4/1/A-CO, 1-2IN - Alpha Company, First Platoon, Fourth Squad

Present outside of combat unit

N/A

Objectives

• Stinger practice
• Stryker protection
• PID

Accidents

• Medevac helicopter was shot down during Stinger practice. Court martial pending for instructors and Stinger operator involved.

Areas of Strength

• Communication between teams.
• Clearing buildings.
• Stinger operation: 100% shoot down rate.

Areas of Weakness

• During mascas situations, some soldiers were found to not be doing anything, i.e. healing or providing security.

Suggested Improvements

• PID

Mission Summary

Phoenix moved to position North West of the town of Poliakko, Hill 70. There we discussed how to protect a vehicle, in our case a Stryker, from enemy fire using surrounding terrain. We've discussed the concept of hull up and hull down, using slopes and buildings to ensure that a vehicle is hull down, and how you can use smoke countermeasures to conceal a Stryker as well as driving out of the area if needed.
Next each squad member received a Stinger and after going through how to use it, each soldier got a turn at firing his launcher at passing by helicopters, with each soldier shooting one down. Unfortunatelly one of our junior enlisted failed to PID correctly and launched his missile at a passing Medevac UH-60, disabling its tail rotor which resulted with its crash.

Once we finished practice we moved on to our mission of locating a vehicle and ammo warehouse belonging to the Islamic State which was located in the town of Therisa, South of Hill 70. On our way we passed through a checkpoint that belongs to the Afghan National Army which we correctly PID'd. Once at the town the two teams split and started clearing their assigned sectors until Bravo team found the cache. Unfortunatelly as Bravo was clearing the cache, one of the ammo crates caught fire and exploded, incapacitating everyone inside. The rest of the squad secured the area and took the wounded outside before the warehouse building collapsed. Once everyone was back up we planted C4 on remaining equipment and detonated it, ending the mission.

Overall Sentiment

POSITIVE