Operation Planet X
2003 Army

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Planet X was a US Army mechanized raid conducted on a village near Ad-Dawr in Salah Al-Din province 11 miles (18 km) north of Tikrit on the night of 15 May 2003 by elements of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, U.S. 4th Infantry Division and Task Force Ironhorse in search of Ba'ath party members and militants.
The name of the operation may have been inspired by the cartoon Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century.
As a result of this effort a key member of the former regime, Gen. Mahdi Al-Duri Al-Tikrit Adil Abdallah was captured along with 260 other prisoners.
US fighting forces involved roughly 500 soldiers, 18 M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 12 artillery pieces, 30 HMMWVs, and 6 patrol boats.
Military Units Involved
US forces reported to be involved were
1st Brigade Combat Team, U.S. 4th Infantry Division
Task Force Ironhorse
1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment
Iraqi Units involved
4th Battalion, 1st Iraqi Army
2nd Battalion, 3rd Iraqi Army
Casualties
No US, Coalition or Iraqi casualties or deaths were reported during the operation.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Operation Planet X” is 2003 Army. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Operation, Planet and Army, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “2003 Army” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7097399. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2003.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Operation Planet X”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Operation Planet X primary sources, Operation Planet X archive and Operation research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Operation Planet X”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Operation Planet X” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.