How did communication serve as the source of failure for
Task Force Ranger in the Battle of Mogadishu on October 3-4,
1993?
History Internal Assessment:
Historical Investigation
Word Count: 1554
Table of Contents
A
Plan of Investigation
3
B
Summary of Evidence
4
C
Evaluation of Sources
6
D
Analysis
7
E
Conclusion
9
F
List of Sources
10
A. Plan of investigation
This historical investigation seeks to analyze the extent communication
served as the failure in the mission of Task Force Ranger to capture Mohammed
Farrah Aidid’s lieutenants in the Battle of Mogadishu. The discussion centers
with the communication between the soldiers of Task Force Ranger and their
communication with Major General William F. Garrison. Then the discussion
shifts to the political and military miscommunications between the United States
and their forces in Somalia. The analysis assesses the role communication played
in the ultimate failure of Task Force Ranger and the failure of the United Nations
to provide humanitarian aid to this third-world nation. Two sources explored in
this essay, are Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down and Clifford Day’s Critical
analysis on the defeat of Task Force Ranger.
B. Summary of Evidence
The evidence available includes the accounts of the soldiers of Task Force Ranger
and the reports following the incident. The communication devices will be examined but
the description of the communication meltdown will be illustrated through the decisions
soldiers and leaders had to make and their ability to mobilize efficiently. The mission
“seemed simple enough on paper”(Bowden 19) but the paper didn’t make allowance for
mistakes.
Task Force Ranger, under the command of Major General William F. Garrison,
consisted of soldiers from the 75th Rangers and the Delta Force. Intelligence informed
Garrison that two of Aidid’s head lieutenants among other of his militia’s leaders would
gather at a residency near the Olympic Hotel on the evening of Sunday, September 3,
1993. The intelligence gathered was skeptical as the last ‘tip’ given to the forces resulted
in the death of more than 50 unarmed civilians and as this intelligence suffers
considerable doubt, the amounting pressure to capture Aidid led to the hasty decision to
infiltrate the city with a large scale force even with no armored units. The
communication breakdown does not link to a single misguided decision but to a
culmination of errors from ranking officers and superiority to judging the content spoken
over the radio so as not to affect troop morale. The Ranger Commander, Captain Mike
Steele, was pinned in a courtyard where medical attention was necessary to prevent
further losses and the Delta team, under Captain Scott Miller, the Delta ground
commander, unaware of the severity of the injured soldiers, insisted Steele and his men
leave their defended area and venture across the street to meet them at their location.
Tensions mount further adding to the confusion of the entire ordeal.
The radio in the Battle of Mogadishu served essentially to call in for air support
for evacuation of the wounded. The necessity of the radio communications may seem
trident and overused in the aftermath but in the confusion this seemed justifiably the
correct decision albeit one that causes more confusion. “Communication's your lifeline,
it's your bloodline, if you don't have communications with someone you're running the
streets aimlessly” (Bowden 68) Often blame is not asserted in the precise moment it is
due to but chosen to conveniently select those to bear the fault of many actions. Garrison
makes amends for an issue that isn’t his complete burden, he believes the Clinton
administration to be absent of condemnation but their decision to withhold select
information may have prevented the entire battle in Mogadishu. Secret negotiations were
being worked with Aidid and the United States government that were not made aware to
Garrison. His hasty decision to enter the city may have been prevented then and a
possible peaceful outcome may have arisen. As such though this lack of communication
as a medium of communication itself imposes the possibility of failure in their operation.
The communication between the soldiers in Mogadishu and with the commander
at the Joint Operations Center was distant and on “two different levels.” Garrison and
other high ranking officials saw from satellite video the events transcribing but the actual
event could only be told through the eyes of the soldier. The amounting confusion
displayed between the leaders and the soldiers may have added more disparity to the
soldiers’ decisions leading to bad judgments that would jeopardize the entire
humanitarian operations.
C. Evaluation of Sources
Black Hawk Down, the popular book turned movie, by Mark Bowden quite
possibly presents the most detailed insight into the Battle of Mogadishu through the
eyes of the soldiers there. His objectivity is quite nice in the novel as he details the
failure in progress of the mission in a narrative based from the soldier’s accounts.
Bowden had published articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1997 but then published
them under a book in 1999. The bias in this novel is substantiated by Bowden’s
citizenship to the United States but ultimately communication does not appear to be
his significant point in writing this but just to write about the events that happened.
These events perpetually demonstrate the shortcomings of communication resulting
in furthered United States occupational force casualties. His writing would appear to
be objective, but when much of the research includes personal accounts by the
soldiers then subjective interpretation interjects as each soldier may recount different
actions occurring.
The second source is the Critical analysis on the defeat of Task Force Ranger by
Clifford Day in 1997. The document includes the causes and the effects of the failure
of Task Force Ranger. This is more biased as this is a written document by the
military obviously allowing the writer to leave certain information out. Yet it is less
biased as the document is based off of other papers and not the accounts of the
soldiers.
D. Anaylsis
Communications are important in virtually every aspect of strategic military
planning and mutual agreement must be met in order for the designed plan to be
coordinated. Once in the field the communication must persist to ensure that all unseen
and seen enemies are identified. Possible mistakes and errors are also reported through
this communication. The confusion communicated across the radio demonstrates the
failure of Task Force Ranger to satisfactorily accomplish their objective. Task Force
Ranger’s failure is not the result of inadequate training but the result of events before
them. The Clinton administration’s withholding of certain intelligence had it been
expressed may have prevented any conflict. Thus the failure of communication in the
defeat of Task Force Ranger can be symbolized by the lack of intelligence. The failure of
communication in Task Force Ranger lead to mismanagement which following the Battle
of Mogadishu causes a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Somalia. The failure
of Task Force Ranger is paralleled to the urban guerilla conflict in Vietnam which also
was plagued with miscommunication and confusion. Humanitarian efforts by world
powers in third-world nations has thus been ridiculed. The communication in the actual
event can not receive all the blame as the communication prior to entering the city was
also problematic. The mission was only expected to be half an hour to an hour and a half,
not seventeen hours, and the ideas presented were to leave certain items behind as they
would be unnecessary. The general view of the Somalis communicated to them as well
proved disastrous. The soldiers expected the Somalis to run from the sounds of gunshots,
but instead the opposite happens: they run to the gunshots, but worse are that women and
children run to watch too. The soldiers misguided expectations are seen in that “we had a
false sense of security, "We're the Rangers, we're part of Delta, we have the best package
in the world that life can offer, and the military power that we had, how can this be
happening to us?" That's what was going through my mind” (Clifford 58).
E. Conclusion
Communication is the largest source of error responsible for the failure of Task
Force Ranger in the Battle of Mogadishu on October 3-4, 1993. Had they had better
communication with UN forces, with other soldiers, superior officers, command center,
and with the United States the battle may have had significantly less casualties on both
the US forces and even the Somalis. Sadly though 18 dead soldiers, 71 wounded
soldiers, and hundreds of Somalis died as a result of this lack of communication. Better
communication can not be said to have prevented those casualties or even prevent the
battle but must be mentioned as a means of producing greater awareness. “The real lesson
is not that Washington must stay out of such conflicts in the world's strategic slums. It is
that when the United States decides it must act, it should act competently” (Stewart 6)
F. List of Sources
Day, Clifford (March 1997). Critical analysis on the defeat of Task Force Ranger.
Air Command and Staff College Research Department. US Department of
Defense. United States of America
Bowden, Mark (March 1999). Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.
Atlantic Monthly Press. Berkeley, California (USA).
Richard W. Stewart, The United States Army in Somalia, 1992-1994. US Army
Center for Military History. 2003