Why US Pilots Were Told NEVER to Fly Over Australian SASR Operating Zones After Dark

In the mountains of Uruguan province, Afghanistan, coalition helicopter pilots passed around an informal rule that became something close to gospel. If you were flying at night and your route took you anywhere near an area marked as an Australian Special Air Service Regiment operating zone, you changed course.

You went around, not because of enemy fire, not because of terrain, because the Australians on the ground below had a reputation. And that reputation was simple. If something moved through their operating area after dark, and it was not one of theirs, it was treated as a threat. [music] The Taliban had already learned this the hard way.

They called the Australians greeneyed bearded devils, a reference to the eerie green glow of night vision goggles floating through the Afghan darkness. But it was not just the Taliban who feared those patrols. Coalition forces operating alongside the regiment knew that these operators moved through the night with a lethality that made friendly identification critical.

One wrong move, one unannounced flyover, and things could go very wrong very fast. So, how did a regiment from a country with a population smaller than Texas build a reputation that made even American pilots think twice? If you like deep dives into elite units like this, hit subscribe.

To understand that, we need to go back to a barracks in a quiet Perth suburb and a unit that started with just60 men. In 1957, the Australian Army stood up a small unit at Campbell Barracks in Swanborn, Western Australia. It became the first special air service company. There were just 16 officers and 144 other ranks.

[music] It was modeled on the British Special Air Service, the SAS, and it shared the motto, who dares wins. Australia is a continent. Covering it with a small special forces element meant every operator needed to work independently across enormous distances with almost no support. That mentality got baked into the regiment’s DNA from day one.

By 1964, they had expanded to a full regiment, and within a year, they were [music] at war. Their first deployment was to Borneo in 1965 during the Indonesian confrontation. The Australians operated alongside the British and New Zealand Special Air Service in dense jungle along the Malaysian Indonesian border. Here is where it gets interesting.

Some of those patrols crossed the border into Indonesian territory. These were classified operations so sensitive that the Australian government did not publicly acknowledge them for years. If those operators had been captured on the wrong side of the border, Cambra would have denied they existed. The special air service regiment killed at least 20 indonesian soldiers in a series of ambushes during those cross uh crossber operations.

And they learned something in those jungles that would define them for the next six decades. How to move through hostile territory without being seen, without being heard, and without leaving a trace. That skill was about to be tested on a much larger stage. In 1966, the special air service regiment known as SASR deployed [music] to Vietnam.

They were based at Nui Data in Fiwok Tui [music] Province, responsible for providing intelligence to the first Australian task force [music] and to American forces operating in the region. The way they operated was different from almost every other unit in the war. While American infantry moved in company-sized formations, the Australians went out in patrols of four to six men.

They moved slower than conventional troops, sometimes covering less than a kilometer per hour through dense jungle, stopping constantly to listen, to observe, to wait. [music] They were heavily armed for their size. Each patrol carried enough firepower to simulate a much larger force if they made contact. The idea was simple.

hit hard, create confusion, then disappear before the enemy could organize a response. And it worked. Over the course of five years in multiple squadron rotations, 580 men served with the SASR in Vietnam. Their losses were staggeringly low. One killed in action, one died of wounds, one missing, [music] 28 wounded.

The Vietkong, who were used to fighting larger, louder Western forces, had no answer for these small [music] patrols that appeared and vanished like smoke. They gave the Australians a name, Ma Rang. It translates to Phantoms of the Jungle. That name was not given out of respect. It was given out of fear.

When the Australians went home in 1971, they carried years of real world experience operating behind enemy lines. But the regiment’s next transformation would not come from a foreign war. It would come from a bomb in a Sydney hotel. On February 13th, 1978, a bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.

Three people were killed and it exposed a critical gap. Australia had no military force capable of responding to a terrorist attack on home soil. The Special Air Service Regiment was given the mission. By 1979 they had established the tactical assault group training in close quarters battle [music] explosive entry shipboarding and building assaults.

They cross trained with Britain’s special air service, the United States Navy Seals, Delta Force and Germany’s GSG9. And they developed a reputation among those elite units [music] for one thing above all else. They were excellent at operating in the dark. But that training came at a terrible cost.

On the evening of June 12th, 1996, six Blackhawk helicopters departed Townsville to conduct a night counterterrorism exercise. The helicopters from the fifth aviation regiment were carrying SASR operators, flying in tight formation using night vision goggles toward a simulated hostage rescue target. 30 seconds from the landing zone, one helicopter veered right and clipped the tail rotor of another aircraft.

The lead Blackhawk flipped and slammed into the ground upside down. The second entered a flat spin before crash landing. Both were consumed by fire. 18 men died. 15 were SASR operators. It remains the worst [music] peacetime military aviation disaster in Australian history. The tragedy could have broken the regiment. Instead, it rebuilt and came out the other side more capable than before.

They had no idea that within five years they would need every ounce of that capability. On September 11th, 2001, the world changed and Australia was one [music] of the first nations to commit forces to Afghanistan. One squadron of the SASR arrived in Afghanistan in December 2001. >> [music] >> They were among the first Allied special forces on the ground.

From forward operating base Rhino, the Australians launched long range vehicle patrols that covered hundreds of kilometers across southern Afghanistan working alongside US Marines from Task Force 58. During one patrol near Kandahar, SASR operators observed fighters guarding an older man in white robes carrying a [music] cane.

US intelligence initially believed it was Osama bin Laden, later revised to his deputy Aean al- Zawwahari. An air strike was called in. Whether it was successful has never been confirmed. All three SASR Saber squadrons rotated through Afghanistan before withdrawing in late 2002, but they would be back.

First, they had another war to fight. Operation Falconer. The 2003 invasion of Iraq saw the SASR provide the majority of Australia’s ground combat force. On the night of March 19th, 2003, two SASR troops crossed the Iraqi border from Jordan in their longrange patrol vehicles.

They penetrated 30 km into Iraq and engaged in one of the first ground actions of the entire war. A third troop was inserted by US helicopters over 600 km from the staging base for several days. Those patrols were the closest coalition forces to Baghdad. Their mission was to secure Western Iraq and prevent Scud missile launches toward Israel.

[music] The Australians fought running battles with Iraqi soldiers, countering them with vehicle-mounted heavy weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and Javelin anti-tank missiles. On April 16th, the squadron captured the Al-Assad air base 200 km northwest of Baghdad. They found over 50 fighter jets hidden in camouflage shelters and seized more than 7 million kg of explosives.

A squadron of special forces operators had just taken an entire aair base. [music] But Afghanistan was calling again. In 2005, the SASR redeployed to Urukin province. From Camp Russell at Taran Kout, they launched some of the most intense special operations of the entire Afghan war.

Patrols went out day and night, striking across multiple provinces, marching for hours in darkness with no sleep under constant [music] threat. The Taliban gave them the name that would stick, greeneyed bearded devils. If you are learning something new about the SASR, hit subscribe. I cover military history and elite units every week.

Now, here is where the story takes its most dramatic turn. On September 2nd, 2008, an SASR patrol was ambushed in Afghanistan. The attack was devastating. Multiple Australians were wounded. An Afghan interpreter working with the patrol was hit and left exposed in the open, directly in the line of enemy fire.

Nobody could reach him without crossing open ground under sustained automatic weapons fire. Trooper Mark Donaldson made a decision that would earn him Australia’s highest military honor. He deliberately exposed himself to draw fire away from his wounded teammates. Then he sprinted across open ground, picked up the interpreter and carried him back to the Australian position while round struck the dirt around his [music] feet.

On January 16th, 2009, Mark Donaldelsson was awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia. It was the first time the medal had been awarded since the Australian honors system was established. He was 29 years old. Two years later, Corporal Ben Roberts Smith received the same honor for single-handedly neutralizing two Taliban machine gun positions during a battle in the Sha Walikot [music] district on June 11th, 2010.

He charged uphill into entrenched positions under heavy fire, eliminating the enemy fighters and allowing his patrol to advance. Two Victoria crosses in 3 years from the same regiment in the same war. The SASR’s time in Afghanistan was not just defined by heroism. In 2008, during the battle of Kaz Orgon, an SASR patrol and US special forces were ambushed in a valley near Anakalai.

The fighting lasted 9 hours. Sergeant Troy Simmons described the enemy fire as being like rain on the surface of water. An American dog handler was killed. Nine SASR operators were wounded. [music] They expended nearly all of their ammunition before fighting their way out. During the battle, Dutch helicopter pilots reportedly refused requests for air support while the patrol was taking casualties.

This brings us back to the question we started with. Why were US pilots told to stay away from SASR operating zones at night? The SASR operates in patrols of five to six men deep in hostile territory for days or weeks at a time. They move at night. They set ambushes. They engage anything that enters their area without prior coordination.

In Afghanistan, where the Taliban moved at night and the line between friendly and enemy blurred in an instant, the SASR’s zones became some of the most dangerous airspace in the country. Not because of enemy fire, because the Australians on the ground were that lethal in the dark. The informal rules spread among coalition pilots.

If the Australians are operating below, coordinate in advance or go around. Today, the SASR remains based at Campbell Barracks in Swanborn. Their operators still complete a 21-day selection course where about 15% make it through, followed by 18 months of reinforcement training from 160 men in a Perth suburb to one of the most respected special forces units on the planet.

The SASR does not have the Hollywood profile of the seals or the mythology of the British SAS. But among the people who actually operate in the world’s most dangerous places, the Australians carry a reputation that speaks for itself, phantoms of the jungle, greeneyed devils, and the unit that made Allied pilots change their flight plans.

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