MB Civic

<> By Pamela Constable | Monday, May 29, 2006; A01 | The Washington Post
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Military helicopter crews over Afghanistan and Iraq know better than most what the wars in those countries have in common: There’s more below than meets the eye. They also have an unmatched view of what makes the conflicts different.

A Black Hawk helicopter crew in Afghanistan skims along above the desert as the crew watches for signs of the enemy below. For miles, the land is empty. Then someone spots a mud compound with a dozen men around it but not a single sheep or goat in sight. Is it a farm or an insurgent hideout?

In Iraq, the field of battle is often a densely packed neighborhood, where a crew on a sweep might see nothing but rooftops and alleyways. But then, out of nowhere, “someone can shoot at you from any direction, blend in and be gone,” said Sgt. Rodney Kitchen, 27, a crew chief from Baltimore. “Here, there are few people in the open desert. They’re not going to take potshots at you because they know four choppers will be chasing them.”

Pilots and crew members of Task Force Knighthawk, a U.S.-led helicopter unit based in Kandahar, know the combat environment in Afghanistan intimately. Many of its members have also served in Iraq, and they say there are great disparities between the two combat theaters. Lessons learned in one don’t necessarily carry over to the other.

Afghanistan is rugged, poor and sparsely populated.

The Iraq combat theater is for the most part flat, comparatively developed and urban.

In Afghanistan, “our biggest threat is not Taliban or al-Qaeda shooting at us. It’s the weather and the terrain,” said Army Lt. Col. Mark Patterson, who commands Task Force Knighthawk. “It’s a rugged, unpredictable environment that an agile, adaptable enemy can exploit.”

Patterson’s fleet of Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters, with their teams of 55 pilots and crew members, perform the heavy lifting of the Afghan war — ferrying the troops, evacuating the wounded, conducting reconnaissance missions and supporting ground assaults across southern Afghanistan.

The region, which includes Kandahar and three neighboring provinces, has been swept by violence in recent weeks, with a death toll since mid-May that could exceed 300. Anti-government insurgents have assaulted civilian and military targets in a dozen locations, and U.S. airstrikes have reportedly killed more than 100 Taliban fighters and at least 15 civilians.

There is danger in both theaters, the team members said, but it comes in distinct forms, degrees and disguises. Iraq’s developed infrastructure includes power lines that can block low flight paths for helicopters, apartment complexes that can hide snipers, and long, paved highways that can be booby-trapped with remote-control explosives.

“Here we are always flying, looking down and scanning the ground. In Iraq, I went in my first road convoy, and suddenly there I was in a truck with my rifle pointing out, wondering what to do if we got hit,” said Sgt. Richard Staggs, 25, a Black Hawk crew chief from Las Vegas. Staggs said a close friend was killed in another convoy in Iraq when three anti-tank mines exploded under his vehicle.

Afghanistan’s trackless deserts and hillside villages mean troops and supplies must often be delivered to forward bases in Taliban territory by helicopter, exposing crews to rocket attacks as well as mercurial flying conditions. But it is easier to spot insurgent hideouts in the open desert, team members said, and the enemy’s weapons here tend to be older, less powerful and far less accurate than those wielded by Iraqi insurgents.

Kitchen said the Knighthawk teams had learned to spot the telltale signs of Taliban presence, such as farm compounds devoid of livestock or field workers, but also to recognize as benign certain sights that might seem suspicious at first glance.

“In the mountains, you always look for animals,” he said. “If you see shepherds with no sheep, or farmers who are not plowing, it means there are possible insurgents.” On the other hand, he said, a man walking alone across inhospitable desert at night could be a nomad or innocent villager rather than a fugitive fighter.

Although the Iraq conflict involves a larger, tougher ground war, the team members said, the Afghan conflict has made far more use of helicopters for combat and other military operations, providing more excitement for the crews and drawing more on their specialized training.

“In Iraq, we ferried a lot of senior officers to meetings. Here we are much closer to the battle, taking part in assault missions, inserting Special Forces,” said Capt. John Wingeart, 29, a Black Hawk pilot from Sparks, Md. “These are things we trained for but never had the chance to do.”

Both the blinding light of daytime missions and the murky conditions of night flying in Afghanistan call for trickier techniques than were needed in Iraq, the Knighthawk members said. At night, objects and distances are hard to measure, even with special night-vision equipment, and crew chiefs must watch the ground carefully, guiding pilots down.

“Things don’t look the same. You can lose your depth perception and misjudge distance,” Staggs said. “You think the ground is still 10 feet away and actually it’s only three.”

Missions in this mountainous country also require much high flying, often among jagged hills and ridges. The task force members said they regularly flew as high as 12,000 feet, and sometimes even have to land with one wheel first on very steep slopes.

Afghanistan is also different from Iraq in terms of human interaction, they said. Although other countries have sent ground troops to Iraq, U.S. aviation units coordinate directly with other foreign military forces only in Afghanistan– a situation Patterson said had proved challenging.

“In Iraq we never really integrated with the multinational forces. Here we do it every single day,” he said. “I have Australian and U.S. assets, and we are supporting Dutch, Canadian, Romanian, French and British forces. We have to rehearse, plan and work the details of every joint mission. We have linguistic liaisons for every operation.”

When it comes to dealing with local citizens, the Knighthawk aviators said they felt far more comfortable with Afghans than with Iraqis, both the soldiers with them in the field and the civilians who work or live near military bases.

One reason, they said, was that Afghanistan’s new national army has been an ally from the start, recruited and trained with U.S. help since 2002. Iraq’s security forces were defeated and then forcibly disbanded by U.S. administrators in 2003, creating mistrust and resentment.

Several team members said they had been at military bases in Iraq where former Iraqi soldiers performed menial tasks such as mopping floors. Others said they had worried about sharing the same dining facilities with soldiers from the reconstituted Iraqi forces.

“In Iraq, the army was being put back together. You always worried about someone walking into the chow hall with a bomb strapped to them,” Wingeart said. “We have absolutely no problems with Afghan soldiers. Here, everything is starting from scratch.”