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2004-01-06 Home Front

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Posted by Dan Darling 2004-01-06 1:22:53 AM|| || Front Page|| [11130 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Although there might, indeed, be some dumbass doctrine (the Pentagon has hordes who codify brainfarts in triplicate) that specifies certain forces in certain situation, this sounds like inter-service rivalry, sour grapes, and gamesmanship.

Does anyone here think, in the circumstances cited above for the Omar sighting in Kandahar, that going ahead and capturing the shithead would have been met with some kind of punishment or reprimand? Not a chance - a success like this makes a mighty fine insurance policy, not to mention casting the desired doubt on the stupidity of inflexibility. Failure, on the other hand, could be due to poor / garbled communications or other vagaries encountered by field locations. Been there, done that, myownself. Anyone here with field time who hasn't improvised when faced with stupid and self-defeating orders? I should exempt the Navy guys, cuz it's pretty hard to commandeer a seagoing vessel for private missions... But a fire-team and a chopper? Hey, that's a snap when the Top Dog wants to hunt.

It's almost always easier to get forgiveness than permission. I know there are exceptions, but hours versus minutes made all the difference - and that was more than obvious to the commander on the scene. I think this instance was the Firebase Gecko Commander's way of saying "Fuck You and your policy, gentlemen." - and if that message and the ramifications didn't get all the way to the top, then there are some seriously gutless turds in that chain of command. I detect a distinct lack of Colonel Wests...

Posted by .com 2004-1-6 3:50:40 AM|| 2004-1-6 3:50:40 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Somehow I think if they had captured Omar or Zawahiri, all would have been forgiven.

Posted by eyeyeye 2004-1-6 9:53:59 AM|| 2004-1-6 9:53:59 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 .com, I agree. There are tons of Pentacrats that don't like to share glory or missions. Osama may be accross the street from an HQ but they need to call in the 'special squad' to take him down. It's all about rice bowls with these idiots. Stay in yours you can't have any of mine. The Pentacrats in charge of the ground troops don't help matters either. Can you imagine a battallion CO in WWII calling in for permission to capture Hitler? That is what this sounds like they have now.

Posted by Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2004-1-6 10:18:29 AM|| 2004-1-6 10:18:29 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 .COM, if the Green Berets went in anyway and things went badly (like Mogadishu) there would have been all sorts of hell to pay. I'm not saying the Green Berets shouldn't have been given the assignment, but jumping ahead and doing it despite orders would be Hollywood stupid.

Posted by ruprecht 2004-1-6 11:35:01 AM|| 2004-1-6 11:35:01 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 This is more pentagon deskbound idiots who want to "use the right tool for the job". Its a case of "The best is the enemy of the good". They want to use "The Best" when "Good enough" would get the job done.

There is no doubt that Rangers or SF units could have done the job in as well as Delta or ST6 ops. could, if you only consider the final objective (kill or capture the target).

The difference would have been casualties and "splash" (publicity, collateral damage, public knowledge).

Delta/ST6 would have sustained and inflicted minimal casualties, and been in and out of there before much of a reaction was raised, and with little collateral damage. SF/Rangers would have had some killed, and likely killed a ton at the target, plus would have damaged a lot more, and taken a while to clear out (which woudl have possibly allowed some more locals to get themselves into the fight - and get killed).

Also the nature of the 2 groups is different: SF/Rangers are combat units. ST6/Delta are "raid" units. The former can move on a lot less notice, the latter require planning and rehearsal. The former tend to be a bit more blunt, the latter more "surgical". The former will leave very solid evidence of their presence and will take longer to extract, the latter can whisper in and out if they have time for proper plan and execution.

These decisions were purely political. In my opinion some of the generals at the pentagon have lost their balls - under clinton they developed the habit of not leaving footprints, or causing casualties (on either side), or making any political waves. During those 8 years, those who have risen General and Colonel rank prior to 2000, were politicians and better off covering their asses than charging hard.

Whats needed now is hard chargers, not deskbound paperpushers who err on the side of caution. This is a war. We need more Leaders and less Followers.

What happened is some command element decided "Lets play it safe - Delta/ST6 can do this with a lot less noise and casualties, and besides thats what the book says to do, so my ass is covered by bouncing this one to somone else - the important thing is to follow the book"

A hard charger would have said "SF and the Rangers can do this - Delta is too far off and doesnt have the intel yet or time to prep. Send in the SF unit - casualties will be higher and we will have a harder time extracting them, so have the Rangers ready to extract them and get some heavy air support on call too - the important thing is to get these bastards. Let the higher ups know that there's going to be a ruckus in Haji-ville when we kick the door in on this mosque, and likely a lot of dead Mahmoods."

There's the difference. Its a shame that the higher ups are more concerned with method than results in cases like this.

Posted by OldSpook 2004-1-6 11:52:40 AM|| 2004-1-6 11:52:40 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 I think the Rumsfeld memo was an example of a good leader recognizing this type of problem and working to fix it.

Good officers do what's right and worry about their career once they retire. If they buck authority along the way, they get a better book deal and improved speaking fees.

Posted by Super Hose 2004-1-6 11:54:03 AM|| 2004-1-6 11:54:03 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Ridiculous. Where do people think Delta comes from? SPECIAL FORCES. And when their hitch in Delta is over, where to they go? SPECIAL FORCES! So it's pretty disingenous (not to mention moronic) to suggest that the skillset isn't there.

This sounds like some command (SOCOM?) doesn't want any of the juicy, headline grabbing missions being grabbed by someone else. How do you justify that next star, not to mention the big budget, if the damn Special Forces are out there nabbing the Bad Guys?! In other words, your classic intra-service turfwar pissing contest.

SF trains for a multiple of missions, including working with indigenous forces, unconventional war (guerrilla/counterinsurgency), reconnaissance, and DIRECT ACTION. If they get sniffs of the Bad Guys sitting close, it's criminal that they aren't allowed to move in and take them down. After all, it wasn't Delta or ST6 that nabbed saddam, it was regular old infantry.

Posted by 4thInfVet 2004-1-6 12:10:12 PM|| 2004-1-6 12:10:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 At least when I was in, there were "door kicker" SF teams that trained for snatch type missions. BTW, the soldiers used in the Entebbe raid were all line paratroopers and infantry: The units should be drawn from Yoni Netanyahuâs paratroops, another paratroop unit and the Golani Infantry Brigade. Golani had endured a long tradition of being the unit to which all rejects from other IDF echelons had been sent. In the years preceding the Yom Kippur War, the brigade had demonstrated a remarkable ability to âpull itself up by its own bootstrapsâ and was now recognized as an elite unit. The choice for the Entebbe operation was yet another recognition of its new status in the IDF. (from the IDF official history) Finally, the German unit that pulled off the raid that utterly destroyed the SAS BULLBASKET mission in WWII was composed of a bunch of landser invalided off the Russian front. It's all leadership and METT-TW.

Posted by 11A5S 2004-1-6 12:46:03 PM|| 2004-1-6 12:46:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 GB's and Rangers could have handled the job just fine.Some paper-pusher or someone trying to feather his nest screwed the pooch,and should be court-martialed.

Posted by raptor 2004-1-6 12:50:14 PM|| 2004-1-6 12:50:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Grab a handful of your AK-47 buddies and go kill'm. Oldspook, you should be writing screenplays in Hollywood, Your poetry!

Posted by Lucky 2004-1-6 1:30:14 PM|| 2004-1-6 1:30:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 The problem is in command structure. SOCOM is a separate entity in the armed forces. The problem arises with our cold ware era command structure in the sense that we have theater commands, eg. CentCom for Middle Eastern areas and Central Asia/Africa. SOCOM doesn't necessarily fall under these guys command structures so the regular brass is loathe to use them more agressively. And when they DO use them you got to keep a relatively good logistics tail on them at all times to provide them with everything from food, intel, firepower as needed or even extraction resources. Basically the only way to get around these problems is to rearrange the command structure to take advantage of SOCOM but this probably wont happen for another 10 years at our rates :(

Posted by Val 2004-1-6 3:10:26 PM|| 2004-1-6 3:10:26 PM|| Front Page Top

06:49 Anonymous
07:33 raptor
03:18 Scott
01:21 Old Patriot
01:11 triticale
01:10 Old Patriot
00:55 Lucky
00:55 Old Patriot
00:41 Lucky
00:29 Lucky
00:07 A Jackson
00:05 CujoQuarrel
00:02 Stephen
00:00 tu3031
23:46 Old Patriot
23:46 A Jackson
23:44 Ed Becerra
23:41 4thInfVet
23:35 Stephen
23:35 A Jackson
23:27 S
23:23 Frank G
23:13 Raj
23:11 Zhang Fei