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Not a Good Day to Review
May. 9th, 2012 11:56 amHey,
So in late June I'm running a game based off events that happened during Operation Anaconda -- a massive fight in Afghanistan in 2002. So I thought I should read up on the fight a bit (one of the many side benefits of playing with toy soldiers is that I get to learn more history).
The book I picked was Not A Good Day To Die by Sean Naylor. It was a good book that laid out a pretty good picture of what happened and the book's only fault is related to the root causes of the mission's failures.
The short story is this -- Afghanistan has just fallen to the Northern Alliance. Local warlords, assisted by a few special forces teams and a lot of US airpower booted out the Taliban in a few months. Now intelligence sources suggest that there are Taliban/Al Qaida gathering in the Shahikot Valley in eastern Afghanistan. So they put together a group of Afghan militia and plan to use them to sweep into the valley from the west. Regular Army units will block trails leading out of the valley to east and catch any high value targets that come out. Intelligence figures there's maybe 250 bad guys tops and once a few bombs fall on them, they'll roll over.
Things don't go according to plan. Post-battle analysis suggests there may have been over 1000 fighters in the area. They were well-equipped, dug in on the mountains overlooking the valley and prepared to stick it out to the bitter end. Combine this with a fractured command structure and various technical failures and the whole thing fell apart before it got started.
The Afghan force got shot up by an AC-130 gunship on their way in and then an expected bombardment never materialized causing the Afghan militia to pull up and retreat. The Army units landed on the valley floor and came under intense fire from the enemy ranged around them in the hills. Near the end of the fight, a team of Navy SEALS flew onto a mountain top that was infested with enemy troops and got clobbered.
Eventually, superior firepower and a better understanding of what was happening proved decisive and Afghan/US forces drove the enemy out, but a simple mop-up operation turned into three days of hell.
The book tries hard to present a fairly even account of events and give everyone involved a chance to tell their side, but it suggests the main problems were caused mostly through a fractured command system that saw various special forces units and regular military units expected to work together but commanded through separate channels (some from as far away as Saudi Arabia or Washington DC). There was no overall commander who could co-ordinate communications and support assets for troops on the ground. There were also technical problems that hampered communications. Advanced surveillance gear failed to detect dug-in troops in rough terrain, but human intelligence sources suggesting a more numerous enemy were discarded.
What's amazing is that despite all of this -- despite a friendly fire incident involving an AC-130, US casualties were less than 20 dead and 80-odd wounded. Body armor and combat lifesaver training were a big part of this, but it's also true that enemy forces weren't very well trained. The ability of US troopers to "un-fuck" themselves was pretty much what saved the mission from become a complete disaster.
The book's only problem is that so many people were involved in the mission, that it's sometimes hard to track who's who -- a problem that was abundant during the actual mission with dire consequences.
Overall I thought it was a pretty good book and a detailed but accessible look into one of the first major military operations of the 21st century.
later
Tom
So in late June I'm running a game based off events that happened during Operation Anaconda -- a massive fight in Afghanistan in 2002. So I thought I should read up on the fight a bit (one of the many side benefits of playing with toy soldiers is that I get to learn more history).
The book I picked was Not A Good Day To Die by Sean Naylor. It was a good book that laid out a pretty good picture of what happened and the book's only fault is related to the root causes of the mission's failures.
The short story is this -- Afghanistan has just fallen to the Northern Alliance. Local warlords, assisted by a few special forces teams and a lot of US airpower booted out the Taliban in a few months. Now intelligence sources suggest that there are Taliban/Al Qaida gathering in the Shahikot Valley in eastern Afghanistan. So they put together a group of Afghan militia and plan to use them to sweep into the valley from the west. Regular Army units will block trails leading out of the valley to east and catch any high value targets that come out. Intelligence figures there's maybe 250 bad guys tops and once a few bombs fall on them, they'll roll over.
Things don't go according to plan. Post-battle analysis suggests there may have been over 1000 fighters in the area. They were well-equipped, dug in on the mountains overlooking the valley and prepared to stick it out to the bitter end. Combine this with a fractured command structure and various technical failures and the whole thing fell apart before it got started.
The Afghan force got shot up by an AC-130 gunship on their way in and then an expected bombardment never materialized causing the Afghan militia to pull up and retreat. The Army units landed on the valley floor and came under intense fire from the enemy ranged around them in the hills. Near the end of the fight, a team of Navy SEALS flew onto a mountain top that was infested with enemy troops and got clobbered.
Eventually, superior firepower and a better understanding of what was happening proved decisive and Afghan/US forces drove the enemy out, but a simple mop-up operation turned into three days of hell.
The book tries hard to present a fairly even account of events and give everyone involved a chance to tell their side, but it suggests the main problems were caused mostly through a fractured command system that saw various special forces units and regular military units expected to work together but commanded through separate channels (some from as far away as Saudi Arabia or Washington DC). There was no overall commander who could co-ordinate communications and support assets for troops on the ground. There were also technical problems that hampered communications. Advanced surveillance gear failed to detect dug-in troops in rough terrain, but human intelligence sources suggesting a more numerous enemy were discarded.
What's amazing is that despite all of this -- despite a friendly fire incident involving an AC-130, US casualties were less than 20 dead and 80-odd wounded. Body armor and combat lifesaver training were a big part of this, but it's also true that enemy forces weren't very well trained. The ability of US troopers to "un-fuck" themselves was pretty much what saved the mission from become a complete disaster.
The book's only problem is that so many people were involved in the mission, that it's sometimes hard to track who's who -- a problem that was abundant during the actual mission with dire consequences.
Overall I thought it was a pretty good book and a detailed but accessible look into one of the first major military operations of the 21st century.
later
Tom
