Apparently the helicopter that went down was carrying some guys from DEVGRU. No word if they were the same guys who pulled off the Abbottabad raid (and we may never know, at least officially.)
If so, it's a reminder of the ops tempo that SOCOM has been dealing with for ten+ years now. The media only notices them once in a blue moon, when something big like taking down Bin Laden happens, as though they'd been sitting around waiting for something to do, twiddling their thumbs since the Battle of Takur Ghar.
UPDATE: Latest RUMINT is that none of the operators on board were the guys from Neptune Spear... (...who are probably busy elsewhere already.)
God bless each and every one.
ReplyDeleteAl T.
And of course, Joe Bite Me Biden had to open his big piehole back in May at a dinner about who got bin Laden.
ReplyDeleteI really wish we'd just pave that entire region of the world and make asphalt out of the Taliban.
Our ROE are ridiculous--worse, in many cases, than the ROE of Vietnam.
Freaking politicians. . .
--AOA
In a less degraded age, the feats of the last decade would have been sung by all the artists in the land.
ReplyDeleteTam,
ReplyDeleteYou hit it on the head. Their OPTEMPO is insane and it's a testament to their skill that we haven't lost more. You keep hitting the snake but eventually he gets his strike in also. Course, if we followed An Ordinary American advice above, it would be a mute point.
What an awful, awful waste.
ReplyDeleteCouple of years back, remember a bunch of the Usual Suspects decrying all the spending on choppers and tanks and so forth and asking "Why don't we just make a lot more of these special forces teams to do the job?"
ReplyDeleteAnd when they got slapped in the face with just what it takes, in training and equipment for a team, they didn't like that, either. And it really seemed as if they simply COULD NOT UNDERSTAND that not every troop is capable of filling one of those positions; they've been playing "Everyone is SPECIAL!!" for so long they just can't seem to get it through their damned heads that "No, they're not."
Dammit, this sucks.
God bless them, resting finally on the fields of Elysium, by the stream of Oceanus.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWhat an awful, awful waste.
Waste? It's chance. Helicopters are dangerous.. and a team that's always flown from action to action has to expect this.
Our ROE are ridiculous--worse, in many cases, than the ROE of Vietnam.
Shoot them all and let god sort them out is never popular with civilians. Russians did that in Afghanistan... and it didn't pay off.
Lanius,
ReplyDelete"Shoot them all" is not what the operators over there want. If you'd ever served in that region of the world, you'd know that.
Secondly, during my years in the military, I never "expected" to get blown out of the sky. It was always a possibility, but no one I served with ever "expected it."
--AOA
The guys, their families, such an awful thing. And all that experience. 25 DEVGRU operators x a minimum 10 years on the teams + however long they were on DEVGRU = a minimum 250 years of warfighting experience is gone. You could wipe out a regular infantry company and not lose that, to say nothing of the 160th guys or the AF Special Tactics members, who were probably as experienced. Such a shame.
ReplyDeleteI did wonder what height they were flying at that would cause total fatalities. The Chinook is a tough bird, and if they were anywhere close to the ground, it would take a pretty big hit for the 160th guys not to be able to get it down with some survivability.
Matt
St Paul
Lanius: We send in SF units when we are trying to avoid civilian casualties.
ReplyDeleteIf we were not trying for that, these folks would be in charge of dealing with Afghanistan.
> look
ReplyDeleteYou are in a cave. There is a evil smelling blanket here that has been used for bedding.
You hear a muffled thump-thump-thump sound from outside.
There is an AK-47 here.
> get AK-47
You get the AK-47.
The lights go out.
> leave cave
Which way?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be shot by a DEVGRU.
Tirno just won the MF'in' internets for at least the next two weeks. :D
ReplyDeleteThey caught the golden bb... They will NOT be forgotten... RIP gents, your job is done, we'll pick up the slack.
ReplyDeleteas though they'd been sitting around waiting for something to do
ReplyDeleteWell, I have been told by a reliable source that the reason it took so long to get bin Laden is that it took the SEALS 5 years to swim that far into the desert.
Without wishing in any way to denigrate the jobs that SF are doing in the "Ghan, it has long been my contention that many of these more routine tasks could be carried out by leg Infantry.
ReplyDeleteSF "burnout" is a very real problem.
RIP, warriors. Lest We Forget.
"It's chance."
ReplyDeleteNo, it is not chance that these wonderful young men were thrown away for nothing by career building generals and admirals. It is not chance that we are destroying our young people, our wealth, and our power in the sort of war that is designed to destroy them. It is not chance that our masters are indifferent. It is not chance that all this is a fantastic test laboratory for the serious future enemies.
The whole of Afghanistan is not worth the bones of a single GI.
There are always complaints about ROE being too restrictive..
ReplyDeleteRegular military, that is. Maybe SF troops are smart enough.
Secondly, during my years in the military, I never "expected" to get blown out of the sky. It was always a possibility, but no one I served with ever "expected it."
Expecting is the wrong word. Perhaps.. 'prepared for the possibility'.
Not unusual for guerilla's to fire RPG's at slowly moving helicopters
'bout time ti bring'em home, I think. This was a fluke, but shit happens. That 'stan is no longer worthy of our blood.
ReplyDeleteRIP, gents: you done good.
Leatherneck
We lost a whole Chinook load (including the CO of ST-10) during REDWING.
ReplyDeleteIt hurts.
Still, one of the unwritten "SOF Truths" is that we lose guys. Even in "peacetime" we used to lose them in training (still do) and now we lose some in combat.
As for Afghanistan not being "worth it"; that may or may not be true, but we're not fighting FOR Afghanistan so much as fighting IN Afghanistan - and a lot of other places beside - and I'm NOT counting OmaMao's little adventure sorties over Libya.
So who are we fighting?
ReplyDeleteI mean, aside from "anyone who resists the invasion".
Who are we fighting? Ironically, the proxies of Pakistan's ISI, a tiny faction of the muj who largely sat out the Russkie war and were therefore in a position to be manipulated into a position of power afterward.
ReplyDeleteYou think Islamabad wanted a hostile Hindu state to the south and a hostile Pathan one to the north?
Hence my comment. Wonderful Americans are killing, dying and being crippled, we are all being plundered, for the benefit of the current rulers of Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteI hate our masters I really do.
The current rulers of Pakistan may be benefitting as an unintended consequence of some of our actions, but that's not why the guys and gals are there.
ReplyDeleteI hate your masters too, but they're not my masters.