Wings Over Afghanistan

it is a declared war against the network of terror that attacked america on its own ground now in the deserts and in the skies of afghanistan the united states goes to battle like never before on the ground american commandos call in 4 000 pound cave busting smart bombs above low-flying apache helicopters pound al-qaeda forces we beat the air into submission and throughout the war new camera mounted drones feed back real-time battle video to commanders thousands of miles away capturing scenes like a mountain rescue mission that went terribly wrong this is all apparently being watched by a predator uav feeding the video back to centcom headquarters the war in afghanistan has become a showcase for some of the newest technology and warfare while highlighting the need for old-fashioned training and readiness yet the enemy remains at large who is the us battling in afghanistan and has it changed forever how americans fight on a pitch-black night over afghanistan approximately four weeks after the world trade center bombing a special forces team fast ropes deep into taliban territory they are team 555 from the us army's fifth special forces group and their mission is clear to work with resistant soldiers destroy al qaeda forces and topple the taliban regime in the dark of night team 555 links up with allied afghan troops from the northern alliance forces who lead them on a long trek across miles of unfamiliar terrain it is nearly 10 days since the first u.s bombs rained down on afghanistan targeting taliban troops military facilities and cave hideouts by week two the power and precision of the air campaign have obliterated most known targets and there is barely anything left to destroy to sense and seek out the enemy special forces team 555 is deployed just days after linking up with their afghan allies the special forces soldiers begin calling in coordinates to new targets once again smart bombs called j dams start falling from the sky j dams or joint direct attack munitions use global positioning satellites to find their way to target the bolt-on tail contains a guidance system which receives target coordinates punched in by the pilot you can drop this thing in any weather any kind of conditions you want and as long as there's enough satellites overhead that it can see it's going to go sick fido right on top of the target laser-enhanced binoculars are the most effective tool used by ground soldiers to obtain coordinates for a jdam target the most common one is that they have what's called a peq-1 or a paq10 it's a target designator with a laser range finder on it set it up on a little tripod and it goes and fires a laser beam at the target and from that it'll determine a range you can then plug in a gps receiver to the targeting unit and based upon the range from that target it will generate a targeting coordinate which you can either then type in into a data messaging unit or you can call up on a radio to an airplane overhead that then is punched into the bomb by the uh by the air crew they drop it and it goes right down on top of the target american fighters have flown some of the bombing missions in afghanistan but for the most part it is older bombers dropping these smart weapons on the battlefield one trooper came down out of the hills and said god i love those b-52s you know they fly over and you just hear these huge explosions and you know they're taking out bad guys i loved it the b-52 stratofortresses now flying over afghanistan are the oldest aircraft in the air force inventory they fly at subsonic speeds at altitudes up to 50 000 feet the b-52 first saw action in korea fifty years ago yet in the heavy air campaign over afghanistan in the fall this aging workhorse dropped 80 percent of the bombs the power of america's air campaign will quickly grant the northern alliance troops the victory that has eluded them for over a decade to suddenly realize they had an air force it was somebody else's and they were borrowing it but they had an air force that could do that to their enemies and was going to do it day and night for as long as it took before they were ready to make the assault just emboldened them for the u.s special forces soldiers choreographing the bombing from the desert floor target designation is just part of their mission as soon as they drop in country the americans begin working with northern alliance troops building up a force capable of destroying the taliban and finding osama bin laden special forces teams helped train afghan fighters supplying them with weapons ammunition food and clothing they're superbly trained very self-confident they speak you know lots of languages they're all you know trained almost it seems like to a surgeon level of medical care for each of these soldiers their mission in afghanistan began at the john f kennedy special warfare center at fort bragg north carolina in recent years discovery channel cameras have dropped behind the scenes to document how commandos in the making learned to fight a war like the one being waged in afghanistan graduates of the special warfare school are the u.s army's best and brightest given only the most challenging assignments [Music] weeks of sleep deprivation 25-mile marches and exhausting mental tests weed out those who aren't up to the task get ready the final exam is a two-week long brow beating exercise called robin sage where american special forces candidates must put all their training and knowledge to the test these students kick off their robin sage mission by preparing to jump into pitch black night over unknown terrain the student missions closely mirror real-life scenarios now faced by special forces teams in afghanistan this group of candidates has orders to find their way through hostile territory and make contact with and train a guerrilla resistance force they are lightly armed each man carrying about 210 rounds of ammunition most are equipped with the m4 carbine a modified m16 combat rifle a c-130 makes the quick hop behind enemy lines according to the students mission statement the fictional country they moved through was recently overthrown by a despotic leader a resistance force has called upon the special forces team to help restore the previous government to power like team 555 in afghanistan each soldier has a specialty demolitions weapons communications intelligence and field medicine the biggest element to a girl is survival is mobility he has to be able to move at a moment's notice and move out of an area and stay fluid so the enemy can't can't pin him down or back him up against some place where he can't get out of and crush him they work their way through the rough terrain for over 24 hours once they finally locate the gorilla base camp they must establish trust with a local guerrilla chief you are at right now whether you're sitting down there or here let's go ahead and sit there you need to get up in this fictional scenario he proves to be a hard man to impress tell me where you're at right in there don't draw it down circle point to a point and say i am right there no in doubt we are right there you are wrong you're not right there i'm not going to show you where you're at until i think if i want you guys in here maybe then i'll show you where yet what happens in a normal robin sage is exactly what we did in afghanistan special forces team links up with a guerrilla ban finds out their requirements resupplies them trains them helps them execute a plan and gets into an operational tempo to help liberate the country kill us all go through the map right over here that's how you get up i said [ __ ] throw that sit back down much of robin sage is a mind game the gorillas are instructed to treat the student teams with utter contempt tell me captain i don't think you understand what you're telling me i think you need to sit there and think about it for a little while no you didn't explain to me because i know captain they like tap dance i don't have time tap dance out here robin sage prepares a special forces soldier to operate in a dangerous world without rules [Music] they learned to deal with ethical dilemmas such as an allied commander guilty of human rights violation i want to go and talk to her myself somebody knows she's here somebody sent her she she couldn't have operated autonomously in a situation like that until it comes to a really hard choice of you know do you risk the lives of all the men in the camp as well as her defending her help you i tell you what i'm doing easy five minutes to figure out what you want to do i want to go and talk to myself [Music] girl's just been assassinated the captain was really not dumbfounded but the gears were turning continuously and at one point when they took the girl up the trail i thought he was going to run after him because he started that way and i'm like you're gonna lose it but he stopped and you could just see him trying to think what am i supposed to do so it was a good dilemma i ask you again are you gonna tell the colonel that you are reporting him of a human rights violation no we're not do they want to be associated with this act and that's where they have to separate themselves plus in addition to trying to stop it through advice they can't physically stop it so all they can do is really report and not let the guerrilla chief know that they're reporting it they lose all report at that point in afghanistan u.s special forces face similar dilemmas northern alliance soldiers have a well-known track record of committing war crimes the special forces guys have said to me you don't want to know about the world we have to work it it's the real world they come from the point of view that the united states plays in a dirty dirty neighborhood and we sometimes have to do dirty things just to just you know stay on our footing in this war against terrorism the u.s has entered an unknown environment [Music] facing a new kind of enemy the face of the enemy here is not just a handful of men much less a handful of very wealthy religiously eccentric men what we're talking about here is a philosophy of zealotry and extremism the first thing to realize is that we're not even at war with a country when president bush went before congress in september and declared war he in effect declared war on an individual and a network spread all over the world chuck spinney is a long-time pentagon employee and an outspoken critic of the military he works for he's agreed to speak to us only on the condition that it stated his views are personal now we're dealing with this sort of vague thing in the mountains the real thing that has to be done is you got to take out the al qaeda network and in its leadership uh and it's not clear what has happened there a fluid network like osama bin laden's is a stateless organization whose warriors infiltrate our society and use our own technology against us they know they can't go head-to-head with an organized army so they're going to go around it try to achieve their objectives by striking directly at the centers of power and culture in a society and bypassing the military in the process true victory against this kind of enemy remains difficult to define [Music] by december 2001 u.s airstrikes against taliban and al-qaeda targets are into their eighth week just a month earlier the northern city of mazari sharif had fallen to allied troops then the spiritual center of the taliban government the city of kandahar also falls after six years in power the taliban government dissolves almost overnight despite these significant conquests the hunt for the one man in charge osama bin laden continues the pursuit leads u.s forces to the mountainous caves of torabora in eastern afghanistan thought to be a last refuge of bin laden and his al qaeda fighters specially constructed 3d mapping of afghanistan shows the mountainous topography of areas like torabora while u.s bombers pound the cave complex american special forces try to guard mountain passes to prevent al-qaeda fighters from escaping across the border into pakistan but with relatively few u.s soldiers on the ground the enemy is able to filter through the mountains in the end the two-week pounding of torabora still fails to locate bin laden or to destroy al qaeda the taliban as the government of afghanistan has certainly been displaced much easier than anybody including myself thought thought would happen but there was an armed force of somewhere between 40 and 50 000 al qaeda and taliban forces if you add up all the people killed and captured you might get the 4 000. so where did the rest go you know conservatively speaking 20 000 disappeared maybe as many as 40 000 disappeared they went to the hills with their weapons this war is not over cleaning out the taliban and al qaeda you have to go ahead and do it zone by zone take them out clear it and then move on while protecting what you've already done osama we think is still at large or is he as we're talking about this right now there has been no proof of life video that can be dated past december of 2001. he may be dead he may be incapacitated he may just not want to show his face he knows right now he is the most hunted man on the planet he zawahiri and sheik omar are the three prizes we do need to go and find these men or kill them the hunt for al qaeda operatives in the labyrinth of deep caves that make up afghanistan has required a powerful penetrating explosive commonly known as the bunker buster bomb they come in a couple of sizes the most common being something called the blue 109 or blu109 which is a 2 000 pound weapon it's essentially interchangeable with the big mark 84 2000 pound ballistically the same and you can mount laser-guided bomb or jdam's kids to it in exactly the same way the lugs are the same when it hits a concrete or rock surface the bunker buster delays its detonation first breaking through the surface of a target like a masonry nail before it explodes for caves buried deeper than 50 feet there is the 4700 pound super penetrator we use it in two configurations there's a gps guided version that can be dropped off the v2 there's also a laser guided version the gbu-28 which can be dropped off the f-15 strike eagle the alleged success of the bunker buster bomb and destroying al-qaeda hideouts has encouraged the development of a new generation of precision guided weapons one called automatic target acquisition or ata has already entered service aboard navy cruise missiles ata does not require a soldier on the ground to designate a target instead of using a laser beam to home in on or a little tv camera to fly down into a target such as you've seen before it uses a dual technology it uses a gps receiver to get it into the general neighborhood where it then starts looking for a target the seeker head mounted on a bomb or air launched missile will use global positioning satellites then an image of the target already loaded into the seeker's mini computer searches for the structure on the ground that matches that image it looks for trackable features around a target for example an air shaft an air conditioning duct a door a window whatever locks those in to that template adjusts it appropriately and will fly to any point within the template directed by the user the intelligence images from which systems like ata can draw are also becoming increasingly sophisticated this three-dimensional cia graphic of a washington suburb was created from overhead infrared cameras and depicts the satellite image of the future you could fire say from philadelphia and it could fly through a window of a building all by itself through heavy weather day or night say in washington dc you know over 100 miles plus distance away the structural detail that 3d infrared imaging provides means that weapons with ata will be able to hunt out specific office or apartment windows and strike without even brushing the curtains if osama bin laden were to be located he would have little chance of escape against a high-tech system like ata but finding a moving human target like osama bin laden has proved to be more challenging than anticipated for u.s intelligence osama bin laden and his associates they can decide uh on a moment's notice to stand up go outside get in a vehicle and drive away and thereby change their location change the context let's say we know osama bin laden is in house b in kabul afghanistan this morning let's say we want to fire a missile at that house from a missile launch platform that'll take 10 minutes we're betting that osama bin laden will be there 10 minutes from now and that's a poor bet it's especially difficult inside terrorist organizations who work on the basis of not only personal relationships that usually have been formed for many years but they work on constant personal interaction and constant personal testing of loyalties of capabilities of stability for of the terrorists activities but one high-tech surveillance system has gained superstar status in the hunt for osama bin laden the unmanned predator surveillance drone has become a regular site over the battlefields in afghanistan gathering video that is instantly fed back to control centers hundreds even thousands of miles away predator is nothing more than an oversized model airplane it's got a propeller at the rear that drives it a couple of wings fairly low radar cross section can stay up for some hours in the front though is the payload this is usually a forward-looking infrared thermal imager with a tv camera as well as a laser rangefinder and designator and you can actually go and use this system to designate laser guided bombs or because it's got a gps system tied to it you can actually get positions for jdams and other systems as well to drop on to targets when it's just in a looking mode it tends to fly patterns much like a dog would go searching for game back and forth across an area but when it finds it it's able to then set up an orbit and actually surveil that target so that if that target attempts to move if something changes the information is immediately relayed back again because it's got a satellite uplink it can go ahead and share this over a uhf satellite anywhere in the world while most praise the capabilities of the predator reports back from the field are mixed the predator is tracking a target with a camera that is essentially looking through a soda straw you see a very narrow field of view and so everybody becomes focused on what that predator is looking at and they may not see something that is much more important that is just outside the field of view for the first time ever continuous live coverage of recent ground battles between u.s and al qaeda forces was fed back to generals and civilian leaders in washington dc ten time zones away the predator by providing this imagery back to the command post is leading to over supervision uh in fact some of them are referring to it as the great nanny in the sky and it's and it basically is is distracting them from the job they have at hand and and people are are sort of overriding their local decisions it is not an opinion shared by all in fact this war has pushed the era of armed combat drones upon us in afghanistan the first ever unmanned combat aerial vehicle or ucav was sent into battle by remote control [Music] on november 18 2001 u.s jets attacked a taliban building [Music] as a group of al-qaeda operatives fled from the destruction a predator drone loaded with a hellfire missile was directed to launch its deadly package into the escaping men the result 100 dead including some senior al-qaeda officials bin laden not among them using improvised racks for the hellfires predator has become the de facto first u-cab and it's really shaking people up to the idea that if an air strike is plinking things and suddenly you see a truck taking off and going the other direction and that you can just use this as a cleanup shot and just shoot is very very exciting [Music] drones could eventually take on an immense variety of combat roles that up until today have been left up to humans who have to eat drink sleep and who die [Music] while afghanistan has shown that the future of ucavs is promising one of the war's tragic incidents warns us that over-reliance on technology and combat can lead to human error [Music] it is the morning of december 5th 2001. special forces team 555 and a group of afghan opposition fighters are positioned near kandahar in southern afghanistan calling in air strikes on enemy targets over a mile away [Music] suddenly a satellite-guided bomb dropped from a b-52 bomber overhead explodes just 100 yards from the soldiers [Music] the bomb detonates with the force of its two thousand pounds of explosives the devastation is instant three special forces soldiers and six afghan allies killed and 38 injured there is no time to understand why they've been attacked by their own and the soldiers scrambled to medevac the dead and injured off the battlefield there was a ford air controller who called in a close air support mission a b-52 responded with jade ammunitions one of those j-dam weapons landed somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred meters from where our our troops were at and that's what has obviously caused the casualties and injuries it was one of those little oddities of technology the batteries in the gps receiver ran out and the controller on the ground popped out the old battery popped in the new one and forgot that when the gps receiver re-initialized itself the position that came up on the readout was the position of the of the receiver itself and so when the controller called up the those coordinates he was essentially calling down a two thousand pound bomb on his own position and that's why they had those casualties the deadly bomb had dropped exactly where it was told to hit now the kind of technology that you want to have in that kind of situation is the kind that you don't have to think about using that you can use intuitively rather than analytically here's what i want to do the basic infantryman is proving to be the best piece of technology we have you know can put eyes on a target can make a judgment who or what that target is i like the fact that you got your wreck you stay in the high ground because that way you can so if that's the best weapon we have and it's a pretty good one it's also the least well resourced weapon we lavish money on big expensive weapons programs infantry men still walking in pretty much the same boots in the december battle for toravora u.s leaders had relied too heavily on northern alliance troops to wage the ground war so in january 2500 soldiers from the 101st airborne division landed in afghanistan together with army troops from the 10th mountain division they formed the largest contingent of u.s ground forces sent out to war since desert storm i have almost never seen soldiers so eager to get into action very aware that they were carrying the nation's desire to pay back for 9 11. that it was on their shoulders and that they had a chance unlike most people to actually do something about it every one of our generations has been called on to do something for its country we are no different we've been called on to fight the war on terror you are part of that fight along with 101st came a battalion of powerful apache helicopters ready to provide air support to the soldiers when it came time to wage war [Music] the ah-64 apache helicopter is one of the most technologically complex weapons that the us has ever sent into combat [Music] the two-seat gunship can prowl undetected deep into enemy territory with a load of laser-guided missiles to an apache pilot rugged terrain is both enemy and friend hugging the deck he is taught to use the folds of the earth to stalk his prey which in afghanistan's southern deserts becomes a greater challenge apache pilots in afghanistan have had to fight blowing sand and dust sometimes in the thin air of high altitudes but those who man these deadly flying machines are a special breed of pilot it's just something that helicopter pilots have voiced again over the years and that's the way they fly is that we beat the air into submission once in range the pilots pop up and pull into a hover providing a steady platform to get their weapons onto target there it goes i remember my initial instructor years ago in flight school told me that he thought trying to teach somebody who had never flown a helicopter to hover a helicopter in one spot three feet above the ground was about like time to teach a guy how to ride a unicycle on top of basketball each man flying apache missions in afghanistan has gone through years of training back in the states there's going to be apaches on the battlefield tomorrow night so i want a very well thought out uh either restrictive fire measures or procedures ironed out to protect the infantry force on the ground as well as to enable colonel cornwall to get fires from the apaches but you're right on top of their head and we need in a war zone like afghanistan coordinating air and ground units requires precise timing and exact situation awareness working just tens of meters from friendly forces calls for detailed planning and rigid precision roughly in this vicinity i don't know where to put you to keep from hitting our guys once they're in there we will drop down to the ground frequency and if you come up against any unexpected resistance we're there to provide direct fires the apache pilot is directly connected to the 14 million dollar aircraft he flies by a system of sensors mounted on the side of his helmet the eyepiece and the sensor on the front of the aircraft are in coincidence and wherever you look it's looking in effect is the same as if you took your eye moved it three feet down and ten feet forward and placed at the front of the aircraft because all of the imagery that you receive on the screen is from that sensor at the very front of the aircraft the destructive power at the pilot's fingertips is formidable and includes a 30 millimeter chain gun up to 38 rockets and as many as 16 laser-guided hellfire missiles the hellfire missile is the tool of choice for apache pilots in afghanistan this anti-tank weapon fires upward and then descends onto the top of the enemy vehicle striking it at its most thinly armored point the hellfire's dual seeker head follows a laser beam that the back seater points at the intended target air force base in afghanistan apache helicopters lie in weight is march 4th 2002 and the biggest assault of the war has kicked off operation anaconda a team of special forces soldiers is being sent on a reconnaissance mission to a mountain ridge in two mh-47 chinook helicopters they take off from bagram air force base the team is headed for a high altitude region in southern afghanistan the chinook helicopter they fly on has been the transport war horse of the u.s military since the vietnam war in the darkness the chinooks land in a predetermined mountain lz just above 10 000 feet recon photos suggest the enemy abandoned the ridge months ago but as the soldiers jump to the ground they come under heavy fire [Music] a rocket-propelled grenade hits one of the helicopters and the troops scramble back onto the chinooks that manage to lift off amidst heavy fire [Music] the helicopter's rear gunner a navy seal returns fire from the open back hatch of the aircraft and as the chinook climbs steeply and banks hard to the north away from danger he is jolted out of the aircraft left behind on the desert floor and the story we've been told is that this seal charged a machine gun nest and personally shot everybody in the nest took out the crew of this machine gun that was firing on the chinook as it was trying to escape [Applause] a predator drone then appears over the battle zone capturing the scene that ensues [Applause] apparently the seal was then either taken captive or disabled and was very badly treated and eventually of course died this was all apparently being watched by a predator uav feeding the video back to centcom headquarters back at mcdill air force base in tampa so everybody watched this happen in real time for unknown reasons centcom headquarters does not communicate news of the navy seal's death to a special forces rescue team already on its way to extract the fallen soldier this team heads into danger not knowing that the soldier they are on their way to rescue is already dead on board is an air force pararescue man trained to recover downed soldiers trapped behind enemy lines when we start getting your headings okay discovery channel cameras had been present last spring as this air force commando named jason cunningham faced the last hurdles of the two-year para rescue school in new mexico cunningham had successfully passed the school's six-day final exercise which included an all-night firefight against a fabricated enemy force now almost a year later in the skies over afghanistan this was the real thing at cunningham's first ever combat mission it is what he has trained long and hard to do but as cunningham and the rest of the special ops rescue team prepare to land [Music] an rpg missile hits the chinook the heavy aircraft crashes to the ground and the surviving soldiers including cunningham run for cover from the hail of small arms fire for jason cunningham and the rest of the special forces rescue team it is a long fight to the death for the next 12 hours they face constant fire cunningham tends to the wounded for hours moving the injured from the incoming enemy fire landing just feet away until he too is fatally hit [Music] when rescue helicopters are finally able to extract the men the casualty count is the worst of the war yet seven u.s servicemen dead u.s ground troops were now more than ready for operation anaconda you know when they gathered to get on the helicopters in the middle of the night before the operation started they were jumping up and down like popcorn even though they had these incredibly heavy packs on they were just vibrating with adrenaline they couldn't wait to get up there apache and cobra helicopters filled the skies as u.s soldiers joined a contingent of allied afghan troops across strategic areas of the shahi coat valley the allied force began pounding the mountainous readouts go go go go fighting at altitudes of 10 000 feet against an enemy force 10 times greater than expected victory was not to come easy it was a very tough fight they got into and they came back saying we know we can take these guys but they are really good and this is going to be hard and a lot of us are going to get hurt for weeks the battle in the caves at shy coat raged on u.s infantry troops remained under constant fire from rpg rockets and other heavy weapons and retaliated with equal force [Music] by battle's end the power of the allied ground troops prevailed this operation was an unqualified and absolute success from the perspective not only of the american and coalition forces involved but also from the point of view of the afghan forces involved u.s military officials claimed over 500 enemy dead and the mountainous valley once again free of taliban and al-qaeda threats reporters covering the war were unable to confirm the number of enemy casualties but operation anaconda was declared a victory despite the loss of seven u.s soldiers to those who like to say oh come on you know why are we losing people well folks it's a war and it's we're fighting on we're fighting on the other guy's home field this is the place where the russians fought for 10 years and got their butts kicked and we handed their heads to them but a month after operation anaconda al qaeda and taliban forces were already filtering back from neighboring pakistan into the mountainous readouts of afghanistan and warnings of more terrorist attacks on the u.s persist so whether we choose to fight terrorism with a precision of high-tech weaponry or the power of the basic soldier one thing is clear this is a battle that has only just begun militarily i think there's always going to be people who don't want us there and will take shots at our people that will just go on and on and on i guess it's sort of up to us how long we stay there and fight it it's going to require a continuous effort probably for the for a generation and that's going to it's going to obviously start with military action but it's going to finish with financial aid industrial and agricultural development education and all the other things that we were talking about earlier that represent the ultimate solution to giving hope to the rest of the world this is not just a military solution general hugh shelton the retired chairman of the joint chiefs of staff once told me that the military is like a hammer it's great as long as what you're hitting with it is a nail but not every problem in the world is a nail [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Mike Guardia

Views: 138,744

Keywords: Afghanistan, war on terror, iraq, kabul, afghan, soviet, russia, dc, trump, pentagon, white house, obama, bush, rumsfeld, apache, fighter, pilot, top gun, maverick, wings, history, discovery, military, channel, squadron, helicopter, bomber, aviation, aviator, raw, combat, dogfight, footage, battle, gulf, war, desert, deployment

Id: GxLSAlQjeYM

Length: 48min 3sec (2883 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020