A photo from open sources
Unexpected high casualties in the battle on the Takur-Gar ridge in Afghanistan March 4, 2002, when US special forces thrice was ambushed, were the result of a poorly studied source radio interference. We are talking about plasma bubbles – turbulent clouds ionized gas generated in the dark in the upper layers of the atmosphere. This was discovered by American physicists who talked about its discovery in Space Weather magazine. It is briefly reported in A press release from the American Geophysical Union. Giant (about 100 kilometers in diameter) plasma bubbles form in ionosphere. In the afternoon, the plasma remains in a stable state (for now solar radiation “knocks out” electrons from atoms and molecules), and charged particles recombine at night, turning back into electrically neutral atoms. This process is faster in lower atmosphere: the plasma there loses its density and quickly “takes off” up like air bubbles in a glass of water. The turbulences at the surface of these rising plasma bubbles deform and scatter radio waves. 
Photos from open sources In the mountainous regions of Afghanistan, such phenomena most often occur in spring. It was then in March 2002 Chinook MH-47E helicopter with a group of rangers flew to the rescue groups of special forces surrounded by al-Qaeda militants on top mountains of Takur-Gar. After some time, it turned out that the rangers gave the wrong coordinates and the helicopter goes to the site, busy with the Afghans. Radio signals from the base never reached the crew helicopter, and soon he was shot down from an RPG. In 2012, the American physicist Michael Kelly suggested that the source of interference there were plasma bubbles. Check this hypothesis turned easy – scientists got lucky: NASA’s TIMED satellite launched in 2001 year to study the upper atmosphere, March 4, 2002 flew just over the battlefield. Having processed the TIMED data, physicists demonstrated the presence of a plasma bubble directly between helicopter and communications satellite. The bubble itself could hardly “knock out” the whole connection, but in combination with rough terrain he He created radio interference that did not allow the base to transmit information to the crew. “Loss of just a few decibels of signal [due to a plasma bubble] broke the ridge of a camel, “Kelly suggested.
Time
