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 American aircraft and cruise missiles simultaneously attacked Taliban air defenses, airfields, command and control facilities, and troop garrisons throughout Afghanistan on 7 October 2001. The success of the operation, called Enduring Freedom, came rapidly. The Taliban controlled more than eighty percent of Afghanistan when the operation began. Al-Qaeda forces were entrenched in camps and safe houses throughout the country, which was little more than a terrorist-sponsored state. US and coalition forces had destroyed almost all Taliban air defenses by 20 October, less than two weeks after the start of the war. US Special Forces linked up with anti-Taliban leaders on several fronts. Twenty days into the conflict, the provincial capital of Mazar-e Sharif fell. The cities of Herat, Kabul, and Jalalabad quickly followed. By mid-December, anti-Taliban forces controlled the capital city of Kandahar. An Afghan interim government was inaugurated just seventy-eight days after the beginning of the war. Today, Taliban and al-Qaeda forces remaining in the country are cut off and isolated, mostly in the mountainous regions in the southern part of the country.
 The success and speed of operations in Afghanistan can be attributed to technology. Small, light, and highly mobile Special Forces units used lasers to designate targets for aircraft flying high above them. These targets were hit almost immediately with accuracies measured in feet. Precision-guided munitions multiplied the effectiveness of every sortie. In Desert Storm, US forces launched ten aircraft to hit one target on average. In Enduring Freedom, one aircraft hit two targets. The targeting cycle itself was reduced from days to minutes. Night vision systems formed rules instead of exceptions. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles permitted around-the-clock surveillance of enemy locations and movements.
Tankers and airlifters played critical roles in getting fuel and supplies to the region. Every service and almost every platform in the US military participated in the operation. US fighter pilots flew missions lasting more than fifteen hours, some of the longest missions in the history of aerial combat. Surveillance missions of twenty-six hours also set records. And though they were not readily apparent in the news coverage of operations over Afghanistan, F-16 units were involved in the earliest mission. The first occurred on 22 October from a deployed location originally intended to support Operation Southern Watch missions over Iraq. F-16s began operating from a second location in early November.
While Fighting Falcons constituted only a small percentage of the military aircraft in the region, they played a significant role in the overall operation. What follows are excerpts from more than twenty hours of interviews with pilots, maintenance personnel, and weapon loaders from several F-16 units that took part in the operation. The excerpts don’t provide a complete picture of air operations over Afghanistan. They do, however, provide a first-hand account of the ingenuity, sacrifice, and resolve of some of those who contributed to the success of Enduring Freedom.
Eric Hehs, Editor of Code One
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