The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior—a deep reconnaissance scout and attack aircraft—was legendary to those it supported. Regularly flying mere feet off of the ground while intentionally drawing enemy fire, almost everyone called Kiowa pilots crazy. Responsible for hunting elusive enemy fighters and protecting those under their charge, Kiowa crews displayed a fierce and intense devotion that was unparalleled.
Through the vantage point of a Kiowa Warrior helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army's Air Cavalry, Scouts Out! offers a truly unique view of the war in Afghanistan. This is accomplished by revealing a deeply personal journey through two deployments, documenting the day-to-day life, struggles, combat, and extreme challenges faced. The after effects of these experiences can be witnessed as Ryan's outlook and very personality are forever altered and changed in unexpected ways. Drawing from copious journals and notes, everything captured in Scouts Out! is raw, real, and in-the-moment.
Richly illustrated with 70 original photographs and maps, Scouts Out! presents an essential and accurate narrative of the conflict in Afghanistan. Devoid of the filler and misleading propaganda that is so pervasive in modern media and writing, Scouts Out! is an engrossing true story from America's longest and least understood war.
The OH-58D Kiowa Warrior—a deep reconnaissance scout and attack aircraft—was legendary to those it supported. Regularly flying mere feet off of the ground while intentionally drawing enemy fire, almost everyone called Kiowa pilots crazy. Responsible for hunting elusive enemy fighters and protecting those under their charge, Kiowa crews displayed a fierce and intense devotion that was unparalleled.
Through the vantage point of a Kiowa Warrior helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army's Air Cavalry, Scouts Out! offers a truly unique view of the war in Afghanistan. This is accomplished by revealing a deeply personal journey through two deployments, documenting the day-to-day life, struggles, combat, and extreme challenges faced. The after effects of these experiences can be witnessed as Ryan's outlook and very personality are forever altered and changed in unexpected ways. Drawing from copious journals and notes, everything captured in Scouts Out! is raw, real, and in-the-moment.
Richly illustrated with 70 original photographs and maps, Scouts Out! presents an essential and accurate narrative of the conflict in Afghanistan. Devoid of the filler and misleading propaganda that is so pervasive in modern media and writing, Scouts Out! is an engrossing true story from America's longest and least understood war.
TAGAB VALLEY, AFGHANISTAN
September, 2010
“Wildwood, this is Eagle 26! Taking fire from the tree line, over!”
Ice water shot through my veins; our ground guys and their small convoy were taking heavy fire, and we could see the fight intensify close below and to our left. We turned in a hard bank, with our wingman in the Lead aircraft’s position quickly exclaiming, “I see them, I see them! They’re moving down the ditch near the riverbed!”
The sound of the radio crackled unintelligibly, and I knew the cacophony of the noises that I was hearing consisted of both incoming and outgoing rounds. The radio operator came back on suddenly and much more clearly. “Request you lay fire on muzzle flashes to our west, south of the river, gun runs east to west, immediate suppressive fire, you’re clear to engage, over!”
The enemy gave us an opening—we were seeing the dirt kick up from a shooter wedged in between some rocks and the low ruins of a wall.
“Confirm location of enemy is to your west, no friendlies in that area, clear to engage?”
“Affirmative, clear to engage!” The radioman and his convoy were desperate for some cover, and we could hear it in the urgency of his voice. The visceral feeling of combat—the anger, rage, frustration, fear for their safety, adrenaline, and feeling of responsibility to save the ground guys—overtook me.
“Inbound from east to west, engaging,” Lead called back. We followed close behind as .50 caliber bullets kicked up dirt and destroyed everything in their path. Our wingman made a breaking hard turn, “Breaking right!”
We responded with, “Engaging!”
Our aircraft bumped slightly up towards the sky, momentarily pausing in our arc and taking in the bright sun. As we began to angle our nose back downward, the snow-capped mountains blurred up the windscreen and the terrain began to return into full view along the craggy, brown and green river bank. Just up the side, we saw the dust still swirling from the previous gun run.
My teeth chattered in my skull as the .50 caliber barrel that sat only a few feet away from me began to roar. With no doors between me and the concussion of the muzzle, I was one with every shot. Brass rained down and lead met the dusty earth. Our tracers and rounds created bright red ricochets off of the rocks.
“Breaking right!” We called out and followed our Lead ship once again. I spotted a puff of smoke just before an RPG flew in the direction of the convoy’s foremost vehicle, slamming into a nearby wall along the road. The enemy had missed, but we were livid.
“Request immediate re-attack, RPG shooter vicinity of graveyard near last run!” The radioman called out.
This time, Lead had preceded the gun run with rockets. They nosed over and let fly two Hydra rockets, followed immediately by a spray of .50 cal.
We followed suit. The rockets flew into the target area with a satisfying “Ca- chunk! Ca-chunk! Boom, boom!”
We broke right once again, my head swiveled back and forth, each of my senses firing on all cylinders. I swung our optical Mast Mounted Sight (MMS), the large ball that was affixed to the top of our rotor disk, to focus into our target area. The MMS optics acted as the Kiowa’s set of binoculars, and I quickly instructed the system to lock on and observe, no matter our helicopter orientation, so that we could continue to see movements in the area. There was a series of old destroyed structures and ruins, perfect for those wishing to stay masked and conduct a solid ambush. The dense foliage in the area was a real problem for us, forcing us to rely on more thermal imaging.
The radios again came to life, the ground element and the Lead aircraft yelling, “taking fire!” This situation was getting worse.
A few enemy rounds had just snapped past my wingman, barely missing him, and soon after, I heard the telltale snapping of rounds whizzing by our aircraft. “Shit, taking fire!” I yelled as we began to maneuver up and away, while still trying to maintain cover and eyes on our wingman.
Along with our guys on the ground, we were having a hard time locating the source. We flew around, keenly fixed on the hunt. Our fuel and munitions were running low just as we were zoning in. We got a break once we spotted a few individuals and flashes near a busted up, abandoned structure right near the graveyard. These insurgents had shot at U.S. forces from here just a few days prior, and now, we had them in sight.
The Lead aircraft made another gun run and got lit up once again. Fortunately, the insurgents were terrible at shooting today. We followed close behind and laid down more covering fire into the area. I witnessed a huge cloud of smoke and realized that our ground guys were lying down larger munitions.
Our AH-64 Apache gunship brothers back at Bagram (BAF) were getting ready and reported that they’d be arriving soon. The ground forces were working up further coordination with anything available in the higher altitude stack of aerial combat support assets to see who else could help. Fighter jets and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) began to race to move overhead.
“Break, break, break! Wildwoo- (rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat)!” There was a pause. My heart sank a bit. Had another RPG been fired? Had the radioman gotten hit? Had anyone else gotten hit? Was there anything else that we could do? How much longer could we possibly stay on this low amount of fuel, and with this diminishing number of rounds? Was I doing everything that I could to save them? Were we able to do more?!
“Trail, this is Lead, I got more muzzle flashes. We’re turning inbound!” Lead put more .50 cal down, followed by a short burst from us. We didn’t have much more left to give. The fuel gauge was showing an unsettling number which would force us to retreat to the French-controlled base Morales-Frasier to rearm and refuel.
The requests for gun runs continued, and we made shorter and shorter runs, trying to conserve what little we had left. Suddenly, after our last run, the fire stopped.
“Wildwood, confirm you’re no longer making runs and that you no longer see activity,” Eagle 26 asked anxiously.
“Roger, we are complete with our runs and no longer see movement or fires from that area, nor are we experiencing any more fire on us, over,” Lead reported.
The relief in the radioman’s voice was obvious. “Copy Wildwood, great job, please continue to scan that area as long as you can. We’ve gotten our disabled vehicle moving again back towards Kutschbach, confirm you’re about to have to leave station for refuel?”
As we began discussing logistics, we were re-engaged as quickly as it had stopped.
Five, maybe ten minutes tops. That was all we would be able to squeeze out before going past the point-of-no-return and be walking home. Effective small arms fire began to descend again on our convoy and the ground forces, now confident on the location of the enemy, let loose larger munitions.
I called ahead to Morales-Frasier and let them know that we would need a NASCAR-quick turn out of the Fuel and Rearm Point (FARP). I informed them that each aircraft would dispatch the left-seated pilot to jump out and aid in ammo and rocket loading, so long as they could pump the gas quicker than they’d ever done before.
Our team agreed to one final gun run on the enemy positions before breaking our coverage for the FARP. We closely followed Lead’s engagement, letting go of the last remnants of our .50 cal ammo into the area before our weapon went dry. We broke out and let them know that we would be back as quickly as possible, and that the Troops in Contact (TIC) call should already have the Apaches queued up and on the way to relieve us ASAP.
Our FARP turn was conducted in near-record time while our engines and rotors still turned at 100Â percent. I got the .50 cal loaded and was assisting with the rockets when even more people rushed out to help. I jumped back into the cockpit just as the last of the fuel was being dumped in. We waved them off at our cutoff point and I was still buckling my harness as we pulled back up into the sky. We made our way back, seething like anxious hockey players sitting in the penalty box, ready to get back in and fight.
Meanwhile our counterparts, the Apaches, co-located with us back at Bagram, were in the air flying at max speed towards the battle. Callsign “Angry,” we had been living and working so closely together that we felt as though we were in the same troop, or “company.” They were our brothers, and I was happy to have them assist.
As we neared the ground forces, we saw that they were still taking and returning sporadic fire. We remarked internally that we had the utmost respect for the ground unit; they were intent to stay and keep up the fight with the enemy instead of breaking contact. They were pissed off.
Angry had arrived on station and were briefed. As we conducted our Battle Handover (BHO), the ground forces were engaged by an even more emboldened enemy descending upon them. The enemy had moved from a structure 100 meters out to now less than 50 meters away, along an entrenched and highly foliage-dense position. Eagle 26 yelled on the radio once more that they were taking even heavier and increasingly effective small arms fire now, much closer than before.
There was no time. We were now working on a situation in which our engagements would be considered “danger close.” We could no longer rely on the rockets aboard, only very precise and expertly laid .50 cal between our forces and the embedded enemy. Lead moved in with a perfect string of fire and broke out, followed by our Trail aircraft. We were immediately engaged as we made our run, and to make matters worse, our gun spit out only ten rounds before jamming. I swore as we broke out, attempting to run the emergency procedure to get our weapon back online. I tried to shrink behind the tiny, bulletproof side-door panel.
“Well, this blows,” I said, as I stuck my head out into the wind stream to check the gun and attempt to re-cock it. As we moved away to regroup, we tried to untangle our now-convoluted communication situation. With five radios in use and an active battle raging, properly utilizing our communications could be one of the most critical situations that we, as Kiowa pilots, could not afford to mess up. It was a medley of confusion, noise, and adrenaline.
The last thing we heard was that Angry now had control of the situation. Our mission to protect any of the ground elements from harm had been successful, and now, Angry would begin to work up some Hellfire missile shooting to put a bit more ordnance on the area. We headed north to clear the way, and I slumped back in my seat. Looking at my watch, I realized that the entire incident had lasted under an hour. It certainly felt several times that.
We landed back at Bagram and did our final refuel before putting the aircraft to bed. As the blades coasted down, the other pilot and I sat in quiet reflection, exhausted.
I also realized a few things all at once: The windscreen was filthy; the aircraft was filthy; and I was filthy. My face felt caked in grit, my stomach ravenous, and my body drained after that final capstone event in an over six hour flight. The troop we were in was like a tightly knit, small family, and our crew chiefs could see that this had been an exceptionally pain-in-the-ass day for us. They didn’t pry, but began to help, securing the aircraft, tying down blades, and installing the coverings. They silently helped us with our gear, pulled mission data cards for us, and gathered the things we left behind.
Inside our Command Post (CP), we sat down and debriefed as a team. We were heavy and spent, yet keenly aware of the next steps. An important aspect of our job was not quitting, even when the bird had been shut down. We submitted grids, sightings, findings, descriptions, and accounts, all typed up and forwarded for those who deal in the farming of such information to ponder and sort. Finally, we spoke of what we had done right, what we had done wrong, and what we could learn from and improve on. This final ritual was important, especially after such a day as this.
Afterward, we would each claim a piece of furniture on which to unwind, eat, chug water, and doze off here and there until it was time for the next shift to show up and replace us. This happened every 12 hours, so that we would continue to maintain coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the entire year.
In slightly more than 400 pages, a Kiowa pilot Ryan Robicheaux recalls his path in the military service and two deployments in Afghanistan.Â
The author based his book, Scouts Out!: A Kiowa Warrior Pilot's Perspective of War in Afghanistan, on the journal entries taken during his service. As the author reveals, it took years to transform the notes into a consistent narration, and the main force that pushed him forward was a promise to his grandmother to tell the world what had been happening in Afghanistan. The author couldn't have chosen a more appropriate time for his book's release: 2021 showed that there is no - and has never been - a simple, clear-cut resolution to the chaos in this Middle Eastern country. The book by Ryan Robicheaux illuminates the reckless steps that led to the disaster, evident to the people inside the military and concealed from the broad public.Â
The raw account of the everyday life of an Army pilot, of missions, both excruciating and full of camaraderie, of gradual changes in the policies; that's the elements that make the book a page-turner. The narrative is peppered sometimes with blatant humour, sometimes with heart-wrenching details. Children's letters sent to random soldiers serving in Afghanistan are placed at the beginning of some chapters to highlight the stark contrast between the children's innocent view of the war and the reality. To document the events that he wasn't a witness to, the author also uses recollections of his comrades.Â
The book's target audience is non-military readers who need to know the insider's side of the story to remember 'the forgotten war.' I'd gladly recommend the book to any reader, military or not, who is willing to think outside the media-sponsored box. You'll find in the book everything a well-written memoir can offer: a timely topic, fresh viewpoint on the subject, and the winsome style. Â
I received an advance review copy through Reedsy Discovery, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.