{"id":196,"date":"2011-08-09T23:46:21","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T04:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.wordpress.com\/?p=196"},"modified":"2011-08-09T23:46:21","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T04:46:21","slug":"lessons-from-the-battlefield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2011\/08\/09\/lessons-from-the-battlefield\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from the Battlefield"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As a veteran, I know the horrors and hardships of war..I like to think I have hardened my heart enough to not let\u00a0the news from the battlefield\u00a0affect\u00a0me anymore, but that is a joke. With the recent tragic loss of 30 Special Operation Operators, 22 of them from the Elite Seal Team 6 in Afghanistan (The Team that took down Osama Bin Laden.)\u00a0I have had a heavy heart and it has been on my mind quite a bit the last few days.\u00a0I want to put out a few points, not as finger-pointing, but as lessons, because if we do not learn from our mistakes in war, we are doomed to repeat them and sacrifice more fine young men un-needingly.<\/p>\n

The war\u00a0in Afghanistan\u00a0is a guerilla war, make no mistake about it..fought by hardened\u00a0islamic zealot\u00a0guerillas, people who have known warfare for centuries, fighting the armies of Alexander the Great to the Soviet Army (with a little help from the\u00a0United States) defeating them all in a war of attrition that staggered the imagination. This is not going to be a general essay on the war, there is way too many of them out there (most of them wrote by men with alot of degrees, but zero combat experience.) Instead I want to learn from the particular incident that killed the 30 US Seals (part of a rescue team)\u00a0in particular, an RPG (or Stinger)\u00a0attack on a low flying helicopter, which if we look back in history not very far, we can learn volumes.\u00a0Make no mistake about it, our enemy has succeeded in writing a book of\u00a0tactics that is successful in creating casualties on our forces..there are some that dismiss\u00a0these attacks\u00a0as “lucky”, I would disagree and use history and my experiences\u00a0to qualify my point.<\/p>\n

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Mogadishu, Somalia 1993<\/strong><\/p>\n

The infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident that shook America awake we were in a struggle with a determined enemy.. not one, but two, black hawk helicopters (the second helo\u00a0was a rescue attempt)\u00a0were shot down by Somali\u00a0RPG teams. In the end,\u00a0American casualties were 18 dead and 73 wounded. The essence of this operation was basically a “snatch and grab” aimed at the Habr\u00a0Gidr\u00a0clan, headed by warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.\u00a0Initiated primarily by the 75th Rangers and 1st Special Operation Detachment-Delta, with the Rangers acting in a security role and Delta initiating the actual snatch. It was a general tactic to use the MH-60\u00a0Black Hawks to “fast rope” the Rangers\u00a0(Delta typically used A\/MH-6M\u00a0Little birds to deploy on the\u00a0 rooftops) to their security box positions on the street, having the helo sit there for an average of 2-3 minutes while the troops were deployed, a big fat target, sitting static, waiting to draw fire. At these ranges, an un-trained insurgent would fire an RPG rocket (dumb munition, no guidance system) and have good effect on target.<\/p>\n

Asadabad, Afghanistan (Kunar Province)\u00a02005<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rescue Mission for Operation Red Wing. In support and rescue of the 4 Navy Seals from Seal Team 10, including the only Lone Survivor, fellow Texan Marcus Luttrell. A total of 16 men were killed in the RPG (or Stinger)\u00a0attack on the rescue helicopter, 8 Navy Seals and 8 160th SOAR Airborne troops. The target of Operation Redwing, Ahmad Shah, a Taliban Commander was later quoted of saying “”We certainly know that when the American army comes under pressure and they get hit, they will try to help their friends. It is the law of the battlefield.<\/em>” Those that say our enemy is not organized and are “lucky” in their attacks, might want to take this enemy’s words to heart. They obviously have our reaction tactics\u00a0charted, like a chess game. More\u00a0importantly, our RESCUE TACTICS<\/strong>, which all of these incidents have in common.<\/p>\n

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Kabul Afghanistan, 1986<\/strong><\/p>\n

Operation Cyclone.<\/a>\u00a0The CIA program to arm and train\u00a0the mujahideen\u00a0to fight the Soviet invasion and\u00a0onslaught, which began in 1979 and continued until 1989. A major weapon system that the Muj were supplied with was the Stinger missle system, an anti-aircraft guided missle platform, capable of downing helo’s or fixed wing aircraft. The major threat at the time was the Soviet Hind Mi-24\u00a0Attack Gunship, which was decimating the civilian population.\u00a0The Stinger would enable the average Muj fighter with the ability to down these monsters. When the Soviets finally were defeated in 1989, the CIA sought to “buy back”\u00a0 300 Stingers, at a price tag of $55 Million, but found the majority of these units had either\u00a0seeped into the \u00a0heroin\/arms\u00a0black market or disappeared over the border to Croatia, North Korea and Iran, in essence, supplying most of our global\u00a0enemies with a devastating weapon to shoot down low flying aircraft. There are several theories surrounding the propagation of the Stinger by the Taliban, one suggest the Russian\u00a0Mafia barters weapons for heroin. Another suggest that through reverse engineering, the Taliban has been able to reproduce a missile\u00a0that could be fired through the Stinger platform. Current CIA and NSA\u00a0intelligence reports suggest the Taliban currently has over 100-200 of these missiles on hand and uses them sparingly for high value targets, such as populated military helicopters or low flying commercial airliners.<\/p>\n

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The current military policy of using slow and\u00a0loud\u00a0transport helicopters like Chinooks, that insert troops at low altitude for assault and\u00a0rescue missions\u00a0without any type of armed\u00a0escort, like Apache attack helicopters is a recipe for disaster. Working around the Chinook for years, I can tell you it is no way a “stealthy” chopper..you can hear it coming from 5 miles away. Also, the terrain of the country means a dedicated RPG team or Stinger team could basically set themselves up and be almost horizontal with the slow, lumbering helo\u00a0and have a “chip” shot. The terrain also offers good cover, like caves and depressions for teams to hide until the last minute. The only way is for Apaches to recon the route, back and forth, with thermal gun sights and root out the teams before they have a chance to set up. Another option is the use of the\u00a0“eye in the sky”, either through a Predator Drone or Ac-130 Gunship. Understanding that the enemy has our SOP in regards to rescue missions, they know beyond a shadow of a doubt, when one of our units is pinned down or outmanned, we will come running with reinforcements\u00a0inserted by air (Quick Reaction Force.)\u00a0We need to change this SOP\u00a0ASAP.<\/p>\n

QRF Insertion Options<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is no easy answer when time is the crucial element in Quick Reaction. When men are dying and the position is about to be overun, the faster the better. Besides the obvious solutions of air support, which we have skimmed the surface of, the other option is starting to fight this war in terms of guerilla tactics (small elite unit action)\u00a0which was the initial strategy in 2001, but somehow got changed along the way, deciding to use the principal of “troop surge” that had worked in Iraq. I personally feel after the failure of Operation Red Wing in 2005,\u00a0which we discussed, the Pentagon changed it’s view to a more conventional type of war. The essence of guerilla tactics is doing more with fewer men. Inserting small teams of SF men in\u00a0MH Little Birds to provide support and extraction for\u00a0rescue missions is not a novel ideal, but I think it is a more viable solution than putting a platoon+ sized element hanging in the air with it’s fly\u00a0unzipped,\u00a0looking like a bullet magnet.<\/p>\n

I propose that the job could have been done with half of the men that were there. We are talking the best of the best ..force multipliers. These 30 men which died,\u00a0could have been inserted in a faster, more efficient vehicle (MH Little Bird). This helo has a lower sound signature and is much quicker to land and take off. There is also the option of a HALO insertion, although not near as fast and typically done in smaller numbers than 10-15 men, typically squad sized, 4-7.<\/p>\n

Endgame<\/strong><\/p>\n

The recent Seal\u00a0tragedy and the other incidents we discussed\u00a0magnifies the need for the US to change it’s strategy on troop rescue operations and the way we are fighting this war.\u00a0We have seen that obviously the enemy uses these rescue operations against us, knowing we will send a large QRF to respond. IMO we need to get back to the roots of the original gameplan to fight this war (massive airpower combined with small elite unit\u00a0guerilla warfare where a indigenous\u00a0counter-insurgency population is trained and armed)\u00a0and away from large troop movements that are predictable.<\/p>\n

Stay Dangerous my friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a veteran, I know the horrors and hardships of war..I like to think I have hardened my heart enough to not let\u00a0the news from the battlefield\u00a0affect\u00a0me anymore, but that is a joke. With the recent tragic loss of 30 Special Operation Operators, 22 of them from the Elite Seal Team 6 in Afghanistan (The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[17],"tags":[37,38,39,40],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}