On killing those three civilians: Sheperds are usually alone for extended periods, but who knows? On that particular day they might have had their scheduled food supply, or one of them was just visiting and expected back soon. In any case disrupting their usual (unknown?) behavioral pattern might as well have alerted the villagers, so killing them wouldn't really have safed the situation any more.

The loss of the team is bad, but #### happens. I don't think that they could reasonably hope to remain undetected anyway. That a Chinook went down afterwards is a different story. Again shows not to pack too many people onto one vehicle!.