Task Force DAGGER

LTC Christopher K. Haas

When I met with him in September 2003, LTC Christopher K. Haas was the deputy commander for 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). During Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, Haas was the commander of 1st Battalion of the 5th SFG (A).

At the start of the war, according to Haas, his battalion was about fifty vehicles strong, packed to the gills with Green Beret and Aussie commandos, ready to breach through the berm in western Iraq on the first night of the war.

The Special Operators and their support had driven through the deserts of Jordan, down to Saudi Arabia, where there was an ideal location for them to infiltrate. Their support would be a unit from the Florida National Guard, who was there to do the actual breaching, while the SF troopers kept an eye out for signs of the enemy.

LTC Haas said his men had trained well for taking care of the breaches, with several months of drilling and focus on their executions before the war began. This made the Western Desert breaches incredibly smooth—the soldiers had it down to a fine art. Now it was time to apply that training.

The 5th SFG had just won their trial by combat in the deserts of Afghanistan. Their code name in Afghanistan, Task Force DAGGER, was resurrected once more, as they prepared to enter combat against a new and deadly foe.

Task Force DAGGER

CJSOTF-W, or Task Force DAGGER, was comprised of the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). They infiltrated into western Iraq through two berms along the Saudi Arabian–Iraqi borders, and moved into western Iraq to two locations, Ar Rutbah and Ar Ramadi. Some locations have been changed at the request of Special Operations Security. Courtesy: CIA World Factbook 2003

The Breach

5th SFG (A)’s Bravo and Charlie Companies were poised in their vehicles, ready to hear the presidential orders that would give them the green light to simultaneously invade Iraq. A Florida National Guard Infantry Company was with them; the Guardsmen carried pickaxes and entrenching tools. By hand they would have to transform an impasse of dirt and stone marking the boundary into Iraq. They would do it, according to operators on the ground that night, in an inhumanly rapid time of two hours and fifteen minutes.

Picking the ideal spots for Task Force DAGGER to breach Saddam’s barricades was not an easy task, however. Reconnaissance efforts were critical and Special Forces recon teams mapped out the best sites weeks in advance. The U.S. Air Force’s Operation SOUTHERN WATCH flew sorties on Iraqi guard posts and ADA (Air Defense Artillery) nets or ground systems below the 38th parallel. Key enemy guard posts that could spot the breach and tip off Saddam were blown up ahead of time.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, Saddam’s Iraqi border guards were “the weakest force they had in their inventory.” Losing the element of surprise was more of a concern than the fight they might put up, so SOUTHERN WATCH took flight and punched a few holes in Saddam’s security belt, guided in by the SF recon teams.

Bravo Company had a caravan of seventy-five vehicles for their detachment alone, which included their Australian SAS (Special Air Service) counterparts. The humvees and Pinkies (Land Rovers) were loaded down with rucksacks and gear, strapped to the bumpers and sides of the vehicle. Antennae and satellite uplinks bristled along the tops, and machine guns and belt-fed grenade launchers were mounted everywhere. It was a scene from out of a Mad Max movie, and viewing it through the green light of NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) added to the weirdness.

Here and there an SF sharpshooter stood atop the berm, facing the wind, and scanning the black horizon for signs of trouble. Through the green filter of the NVGs, the darkness of the desert took on an alien-like quality, looking like a scene from the surface of the moon. Bleak, flat, rocky soil spread out in all directions, making this giant berm the only geographic feature in what seemed like a hundred square miles.

The breach spot was twenty miles northwest of Judaiat al Hamir. Charlie Company would cross there, and enter a system of sha’ibs and wadis. Bravo Company would cross at a point north of there. These dry riverbeds would hopefully conceal the Green Berets and their vehicles as they raced northeast.

A recall plan was put into place in the event that Saddam Hussein decided to “play ball” with President Bush at the last second and the invasion was to be called off.

Radio silence was the SOP, except for code words to the HQ when necessary; these were limited to their codes for “Commencing the breach,” “First breach is complete,” “Second breach commenced,” “Second breach complete,” and “First vehicle into Iraq.” Also, there were code words for the companies when they hit their first phase lines or made contact with the enemy.

It was a clear and windy night; the moonlight was bright enough for some of the soldiers to keep their NVGs flipped up on top of their Kevlar helmets.

The operation was a “go.” Stone by stone, they pounded and tore away at the berm; one rock at a time it began to take the shape of a ramp instead of an obstacle.

The 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) was on standby with Little Birds and Black Hawks, as well as a flight of USAF fighters. If the Iraqis got wind of these breaches, there would be gunships and fast-movers all over them. As the men dug the breach, the helicopters were in the air, choppers loosing rockets and chain guns at several guard towers south of Bravo Company.

As the choppers “lit up” the Iraqi towers, the SF commanders monitored the enemy radio transmissions; if they weren’t wiped out, and called in for a QRF, the Coalition would know about it ahead of time.

Planning in this operation covered every variable the Green Berets could imagine. There was no room for errors, and they had warmed up for this with an unconventional war against the Taliban only a year earlier.

The vehicles topped the berm and crossed into Iraqi territory single file. In the military, this is called “ducks in a row.”

An American flag was raised at the breach spot. The flag blew wildly in the windy night as the Green Berets and Australian SAS drove into enemy territory, racing across the flat sands toward their first objective: several areas in Iraq’s Western Desert that were designated as being “primary launch sites” for missile attacks against Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait.

SCUD Hunters

The Special Forces went as deep as they could into Iraq. They drove through the night and into the day, trying to get as far as possible.

Haas and his men were to “deny” the Iraqis the capability to launch a SCUD missile attack on anyone: that was their mission.

The Australians with the 5th SFG (A) infiltrated by vehicle at the breach sites, and were also airlifted by the 160th, but their mission was different: find and secure potential landing strips in the desert, so that more forces could be brought in.

COL Mulholland’s intent was to be “omnipresent” in western Iraq within the first few hours, flood the west with as many Special Operations “bubbas” as he could, so that the Iraqis couldn’t really figure out “Where are they not?” and could launch something.

By going in simultaneously close and deep, the Special Forces would have the Iraqis totally overwhelmed.

The seeming battlefield omnipresence of the Special Forces was achieved within eighteen hours. At dawn the following morning, the fight started against the Iraqi Army’s counter-recon units, with a few minor contacts.

The morning of March 21 brought more counter-recon units to face the Green Berets. They came from the built-up areas in southwestern Iraq, and from the H-3 airfield in northwestern Iraq, just southeast of Ar Rutbah.

The area that the SF infiltrated was described as a “bowling alley,” with terrain that certainly favored the Iraqi defenders in their counter-recon positions.

Over the next three days, Haas’s men on the ground fought a mounted battle against the Iraqi counter-recon units—the Green Berets came out of it clearly on top of the enemy, with better weapons systems, better technology, better vehicles, and better shots.

The Iraqis attacked in pickup trucks with Soviet DHSK “Dishka” mounted anti-aircraft machine guns and five to ten soldiers in the back. Groups of ten or so pickup trucks came out at first. This number dwindled down to four or five pickups after the first few engagements against the four-vehicle Special Forces teams.

According to LTC Haas, “Every team saw combat, and I had ten from my battalion, and three from 3rd Battalion; every team saw combat within the first four or five days.”

When Haas saw the Iraqi tactic of trying to outnumber the SF team’s vehicles with their own, he switched his tactics and combined the teams into two-team, eight-vehicle patrols instead. The next time the Iraqis came out with ten vehicles, now it was ten on eight instead of ten on four.

The ability of the SF teams to utterly destroy the Iraqi opposition and not have to retrograde or go into a defense gave LTC Haas a feeling of confidence. “It lessened my anxiety. We weren’t running, we were destroying stuff,” Haas recalled.

Within the first four days, SF teams under Haas’s command destroyed over forty vehicles and killed more than one hundred Iraqi soldiers, just in the north, near Ar Rutbah. Charlie Company to the south had an equal damage assessment.

The Florida Army Reserve National Guard (FLARNG) Infantry Company attached to the 5th SFG (A) freed up SF to do what was most important: conduct the counter-recon fight. They had been working with 5th Group for over a month prior to the invasion and training full-time with the Special Forces.

Two of the FLARNG platoons were set up on strip alert as QRFs in case the Green Berets got in over their heads. They also guarded the H-1 Airfield inside Iraq and set up security on the resupply bundles when they came in.

Unfortunately, one of the Florida soldiers lost his life in a rollover crash at H-1 Airfield, but none fell on the battlefield.

A Company from the 10th Mountain Division eventually replaced the Guardsmen who supported 5th SFG (A). The Florida Guard unit was handed back over to Task Force SEMINOLE, responsible for taking care of detainees at H-1 that the SF teams picked up, as well as having a forward logistics site into the west to help out the British and Australians, who were deep inside Iraq.

Haas’s battalion had the most ground to cover in the west of Iraq, so he set up his men along the major, high-speed avenues of approach.

TF DAGGER shared a center sector with the Australians, while the British SAS moved along the north. The way that the sectors were divided up was based on history—the launch sites that Iraqis had used during the first Gulf War, good terrain analysis, and new intelligence from NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) imaging satellites.

Underpasses on highways were favored hiding spots for Saddam’s ballistic missiles, where they would hopefully be shielded from America’s big eyes in the sky.

Unfortunately, this tactic was outdated, so the Special Forces knew that they might have something new up their sleeves. Saddam’s most trusted intelligence lay within his Rocket Artillery Corps (the SCUD missile units), and they might try new techniques.

Previously, the SCUD units would lay in wait under a bridge or overpass and briefly emerge when a launch command was given. The missile would be raised and after the launch the vehicle would then retreat to its hide spot under the overpass. Civilian vehicles were used to transport missiles, parts, and supplies to the Iraqi soldiers manning the SCUDs, in an effort to keep a lower profile and keep satellite attention away.

This was Saddam’s “Ace in the Hole,” and he wanted to protect it as best he could.

Little did Saddam know that he would literally be an “ace in the hole” as well, when he was captured on December 13, 2003.

Based on the known ranges of SCUD missiles and the new locations of potential hide spots, the men of TF DAGGER knew they would have to go deep into Iraq to locate and destroy them. If they were to get to them in time, the Green Berets would have to go directly down Iraq’s major highway systems. Forces were arrayed along the highways to prevent Saddam from ordering his missiles to be moved to a new location.

GEN Mosley of the JFACC (Joint Forces Air Component Command) located at PSAB (Prince Sultan Air Base) in Saudi Arabia was the “big boss” of the western Iraq SF mission.

Mosley put together an incredible “air package” available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which provided “superb” air support for the western fight.

A-10 Warthogs, F-16 Eagles, E-3 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) command and control planes, British Tornados—somewhere between sixteen to twenty aircraft were flying CAS missions for Mulholland’s Green Berets and their SAS counterparts.

The ground to cover in the SCUD searches was broken up into “keypads,” i.e., the sectors to cover were laid out in a grid like the numbers on a touch-tone telephone. The air and ground recon efforts were stacked up adjacent to each other, with real-time SATCOM (SATellite COMmunications) keeping the Green Berets and SAS on the ground constantly in touch with Mulholland and the CJSOTF-W. The aircraft covered different ground than the teams, avoiding duplication and wasted effort, but were near enough so they could be called on for support if the need arose.

The aircraft helped SF teams out of a jam on several occasions. ODA 525 was almost overrun by ten to fifteen Iraqi vehicles. Their call on the SCUDNET saved the team. An F-16 Eagle broke the ceiling, came down “on deck,” and saw the enemy vehicles maneuvering on the detachment. The fast-mover “broke the enemy’s back there,” bringing in CAS right in close to the team and freeing up the ODA to counter-maneuver against the enemy.

The additions of Air Force combat controllers (TAC-Ps) to the SF teams allowed the Air Force’s two-fold campaign of air interdiction and support for the SCUD fight, to be de-conflicted and run smoothly without losing assets for either fight because of improper organization or tasking.

Every day, the Israelis threatened to enter the conflict should even one SCUD missile be launched at their country. With this in mind, Mulholland, Haas, and the other Task Force DAGGER commanders were kept constantly on their toes.

According to SF commanders, one of the key lessons learned in the Western Desert SCUD fight was the importance of a Joint Fires Element to prevent green-on-green, or fratricide, and to maximize what both the ODAs and the aircraft could excel at on the battlefield.

All of this had been rehearsed prior to the war in Iraq at an exercise called EV, or EARLY VICTOR, at Nellis AFB in the United States.

Classes included calls for fire, concept of Joint Fires Element, and “live flies,” with actual planes in the air and teams on the ground. How were teams to talk to the planes? How were the HQs going to talk to the AWACS? Code words and other intricacies of Saddam’s “SCUDNET” were worked out for over two weeks in January 2003, before deployment. Continual rehearsals were performed on-site once the Green Berets arrived in the Middle East, as well.

The art of CAS, with an SF soldier on the ground, allowed for incredible precision and eliminated a great many potential friendly fire incidents and civilian casualties. In LTC Haas’s Area of Operations (AO), in the city of Ar Rutbah, precision strikes on the Ba’ath Party headquarters were called in by Green Berets with their eyes on the target. There was much less of a chance of an errant bomb with an expert visually confirming the locations of enemy personnel. There was a Ba’ath Party defensive position in the city’s old prison as well, and the Saddam loyalists were using the prison’s fortifications—and the hapless inmates—to their advantage.

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is a major component of any army; operating without them is operating without communications and command and control (C&C). Major SIGINT stations in western Iraq were also a problem for Coalition bombers; without a man on the ground calling in the air strike, radio towers would be very hard to destroy. A skeletal steel frame and a tall, thin target could stay standing in place after scores of “dumb” bombing runs.

Again, it was the Special Forces eyes on the ground that saved an overexpenditure of ordnance as well as innocent lives. Those eyes on the ground also saved the Air Force time and money by driving up to radio towers and physically setting demo charges on the towers and blowing them up.

Another difficult target for the air assets was the Iraqis’ German-built Roland missile systems. Here, Haas’s men took out the crafty weapons systems with a combination of Javelin missiles, Mark-19 grenade launchers, and .50 cals.

The war in Iraq could not be won with air superiority alone, and if the Green Berets didn’t call in the air strikes, they were neutralizing the enemy with what they had on hand. Both in the north and the west of Iraq, the three-fold arsenal of the Special Forces was always .50 cals, Mark-19s, and Javelins. They could hold their own against the Iraqis with only these three, but it was their mutually beneficial relationship with the joint air components that made the Coalition SCUD hunters unbeatable.

Urban Warfare

After the SCUD threat had been eliminated, CJSOTF-W’s gaze was focused on removing the high-level Ba’ath Party officials from power. Throughout the southwestern cities of Iraq: Ar Rutbah, Nekayeb, Haburiyah, Mudaysis, the linkup of 5th Group’s ODAs with the local Iraqi forces led to quick HUMINT and subsequent raids on the suspected hideouts.

CA assessments were drawn up at once, and the Civil Affairs teams basically came in “right on top of” the A-Teams. The Civil Affairs activities included the basic necessities—food, water, and supplies.

From Combat to Nation Building

“The people of southern and western Iraq are self-sufficient and independent,” according to LTC Haas. “Hard core; they live pretty austere lives.”

The Special Forces Civil Affairs teams established a city government in Ar Rutbah. MAJ Jim Gravillis, the B Company/5th SFG (A) commander in Ar Rutbah, “did some historical, fantastic stuff,” according to Haas. Gravillis quickly put together a city election, organized a vote for mayor, and had a flag-raising ceremony celebrating Ar Rutbah’s liberation from the Ba’ath Party. A police force was reestablished; humanitarian NGOs were brought in to repair the hospitals and get the electricity and water up and running.

Combat operations were immediately replaced with nation building.

At the same time, MAJ Gravillis’s B Company ran two checkpoints: one in Tirbil, on the Jordanian–Iraqi border, and one up north on the Syrian–Jordanian border. 10th Mountain Division companies were brought in to augment the Special Forces teams. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of young Syrian males were turned away at the borders before they could enter Iraq to assist in the guerrilla fight against Coalition forces. They carried no weapons, but their MOs were easily discernible: lots of money (over $50,000 on some of the men) and directions on them as to who to link up with inside Iraq to fight the Americans.

The wannabe jihadists tried to come into Iraq on buses. There would be one bus with several families on it, then the next bus would be “loaded down” with fifty to sixty young males. They were interrogated and sent back across the border, while the “legitimate” families were allowed to proceed into Iraq to visit their relatives or reenter the country after fleeing before the start of the war. The 2nd BN/5th SFG (A) continued at Tirbil and Charlie Company from the 3rd BN/5th SFG (A) remained at the northern checkpoint.

According to Haas, MAJ Paul Ott “did fantastic work” in the Tehayab, Haburiyah, and Mudaysis airfield areas in the southwest. SF’s ability to blend in and care for the “host-nation” populace made the areas under their control very safe and friendly. They had gained experience in helping people in Afghanistan and this paid off when they built a rapport with the local Iraqis.

It became such a friendly, permissive environment for U.S. forces that LTC Haas was able to reposition Ott’s company into the Akashat area to examine the phosphate mines there and to perform linkups with locals in that vicinity. Periodically, an A-Team or two would be sent back to their original southwest areas to ensure that everything was still under control. The close-knit tribal government there worked very efficiently and the locals were supplemented by airdrops of food and medical supplies, as well as work on their electricity and water sources.

This was dubbed by Haas as an “economy of force,” which was moved northward to address problems along the Syria–Iraq border, where the ODAs were needed the most.