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  • Essay / Operation Anaconda: A Failed Mission of the 21st Century

    Operation Anaconda is America's first major conflict with the enemy since Desert Storm and the largest battle of the 21st century. This operation was a combined effort between branches of the U.S. services, ranging from Army Special Operations and Conventional Forces to USAF and Navy fire support, as well as Coalition Forces , the Afghan National Army (ANA), with the main push from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). ).Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The concept of Operation Anaconda is based on mission command principles, like any other mission or approach when it comes to planning an operation of any size. . According to the Army in ADP 6-0, it states: “Mission command requires competent forces, environmental mutual trust, and shared understanding among commanders, staffs, and subordinates. This requires effective teams and a command climate in which subordinates must seize opportunities and counter threats within the commander's intent. The seven principles of mission command are: competence; mutual trust; shared understanding; commander's intention; mission order; disciplinary initiative; Risk Acceptance. Operation Anaconda was overall a mission failure, as the CIA's intention was to capture Osama bin Laden before he was allowed to escape to neighboring Pakistan with the United States. mounted on eight KIAs and 50 wounded in combat. The planned three-day mission ended up being 17 days, from March 2 to 18, 2002. The mission launch was expected to fail from the start because it did not follow the broad outlines of mission command principles. Gen. Hagenbeck, division commander of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain DIV, did not have command authority over TF Dagger, a U.S. Special Operations Force (SOF) team, friendly Afghan forces and could only request close air support (CAS) or high-level fire missions. there is a risk that his application will not be approved on time or refused completely. General Hagenbeck was unable to visualize and conceptualize his operation with his staff because, on the one hand, he did not have overall command authority, he was at the mercy of the CIA and of his agenda, and on the other hand, there were too many senior officers who did not understand the overall mission. , and finally, not having the right people in his staff sections due to lack of timing, personnel and equipment. The United States had not learned lessons from its domestic service branches' previous failures in joint operations. This failed operation led to the creation of the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) which put a single commander in overall command and control of all U.S. coalition and NATO forces in the world war. against terrorism. He failed to capture Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. Operation Anaconda failed because leaders failed to use the seven principles of mission command. In order to succeed in any operation/mission, leaders must be competent in their job, whether it is a team leader or a division/coalition commander. They must know the responsibilities inherited from their assigned role, use all resources, personnel, information and knowledge to fully be a good commander. The generalHagenbeck lacked the concept of TF Dagger and the intelligence provided to him when planning the operation. Top Brass relied too much on ISR Predator Reconnaissance and had already developed a decisive battle plan based solely on Soley from drone intelligence and had no secondary or tertiary battle plans. When SOF teams were dispatched to the Shah-I-Khot Valley region to reaffirm intelligence from drone footage, they were caught off guard due to the RECON's single angle of approach from top of 1 dimension. Reports were immediately sent to Higher regarding deficiencies and threats from the field and were ignored, creating distrust on the part of the SOF community and conventional forces. The current leaders failed to realize that the Russians were too defeated in the same region by the same fighters they were facing. Distrust of SOF communities and conventional forces has eroded the second principle of mission command, mutual trust. Intentionally or not, General Hagenbeck and his staff created the division within an already fractured command team. Mutual trust stated in ADP 6-0: “Mutual trust is a confidence shared among commanders, subordinates and partners that they can be relied upon and are competent in carrying out the tasks assigned to them. assigned”. Mutual trust is highly essential to the success of mission command, it must be able to flow throughout the chain of command between subordinate units so that they can make independent decisions, thus making them more lethal by exercising their own initiative. This is evident throughout the planning and execution process of the entire Operation. An example shown in this article where SOF teams sent to train Afghan forces accustomed to guerrilla tactics never executed structured maneuvers. This training was supposed to take up to three to four months, but due to time constraints, Afghan forces trained for about a month, creating uncertainty about how reliably they would perform with U.S. structured conventional units. This left doubts among several commanders at different levels who all had a common understanding of the mission to surround and prevent bin Laden from carrying out their mission. In another article in Military Review Transformation, May-June 2002 edition, Adam Geibel illustrates the "misperception" of Afghan allied support when Commander Abdul Mateen Hassankheil had assembled about 1,500 fighters in the Shah-I-Kot valley and criticized “the United States does not understand our local politics; she doesn't know who to trust and trusts the wrong people. » CIA and Army planners were unresponsive to other intelligence and were misled about the number of enemies in the area and did not confirm the validity of the intelligence they received or information correctly. Checked. This miscalculation in the Army's ability to properly plan and execute a mission failed because it failed to grasp one of the principles of mission command. Another aspect of the principles of mission command is the shared understanding I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Throughout the article it is apparent that at all levels there was a shared understanding, an understanding of the mission set to a certain degree or level, as not all commanders were aware of all aspects of operations. The last time this type of confusion..