Senior Chief Petty Officer Britt Slab Slabinski
Senior Chief Petty Officer Britt Slabinski
Commander, SEAL Team Mako 30
Do you have reservations about attempting the initial landing on the Takur Ghar peak instead of landing farther away and moving there on foot?
Why did you decide to return to the mountain to rescue Neil Roberts?
Senior Chief Petty Officer Britt Slabinski was a longtime Navy Sea Air Land (SEAL) operator and the commander of a team dubbed “Mako 30,” an elite reconnaissance unit during Operation Anaconda. During the operation, his team was assigned to establish a watch position at the highest point overlooking the Shah-i-kot Valley, a 10,000-plus-foot peak called Takur Ghar.
Background
In his mid-30s at the start of the war in Afghanistan, Britt “Slab” Slabinski was already a seasoned and well-respected special operator.[1] He had wiry build and reddish blond hair, and often sported a beard when deployed.[2] In the words of his friends and colleagues, Slab was “built like a marathon runner, he was quiet and introspective, and never wasted words.”[3]
Slab also had a dark sense of humor. In one of his first missions in Afghanistan, he led a team to rescue the crew of a downed KC-130 refueling aircraft. After trudging through waist-deep snow, he found the aircraft wreckage, leaking jet fuel and ready to explode at any moment. Using the Maglite attached to his pistol for light, he entered the aircraft and found a crew member whose foot was trapped under a structural beam. Slab joked, “Dude, I gotta cut your foot off to get you out of here.” Needless to say, the airman started screaming, before Slab said, “I’m just kidding.” Slab, however, thought, “Hey, we could all be dead in a minute, so what else is there to do but put some humor in it?” He wrenched the crewman from the beam and carried him out, saving the airman’s foot and earning the Navy/Marine Corps Lifesaving Medal in the process.[4]
Slab’s path to Afghanistan started decades earlier. He came from a military family; his father served as a member of the Underwater Demolitions Team, the predecessor to the SEALs, from 1953 to 1957, but subsequently left the service — a decision he always regretted. Slab’s father would regale his young son with his exploits and take Slab to his military reunions.
Slab’s family life, however, was not happy. His father never fully adjusted to civilian life and became increasingly bitter over time. As his home life deteriorated, Slab wanted to get away. After graduating high school, he tried college briefly, but found that it was not for him. And so, Slab followed in his father’s footsteps and in 1986 and joined the Navy.[5]
Slab became a SEAL right after graduating boot camp and trained as a medic. Slab found his niche in this secretive world, joining ever more elite units. In 1994, Slab became a member of Joint Special Operations Command. Two years later, he became the commander for an elite reconnaissance unit of SEALs.[6] Throughout the 1990s, he fought in many of America’s “small wars” around the world. Of note, he served in Bosnia, where he met an Army Delta Force officer named Pete Blaber, whom he later worked with during Operation Anaconda.[7] Throughout these missions, Slab earned a reputation for competence. In Blaber’s estimation, Slab was “one of the most proficient operators he’d ever known,”[8] and a man he inherently trusted.[9]
Operation Anaconda: The Plan
Operation Enduring Freedom, the campaign to destroy al Qaeda and topple the Taliban that had harbored them, began October 7, 2001. The combination of Army Special Forces, U.S. airpower and Afghan militias routed the Taliban more quickly than had been expected, but al Qaeda fighters still remained a focus of operations. By early January 2002, intelligence reports identified al Qaeda remnants assembling in villages of the Shah-i-kot valley. Shah-i-kot was located in the mountainous and remote Paktia province along the border with Pakistan, roughly 80 miles southeast of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. (See attached map of Afghanistan for the Shah-i-kot’s regional location) Senior U.S. leaders were concerned that the enemy would flee over the border to Pakistan, as they had a month before during the battle of Tora Bora. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) intelligence had been tracking developments in the Shah-i-kot and CENTCOM’s forces in the region began drafting a plan to target the remaining pocket of al Qaeda fighters and prevent their escape into Pakistan.
The terrain of the Shah-i-kot valley made for a difficult operating environment. The valley itself was 5,000 feet above sea level. Two parallel valleys — the Upper Shah-i-kot and the Lower Shah-i-kot — ringed by steep mountains comprised the area. The eastern valley, the Upper Shah-i-kot, was at a significantly higher elevation and was not populated. The Lower Shah-i-kot (later just known as the Shah-i-kot valley) was five miles long and more than two miles wide.[10] A high ridgeline, which was four miles long and a mile wide, rose several thousand feet above the plateau and formed the western wall of the valley.[11] It was nicknamed “the Whale” due to its shape, which reminded the Army planners of a prominent ridge at their premier training center. The eastern ridgeline of this valley was even steeper. Its highest point was 10,469 feet above sea level and was known as Takur Ghar.[12] A narrow ridgeline protruded into the southern end of the valley and was called “the Finger.”[13] The floor of the valley was habitable, with roughly a couple hundred Afghans living in each of four small villages: Marzak, Babulkhel, Serkhankhel and Zerki Kale.[14] The mountains were riddled with caves, which offered ideal hiding spots for enemy fighters. Whoever controlled the decisive terrain along the ridgelines, specifically those on the Whale, the Finger and the eastern ridge, had an important advantage.[15] (For an overview of the Shah-i-kot, with both its uninhabited upper valley and the lower valley where Operation Anaconda would take place, see attached map, “The Shah-i-kot Valley”)
The campaign to crush the al Qaeda presence in the Shah-i-kot would be called Operation Anaconda, and would involve “Task Force Mountain,” a hastily-assembled group of U.S. conventional forces, Army Special Forces (included to equip, train and help to lead sympathetic Afghan forces) and air support — as well as a collection of Afghan militiamen. Task Force Mountain, directed by Major General Franklin “Buster” Hagenbeck, who had his forward headquarters at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, would not be the only coalition force on the battlefield, however.
Operation Anaconda included a parallel command structure, “Task Force 11,” answering not to Hagenbeck but instead to the overall regional commander, the chief of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks in Tampa, Fla. In fact, Task Force 11 also reported indirectly to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, N.C. Over the years, JSOC’s elite or “black” special operations forces – Navy SEALs, Delta Force and Army Rangers – responsible for killing and capturing high-value targets across Afghanistan, had become a kind of separate service. JSOC’s commander, Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey, also liked to rotate units and commanders regularly, believing that his command would bear a large burden in the “global war on terror,” which he thought would be a long and arduous campaign. Thus Brigadier General Gregory Trebon, a former transport pilot for special operations forces, oversaw Task Force 11, playing a key, if also controversial, role in the campaign in the Shah-i-kot. Slab and his Navy SEAL team would be grouped under Task Force 11, and would suffer from the personality conflicts within the organization, particularly that between Trebon and Blaber, whose “Advanced Force Operations” reconnaissance teams were a key element in Operation Anaconda. (For a diagram of the command arrangements, see attached, “Chain of Command”)
Slab and Mako 30 Arrive in the Shah-i-kot
Slab’s involvement in Operation Anaconda began relatively late in the game, on the morning of March 3, 2002; the battle had begun the day before. The SEAL leader and his team arrived in the special operations “safe house” in Gardez, 18 miles north of the Shah-i-kot. By this point, the opening moves of the main conventional fight of the battle had taken place — with the Afghan attempt to enter the valley turned back and a furious contest erupting on March 2 between the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division troops who landed in the valley and the al Qaeda troops dug in atop the Whale, the Finger and the eastern ridge of the Shah-i-kot.
Slab was the leader of one of the two SEAL teams — code-named Mako 21 and 30 respectively — who arrived in Gardez within hours of the start of the operation. Unlike other SEAL units that focus on direct action (that is, the “kill or capture” missions of high-value targets, such as the raid that ended Osama bin Laden’s life), Slab’s team was a reconnaissance outfit. To make matters yet more confusing, the SEALs involved in Operation Anaconda were part of Task Force Blue, or the Navy component of Task Force 11. Blaber’s reconnaissance unit, however, was based in the Gardez safe house and had been operating in the Shah-i-kot area for weeks already. For reasons of service politics, Slab did not report directly to Blaber – who was the “on-scene” commander – but rather to Navy Lieutenant Commander Vic Hyder. Hyder, too, was a late arrival to the Shah-i-kot. Hyder was an officer with a lackluster reputation and had already been cited for “bad judgment” in previous operations in Afghanistan.[16] Nonetheless, he wanted to play a role in the battle that was raging, and Trebon, too, felt that Task Force 11 was in a position to play a decisive role.
Blaber and many others in the Gardez safe house were caught off guard by the SEALs’ arrival. Blaber thought most of the special operations missions would fall to his own unit. Hyder, however, informed him that Trebon and Hyder had other plans: Mako 30 and Mako 21 would be inserted into the Shah-i-kot that night, replacing the three observation posts that Blaber had established days before. Blaber called the deputy commanding general of Task Force 11 and complained that this plan was unnecessarily risky, but was overruled. Frustrated, Blaber then pulled his old friend Slab aside and expressed his concern about inserting SEALs who were unfamiliar with terrain and the enemy presence in the valley on such short notice.
Slab responded, “I totally agree, but I do what I’m told, and we’re being told to go in tonight.”[17] While Blaber’s men had spent weeks studying the terrain, talking to locals and reading everything they could lay their hands on about the Shah-i-kot (particularly the ill-fated Soviet campaigns there), Slab and his men would be entering an ongoing battle with little idea of the terrain and enemy force that awaited them.
At about 3 p.m. on March 3, Blaber and Hyder devised a rough plan for how the SEALs should be employed. As the reconnaissance team, Mako 30 would establish an observation post on Takur Ghar, the 10,469-foot mountaintop that overlooked the Shah-i-kot valley and the highest point in the area. From atop Takur Ghar, the SEALs should be able to see the operation unfold and help direct the battle below. Appreciating the value of the “high ground,” Blaber had wanted one of his three initial observation posts to be set on Takur Ghar, but Blaber’s team had been unable to reach the mountaintop when inserted a few days before, settling instead for a position in the north of the valley.
Blaber’s plan for Slab’s team’s insertion was relatively straightforward. By 10:30 p.m. that night, Mako 30 would stage on the landing strip near the Gardez safe house and an hour later, at 11:30 p.m., helicopters would drop Mako 30 about 1,300 meters east of the Takur Ghar. From there, under cover of darkness, the SEALs would move on foot to the mountaintop and occupy it. While intelligence personnel already spotted enemy positions at the top of the mountain (although whether Slab and Mako 30 were told about this later became a point of dispute), Blaber felt that the SEALs’ night-vision goggles, better marksmanship and ability to call in airpower would allow them to either defeat any opposition or, failing that, to successfully break contact and leave the area.[18]
Blaber’s original plan, however, quickly ran into two problems: The SEALs were not keen about making the tiring climb up to the top of Takur Ghar. During the afternoon, Slab proposed alternative insertion points closer to the top, but Blaber argued that this approach would risk compromising Mako 30’s observation post on the mountaintop, because al Qaeda fighters would see and hear the helicopters land and then attack the small reconnaissance team as it moved into position.[19] At 10 p.m., a mere 30 minutes before the SEALs’ helicopters should have arrived, Hyder went to Blaber with an even bolder plan—to land directly on top of the mountain. Incredulous at Hyder’s tactical naiveté—one of the cardinal rules of inserting observation posts by helicopter was never to land on the observation post — Blaber vetoed the plan.[20] If landing close to one’s hide site was risky, landing on top of it was extraordinarily dangerous — as was changing a plan only moments before an operation began.
The second problem came with the helicopter movement of the SEALs. At 11:23 p.m., the two Chinook transport helicopters landed at the Gardez airstrip and picked up the SEALs. At 11:41 p.m., however, a B-52 bomber airstrike in the area prevented AC-130 gunships, aircraft with sophisticated technology able to detect body heat from the sky, from verifying whether Mako 30’s intended landing zone was free of enemy activity, forcing the helicopters to abort the mission and return to Gardez. While the team waited on the airstrip, one of the helicopters developed engine trouble and needed to be swapped out with a new helicopter from Bagram. For this to be accomplished, however, Mako 30’s infiltration time would need to be pushed later, leaving the team with an insufficient amount of time to move from the original landing zone to the mountaintop under the cover of darkness.[21]
The SEALs, therefore, faced a choice. Slab argued that the mission should be delayed 24 hours. Hyder called his superiors at Task Force Blue and requested the delay. The Task Force Blue operations officer denied the request and said that Mako 30 needed to be in place, on top of Takur Ghar, that night. Without talking to Blaber — technically still in charge but cut out of the command chain since Hyder’s arrival — or anyone in the Advance Force Operations unit, Hyder, Slab and the pilots decided to make up for lost time by landing on the mountaintop, despite Blaber’s warnings against this course of action.[22]
When Hyder was asked by a pilot if the mountaintop was a safe landing zone, the lieutenant commander replied, “It should be no problem — I’ve seen imagery.” Here, the difference in philosophy between some whose trust in the power of technology and above-ground imagery (collected by AC-130 gunships, Predator drones and satellites) to provide information and those who sought additional sources of intelligence was striking. Peter Blaber had been studying the Shah-i-kot for weeks, with men in the valley as well as extensive research on the valley’s history, but was not consulted.
Of course, this lack of communication may have drawn as much on a clash of personality between Hyder — and above him, Trebon — and Blaber as any difference in philosophy. Hyder had begun communicating with Task Force Blue in Bagram on a separate radio frequency, without telling Blaber; this meant that not only could Blaber not opine or intervene, but his deputy, “Jimmy,” was also cut out of the loop. Jimmy was receiving intelligence about an enemy presence on Takur Ghar, but, unaware of Hyder’s plan to send Slab’s Mako 30 to the mountaintop, did not pass it to Task Force Blue. As far as Jimmy knew, the decision not to land on the Takur Ghar peak already had been made.
Slab was reassured by one piece of news, however: an Air Force AC-130 gunship, having scanned Takur Ghar with its heat sensors, had just reported that the mountaintop was clear of enemy fighters. In any case, if Mako 30 was to reach Takur Ghar before daybreak, a direct landing on the mountaintop would be the only way. At 2:20 a.m., on March 4th, Slab and Mako 30 lifted off from Gardez once again, headed for Takur Ghar.[23]