Black Hawks down in Iraqi
quagmire By Iason Athanasiadis
TEHRAN - One of the most terrifying
experiences of an embedded journalist in Iraq has
to be skimming over the darkened landscape in the
middle of the night in a Black Hawk helicopter.
On one such trip, a gunner hunched over
his M60 machine-gun, scanning the blank spaces in
between the rapidly retreating palm-tree tops for
the Iraqi resistance. Sitting to my left and
opposite me were fresh troops being sent out to
Balad, the sprawling US air base in central Iraq
that is said to be one of the busiest
airports on Earth.
Huddled in the dimly lit cargo space,
stuffing the ear-mufflers deeper into my ears, I
could only think of how exposed the helicopter we
were riding in was and the ear-shattering noise it
made as it pounded through the night. It was the
same noise, amplified a hundred times over, that
is the constant accompaniment to every waking
moment in Baghdad.
US helicopters patrol
the Iraqi capital day and night, purposely flying
over the Euphrates River to put some dead ground
between themselves and any Iraqi fighters wanting
to take advantage of the blind spot immediately
beneath the flying machines. So ubiquitous is
their presence that they keep Iraqis from sleeping
and prompted US military spokesman
Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, some time ago, to
remind an interviewer that "the noise they hear is
the sound of freedom".
Hundreds of Black
Hawks fly into the Green Zone every day, banking
steeply over Saddam Hussein's former presidential
palace - today the temporary US Embassy - before
landing at the adjoining helodrome dubbed the
"Washington LZ" (landing zone). As the helicopters
career over the city's dirt-gray, rubbish-strewn
dun, they often discharge flares to head off
incoming missiles. With Iraq's roads laced with a
web of well-disguised roadside bombs, flying has
been the preferred mode of transport between the
wide network of US and British bases.
But
the fragile perception of the helicopters'
invulnerability has been shattered over the past
three weeks as five US helicopters went down
around Iraq.
"It may be that the airframes
were hovering more, or that they were doing so out
of range of the suppressive fire of ground troops,
or that the insurgents are giving their weapons
more 'lead', or just sheer luck," said James
Spencer, a Middle East expert specializing in
defense and security issues.
The flurry of
aerial destruction indicates that the insurgents
have attained a new tactical plateau and may be
using more advanced weapons systems to target the
US occupation. Analysts are asking whether the
insurgents are suddenly accessing greater numbers
of man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) and
from where. These shoulder-launched surface-to-air
missiles typically use infra-red guidance and can
shoot down low-flying aircraft and helicopters.
"There is no question that advanced
MANPADS are being used against US helos and that
holding back on this strategy was intentional, so
that the ramp-up would do the most damage to
morale," said Don Weadon, a Washington-based
international lawyer and Middle East authority.
"It is a battle of wills, and against superior
firepower one has to be cagey to the max."
The US military ordered changes in flight
operations early last week but it was not enough
to avoid the downing of a fifth helicopter on
Wednesday. The crashes began on January 20 and
follow insurgent claims that they have received
new stocks of anti-aircraft weapons and a recent
boast by Sunni militants that "God has granted new
ways" to threaten US aircraft, according to the
Associated Press.
"There's been an ongoing
effort since we've been here to target our
helicopters," said Major-General William Caldwell,
the US chief military spokesman. "Based on what we
have seen, we're already making adjustments in our
tactics and techniques and procedures as to how we
deploy our helicopters."
In the past,
defensive measures have included flying lower and
faster, varying routes and using zigzag patterns
when traversing dangerous areas. US helicopters in
Iraq are also armed with defensive aid suites
(DAS), anti-missile systems such as flares and
anti-heat-seeking devices.
The most basic
DAS system includes a laser-warning detector and
multi-spectral smoke and counter-fire as
countermeasures. "DAS are only of use against
guided weapons," said Spencer. "There's almost
nothing that can counter a bullet in a soft spot,
nor an RPG-7 fired at an airframe." RPG-7 is a
handheld grenade launcher.
In December,
Khudair al-Murshidi, a spokesman for Iraq's Ba'ath
Party, announced that Sunni insurgents had
received shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles,
adding that "we are going to surprise them", in a
reference to US forces.
Four of the
helicopters crashed in Sunni areas, with another
shot down during fighting between the US and Iraqi
armies and cultists in the Shi'ite stronghold city
of Najaf in southern Iraq.
"Until more is
known about these apparent shootdowns, one cannot
rule out a very old method," said Wayne White, a
veteran State Department intelligence analyst, "a
group of shooters with systems like the RPG-7,
originally designed for use against various
armored vehicles on the ground, fired
simultaneously or in rapid succession at a
helicopter at relatively low altitude, increasing
the chances for a lucky hit."
This theory
certainly appears to be borne out by witnesses. On
January 28, a Reuters reporter witnessed the
downing of the helicopter in Najaf. He described
how a burst of machine-gun fire produced a trail
of smoke from the helicopter before it crashed.
At the site of the most recent crash,
Iraqi farmer Mohammad al-Jenabi described how the
twin-rotor C-46 troop carrier came down. "The
helicopter was flying and passed over us, then we
heard the firing of a missile," he said. "The
helicopter then turned into a ball of fire. It
flew in a circle twice, then it went down."
The helicopter went down near the Sunni
insurgent stronghold of Taji, about 30 kilometers
northwest of Baghdad. Responsibility was claimed
by the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group of
insurgents that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq.
"It's not that difficult to shoot down a
chopper with small-arms fire," said a British
officer serving in the Middle East, "especially if
you take into account that the birds are slow and
even a car driven fast can outpace them."
Insurgents have used SA-7s, a widely used
shoulder-fired missile with an infra-red homing
device, against US and British aircraft since
2003. But accusations that Iran is supplying this
hardware are either false or irrelevant, according
to Western analysts.
"Whether ... they're
coming in from Iran - where the technology isn't
that good - is not the case," said Weadon, the
Middle East expert. "The MANPADS can either be
leftovers in Afghanistan or of Chinese or Russian
manufacture rolling in over from Saudi or even
Turkey. I doubt that anyone would risk rolling
them in over the highly scrutinized border with
Iran."
Whatever their provenance may be,
the introduction of advanced MANPADS into Iraq
presents an unsettling echo from a previous
occupation and a telling indication of where the
current conflict may be headed. In 1980s
Afghanistan, the invading Soviet army was
similarly incapable of establishing its authority
outside Kabul, forcing it to rely on its air force
for transport.
Washington took advantage
of this and supplied its mujahideen allies with
US-made FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missile
systems with which to target its Cold War enemy.
The mujahideen yielded the Stingers with unnerving
accuracy and vastly increased Soviet losses. It
was the single development that contributed the
most to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Iason Athanasiadis is an
Iranian-based journalist.
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