Modern Warfare—And Not So Modern
In the coming fight for Fallujah, there would be no reliance on a 20th-century, win-from-the-sky mentality. Instead, Generals Sattler, Natonski, and the Marine Air Wing Commander, Major General Keith Stalder, had embraced the boots-on-the-ground-but-support-from-the-sky, Marine MAGTF mantra. The plan was to overwhelm the enemy in a three-dimensional blitzkrieg.
Air Force, Navy, and Marine fixed-wing aircraft would loiter in holding patterns 18,000 feet above the city, waiting for a call to drop their deadly GPS-guided bombs onto unsuspecting enemy fighters. Marine AV8 Harriers would orbit at 13,000 feet, waiting to support Marines on the ground. Air Force AC-130 gunships from their Special Operations Squadron would circle at 10,000 feet every night. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles would buzz over the city, flying between 1,500 and 6,000 feet, watching and reporting the enemy’s every move. US Army Kiowa, Apache, and Marine Cobra helicopters would provide scouting and close air support below 1,500 feet.
While Colonel Formica’s soldiers and Marines isolated the battlefield, Natonski would pulverize the enemy on the ground with two unstoppable armored thrusts deep into the city, followed by the relentless onslaught of four Marine infantry battalions. The Iraqi Army and National Guard units would fill in behind the Marine infantry to hold captured ground and conduct more searches for stragglers and weapons.
As part of their preparation, the Marines exposed and destroyed as many command-and-control nodes and defensive fortifications as Metz’ IO threshold would allow. These actions heightened the state of paranoia and anxiety within the enemy’s rank and file. In addition, they tried very hard to confuse the enemy in an effort to keep the insurgents guessing as to where the actual attack would be launched.
The Marines also succeeded in driving a wedge between the anti-Iraqi forces and the local populace, convincing the majority of the civilians to leave the city. Everyone who could do so locked up their shops and homes and fled. As families streamed out of the besieged city, word leaked out of the insurgents’ reign of terror inside Fallujah. Civilians were being beaten and beheaded for the most innocent of offenses. Thugs commandeered homes, businesses, food, and vehicles. Zarqawi and his Al Qaeda hoodlums had seized an entire neighborhood in the southern reaches of the city. Anyone who resisted was dragged off and beaten or killed on the spot.
Containment
Formica viewed his assignment of isolating Fallujah as a classic cavalry mission—a guard operation to protect the main body. The Black Jack Brigade had two tasks. First, to provide freedom of maneuver for the Marines, and second, to prevent the enemy from entering or leaving Fallujah. Now that most of the civilians had left the city, the Black Jack Brigade could move in. From that point forward, no one would be allowed in or out.
On this multi-layered battlefield, Formica would establish a dynamic cordon to control the battle space outside Fallujah, with static positions tied into the terrain at key locations. His soldiers and portions of Gary Patton’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team would establish their outer cordon from Karmah to the Syrian border in the north and west, and Abu Ghraib to Al Amariyah in the east and south. Task Force Wolfpack would secure the “Shark’s Fin,” while Lieutenant Colonel Myles Miyamasu mechanized battalion (1–5 CAV) would establish blocking positions along MSR MOBILE from the Euphrates River east toward Karmah, manning two fortified outposts along the route.
This would not be the first time Colonel Miyamasu fought alongside Marines. As a young lieutenant, Miyamasu had rolled into Kuwait in 1991 with the Second Armored Division’s Tiger Brigade. The brigade had been chopped to the 2nd Marine Division to provide the Marines with additional armored assets to punch through Saddam’s defenses in Kuwait. Now Miyamasu would tie in with Lieutenant Colonel Todd McCaffrey’s 1–5 Infantry. Together they would control the areas east and north of Fallujah, past Karmah all the way to Abu Ghraib.
To the south, Formica would build Natonski’s anvil, a formidable fighting force formed around Lieutenant Colonel Darric ‘Spike’ Knight’s Second Reconnaissance Battalion by adding a Bradley platoon, a LAR Company, and a few Marine tanks. By the first week in November, Knight’s force would grow to more than 600 soldiers, sailors, and Marines.
Knight assigned Captain John Griffin’s agile, fast-moving Apache Company from 2nd LAR Battalion to the industrial area and “Queens,” the Al Qaeda stronghold in the southeast section of the city. Griffin worked out of a couple of outposts in the swampy wasteland and rough terrain south of the city, one at the Dam Bridge and the other named OP ROCKPILE. Knight established roadblocks to keep the enemy from coming out of the Zaidon into the rear areas. “We knew the Zaidon area was just a bad place,” explained Colonel Formica.1
The Zaidon, just south of Camp Fallujah and southeast of the city, was one of the most dangerous parts of the region. This low-lying agricultural area was crisscrossed with irrigation canals and impassable terrain perfect for ambushes. While on patrol in the Zaidon, one of Griffin’s LAVs was attacked by a Suicide Vehicle-Borne IED (SVBIED). Fortunately no Americans were killed, but the blast seriously wounded the LAV’s driver. The explosion was so powerful that the bomber’s engine block was thrown 100 meters from the point of the blast, and little was found of his body. The Marines radioed Colonel Knight to report, “Sir, we found his balls in the road.”2