade TAC would finally be suppressed.

They were now getting constant calls for fire support from Task Force Summit at block position GINGER. It was a treacherous location, a narrow valley only a kilometer across with high ground on both the east and west. Every time into the narrow meant running a gauntlet of RPG fire. CW3 Chenault counted five air bursts around them on one turn: "On our fifth turn, we took some pretty heavy fire to the right side of our airframe. When that happened, we lost our night-system capabilities, and my front seater lost all targeting whatsoever." Chenault had lost both his Target Acquisition Designation Sight (TADS) and Pilot Night Vision Sensor (PNVS) systems. He radioed RAK 6 to inform him of the condition of his aircraft. RAK 6 ordered Carr and Chenault back to the FARP to see what could be done.

Task Force Summit had been fighting for hours and casualties were beginning to add up. SGT Amick could hear the enemy's mortar shells coming out of the tube as he got down and prayed that the incoming would not land on him. An enemy sniper flanked Amick's position to the left and shot one of his soldiers square in the chest, knocking him down, although his body armor prevented serious injury.

Amick helped the wounded reach the Casualty Collection Point as his unit redeployed towards the Summit TAC. However, shortly the mortar rounds began coming closer and closer to the wounded. Two mortar rounds slammed in amongst them, the second round nearly on top the first. Many who had been wounded earlier in the day were now taking shrapnel for the second time. The enemy was bracketing their position. Amick's men returned fire at anywhere they thought the enemy's forward observers might be located - every bush, rock outcropping, anywhere someone might hide. Getting eyes on the target and eliminating the enemy was essential. They had to eliminate those mortars.

Machine-gun fire erupted from Marzak in the north. Three soldiers were wounded immediately, taking rounds to the foot, leg, and buttocks. As they were reacting, fire came from the south. The enemy had flanked them, and now Task Force Summit was caught in a crossfire at its open ends. SGT Amick returned fire, launching high-explosive rounds from his M-203 grenade launcher. The enemy fire stopped. It felt good to silence the suspected position. That's one more guy that's not going to be shooting at me , Amick thought to himself with grim satisfaction.

"Where was CAS?" Amick shouted. Then from the radio, "CAS is on the way - five minutes." "Oh my God, five minutes?" Amick responded.

Round Three: Last Flight

Charlie Company Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sam Bennett hadn't planned on being in action on D-Day. He had been with the rest of his company in Kandahar, but with nearly all the Apaches from Alpha Company out of action, his aircraft was mobilized. He linked up with CW3 Chenault's and CW3 Carr's aircraft at the FARP for guidance into the valley. The newly formed three-ship team was going back in with two objectives. First, it would continue to provide close combat attack for the troops in Task Forces Summit and Raider. Secondly, the team had to make sure a third lift could get into its LZs. It was supposed to arrive just after dark to reinforce the elements on the ground and extract the casualties.


10th Mountain Division mortars blasting Taliban/al
Qaeda positions on D+3.
Michael Peterson, HHC Mortars, 10th Mountain Division

Bennett had been briefed on what to expect but was amazed as he watched the lead aircraft make its first turn into enemy fire. Several RPGs shot past the first aircraft, falling short, and another zipped between the following two. White trails of smoke, most of them coming from a western ridgeline near Marzak, showed the path the RPGs had taken.

By now the sun was so low in the sky that every gun run towards the west faced directly into it, making accuracy nearly impossible. They decided to try from the south but met with little success. They then swung over a hilltop, designated Ginger Mountain, to get a better angle on the enemy in the small valley below. As Chenault crossed the ridgeline, he heard Bennett scream over the radio, "Hey, you just got hit by a RPG in your tail rotor!"

Before he had time to contemplate Bennett's radio call he noticed triple-A, anti-aircraft artillery, fire zip past his canopy. For the first time, Chenault became really scared. They were already taking more hits than they had been earlier in the day, and now with triple-A, conditions were going from bad to worse. They exited to the south, deciding to try to enter from the north. At last finding success, the Apaches pealed out and swung around to enter from the north once again.

This time they switched positions. Carr would lead into the valley, then Bennett's aircraft and finally Chenault. Chenault saw a lone individual launch a SA-7. "We made the pass through the valley itself and tried to suppress that ridgeline where Summit 6 was taking a beating from. They launched a SA-7 at my aircraft, and he said it went up and around the tail and it hit the ground. So I guess the AN/ALQ-144, which is our ASE [aircraft-survivability equipment] against SA-7s and Stingers, worked." Chenault then cut hard and put fifty rounds on the missile-launch position below.

Still under intense fire, RAK 6 listened to the traffic on the net and realized that not only could the Apaches no longer be effective, but reinforcements hovering outside the objective area would neither be able to insert nor drop supplies to either his position or that of Task Force Summit. He made the call, and the CH-47s returned once again to base at Bagram.

The sun had finally gone down, and every time the Apache Team flew into the narrow valley at block position GINGER, the enemy seemed to have amassed more weapons against them. Since Chenault had no night vision, it was decided that the team would head back to the FARP. Said Carr, "It was getting dark and [Chenault]...had his night system taken out, so he had no way to fly back at night. What he ended up doing was using goggles in the back seat to navigate back, which in the mountains with limited 'lum' is a real chore." Following the two other aircraft, Chenault made his way out of the valley, over the passes, and to the FARP. There would be no more Apache support for the night. Task Force Summit would now have to rely on AC-130 gunships and fast-movers high overhead to provide close air support.

With the Apaches gone, fighter-bombers dropped JDAM after JDAM on the western ridgeline and other suspected enemy positions around the Brigade TAC and Task Force Summit. But the enemy had prepared his mortar positions well, embedding the base plates in concrete. Every time the bombers over flew their positions they would break down the mortar and run inside their caves and bunkers, coming out again once the strike was over.


Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division prepare to
dig into fighting positions after a day of reacting to
enemy fire on D+2. Note the night-vision rigs on the
soldiers' helmets.
US Army

Eventually, after a full day of pummeling, Taliban fire began to decrease. Preparations were made to bring in the Chinooks and extract the Brigade TAC and Task Force Summit. Task Force Raider in the north would remain in the valley and await reinforcements.

RAK 6 listened to the radio traffic and waited for his inbound CH-47. His was the last lift of the extraction, and he would leave the valley with the last remaining elements of Task Force Summit. It had been nearly twenty hours since H Hour - twenty hours of continual fighting for the Brigade TAC and men of Task Force Summit. Summit had taken 27 casualties out of 82 soldiers, though miraculously, none had been killed in action. Five of the seven Apaches into the valley sustained significant damage, but all would fly again.

D-Day, March 2, was a down and dirty affair in unfamiliar terrain, stretching the electronic aspects of the operation involving the soldiers on the ground and the Apaches overhead. Getting "eyes on the target" was done visually, as the distances to the enemy were often only a few hundred meters. Soldiers called in suspected positions, and the Apaches overhead then reacquired the target themselves before letting loose a barrage of fire. This was intermittently complicated by the line-of-sight radios used in the rugged, vertical terrain. At the end of the day, under the cover of darkness, Task Force Summit was extracted, validating the adage: "We own the night." However, the Apaches were not invulnerable, and the loss of Chenault's night-vision system forced the team to leave the battlefield as a group to guide Chenault back to base.

Dodge Billingsley is the director of Combat Films and Research (www.combatfilms.com) and has collected material in various war zones, including Bosnia, Chechnya, and most recently Afghanistan. He has reported from Afghanistan for CBS and has recently been featured in numerous documentaries regarding his work during the fortress uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif.

You can also view this article at the Journal of Electronic Defense: http://www.edefenseonline.com/