Pasting this comment from reddit ,few details are left out but overall what happened is still in this
The original plan for Red Wings, created by the USMC infantry battalion that was in charge of that sector, was to start out with sending a reinforced scout sniper team of eight Marines, led by a very highly experienced team leader, to infiltrate that area by foot, try to get eyes on the various Named Areas of Interest (different parts of the village) to report on possible activity and location of the target, Ahmed Shah. They'd be reporting back, at which point a company sized raid force would air assault into the area with Chinooks, to both establish blocking positions preventing anyone from leaving/entering the area, and an assault force to clear the buildings. The problem was that Marine battalion was not operating as part of a Marine Air Ground Task Force and didn't have organic lift capacity, and it would take months going through the channels to the divisional HQ in charge of Regional Command East to get them. However, the regional Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force – Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A) did have their own organic air lift capacity, and were always looking for work. It was much easier and faster to go through them to try to get help, which is what the Marines did.
It was a SEAL team commander who ran that CJSOTF-A, and after some bargaining, it was agreed that in order to give helo support from the 160th SOAR, both the assault element and the recon would be done by the SEALs, while the Marines would set up blocking positions and take over the SSE and detainee ops, so the SEALs could be airlifted out as soon as Shah or other targets were killed/captured. The Marines agreed, they just wanted Shah and didn't really care who got them.
The SEAL assault force was very experienced, but they had been ordered to make use of the SEAL SVD teams attached to them, so it was decided to use them ground recon despite none of them being trained on that stuff. Of that four man team, only one had ever done a combat deployment before (Luttrell), doing nothing at all remotely like what they were being tasked with doing for Red Wings. The Marines gave them the OPORDER and helped them plan, gave pointers because they knew the terrain and had a lot of experience doing that stuff. For instance, their scout snipers flat out told Murphy's team that the MBITR they planned to rely on for comms wouldn't work, it didn't have enough power. But they disregarded the advice.
To avoid a long walk, both stressful and dangerous, increasing the chance of being compromised, the SEALs decided to be airlifted within ~500 meters of the designated observation posts. That is a MAJOR no-no within the recon community, but again, they weren't trained. To try to mitigate the threat, the 160th spent the week beforehand flying all over the area doing false insertions, to try to trick the enemy into not knowing when/where the real one would be. And while that technique does work in some scenarios (namely when the enemy is already alert), in this case it only solidly tipped off Shah and his bunch. There is a video of them in the hills the day before Red Wings actually kicked off, patrolling around looking for infiltrators.
Then during the mission, when they fast roped onto the LZ, the rope was detached but Murphy's team didn't hide the rope. Then when they got soft compromised by the goat herders they didn't end mission and start their E&E plan (which they didn't appear to even have). They lost comms, which wasn't a surprise. They let the goat herders go instead of gagging them and flex cuffing them to some trees. After letting them go they only moved a few hundred meters away and sat there for a while. When they got ambushed on their walk back up the high ground, they didn't execute any sort of proper counter ambush battle drill. Murphy exposed himself by trying to establish comms in the middle of a firefight instead of taking charge and trying to break contact and escape. By transmitting a garbled plea for help, the QRF got sucked into a skirmish they had no intel on other than Murphy's team were in trouble. By the time the QRF arrived, Murphy's team were all dead, minus Luttrell who ran/fell down the mountain (which is what all of them should have done). And then the QRF bird, instead of waiting for their slower Apache escort to first scan and scope out an LZ, landed within a few hundred meters of Murphy's original LZ, which had an RPG team camped on it, just in case.
OP Red Wings was basically a "what not to do" compiling of lessons learned for a recon mission
