I remember role playing a bad guy at an urban training excersize in our trainup for Bosnia. I was walking arond playing nice with the GI's. The whole time I was turning knobs on thier squad radios and manpack SINCGARS. Fucked up thier comms big time. When asked about comms at the AAR, the comment was that the manpack and squad radios were absolutly useless.
I got caught doing it by an OC (but not by any of the troops). He pulled me aside and asked me what I was doing so I fessed up - I thought I was going to be in trouble. He was very surprised and told me to let him know if I was able to do it again. For the rest of the morning I would walk by him with my fingers extended counting how many radios I was up to. Must have looked like I was giving him gang signs or something. I think I got up to 4 or 5 before I quit.
When the blanks started flying they couldn't communicate and couldn't figure out why. Something as simple as making sure you're on the right freq/channel can suddenly become not so simple when you're as stressed as you are when you're in combat. It's called the fog of war for a reason. They were quite shocked when my Company Commander and the OC told them why their comms were so screwed up. I wasn't there, but I wish I could have been.
Having said all that, I read a book called, IIRC, 'Not a Good Day to Die' which was about Operation Anaconda. The Roberts Ridge issue was prominent in the book. The difficulties they had were, IMHO inexcusable. An Air Force General sitting in Kuwait (Quatar? somewhere along the Gulf) shouldn't be overruling a SF unit commander on the ground thinking he has a better idea of what's going on than the guy who's actually there. There were alot of screwups that I think was a matter of comm dificulties, but made worse by inter service rivalry and turf battles. It's been a while since I've read the book though, maybe I should read it again.
-K