Canadian-made Griffon helicopters begin hunting Taliban Sun, February 22, 2009
Night missions intended to disrupt bomb planters
By Murray Brewster, THE CANADIAN PRESS
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Two CH-146 Griffon helicopters lifted off into the dim, grainy dusk above Kandahar Airfield one night last week and made straight for the mountains, in a new and completely unheralded chapter in the Afghan war.
This mission and the handful of ones before it are not something the air force eagerly broadcasts in its public relations campaign, but it is perhaps one of the most important life-saving duties the new air wing carries out.
Aircraft running lights were switched off once they cleared “the wire” allowing the grey and black camouflaged Griffons to blend in with the night sky.
Armed with night-vision goggles and a pod of darkness-piercing sensors, including high-definition cameras, the aircrews had set off on a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with the Taliban.
Two gunners on each aircraft leaned on their weapons through open doorways and looked down impassively as the lights of Kandahar city unfolded below them like irregular multi-coloured jewels cast on black velvet blanket.
The helicopters rose swiftly, brushed past the soaring volcanic peaks and then burst out over the desert, dropping to 152 metres, where the total blackness of the countryside enveloped them.
Although officially relegated to escort new CH-47D Chinook transport helicopters, the Griffons belonging to 408 Squadron were quietly given a new, more dangerous role soon after they deployed in December.
Their orders were to hunt insurgents who lace the roadways with home-made bombs, missions that depend on the murky world of classified intelligence.
Roadside bombs,have over the last three years exacted the single most deadly toll on Canadian soldiers, accounting for half of the 108 deaths.
That the Griffon could be useful in reducing the carnage has long been recognized in air force circles.
“Two kilometres to the road,” Capt. Ben Massicotte, the commander of the second Griffon, declared over the intercom. “Keep your eyes open.”
A tense silence followed.
The location of the road on this mission was classified, but was clearly one that NATO troops often used.
Twin cone-shaped lights of a pickup truck punctured the darkness and Capt. Greg Cowan, the flying officer, swung the chopper around to creep up behind the slow moving vehicle.
Massicotte quickly determined it was “only carrying junk” and not an explosive.
Ideally they hoped to catch the bombers in the act of digging into the hard-baked soil of dirt roads that spiderweb the desert — or find them tunnelling under the few paved highways.
Occasionally, only U.S. surveillance drones have been that lucky, dispatching the night-time bomb-planters with a well-placed Hellfire missile, but there have never been enough of them in southern Afghanistan going around.
But even without actually spotting insurgents, the sensors and electronics carried by the CH-146s were powerful enough to detect changes in the landscape.
That the Griffons, a utility helicopter modified for combat and surveillance, were here at all is something of minor miracle.
Their deployment had been stubbornly opposed by National Defence since it was first proposed in December 2005, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information laws.
Full story and Source
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/World/2009/02/22/8486446.html
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