http://www.thedonovan.com/historicalstuff/wardak_executive_summary.pdfA few notes:
The key paragraph in my view is 8.c They were going into the LZ essentially devoid of overhead assets. The earlier description of the Ranger inserton gives you an idea of the level of support that may, may have prevented the shootdown.
The description of the shootdown indicates to me that the gunship or one ISR (most likely) was overhead at the time.
The description of the ISR operations indicates to me that I know what at least one of the ISR assets was (former coworkers were responsible of the development, fielding and sustainment of the system).
I disagree with one of the conclusions in paragraph 8.a but then I'm not a highly trained SOF operator.
BGen Colt's summary makes me feel a bit better concerning the shootdown but it was still a huge loss with the SOF community.
