16 Air Assault Brigade: Britain's Rapid Reaction Force

INTRODUCTION

Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, 24 September 2006

Down the flight line at the massive NATO airbase in the barren desert of southern Afghanistan a pair of British Army Air Corps (AAC) Apache attack helicopters were returning from a mission, empty weapon pylons indicating that they had seen serious action a few miles away where Canadian and British forces were mopping up Taliban resistance after the conclusion of Operation Medusa. At the other end of the base, RAF Harrier jump jet pilots were walking around their aircraft in preparation for the third close air support mission of the day to protect British paratroopers defending isolated district centres in war-torn Helmand province. Nearby, RAF engineers and army air dispatch experts were packing pallets of water, food and ammunition to be parachuted out of the back of C-130 Hercules transports to the besieged paratroopers under the cover of darkness that night.

The veteran Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules provides 16 Brigade with its tactical airlift and airdrop capability. (Tim Ripley)

In a nondescript air conditioned pre-fabricated building near the flight line, the UK Task Force headquarters staff were monitoring the situation. The large operations room where Britain’s war in Afghanistan was being run from seemed strangely quiet. Staff officers and radio operators were calmly monitoring the internet chat rooms used to rapidly pass secret messages between the various NATO headquarters in Afghanistan. Radio messages asking for air strikes, ammunition re-supply drops or casualty evacuations were being answered in calm, measured tones. The average age of the soldiers and airmen in headquarters seemed to be well under thirty. They all seemed at ease with making life and death decisions. Walking around the room Brigadier Ed Butler, the Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and 16 Air Assault Brigade, radiated calm confidence amid this hive of activity. He clearly led a well-oiled team, which was at the top of its game. The war in Afghanistan was not yet over but the Brigadier and his troops were soon to head home. They had fought a series of pitched battles and proved, if anyone still doubted it, that the British Armed Forces had at last mastered the use of the helicopter in high intensity combat.

In the summer of 2006 British AAC and RAF helicopter crews found themselves in the forefront of a series of desperate battles to help paratroopers of 16 Air Assault Brigade isolated in walled compounds called district centres. Throughout the summer of 2006 the troops and helicopter crews of 16 Brigade battled against overwhelming odds to keep several thousand Taliban fighters at bay. By the autumn, both sides had drawn back and a pause descended over the bloody Afghan battlefields.

The first phase of the Battle of Helmand proved a tough test of 16 Brigade and its reliance on helicopters and other air support to compensate for its lack of heavy armoured vehicles and artillery. A few months later the Brigade’s personnel were awarded an unprecedented number of decorations for gallantry, including two Victory Crosses, for their time in Afghanistan. This illustrated dramatically the intensity of the fighting as well as the bravery and determination of the Brigade’s personnel.

While the award of a series of prestigious decorations to members of the Parachute Regiment won much publicity, the Afghan operations awards list in 2006 also included a raft of awards to helicopter pilots, crewmen, forward air controllers, aeromedics and Harrier pilots. This was graphic recognition that 16 Brigade was a true air manoeuvre force that depended on brave and skilled aviators from both the AAC and RAF for its success.

The honing of 16 Air Assault Brigade into the British Armed Force’s elite rapid reaction formation that specialises in using helicopters and transport aircraft, backed by airborne firepower, to carry out what are termed air manoeuvre operations has been a long and tortured process. This book charts that process, which stretches back to the 1956 Suez crisis when helicopters were used to ferry assault troops ashore from aircraft carriers off the Egyptian coast.

The RAF Boeing Chinook HC.2 heavy-lift helicopters are the mainstay of 16 Brigade’s rotary wing support forces. (Tim Ripley)

This promising start in utilising the unique attributes of the helicopter – the ability to land and take off vertically – was soon lost. It was nearly three decades until the British Army formed its first specialised air mobile brigade, even through the Americans were soon using helicopters on an unprecedented scale during the Vietnam war in the 1960s and 1970s. Shortages of money, resistance from existing regiments and corps, along with inter-Service rivalry between the RAF and Royal Navy, were the main causes of the British Army’s failure to move more aggressively to utilise helicopters in combat.

The British military helicopters were in the forefront of combat operations in the Middle and Far East in the 1960s, Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007 and the Falklands in 1982. However, the lack of a dedicated air mobile force meant that hard learnt expertise and experience were quickly lost when units were retuned to conventional duties after conducting helicopter operations. The exception to this was the Royal Marines who had their own dedicated Commando Helicopter Force, which became highly skilled at projecting combat power ashore by helicopter during amphibious operations. The British Army clearly suffered through not having a comparable organisation.

While a shortage of resources was a major part of the British Army’s inability to fully embrace air mobile operations, there was also a strong reluctance from a significant part of the Service’s senior hierarchy to get its mind around the potential of the helicopter. An often-used phrase in the 1980s was, ‘moving by helicopter is not an act of war, you know’. The inference was that on a Central European battlefield – packed full of tens of thousands of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery – lightly armed helicopter-borne tro would get slaughtered before they could achieve any effect. At the height of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s, many senior British NATO commanders only thought in terms of any future war with the Soviets being a bloody war of attrition that would evitable result in a unwinnable nuclear exchange.

The fact that the RAF’s helicopter force was multi-roled to provide mobility for logistic support for the army and RAF Harrier jump jet squadrons deployed to field sites, meant that there were often competing demands for the limited number of large transport or support helicopters throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

This changed in the mid-1980s when the British Army formed an experimental air mobile brigade to act as a kind of air portable ‘speed bump’. The role of the brigade’s helicopters was to rapidly move large numbers of infantry armed with anti-tank guided missiles to block any breakthrough by Red Army tank divisions. This was the start of the recognition that air mobility might play a part in future operations.

Battalions of the Parachute Regiment have spearheaded all of 16 Brigade’s major operations. (Tim Ripley)

The 1991 Gulf Conflict was a major watershed for the British Army’s interest in helicopters after it saw what the US Army and Marine Corps attack helicopters achieved during the brief ‘100 hour war’ against Iraq.

Although the next fifteen years saw dramatic progress in the development of UK air mobile forces, it proved a hard struggle. In the post Cold War era, cutbacks in defence spending meant it was a constant battle to win resources to buy new helicopters and other capabilities. The mid-1990s did see a spike in investment in helicopters and other capabilities, including sixty-seven AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, twenty-two EH101 Merlin and fourteen CH-47 Chinook helicopters and twenty-five new C-130J tactical air lifters. Barely had this equipment been ordered than budget cuts and procurement mistakes meant the delivery of this equipment to frontline users became a long and tortuous process.

The weakness of the UK’s air mobile and strategic airlift equipment was highlighted dramatically during the ill-fated deployment of 24 Airmobile Brigade to Bosnia in 1995. Four years later the paratroopers and Gurkhas of 5 Airborne Brigade conducted a daring air mobile operation to open the NATO move into war-torn Kosovo. This operation was clearly a sign of things to come and showed a new confidence on the part of UK air manoeuvre commanders.

The past decade saw the formation of 16 Brigade as the British Armed Forces’ centre of air manoeuvre excellence. This term is now used by the UK military to encompass air mobility or movement by helicopter, airborne operations by parachute and air transport moves by tactical airlift aircraft. The Brigade has been in action almost constantly since its formation in 1999. A large part of the Brigade was committed to action in Sierra Leone the following year. In 2001, it spearheaded NATO’s successful intervention in Macedonia to separate government troops and Albanian rebels. The next year it was in Afghanistan and in 2003 the Brigade was in the thick of fighting in Iraq. Elements of the Brigade then took turns contributing to occupation duty in Iraq as well as peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and Northern Ireland

These early operations were conducted largely with legacy equipment and it was not until 2005 that new hardware, such as the Apache and Merlin helicopter, was in widespread use. The 2006 operation in Afghanistan saw 16 Brigade put its newfound combat capabilities to dramatic effect.

Tim Ripley and one of Saddam Hussein’s T-55 tanks in Al Amara, Iraq, 2003. (Tim Ripley)

In the months after returning from Afghanistan, the Brigade moved into a new period of re-equipment, acquiring Bowman digital radios and more Apaches. These new capabilities are intended to enhance its combat power ahead of the Brigade’s next deployment to Afghanistan in 2008. Other new capabilities including unmanned aerial vehicles and airborne stand-off radar sensors are being brought on line in time for deployment to Afghanistan with 16 Brigade.

All this suggests that 16 Air Assault Brigade will continue to be at the forefront of the British Army’s expeditionary operations. It is almost certain that its soldiers and aviators will be earning many more medals in the conflicts of the coming decade.

For more than a decade I have followed the development of British air manoeuvre forces in trouble spots around the world, at their bases and headquarters in the UK, at defence industry conferences, helicopter factories around the world and Ministry of Defence briefings.

This book is based largely on my own observations of the battles and campaigns fought by 16 Air Assault Brigade – and its predecessor brigades. My observations range from the dusty helicopter landing pads at Ploce in Croatia in 1995, through to flying into weapon collection points in Macedonia in 2001, walking the deadly streets of Al Amara in Iraq in 2003 and to watching waves of Apaches and Harriers taking off to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2006. In between my travels to operational theatres, I was able to see 16 Brigade put its innovative tactics to the test in a series of exercises around the UK.

During this time I have been able to speak to scores of soldiers and officers of 16 Brigade about their experiences, including interviewing a number of the Brigade’s commanders, as well as senior officers of the Joint Helicopter Command and Permanent Joint Headquarters. The military personnel quoted by name in the following chapters were all speaking at public events, such as press briefings or interviews conducted ‘on the record’ in the presence of media operations officers or ‘minders’. Many others wanted to contribute to this book anonymously because their comments might be considered ‘off message’ by the Ministry of Defence and Downing Street ‘spin machines’. Even though many friends in the UK Armed Forces have reviewed my text, any errors and omissions are mine alone.

In many ways the story of 16 Brigade is also the story of Britain’s wars in the post-Cold War era. It starts with success in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and Africa. The past decade has seen the portion of the UK’s national wealth devoted to defence continue to decline in real terms and this has been translated into the delay or cancellation of many military procurement projects. From the experiences of 16 Brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, the implications of this are becoming increasingly clear. Britain’s Armed Forces are fighting the country’s wars without many items of key battle-winning equipment. These shortcomings are only being compensated for by the military prowess and battlefield bravery of our servicemen and women or the mistakes of our enemies.

Tim Ripley

January 2008

CHAPTER 1

16 Air Assault Brigade, January 2008

‘16 Air Assault Brigade is the newest and largest Brigade in the British Army’ is how Brigadier Mark Charlton-Smith, the current Commander 16 Air Assault Brigade, introduces his formation on its website. He continues:

What makes 16 Brigade unique is not only that it is the Army’s primary rapid reaction formation but that it is equipped and manned so it can be used in any eventuality, whether evacuation tasks and humanitarian operations, through to warfighting, should that ever be necessary in the future. The combination of air assault troops, parachute troops and helicopters makes it one of the most flexible and usable formations in any modern army in the world. 16 Air Assault Brigade is the most exciting formation in the Army and we are the cutting edge of the military.

RAF Boeing Chinook HC.2 heavy-lift helicopters move 16 Air Assault Brigade vehicles during Exercise Eagle’s Strike 2005. (Tim Ripley)

The Brigadier’s enthusiasm for his command is not surprising. Leading the British Army’s only air manoeuvre force is one of its most prestigious appointments. Outside the secretive world of the UK’s Special Forces, 16 Air Assault Brigade is the most battle-hardened and combat-ready formation in the British Armed Forces.

Not only does the Brigade contain three Army Air Corps (AAC) aviation regiments, two of which are equipped with the British Army’s newest and most powerful weapon system – the AgustaWestland Apache AH.1 attack helicopter – but it also contains two elite battalions of the Parachute Regiment. These forces have some of the best training available in the British Army lavished on them and a significant part of 16 Brigade’s soldiers is held at high readiness to respond to sudden crises around the world as part of the UK’s Joint Rapid Reaction Force (JRRF). As well as boasting some of the British Army’s best units, it is also supported by helicopters and transport aircraft of the Royal Air Force to move it into action. At the heart of 16 Brigade is the ethos of ‘going by air to battle’, whether by parachute, helicopter or air transport. The British Armed Forces attribute the term air manoeuvre to this combination of capabilities, rather than airborne or air mobile operations, which refer respectively to parachute drops and helicopter-borne only activity.

As Brigadier Charlton-Smith hinted at, a posting to 16 Air Assault Brigade is not for those expecting a routine life in a backwater garrison. The Brigade’s major units have participated in every major British military overseas deployment since Kosovo in 1999 and as this book goes to press in the autumn of 2008, it is making its final preparations before returning to Afghanistan for its third tour in the Central Asian country.

Deploying on operations is a way of life for the Brigade’s soldiers. ‘It’s what we do’ was the comment of one Parachute Regiment sergeant major when being questioned by journalists in Afghanistan in 2006 about the regularity of the Brigade’s overseas tours of duty. Almost everything the Brigade does is orientated about being ready, should the call come to go into action. As one of the UK’s main ‘theatre entry’ forces, 16 Brigade’s soldiers have become used to being the first British troops on the ground in a new war zone. The ability to think on their feet and quickly find solutions to new problems has held them in good stead over the past decade.

Every since the British Army’s Airborne Forces came into existence in 1940, they have been at the cutting edge of tactical innovation. They pioneered military parachuting in the British Armed Forces and then the employment of gliders. Today’s 16 Brigade is no different. It used the attack helicopters in action for the first time in British military history and in the 2003 Iraq war fought an innovative air-land battle to defeat an Iraqi armoured division with artillery fire and air strikes alone.

16 Brigade is also unique in that it was the first modern British Army brigade to boast a near fixed or permanent brigade order of battle after it was formed in 1999. Up until 2004, all the infantry battalions and armoured regiments of the British Army moved every two to five years as part of what was known as the ‘arms plot’. This was designed to liven up the careers of soldiers during the Cold War by giving them a variety of postings. For 5 Airborne and 24 Airmobile Brigades, 16 Brigade’s direct predecessors, it meant many of their major units were never attached long enough to build up real experience expertise in airborne or air mobile operations before they were posted to another brigade.

16 Air Assault Brigade Badge and Historical Lineage

16 Air Assault Brigade was formed on 1 September 1999. It draws upon the historical traditions of 16 Independent Parachute Brigade, which was the UK’s sole airborne formation from the late 1940s until 1977 when the brigade was disbanded. This in turn was formed after World War Two from the famous 1st and 6th

Airborne Divisions, bringing together their numerical designations. The new Brigade’s badge draws on the traditions of both the paratroopers of the Airborne Forces and the aviators of the Army Air Corps (AAC). The ‘Striking Eagle’ design was adapted from the emblem of the Special Training Centre, Lochailot, Scotland, which was used to train Special Forces and Airborne troops between 1943 and 1945.

The maroon and light blue colours of the badge represent the Airborne and AAC constituent elements of the Brigade.

Since 1999, 16 Brigade has had a degree of organisational stability previously unknown in modern British Army experience and the result has been the building up of a degree of tactical expertise in air manoeuvre that is unprecedented. Most members of the Brigade staff and members of its major units are now veterans of numerous wars and operations over the past decade. Time and again over the past decade, the ‘Toms’ of the Parachute Regiment have flown into action in helicopters crewed by the same RAF pilots and loadmasters. They have shared the same lengthy tours away from home, living in the same desperate conditions and been shot at at the same time. Perhaps more significantly, the RAF helicopter crews have always been on hand to fly into harm’s way to lift out wounded paratroopers. This level of familiarity with each other is otherwise unknown in the British armed forces, outside the Special Forces, and means when 16 Brigade deploys on operations it does so with a verve and confidence that is the envy of every other British Army brigade. This Brigade esprit de corps is a major factor in its success.

The 2004 Defence Review proposed to stop the ‘arms plot’ by the end of the decade and permanently assigned major combat units to individual brigades. But 16 Brigade led the way and the rest of the British Army is some way behind in building up the same degree of brigade spirit.

Another important element of the Brigade’s success has been its strong connections to the UK’s Special Forces community. A significant number 16 Brigade’s personnel have served with the Special Forces at some point in their military careers. This means the senior leadership of 16 Brigade and its major units all have unprecedented exposure to UK Special Forces operations, equipment and procedures. The UK Special Forces have been some of the most innovative users of helicopters in combat operations and their procedures and tactics have strongly influenced how 16 Brigade operates.

The Lead Airborne Task Force jumps into action over West Freugh. (Bob Morrison)

For the junior ranks, service in 16 Brigade is seen as a stepping stone to service in the Special Forces. The exposure of these young soldiers to so many Special Force veterans is a great spur to them developing their military expertise in a bid to try to pass the famous Special Forces selection test.

With some 8,000 personnel under its command in peacetime, 16 Brigade is the largest brigade-sized formation in the British Army. In peacetime the bulk of the Brigade is based in a number of barracks around Colchester in Essex, with other major units in Wattisham in Suffolk and Dishforth in North Yorkshire.

The 200-strong Brigade main headquarters is the nerve centre of its operations. It is broken down into a number of distinct teams that run specific activities. Supporting the commander and his staff is 216 Squadron of the Royal Signals, which provides the Brigade with its communications equipment and the specialists to operate it.

Heading up the Brigade is a brigadier, or one star general, and he has a very small tactical headquarters of half a dozen officers and radio operators, who follow him around the battlefield. This ‘Tac HQ’ can either move by Land Rover or helicopter and is fully parachute-trained.

The Brigade Main Headquarters is its core command centre and it is largely vehicle-borne. Here, the bulk of the staff monitors a number of radio networks or nets to control all aspects of the Brigade’s operations. It also has communications links to other UK and allied headquarters to ensure the Brigade is co-ordinating its actions with the broader battle. Within this headquarters there are a number of specific cells or teams to co-ordinate intelligence, offensive air support, helicopters operations, air transport, artillery fire, reconnaissance and surveillance, logistic support and medical evacuation. All the cap badges of the British Army are represented in the headquarters, which usually contains more than 200 officers and soldiers, as well as the RAF, and on occasions, the Royal Marines and Royal Navy. The Brigade headquarters is almost twice the size of a British armoured or mechanised brigade headquarters.

At the heart of the main headquarters is a ‘bird table’ map, which plots all the friendly and enemy forces and allows all the staff officers to see at a glance how the battle is progressing. Until recently this was just a large paper map but the Brigade is starting to receive electronic systems with plasma screens to replace it. The Brigade had a RAF-led Air Manoeuvre Recognised Air Picture Flight attached in 2003 that allowed a real-time graphical map of all aircraft flying in a theatre of operation to be projected onto a large computer screen in the headquarters. The Brigade is in the process of being equipped with the Bowman digital communications system to replace its 1960s vintage Clansman radios. One importance feature of Bowman is that each radio contains a tracking device that feeds back positional data to the Brigade headquarters to allow an electronic map showing where all its ground units are to be created. When combined with the air picture, this capability gives the headquarters staff an unprecedented view of what is happening on the battlefield to allow them to plan missions and organise air and fire support, as well as track the location of friendly air and land forces.

On operations the main headquarters is run by the Brigade deputy commander and the Brigade chief of staff, to allow the commander to spend most of his time out on the ground with the frontline troops. At the heart of the smooth running of the main headquarters is its ability to split itself into two echelons when it has to move. Known as ‘Step-up’, the advance element is able to move first and then set up a second headquarters to start running the Brigade to allow the rest of the main headquarters to begin moving. This procedure ensures that the Brigade is never out of communications. The ability to do this while major units are moving by aircraft or helicopter is a key capability for 16 Brigade and ensures it can maintain a tempo of operations.

16 Air Assault Brigade Order of Battle, January 2008

Brigade Headquarters

216 Signal Squadron

Pathfinder Platoon (Wattisham airfield)

1st Battalion, The Royal Irish Regiment (Ternhill)

5th Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland (Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders) (Canterbury)

2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (Colchester)

3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (Colchester)

D Squadron, Household Cavalry Regiment (Windsor)

7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery (Colchester)

23 Engineer Regiment (Air Assault) (Woodbridge)

13 Air Assault Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps (Colchester)

7 Air Assault Battalion, Royal Mechanical and Electrical Engineers (Wattisham Airfield)

16 Close Support Medical Regiment (Colchester)

156 Provost Company, Royal Military Police (Colchester)

3 Regiment Army Air Corps (Wattisham Airfield)

653 Squadron – Apache AH.1 (converting from Lynx)

662 Squadron – Apache AH.1

663 Squadron – Apache AH.1

4 Regiment Army Air Corps (Wattisham Airfield)

654 Squadron – Apache AH.1 (converting from Lynx)

656 Squadron – Apache AH.1 (ex 9 Regt)

664 Squadron