Joint Force Harrier

by Adrian Orchard

  In Iraq the situation was entirely different. There IEDs had become increasingly sophisticated primary weapons, detonated by remote control, often using either mobile phones or a keyless entry system taken from a car. The Iraqi bomb-makers frequently included anti-handling devices and booby-traps as further refinements, but the important point was that the IED essentially stood alone. Once it had detonated there was no gang of gunmen waiting in the wings to try to massacre anyone left alive afterwards.

  I was beginning to wonder if the techniques that had been honed and perfected in Iraq were being exported to Afghanistan and, if so, what effect that would have on the way the coalition troops conducted their campaign.

  Fighting the Taliban is difficult. Battling an enemy that has no fear of death and whose warriors will never surrender is perhaps the hardest task any armed force can ever face, because almost literally the only military solution is to kill them all. Nothing less than that will achieve the short-term objective on the battlefield, though clearly a long-term solution will require some kind of negotiated political settlement.

  The Taliban and Al Qaeda share at least two common short-term objectives. They want the opium trade to continue, because that generates huge amounts of income for both factions, and neither want the rule of law – unless it’s the Taliban’s interpretation of the Koran – to be applied in Afghanistan because that would prevent them from setting up terrorist training camps in the country. For both organizations an Afghanistan at peace, and with a strong government that properly regulates life within its borders, is the worst possible outcome. They can only flourish in chaos.

  Apart from actual conflict with the Taliban, the other major difficulty facing the coalition forces is that of obtaining good intelligence about the organization. The Taliban have proved to be almost impossible to infiltrate, and any information that is passed on by paid informers and others is often suspect or simply wrong.

  This has resulted in a rather different approach to the problem. Instead of trying to actively identify and engage the Taliban – though of course this does still happen – ISAF is making a determined effort to wage a genuine ‘hearts and minds’ campaign on the ground, and by most accounts it seems to be working.

  The Army and Marine officers who are tasked with talking to the village elders – the local leaders of the community – and working in the villages and compounds, have to be all things to all men. They have to be politicians, counsellors, fighting men, engineers and diplomats, all at the same time. They have to show strength, because they represent the forces of the coalition, but at the same time be subservient because they are talking to the local chief. They have to have a very clear idea of what they’re trying to achieve and know exactly what they can do and offer to get it. In many ways it’s much more difficult than simply flying around in a jet aircraft dropping bombs, and is a thankless and most unglamorous task.

  Whenever an electricity generator is installed in a village or a hospital, whenever the coalition forces bring proper medical attention to the occupants of a compound, or repair a piece of broken machinery, it’s a small victory over the Taliban, which is, of course, why the insurgents make such strenuous efforts to destroy or disable any such facilities that the coalition troops do manage to install or get working.

  But each new generator, or water pump, or happy patient improved the flow of intelligence. And, in the end, our success was dependent on the quality of our intel. We were fortunate that the Harrier det was particularly well served. One of the reasons was that our Ground Liaison Officer, Captain Mick Trafford, the Harrier Force’s first-ever Royal Marine GLO, had proved outstanding.

  In the years before British forces became seriously engaged in combat there was a tendency for this kind of exchange posting to feature second- or third-tier officers. This was simply because the Army appointer, say, faced with a requirement to send a captain or major to work with the RAF, would deliberately not choose a rising star on the grounds that the Army should hang on to its best men.

  But when the Royal Marines were required to second an officer to the Harrier detachment in Afghanistan, their appointer rightly decided that we needed the best man he could find.

  The moment Mick Trafford arrived in theatre, even before he relieved the existing GLO, he picked up his rifle and his Bergen and disappeared. He joined up with some of his colleagues from 3 Commando Brigade and went off on foot patrols with them to places like Lashkar Gah, which were the hotspots of Taliban activity.

  He came back with an incredibly detailed assessment of the situation on the ground – the real ‘ground truth’ – and then gave us all a hugely vivid and accurate presentation on exactly what was going on with the troops on the ground, about what they were doing and how they were having to do it.

  Mick was a very fit ex-ranker who’d then taken a commission, but you could tell from the way he talked where his heart lay.

  ‘Right,’ he said, when we were all assembled in Ops, and his first sentence set the tone for the whole briefing. ‘First day out with the Green Death, we went out for a yomp over at Lashkar Gah, found the Taliban and gave them the good news.

  ‘Now, these boys are right on the front line, however you slice it,’ he went on. ‘They’re doing patrols that might last twelve or fourteen days, deep into bandit country. They’ve got the most basic rations – the dreaded MRE, Meals Ready to Eat, and some of those are really bloody awful – they often can’t have brews because they’re too close to the enemy, so they’re drinking lukewarm water. They grab sleep where and when they can, and the whole time they’re out there they’re living with the knowledge that they could take a Taliban bullet at any moment.’

  He paused and glanced around the room.

  ‘And the biggest problem you lot have got is coping with the stink from Poo Pond!’

  Mick’s presentation was, for most of us, a real eye-opener, and some of the things he described literally made my hair stand on end as he set the scene. For the first time he made us properly appreciate the reality of what the troops were going through on a daily basis. He really did put everything into context.

  At the end of the briefing one of the pilots asked about the danger of being hit by a Stinger.

  ‘Right,’ Mick said. ‘Well, it’s not quite as simple as you might think. You need to understand something about the dynamics of the situation on the ground with regard to these weapons.’

  In the 1980s the CIA supplied at least 500 and, according to some reports, possibly as many as 2,000 Stinger missiles – the correct designation is the FIM-92 and it was initially manufactured in America by Raytheon Missile Systems – to the Mujahidin guerrillas who were fighting against the Russian military in Afghanistan.

  After the Russians withdrew in 1989, the Americans initiated a $50-million programme to buy back the remaining Stingers, and at the time it was assessed that there could be as many as 300 remaining in the hands of the Mujahidin. Quite a lot were recovered, but it was known that some found their way into other countries that have been linked to the supply of arms and ammunition to the Taliban. In short, numerous missiles are still unaccounted for, and almost certainly a lot of these are hidden away somewhere in Afghanistan. The Afghans have always been well armed as a nation, and it’s likely that many of the nationals who had Stingers decided to hang on to them, just in case.

  ‘Now,’ Mick said, ‘it’s quite possible that the Taliban possess a bunch of Stingers, but there’s rather more to the equation than that. First of all, they’re now so old that the batteries needed by the launcher to function are probably knackered.

  ‘Second, they’re not that easy to use, even for people with a military background. Without proper training, even experienced soldiers struggle to make the things work. If that’s true of the best NATO armies have to offer, how good do you reckon the Taliban would be at firing them?

  ‘Then there’s target acquisition. The Stinger’s envelope is pretty tight, and my guess is that before a Talib realized th
ere was a Harrier in the area and powered up his Stinger, you’d be long gone.’

  Mick glanced around the room. ‘Oddly enough,’ he said, ‘there’s another good reason why you’re not likely to find one of these missiles up your jacksie, and it’s all to do with street cred. Just about everybody in Afghanistan owns a Kalashnikov or something similar, but a Stinger’s a special weapon, expensive and powerful; that means the man who owns it is something special in his community. Thing is, he’ll have that status right up to the moment he fires it, when he’ll be left with a short length of very expensive drainpipe and a few electronics. In short, it’s cool to own a Stinger, but if a Talib uses it he doesn’t own one any more. He’s just another raghead with a Kalashnikov.’

  That was a typical ‘Green Death’ assessment of the situation, though Mick was right, and it was good to have him working with us. But it only made us even more aware of the very real dangers faced by the Royal Marines on the ground out to the west of Kandahar.

  And Wedge and Flatters soon saw exactly what the Marines were facing.

  16

  Wedge began flying operational sorties in Afghanistan less than a week after joining 800 Squadron as a medium-level combat-ready only pilot. That meant he’d done the training course but hadn’t had time to do the full combat-ready work-up, which normally takes a pilot about six months. We needed him in theatre so quickly that he’d done an abbreviated course to get him ready for medium-level combat in Afghanistan.

  That day he got airborne as Mamba Four Three flight, with Flatters flying the bomber jet and Wedge in the rocket jet, in support of Windmill Six Nine – a Dutch JTAC – in the vicinity of Tarin Kowt.

  The weather was pretty shitty at Kandahar and they step-climbed up through solid cloud. Immediately after contacting Trumpcard at the top of the climb they were redirected to support a TIC at Naw Zad in support of Widow Eight Four, a British JTAC, and both pilots noticed heavy icing on the intakes as they vectored west, still in thick cloud. Mamba Four One flight had already been supporting the patrol, but had been forced to break off when they ran short of fuel.

  When Wedge came up on the JTAC tactical frequency they realized that the British patrol was in real trouble.

  ‘Mamba Four One fired rockets,’ Widow Eight Four reported, his voice high and tense with fear, ‘but we’re still taking heavy fire, really heavy fire. They’ve got mortars and machine-guns and we’re pinned down here.’

  Over the radio Wedge could hear the crump of mortars landing, and the louder, repetitive sounds of the Royal Marines returning fire with .50-cal machine-guns.

  ‘There’s a big group of these bastards right in the middle of the town, hidden in a small tree-line,’ Widow Eight Four reported. ‘They’re your target.’

  ‘We dropped down over the desert to the south of the town, where it was almost level, in an attempt to get VMC,’ Wedge told me afterwards, explaining his search for clear air and a view of the ground. ‘I was checking my position on the moving map as we edged down below safety altitude, still in solid cloud. Watching the radalt like a hawk, I went a bit lower. I was confident that our GPS position was accurate and that there was flat ground ahead.’

  This was against all peacetime safety rules but when there were guys on the ground yelling for help, all my pilots knew there really weren’t any other options. They simply had to get down there.

  ‘I knew that the previous aircraft – Four One flight – had managed to get down below the weather. They’d told me it was closing in before they left, but logically I knew it couldn’t have got that much worse.’

  At about 1,500 feet Wedge began to get glimpses of murky brown desert below him. At about 1,000 feet he broke cloud and found himself at low level over the desert in driving rain. He met up with Flatters and they established an orbit about ten miles south of Naw Zad while the JTAC passed them the target details.

  ‘Mamba Four Three, Widow Eight Four, we’ll take a five-forty airburst.’

  ‘Negative, Eight Four. At this altitude none of our weapons will have time to arm before they hit the ground. The only options we can offer are either CRV-7s or one of the GPS-guided Enhanced Paveway II bombs from height, but for that we’ll need a really accurate target position.’

  ‘OK, that’s understood. My coordinates aren’t accurate enough for the bomb, so I’ll take the rockets.’

  Naturally, the JTAC didn’t want 1,000lb of high explosive going off in an urban area, quite possibly close to friendly forces.

  ‘Roger,’ Wedge replied, and prepared himself for the attack.

  He ran in from the south of the town, accelerating up to the attack speed of 450 knots – rockets are delivered when the aircraft is moving much more quickly than is needed to release a bomb. As the ground rose towards the town the cloud base dropped. Flatters had been trying to keep in battle formation with Wedge, but kept losing sight of his aircraft in the rain, so sensibly elected to get out of the way and climbed up into the cloud to await developments.

  A few miles from the target Wedge eased up to the cloud base to try to acquire the target.

  ‘The designation diamond was right in the middle of a built-up area,’ he explained, ‘but I couldn’t see the tree-line that concealed the Taliban. Widow Eight Four cleared me hot for the attack, but all I could see through the sight were nondescript compounds, so I pulled off the target without firing because I couldn’t positively identify the area.

  ‘Then, just as I was recovering from the aborted attack, I suddenly caught a glimpse of the tree-line flashing past under my wing. The weather had closed in – I reckoned I had no more than about two clicks’ visibility – and I then found myself stuck at low level right over the town. My original route in seemed impassable.’

  Naw Zad is surrounded by hills, the peaks of which were in the cloud, and Wedge was in a sort of bowl where he could see the ground. He knew that if he climbed up, he doubted if he would ever get back into the area to attack again.

  ‘I pulled the jet round the corner at full power with the hills uncomfortably close, and Widow Eight Four called that he could mark the target with smoke.

  ‘I yelled, “Fire it now!” and pulled the Harrier round for a re-attack.

  ‘I tipped into the target area, but again all I could see were murky buildings through the rain. Then the smoke round suddenly bloomed right in front of me and I identified the tree-line just in time. I fired the operational pod from the cloud base at 900 feet, a little inside the minimum prescribed range.’

  The exhausts of the nineteen rockets blazed brightly in the darkness as they raced towards the target. Wedge pulled up and dropped the wing to see the debris from the rounds impacting around the tree-line. The JTAC called a direct hit, but the enemy continued to press their attack. Once again Wedge set up for the attack, this time with the six-round training pod in ripple mode Q6M1. This stood for quantity and multiple, and meant six rockets, fired once.

  Wedge was very conscious of the fact that he was now on his third low-level orbit over the town and that, historically, aircraft don’t normally come out of re-attacks very well.

  ‘The Marines fired smoke again to mark the target, and I ran in and fired the rest of the CRV-7s.’

  Then, with no usable weapons left, he rapidly pulled up into the sanctuary of the cloud. As he levelled off and put the altitude hold on he realized that he was physically shaking. He composed himself, and heard Flatters being called in for a potential attack with his GPS bomb. Then a relieved Widow Eight Four stated that the rockets had had the desired effect and that any remaining enemy had withdrawn and broken contact, so the Enhanced Paveway attack would not be needed.

  At that stage Wedge thought the excitement was over. But after charging around at low level for that long he realized he was quite low on fuel. Flatters, too, was short of fuel. They contacted base but were told that the weather at Kandahar had deteriorated, and this meant they didn’t have enough fuel to shoot an approach and still have fuel in hand for a diver
sion to an alternative field. And if Kandahar was clamped that safety margin wasn’t optional.

  As the nearest tanker was over 100 miles away, they were immediately diverted to Bagram Airbase in the north-east of Afghanistan. They just had enough fuel to cover the 280-mile journey there on a VFR profile. As they transited, the cloud began to break over central Afghanistan to reveal magnificent snow-covered mountains, and Wedge couldn’t help but think how good the skiing would be there if circumstances were different.

  Disappointingly, the clear air didn’t last all the way and they re-entered cloud as they got close to the airfield. It turned out that Bagram was also operating radar recoveries, which they barely had enough fuel to cope with. The two pilots declared a fuel emergency and were quickly vectored in by the American controllers.

  ‘With my lower fuel state,’ Wedge said, ‘because of the time I’d spent prosecuting the attacks at low level, I went in for the approach first. I even delayed dropping the undercarriage in an effort to save fuel. It was bloody hairy. As I approached the minimum descent height I still couldn’t see the airfield, but there was nothing for it but to continue, as neither of us had enough fuel left to go anywhere else.’

  Clearly it hadn’t occurred to the controllers to turn on the airfield lights and Wedge was concentrating so hard on finding the runway that it didn’t occur to him to ask.

  ‘Then I saw a bright flashing X, and took this to be the disused runway light, but I aimed for it anyway, because by that stage I was going to land on the first runway or taxiway I saw, disused or not. Or even a road if I couldn’t find anything else.’

  The flashing X thankfully led him to the airfield, and he saw the correct runway late, which put him high on the glidepath.