In March, 2002, on a frozen mountain top in eastern Afghanistan, seven American servicemen were killed in the deadliest special operations engagement of the entire war so far. >> [music] >> Three helicopters were shot up. Two SEAL teams were driven off a 10,000 ft peak by entrenched Al-Qaeda fighters who were never supposed to be there.

And the whole time sitting in a hidden observation post just below the fighting, a handful of Australian soldiers watched it happen through their scopes. They had walked into position days earlier. No helicopters, no engines, no noise, just boots in the snow in the dark and silence. Those Australians would end up being the reason the entire mountain top didn’t fall.

If you enjoy deep dives into elite units and operations like this, consider liking the video and subscribing. It helps more than you think. This is the story of Operation Anaconda, the Battle of Roberts Ridge, and why the Australian SASR succeeded at a mission that had already gone catastrophically wrong twice. To understand what happened on Tora Bora mountain, you need to go back three months.

Because this story really starts with a failure. In December 2001, the United States had Osama bin Laden cornered in the in the cave complex at Tora Bora in the White Mountains near the Pakistani border. Special Operations Forces, CIA paramilitaries, and Afghan allies had him surrounded. And then he slipped through. Whether it was a lack of conventional blocking forces, reliance on Afghan warlords who may have been paid off, or just [music] the sheer difficulty of the terrain, bin Laden and hundreds of his fighters escaped across the border into Pakistan’s [music] tribal areas. It was a humiliation that reverberated through every command center from Bagram to the Pentagon. So when intelligence analysts at Joint Interagency Task Force Counterterrorism started picking up signals in January 2002 that Al-Qaeda fighters were regrouping, the military paid very close attention. And the signals pointed to one place, the Shah-i-Kot

Valley. The name means place of the king in Pashto, [music] and the valley sits in Paktia province, about 60 mi south of the city of Gardez. >> [music] >> It is roughly 9 km long and 5 km wide, flanked by towering mountains on all sides. During the Soviet-Afghan War, mujahedin fighters had turned this valley into a fortress.

[music] They dug trench systems into the ridgelines. They built bunkers and firing positions with overlapping fields of fire. They had beaten the Red Army here twice. Now the sons and grandsons of those same fighters, along [music] with foreign jihadists from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, >> [music] >> and across the Arab world were settling back into those same positions.

American intelligence estimated there were maybe 200 lightly armed fighters in the valley. They were wrong by a factor of five. They were closer to a thousand, and they were armed with DShK heavy machine guns, recoilless [music] rifles, mortars, RPGs, and an actual artillery battery. The plan to clear them out was called Operation Anaconda.

Like the snake, the idea was to constrict, squeeze the enemy from multiple directions and crush them. Afghan militia forces would drive in from the west as the hammer. American infantry from the 10th Mountain Division and 101st [music] Airborne would air assault into blocking positions on the eastern ridges as the anvil.

It was supposed to take three days. It would take 17. And before any of the conventional forces moved in, small teams of special operators were going to slip into the mountains around the valley to act as the coalition’s eyes. This is where the story splits into two very different approaches to the same problem.

And that split is what makes everything that follows possible. On one side you had the advanced force operations teams run by Lieutenant Colonel Pete Blaber, a Delta Force officer. Blaber was obsessive about one thing above everything [music] else. Do not let the enemy know you are coming. He refused to use helicopters for his reconnaissance insertions.

Helicopters were loud. Helicopters attracted attention. If Al-Qaeda fighters in those mountains heard rotor blades echoing through the valley at night, they would know something was about to happen. So Blaber sent his teams in on foot and on modified Polaris all-terrain vehicles, [music] moving through free freezing mountain passes in total darkness.

His Delta operators from teams code-named India and Juliet [music] crawled into position over multiple nights, sometimes through thigh-deep snow, [music] sometimes in blinding storms, and set up hidden observation posts on the ridgelines overlooking the valley. They moved [music] slowly. They moved carefully. And they arrived undetected.

Working alongside these Delta teams [music] were Australian SASR soldiers. The Australians had been in Afghanistan almost from the beginning. One Squadron SASR arrived in the country in November 2001, barely 2 months after the September 11th attacks, making them among the very first coalition special forces on the ground.

And there is a reason they were trusted with this kind of work. The SASR was founded in 1957, modeled on the on the British Special Air Service. Their motto is the same, who dares wins. Their base sits in Swanbourne, >> [music] >> a quiet suburb of Perth, Western Australia, about as far from any battlefield as you can get.

The regiment is small, just three rotating Sabre Squadrons, each composed of roughly 80 operators. What makes them different is their doctrine. The SASR was built from the ground up for one specific thing, getting into places they are not supposed to be, watching, listening, and getting out without anyone knowing they were ever there.

In Vietnam, the Viet Cong gave them a name, Ma Rong. It translates to phantoms of the jungle. During their entire deployment in Vietnam, the Australian and New Zealand SAS killed between 492 and 598 enemy fighters and lost only two men killed in action. Two. In years of jungle warfare, that ratio was not achieved through overwhelming firepower.

It was achieved through invisibility. And in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, those same skills were about to save American lives. Before Operation Anaconda launched, an SASR patrol, accompanied by a United States Air Force combat controller, infiltrated the area around Tora Bora on foot. They moved at night.

They found a concealed position. They set up an observation post. And then they did what Australian SAS operators do better than almost anyone on Earth. They disappeared. No radio chatter that could be intercepted. No thermal signature big enough to register on a scan. No movement visible to anyone watching the slopes.

They became part of the mountain. Now on the other side of this equation, you had the SEALs. On the evening of March 3rd, 2002, two days into Operation Anaconda, the battle in the valley was going badly. >> [music] >> The Afghan militia hammer had never arrived. They ran into Al-Qaeda fire west of the valley and turned back.

The American infantry dropped into blocking positions on the eastern ridges, discovered that the enemy was not on the valley floor as expected. The enemy was above them on the high ground, dug into the same positions the mujahedin had used against the Soviets. Mortar rounds and heavy machine gun fire rained down on the coalition [music] forces from ridgelines and mountain peaks.

Attack helicopters from the 101st Airborne were getting shredded. Within 90 minutes of the first wave, two Apaches were so badly damaged they had to leave the fight. The situation was deteriorating. The man in charge, Major General Franklin Hagenbeck, needed eyes on the southern end of the valley.

That meant someone had to get to the top of Tora Bora. Tora Bora sits at 10,469 ft. It is the tallest peak bordering the Shah-i-Kot. And from its summit, you can see the entire southern approach [music] to the valley. It was the perfect spot for an observation post. It was also exactly where Al-Qaeda had positioned a DShK [music] heavy machine gun, a network of camouflage bunkers, [music] and a group of fighters who were very much ready for visitors.

Two SEAL teams from DEVGRU were tasked with the mission. [music] Mako 30, led by Senior Chief Petty Officer Britt Slabinski, would take the peak itself. Mako 21 would link up with Delta Juliet team at the northern end. Their original plan was sound. The SEALs would be inserted by helicopter at a point about 1,400 m east of the peak at a lower elevation.

From there, they would patrol uphill on foot under the cover of darkness, using their night vision to spot and neutralize any threats along the way. 4 hours of climbing, arrive before dawn, set up the observation post. Classic special operations work. And then the delays started. The first helicopter, Razor 03, developed engine problems.

Replacement aircraft had to be dispatched. [music] By the time the SEALs were airborne again, they had burned through their cushion of darkness. There was no longer enough time to land at the offset point and climb to the summit before daylight. Slabinski wanted to postpone 24 hours, wait for the next night, and do it right. He radioed back to Bagram.

His bosses said no. The troops in the valley needed observation support now. Get to the top of that mountain tonight. So the plan changed. Instead of landing below and climbing up, the helicopter would fly directly to the summit and drop the team right on top. What nobody told Szubinski, and what would haunt the after-action reports for years, was that another special operations team had [music] tried to reach Takur Ghar the day before and been turned back by enemy fighters in the area. That information never made it to the SEAL team leader. Communication channels between different task forces had fractured. Different commands were talking on different frequencies. Critical intelligence was falling through the cracks. An AC-130 Spectre gunship, call sign Nail 2-2, flew a reconnaissance pass over the summit. The crew reported no enemy activity. The mountain top looked clear. It was not clear. At approximately 2:30 in the morning on

March 4th, Razor 0-3 flared over the peak of Takur Ghar. The ramp dropped and the mountain erupted. RPG fire struck the helicopter’s left electrical compartment. Heavy machine gun rounds punched through the fuselage. In the chaos, as the pilot fought to pull the stricken aircraft back into the air, Petty Officer First Class Neil Roberts fell from the open ramp.

Crew Chief Sergeant Dan Madden and another operator grabbed for his pack but lost their grip. Roberts dropped about 10 ft into the deep snow [music] covering the summit. The damaged Chinook limped away and crash-landed nearly 7 mi from the peak. Roberts was alone on the mountain top, surrounded.

Predator drone footage captured what happened next. Roberts activated his infrared strobe to mark his position. He fought. He used his sidearm and grenades against the fighters closing in on him. Reports suggest he held out for close to an hour before he was overwhelmed. Quick Reaction Force soldiers who reached the peak later found a helmet with a bullet hole through it.

It was clear that whoever last wore it had been shot in the head. The rest of Mako 30 was not going to leave him there. A second helicopter, Razor 0-4, flew back to the peak to insert the remaining SEALs. They jumped into the snow and immediately came under withering fire. Air Force Combat Controller Technical Sergeant John Chapman moved uphill and engaged fighters in a concealed bunker at close range, killing at least two of them before he was hit and went down.

Two more SEALs were wounded. The team [music] leader ordered his men to break contact. They believed Chapman was dead. He was not. Predator footage analyzed years later showed a figure, almost certainly Chapman, regaining consciousness and fighting alone from a bunker against multiple attackers coming from three directions.

He fought for nearly an hour. He was killed approximately 45 [music] seconds before the first rescue helicopter appeared over the ridgeline. In 2018, Chapman was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Mako 30 fought their way off the peak and called for the Quick Reaction Force. A Ranger platoon from the 75th Ranger Regiment, led by Captain Nate [music] Self, launched from Bagram.

Two Chinook helicopters, Razor 0-1 and Razor 0-2, carried them to the mountain. Razor 0-1 touched down on Takur Ghar at approximately 6:10 in the morning. It was now broad daylight. [music] Every Al-Qaeda fighter on the mountain could see them perfectly. As the ramp dropped, [music] a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the helicopter.

Machine gun fire raked the cabin. Private First Class Matt Commons, Sergeant Brad Krows, and Specialist Mark Anderson were killed. [music] Commons and Krows were cut down on the ramp. Anderson was shot inside the aircraft. The surviving Rangers and air crew crawled into cover behind a small rise and began returning fire.

>> [music] >> Razor 0-2 had been diverted to Gardez. When it returned with the rest of the Quick Reaction Force, those men joined the fight. The Rangers and Special Tactics airmen clawed their way up the slope, bounding forward in fire teams, but the weight of enemy fire from fortified positions above them was simply too heavy.

Senior Airman Jason Cunningham, a pararescueman, was mortally wounded during an enemy counterattack at midday. He would die 6 hours later. The wounded were refused medical evacuation during daylight. Another helicopter landing on that peak would almost certainly be another helicopter shot down. The situation was desperate.

American forces were pinned on an exposed mountain top. Three helicopters had been hit. Seven men were dead. Dozens were wounded. Enemy fighters were maneuvering to overrun the position, and that is when the Australians made their presence known. The SASR patrol had been there the entire time. They had watched the first helicopter get hit.

They had watched Roberts fall. They had watched the Rangers land into a firestorm. They had stayed hidden, stayed invisible, because that is exactly what they were trained to do. Their observation post was close enough to the fighting to see everything, but concealed [music] well enough that not a single Al-Qaeda fighter, not a single thermal scan, not a single set of eyes had detected [music] them.

Now, with American forces about to be overwhelmed, the Australians went to work. United States Air Force Combat Controller Jim Hoteling, attached to the SASR team, began coordinating precision air strikes. >> [music] >> From their concealed position, the Australians could see what the pinned-down Rangers could not. They could see the enemy positions.

They could see the bunkers. They could see the approach routes the Al-Qaeda fighters were using to try to flank and overrun the American perimeter. Hoteling started calling in strikes. F-15E Strike Eagles and AC-130 gunships. The coordinates were precise because the eyes on the ground were steady, hidden, and had been watching the enemy’s movements for days.

The air strikes were devastating. Bomb after bomb slammed into Al-Qaeda positions around the peak. Fighters who had been maneuvering to assault the Ranger perimeter were cut apart. The pressure on the American forces eased. The overrun that had seemed inevitable did not come. Multiple coalition air strikes, coordinated from that one hidden SASR observation post, prevented the Al-Qaeda fighters from finishing what they had started.

The Australians did not fire a shot that gave away their position. They did not need to. They had something more powerful than rifles. They had eyes, radios, and the patience >> [music] >> to use both. At 8:15 that evening, nearly 18 hours after the first helicopter was hit, the surviving Americans were finally evacuated from Takur Ghar.

The Quick Reaction Force, the remnants of Mako 30, and the bodies of the fallen were pulled off the mountain under the cover of darkness. Seven Americans died on that peak. 12 more were wounded. The mountain was eventually taken, but at a cost that nobody had planned for. The commander of the Australian SASR force in Afghanistan was awarded the United States Bronze Star for his unit’s outstanding contribution to the war on terrorism.

The citation specifically noted the actions of the SASR operators and their attached combat controller in coordinating the air strikes that saved the American position on Takur Ghar. Two additional SASR operators, working with the 10th Mountain Division elsewhere in the valley, also earned recognition for their contributions during Operation Anaconda.

The Australians fought across the entire battle, not just on Takur Ghar, providing intelligence, calling in strikes, and keeping American commanders informed of what was actually happening on the ground. So why did the Australians succeed where [music] the SEALs ran into disaster? It is not about who was braver.

Every man on that mountain, American, Australian, whoever, showed extraordinary courage. Neil Roberts fought alone against overwhelming odds. [music] John Chapman gave his life covering men he did not even know. The Rangers charged into fire that would have broken most units. Courage was never the issue. The difference was doctrine, philosophy, [music] how each unit approached the same fundamental problem of getting onto a mountain occupied by the enemy.

Doctrine mattered. The SEAL teams were inserted by helicopter. Helicopters are fast. Helicopters let you cover distance that would take days on foot in a matter of minutes. The American military loves helicopters for exactly that reason. Speed, mobility, the ability to put operators anywhere on the battlefield >> [music] >> in hours. Speed was the advantage.

The problem is that helicopters are also loud, visible, and predictable. Al-Qaeda knew the coalition used helicopters for everything. They positioned their DShK heavy machine gun to cover the most likely helicopter landing zones. When Razor 0-3 appeared over the summit of Takur Ghar, the fighters on that mountain were not surprised.

They were ready. Predictable. [music] The Australians walked. They moved on foot at night through terrain so harsh that most people would not survive a camping trip in it, let alone a covert military infiltration. They moved slowly. They stopped frequently. They checked their surroundings. They controlled their noise, their light, their thermal signature.

It took them days to cover the distance that a helicopter could cross in minutes. Concealment mattered. And when they arrived, nobody knew they were there. That is the SASR’s entire reason for being. The regiment was not designed to kick down doors. It was designed to be invisible, to watch, to listen, to wait, and then at exactly the right moment to bring down the hammer from a position the enemy never knew existed. Invisible.

It is the same approach that earned them the name Phantoms of the Jungle 30 years earlier in Vietnam. Small patrols, five or six men, moving through enemy territory like ghosts. In years of combat operations in the jungles of Phuoc Tuy province and beyond, the Australian SASR lost only only two men killed in action while accounting for nearly 500 confirmed enemy kills.

They achieved that ratio not through superior weapons or technology. They achieved it because the enemy never knew where they were. Phantoms. Lieutenant Colonel Pete Blaber, the Delta Force officer who ran the reconnaissance operations for Anaconda, understood this instinctively. He refused to use helicopters for his own teams for the exact same reason.

Do not let the enemy know you are coming was not just a preference for Blaber. It was a commandment. His Delta operators and the Australian SASR patrols infiltrated on foot and on ATVs in darkness and bad weather because the alternative was announcing your arrival to a thousand entrenched fighters who had been beating conventional armies in these mountains for decades.

Commandment. The tragedy of Takur Ghar was not a failure of courage or skill on the part of the SEAL teams. It was a failure of approach compounded by communication breakdowns, time pressure from higher command, and intelligence gaps that left operators flying blind >> [music] >> into a prepared enemy position.

Failure of approach. The SEAL team leader wanted to delay. He wanted to wait for the next night. He wanted to do it the way it should have been done with a low altitude insertion and a long foot patrol to the summit. His bosses overruled him, and in the rush to get eyes on the southern valley, the SEALs were pushed into a direct helicopter insertion onto a peak that the enemy had already fortified. Overruled.

The Australians, by contrast, had time. They had been in position before the battle even started. Their approach was patient, deliberate, [music] and grounded in a doctrine that values concealment over speed. When the crisis came, they did not need to scramble. Patient. They did not need to be inserted. They were already there.

Operation Anaconda officially ended on March 18th, 2002, 17 days after it began. Coalition forces estimated they had killed between 200 and 300 enemy fighters. Eight Americans died, seven of them on Takur Ghar. 80 were wounded. The Afghan militia that was supposed to be the hammer never reached the valley on the first day.

The enemy strength, the enemy positions, and the enemy’s willingness to stand and fight were all dramatically underestimated. The SASR withdrew from Afghanistan in November 2002 after all three saber squadrons had rotated through the country. They would return in 2005 as the conflict evolved into an into a longer counterinsurgency.

[music] The battle for Takur Ghar became one of the most studied engagements in modern special operations history. It reshaped how the American military thought about joint command and control. It exposed the dangers of interservice [music] communication failures, and it demonstrated, in the starkest possible terms, the difference between approaching a problem with speed and approaching it with patience.

The Australians never sought the spotlight for what they did on that mountain. That is not how the SASR operates. Their contributions were classified for years, acknowledged mainly through the quiet awarding of an American decoration to their commander and brief mentions in after-action reports.

[music] US Special Operations Command later singled out the SASR patrol as being instrumental [music] in keeping alive the doomed American position on Robert’s Ridge. Without the precision air strikes coordinated from that hidden observation post, the Rangers and surviving SEALs on the mountaintop would have faced a very different outcome.

Seven men went up that mountain and did not come home. Their sacrifice deserves to be remembered. So does the truth about how they ended up there and who it was sitting invisible in the snow that helped make sure no more followed them. The Australian SASR’s motto has been the same since the regiment was founded in 1957. Who dares wins.

On Takur Ghar in March 2002, the men who dared to walk instead of fly were the ones who won. If you found this story as gripping as I did, you should see the video on screen right now. It covers another mission >> [music] >> where a small unit of special forces changed the outcome of an [music] entire battle against impossible odds.

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