Call Sign Extortion 17

by Don Brown

  The selection of this particular aircrew, to fly this particular mission, in this particular area, despite the “we did nothing wrong” claim set forth by the military, amounted to nothing less than sending American forces on a suicide mission. The National Guard aviators were not adequately trained nor experienced enough to fly this mission, which should have required Special Forces aviators from the 160th Special Operations Airborne Regiment out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the unit the SEALs usually fly with.

  In other words, even if we assume that there was no Taliban infiltration aboard the aircraft, the mission planning was still very foolish. They sent pilots trained for one thing, in an aircraft designed for one thing, on a mission demanding pilots trained in another area, and on a mission requiring another type of aircraft—that is if the military commanders wanted their men to have the best chance of surviving.

  But the military tried whitewashing this foolish mission planning, as shown by the Colt Report’s Executive Summary (September 7, 2011) and General Mattis’s approval of that summary (September 13, 2011), which included many misleading statements claiming that the selection of the flight crew and the aircraft were appropriate.

  On September 13, 2011, General Mattis signed the Memorandum for the Record approving the factual conclusions of the report, finding no fault with the Army pilots and concluding that Extortion 17 had not been “shot down “ as “the result of a baited ambush.” This Memorandum for the Record, was attached to and made part of the 1,250-page Colt Report as Exhibit B.

  One example of a misleading finding appeared at Paragraph 3 of that Memorandum:

  3. I specifically agree with the conclusions that the Army aviators were fully qualified to perform all required tasks, that the aircraft was fully mission capable, and that loading the Immediate Reaction Force (SEAL Team and SOC operators) onto one aircraft was tactically sound. The aircrew, having flown into the valley only hours before to insert the initial force, was the most familiar aircrew available to effectively carry out this mission. I believe that the shoot down was not the result of a baited ambush by the enemy; instead the enemy was in a heightened state of alert due to 3 1/2 hours of ongoing coalition force operations in the area prior to the CH-47’s arrival.

  On the surface, this claim might be just accurate enough to deflect questions at a superficial level. But under the surface, paragraph 3 was manifestly misleading.

  Pilot Bryan Nichols and co-­pilot Dave Carter certainly were trained to fly the Chinook, and Carter was in fact a very experienced Army pilot. There is no evidence that either aviator did anything wrong during the course of this mission.

  But here’s what was misleading. Nichols and Carter were National Guard pilots. They were not Special Forces aviators, had not been trained as Special Forces aviators, and were not flying in a Special Forces aircraft. Moreover, although it’s technically true that they had already flown a mission earlier in the evening, it is not true that the mission they flew took them into the same, dangerous, Taliban-­infested airspace that their final, fateful flight did.

  In the earlier mission, the aviators had dropped the US Army Rangers two to three clicks (kilometers) outside the edge of the battle zone. On the final mission, they were ordered to fly a different course, this time over the Tangi River Valley into an airspace in which there had been three attacks on US helicopters, even Special Forces helicopters, within the previous ninety days.

  Why didn’t the general’s report make this distinction between the dangerous airspace over the Tangi River Valley where the Seal team was shot down, and the original landing zone from the earlier mission, which did not have any known Taliban forces?

  Instead, it implied that the earlier mission that inserted the Rangers outside the hot zone was just as dangerous as the subsequent mission that flew the SEALs over the hot zone, which simply was not true.

  To better understand how these conclusions were misleading, it is important to understand some basic concepts about US Special Forces.

  Each branch of the military has a Special Forces component. For example, the US Army has the Rangers and the Green Berets. The Marines boast their Combat RECON and Scout Sniper units. The Air Force has its para-­rescue teams, Combat Rescue and Combat Control. The Navy has its EOD (Explosive Ordnance) Teams. The vaunted Navy SEALs have become the most famous Special Forces unit of all.

  On board Extortion 17 that fateful night, every American who was not a part of the five-­member National Guard flight crew was a Special Forces operator. The SEAL team was the best known, but even the three Air Force men who died were also Special Forces.

  In each branch of the service, Special Forces members are chosen from a highly competitive field. They are trained to carry out missions with speed, stealth, and deadly precision that give them a role that is often distinct from the regular members of the US military. Quite often Special Forces units carry out the most dangerous missions in the military, and the most potentially deadly missions.

  The National Guard pilots who flew that helicopter were not Special Forces aviators. That does not mean that they were any less important or less patriotic. Nor does it mean that they were not brave or willing to carry out their mission or give their lives for their country. They were all these things. This simply means that their military roles were typically very different from the Special Forces aviation units.

  It should be noted that Special Forces, such as the SEALs, typically train with and fly on helicopters that are part of Special Forces Aviation. The best-­known command for Special Forces Aviation is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). The 160th SOAR is often referred to as the “Night Stalkers.” Based out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the Night Stalkers are part of the US Special Operations Command, meaning they transport Special Forces from all branches, including the Navy SEALs. Their pilots are specially trained, for example, to fly in quickly, low, to avoid enemy radar, to attack at high rates of speed, to insert ground troops quickly, and to get out quickly. The stated role of the Night Stalkers is to “provide aviation support to special operations forces.” Night Stalkers typically do not operate aircraft as antiquated as the CH-47 Chinook, but rather, operate the more advanced MH-47G Chinook, the MH-60 Black Hawk, and the MH/AH-6M Little Bird.

  US Special Forces will typically be inserted into hot battle zones by helicopter. But Special Forces, including the SEAL units, typically operate with helicopters that are faster, and are “souped up” with more armament, heavier weaponry, electronic-­warfare gadgetry, and jamming mechanisms.

  As an example, in Operation Neptune Spear, the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden on May 1, 2011, the SEAL team was paired with the Army’s Night Stalker pilots, who flew the SEAL team into Pakistan on a modified version of two MH-60 Black Hawks.

  The Night Stalkers are trained to fly into hot zones, at low altitudes, at fast rates of speed to avoid detection, with sophisticated weaponry and electronic jamming mechanisms on their aircraft. Put another way, the Night Stalkers are specifically trained for the type of highly dangerous mission that the SEALs were attempting to execute, and they fly souped-­up, sophisticated aircraft capable of carrying out those missions.

  The National Guard aircrew simply was not trained in the same way, nor were they flying Special Operations helicopters designed for these types of missions.

  Chapter 15

  Extortion 17 Pilots: Underequipped and Untrained for Special Ops

  Army Chief Warrant Officer 4th Class David Carter was forty-­seven years old at the time of the Extortion 17 mission. Described as a pillar of his community of Centennial, Colorado, and as a man of great faith, he was a full-­time National Guardsman. The father of two daughters, had he lived, David and his wife Laura would have celebrated their twenty-­fifth wedding anniversary in December 2011.

  A rock of stability who was trusted by all who knew him, David was the type of man that most people, under ordinar
y circumstances, would want in the cockpit. Indeed, he had logged over seven hundred hours flying, and enthusiastically served as a flight instructor for younger pilots.

  So on the surface, General Mattis’s conclusions about the experience of the Chinook’s aviators beared a superficial semblance of truth, at least with regard to Carter.

  However, these were not ordinary circumstances, and as experienced as he was as a general forces military pilot, Carter was not trained as a Special Operations aviator. Also, Carter was not the lead pilot in command of the aircraft.

  That job fell onto the shoulders of Carter’s younger counterpart of seventeen years, thirty-­year-­old Bryan Nichols.

  Nichols was a brave American who, as a combat soldier, had been deployed to three different combat zones before he became a pilot in 2008, twice to Iraq and once to Kosovo.

  He had enlisted in the Army in 1996, so at the time of his death, on August 6, 2011, he had fifteen years of service under his belt. Nichols was a credit to his country and a credit to the Army, and later to the National Guard. He was also a fabulous father, and was the ultimate hero, and rightly so, to his ten-­year-­old son, Braydon.

  But when one looks at how Bryan Nichols’s fifteen-­year history in the military was allocated, we discover that twelve of those fifteen years had been primarily as a foot soldier, and only three of those years (from 2008 to 2011) had been served as a pilot.

  And when one considers the fact that like David Carter, Bryan was not a Special Forces pilot, and on top of that, he was the lead pilot in command of the aircraft, General Mattis’s conclusion about the aviators’ so-­called “experience” becomes even harder to swallow.

  David Carter was an experienced pilot, but was not experienced as a Special Forces pilot. Bryan Nichols, the lead pilot, was an experienced infantryman, but was not overly experienced as a pilot, and in fact, had never before flown into any type of wartime environment before this deployment.

  Once again, there is no apparent evidence that either Carter or Nichols did anything wrong on this mission. They simply followed orders that led to their deaths.

  But why were they ordered to fly this mission? Why weren’t Special Forces aviators ordered to fly the mission in Special Forces helicopters?

  Putting an experienced National Guard pilot on a mission that should have required a Special Operations pilot was manifestly unfair, not only to the National Guard pilot, but also to every man, including the Navy SEAL team, that the National Guard pilot was flying with.

  Would it have made a difference?

  Perhaps.

  Most likely, a Special Ops flight crew would have flown at a different flight trajectory and would have approached the target more quickly, flying with weapons and equipment that gave them a superior ability to fight back.

  Pat Hamburger is reported to have told family members that he would be flying with Special Forces, but that National Guard helicopters would drop Special Forces off several clicks (kilometers) from the battle lines, as happened with the Ranger unit earlier in the evening.

  In other words, it did not appear, at least from Hamburger’s comments, that National Guard aviators were going to be required to fly directly into ultra-­dangerous aviation hot zones, like the airspace over the Tangi Valley that normally would be assigned to Special Forces aviators. Indeed, despite the insinuation in the Colt Report that the National Guard helicopters flew the same type of mission with the Rangers as they did with the SEALs, this is not accurate. The National Guard helicopters earlier in the evening did not fly the Rangers directly into the teeth of Taliban RPGs as later happened with the SEALs. The Rangers, earlier on, were flown over far less dangerous airspace, and not straight down the gut of the Tangi Valley, where Taliban insurgents were known to be waiting to shoot down an American helicopter. Put another way, there was a reason that the highly trained Night Stalkers were chosen for the Bin Laden raid over a National Guard crew with a Vietnam-­era helicopter.

  Again, this in no way degrades the bravery or the professionalism of the National Guard crew or its pilots. They were forced into a mission for which they, through no fault of their own, were neither fully trained for nor equipped to prosecute.

  National Guard Pilots a Bad Choice for Mission

  The inadequate training and inadequate capabilities of National Guard pilots to fly Special Forces missions was set forth clearly in sworn testimony in the Colt Report.

  At Exhibit 49, General Colt and his assistants interviewed the commander of the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade (CAB) in Afghanistan concerning the readiness of the National Guard pilots (as opposed to Special Forces Aviation) to fly night missions in combat. Extortion 17 and other National Guard air units were assigned to the 10th CAB.

  Part of the problem was that the National Guard pilots were ill equipped to fly combat missions at night.

  The parties involved in the testimony at page 60 of Exhibit 49 include: (1) the SME-­NGB, which stands for Special Missions Expert—National Guard Bureau. This officer was assigned to General Colt’s staff for his expertise in National Guard matters; (2) 10th CAB, which stands for Commander of the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade This officer was a full-­bird colonel in the US Army Aviation Corps, typically a helicopter pilot; and (3) the BDE, who is the brigade serial commander for the CH-47s. That means that this officer was the regular Army officer (not National Guard) who was in charge of all the CH-47s who were in the air for this particular mission, which included Extortions 16 and 17.

  SME-­NGB (Special Missions Expert–National Guard Bureau): Sir, just one last question: The reserve component guys, are they coming in fully RL1 qualified, day/night NVG? Are there any training issues when they get here, or—and, I guess, equipment shortages. Are [that are] equipment shortages that are significant?

  10th CAB (Commander 10th Combat Aviation Brigade): Let me ask ESP to go ahead and talk about the training readiness.

  BDE (CH-47 Serial Commander): This is kind of a prickly subject for us. But for the most part, they bring crews in who are day/night NVG RL1 on paper. However, if you look at the numbers they have as far as experience level, goggles, the killer for us—I don’t want to use that term lightly. But the worse part here is the fact they have very limited NVG experience.

  Notice the CH-47 Serial Commander here expresses very frank concern about the National Guard pilots’ ability to fly night missions.

  On one hand, the National Guard pilots were technically qualified on paper, which gave General Mattis cover for his questionable conclusion that, “the Army aviators flying this mission were fully qualified to perform all required tasks.”

  On the other hand, despite technically qualifying on paper, the National Guard pilots were not up to speed with sufficient night flying experience to make regular Army aviators confident in their abilities to fly dangerous nighttime combat missions. The serial commander’s testimony is disconcerting. “But the worse part here is the fact they have very limited NVG experience.”

  Again, questions arise. Why send pilots with “very limited NVG” experience into the cockpit, in a dangerous hot zone, on night missions, when crucial consequences of life-­or-­death are at hand?

  The foolishness of choosing this particular flight crew for this very dangerous mission was further evidenced in this same document, Exhibit 49 of the Colt Report, in an exchange between the deputy investigating officer and the brigade commander. Note that the deputy investigating officer, denoted as “IO-­DEP” below, formed his question by acknowledging that the experience level of the pilot of Extortion 17 was not only “low,” but was in fact “very low” [author’s emphasis].

  IO-­DEP: The skill set or experience level of the pilot and co-­pilot. Do you know that handy?

  10th CAB: Yes, sir.

  IO-­DEP: I just want your opinion, if you think that’s consistent—basically, the PC is very low experience; however, it looks lik
e there’s potentially some risk mitigation by a very, very experienced co-­pilot on this particular mission. I want to determine if this is getting at the core of what you are discussing—

  10th CAB: Yes.

  IO-­DEP:—about on paper versus—or in qualifications or currency versus proficiency.

  10th CAB: This particular aircraft, the pilot in command was three years out of flight school, 672 hours of total time, 99 hours of combat time, 588 CH-47 Delta time. 156 hours of goggle time, and only 46 hours of TC time. He was, essentially, a brand new PZ appointment within the last 30 days or so.

  In considering the very frank testimony concerning Bryan Nichols’s low experience level as a pilot, with the deputy investigating officer describing him as Pilot in Command (PC) with “very low experience,” and saying that there is “potentially some risk mitigation” by having an experienced co-­pilot, and with the Combat Air Brigade commander testifying that Bryan was, “essentially, a brand new PZ appointment within the last 30 days or so,” the foolishness for selecting this particular crew for this particular mission is magnified.

  Now this constant refrain about the inexperience of the lead pilot, sprinkled throughout the testimony from various witnesses, was curiously and inexplicably minimized by General Colt in his final Executive Summary to General Mattis, of September 9, 2011.

  Recall that in his charging order of August 7, 2011, Mattis charged Colt with providing for him an “Executive Summary of the evidence” concerning the shoot-­down of Extortion 17.

  Colt did comply with that order, and signed his Executive Summary back to General Mattis, on September 9, 2011. This five-­page report was attached to the Colt Report as Enclosure C.

  There was also another document, signed by Colt on September 9, 2011, entitled Investigation Findings and Recommendations. That document was attached to the Colt Report as Enclosure B, and is discussed later in the book.