Delta Force

The Al-Qurayshi Raid In Syria, What We Know So Far

The planning for this raid would have begun months ago, most likely involving signal intelligence, a fancy word for tracking the target’s use of cell phones by him or known associates. From there the noose would tighten in terms of his exact location. Once that was worked out to a reasonable approximation, assets on the ground would then do the leg work of surveilling the location to assure the target was present there.

The intelligence gathered would include knowing how many persons lived there, their comings and goings and who visited the compound and where they went afterward. Photos and video from every angle would be taken and operatives would even go as far as walking past the building or attempting some ruse to gain entry to determine the layout, like a city worker checking for a gas leak or other inspection of some kind.

ISIS leaders know the U.S. is looking for them so they go to great lengths to keep their locations concealed, like bin Laden did, they often take up residence in plain sight hoping to blend in with the local population. Theirs is an existence not unlike being in a prison of their own making, living in near-complete isolation from the outside world. Al-Qurayshi was said to never leave the inside of his residence on the third floor except to bathe.

From there, a model would be built of the compound including the surrounding buildings in several scales to plan the method of approach and assault. A realistic mockup in full size would also be made to allow the operators to practice assaulting the building over and over until they know its layout is cold.

Current reports state the attack began at approximately 0100hrs with the arrival of some 50 helicopters(We don’t believe this number is accurate at all, there aren’t that many in the theater) from a base said to be in the region. Since the location of the village is only about 20 minutes from the border with Turkey and the administration stated that it deconflicted with several nations before the raid we imagine the raid may have begun from Turkey, or U.S. forces egressed to Turkey after the raid or perhaps both.

Before the raid witnesses claim to have heard a loudspeaker telling inhabitants of the target house to evacuate any women or children and surrender. Witnesses stated that a family exited from the ground floor. Upon landing the raiding force engaged in what was said to be an hours-long gun battle with those inside the second and third stories and with members of a militant group that heard the battle and tried to intervene in some manner with two of them being killed.

The DoD claims that during the fight, Al-Qurayshi detonated an explosive vest or belt inside the third story killing himself and his wife and two children. Photos taken by a photographer for Getty of the building itself seem to support these claims as the debris is blown outward, the lower floors are not collapsed and there is an apparent lack of fire damage that would accompany a strike by a missile or bomb from an aircraft.

(Photo by Izzeddin Kasim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

During the raid, one of the helicopters suffered a mechanical malfunction and was diverted to a landing area safely. It was destroyed on the ground by the raiding force. Pictures of the destroyed aircraft identify it as a UH-60 Blackhawk in common use and not the kind of special helicopter used in the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan.

Generally, raids like these do not last two to three hours, but the downed helicopter would have added to this time.

About 150 yards from the main house was a garage building that was hosed down with a heavy weapon of 30mm caliber by our estimation. This suggests the presence of at least one Apache attack helicopter. This building may have contained vehicles that the targets might have used to escape in. They appear to have entered the aluminum rolling doors of the building at a flat angle which points away from them being fired by an Ac-130H gunship orbiting over the raiding force.

We looked at Flight Tracker and found what appears to be the air support for the raid. We believe the tracks show a least one drone in orbit over the area and perhaps four F-16s flying close air support for the mission. They are stacked between 20,000 and 22,000 feet.

Speculation abounds over which Special Operations Unit conducted the raid or whether it was done by an elite unit belonging to a foreign country like Iraq’s CTF or the Jordanians. We believe that if any coalition forces had been part of the raid President Biden would have given them due credit in his announcement. SEAL Team Six is unlikely because they generally operated in Afghanistan while CAG or Delta Force has Syria as their bowl of falafel when it comes to special operations directed at high-value targets. Given the location of the raid and a few other markers, we estimate that CAG or Delta Force conducted this very successful raid.

The fact that this raid occurred in a country wracked by civil war with various Islamist militant groups all vying for control and the urban environment that the raid took place in, killing the target without any fatalities reflects very highly on the people who planned and executed the mission.

Well done.

DELTA Force Doc – Can You Save The Hand?

He ought to be screaming in pain

After two years of working at Fort Bragg, NC, as a Clinic Director, I was approached by the secret DELTA Force organization. They asked me to apply for the job of the unit’s Command Surgeon. “Surgeon” is a military title given to physicians of any specialty when assigned to a medical command and staff position in the military. As a family physician, I was invited to become the senior medical advisor to the commander.

I was recruited in part because of my past special operations experience as a Navy SEAL. I accepted the position and reported to the Deputy Commander’s office for my initial brief.
“Doc,” pronounced the intent colonel. “I’ve done the job of every officer on my staff, except yours. I can never do your job, but I consider it essential to our command’s success. I want you to provide the best medical care in the military to my staff and their families. I’ll expect you to ask for what you need to accomplish this, and when you ask me, I will approve it every time. I’m not qualified to argue with you, so if you say we need it, you’ll get it.”

That promise was never broken. Our clinic building was expanded and renamed in honor of unit medics killed in combat. Then we opened the doors to family members. We added a dental clinic, provided obstetrics care, and began delivering the children of unit moms. I delivered forty-four babies for these families. When I return now for reunion gatherings, there is always a mom or dad that regales me with stories of their children that I delivered. Good times.

Challenging patients frequently presented themselves because of the constant training with live weapons, explosive ordinance, parachuting, and aviation operations.
“Eagle down,” came the message to my secure phone. “There has been an accident in the field with an explosive injury to a hand. He’s en route to the hospital now,” finished the voice on my secure phone.
“Roger that. I’m on my way. Give me his name, please.” The name was passed, and as many times before, I drove above the speed limit to the emergency room. I arrived soon after the casualty did and was met by the nurse, who expected me.
“Hello, Doctor Adams,” she breathed. “Your patient is in room three. He may have lost his hand.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “How is he doing?”

“Sir, I have to be honest with you. He ought to be screaming in pain. His hand is almost completely gone! But he is just looking at it, while we clean it, and asking if we can save it. Who is this man?” She finished in awe.
He’s the definition of someone special. “He’s made of different stuff,” I replied.

When I got to the room, he was looking at his hand. Most of the soft tissue was gone. The bones of his fingers were mostly there, but he could not move them. There were burned edges of flesh visible down to the wrist area. I had been briefed en route, by the medic on the scene, that the squad was conducting simulated combat building clearance operations. He had pulled the pin on a flash-bang grenade to throw forward. Instead of the standard three-second delay, it had detonated instantly in his hand. A flashbang grenade produces a brilliant, eye-blinding flash of light and heat, with a loud explosive noise, but does not produce shrapnel. It is used to disorient attackers before entering a room.
The orthopedic hand surgeon arrived almost immediately after we called him. He took a careful look and directed us to move to the operating room. He would be better able to determine the extent of the injury with the patient under anesthesia. Our patient insisted on a local nerve block so he could listen and watch. Who were these men, and where do we get them?
A few months later, after they had fitted him with a new functional artificial hand, he came to me and requested to be medically cleared to freefall parachute again.

Where do these men come from?

The next week the same orthopedic medical team was back in the operating room. During building assault training, a rope rappelling rig had failed, and my new patient had slid down a four-story building. He had landed feet first onto the ground and performed the best parachute landing fall he could. His feet took the brunt of the fall, absorbing the impact of full body weight, weapon, and backpack. He had broken almost every bone in his two feet. We were passing stainless steel wires from the tip of each toe back towards the heel as we manually pushed bone fragments back in line.

“Bob, I hate to hang black crepe here,” stated the concerned surgeon. “These wires pass through the smooth cartilage of every joint in his toes and feet, and this creates a type of joint arthritis that will probably make it impossible to run again. Walking will be painful for a long time.”

“Thanks, Kurt,” I replied, concerned. “I’ll let the boss know.”
That afternoon, after seeing our patient tucked in and stable, I went back to the unit and passed the same prognostic information to the commander.
“Really, Doc?” he responded. “I know you’re telling me what the book says, but I’ll suggest something different. He’ll be running in six months,” he predicted, smiling.

“You just don’t know yet what these men are made of,” he concluded.
Six months later, I watched him run by the clinic and wave.

Dr. Bob Adams is a graduate of the Naval Academy and then BUDs and becoming a Navy SEAL. Then, off to medical school to become a physician as a civilian again. Bob joined the Army as a doctor and became the Delta Force Command Surgeon. He retired as a Colonel in the Army. Doctor Bob has written several books, including, Sword and Saints and an autobiography of his time in both the Navy and the Army.

How Delta Force Taught Social Distancing Before It Was Cool

Editor’s Note: Geo’s memoir, “Brothers of the Cloth,” a true account of special mission unit soldiers, has sold out in hardcover and will soon be coming out in paperback! You can keep an eye out for it here.

Isolation is a frightening prospect for a lot of us. True isolation — total isolation from all social interaction and deprivation of sensory stimulus, sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste — is something that few have experienced. Such isolation is quite matter-of-factly terrifying and even maddening to most.

This severe level of isolation is hardly experienced by our society’s general population. Solitary confinement is the most severe level of isolation and should not be confused with the simple isolation that most Americans are in due to the world health crisis at hand. To maintain perspective, the prospect of isolation sounds pretty innocuous to me, and I can say that we could do much worse.

Solitary confinement, or just Solitary, is an extreme situation that prisoners are prone to face depending on their attitude and conduct, as well as that of their captors. Prisoners of war and armed conflict are subject to some of the cruelest measures of extreme isolation possible. Most warfighters are fortunate to be able to attend training courses that aid significantly in their ability to endure the physical and mental rigors present in a Prisoner of War (POW) environment.

The highest level of POW survival training is called Survival, Evade, Resist, and Escape (SERE) training. As a student in SERE training, I was first isolated from all other students with a black hood over my head. From there my isolation went to a deeper state of apparent Solitary (confinement) where I was stuffed into a very small wooden box whose dimensions didn’t allow full limb extension or the ability to sit up fully erect. In the top was a hole just large enough to squeeze the average head through — woe was me!

I say “apparent” Solitary because I was not immediately aware of the men around me who were also confined in wooden boxes; in my case, we were three in a room. We, citizens, shall potentially isolate in our homes for several weeks… well, I can hardly think of such an environment as “isolation.” We are in our house “boxes”, but we are immediately and keenly aware that our friends and neighbors are all around us sharing in the very same experience.

The eventual discovery of my Delta brothers around me immediately lowered my sense of confinement despite the fact that I was stringently forbidden to talk to them. The tap code we had all learned to communicate with was ponderous but it did work. We all randomly snuck out a few verbal strings despite the guards’ vigil.

In contrast to such conditions, I can wave at my neighbor through my window. We can chat from sitting on our balconies just fine. Why… we could even step out on our front porches and chew the fat just fine. All this in-person chatting is on the very bottom of the communications technology totem. I’m now at liberty to call people on my smartphone, to video chat, or link up with them in an IM forum like Facebook:

Just how “isolated” are any one of us really in the comfort of our homes?

“How goes the struggle Bill?”

“Oh gosh, Geo… we’re hanging on by a thread over here. We barbecued steaks last night but were out of propane gas so we just burned rolls of toilet paper. The kids built a toilet paper fort that took up most of the house. Eventually had to have them tear it down and stack the rolls back in the garage — we keep the Stratus and the Cube parked in the driveway now.”

“Sounds pretty grueling over there, Bill. First daughter is working her HR gig from home now — just as happy as a true in a muscadine patch. I’m still hammering away at the keys trying to keep pace with the demands of my SORFEP major asshole boss.”

But what I can’t do is walk over and touch my neighbor on the shoulder with my index finger, a thing I coincidentally hate to do more than anything in the world short of snorting Ricin!

The Solitary that we POWs faced worked a different angle to sensory isolation; that was, they applied sensory overload to our audio receptors in an event that I referred to as “ear rape.” Very loud sounds were blasted through powerful speakers into our rooms at every second of every hour.

These sounds came in many irritating and annoying formats: babies crying, small children crying and begging for their daddies to come home, a man screaming indiscernible words to a Rudyard Kipling poem. It was all quite maddening though we all kept our wits about us. That is… until the prison camp got hold of a tape of my ex-wife bitching at me, a sound under which I folded fully and immediately, compromising the names of all my unit commanders and the invasion plans for Operation Overlord.

A thing many of us face that is a moderate threat to our sanity is being stuck inside our houses with — I’m sorry to say — our loved ones. We, who have been accustomed to being away from our close ones aside for just a few hours in the evenings — are suddenly faced with being crowded in a space whose walls seem to be closing in. Damnit, we’re actually going to just have to be adults about it.

I’m not equating our pending quarantine situation to captivity, though some folks will be puerile and obstreperous enough to cry “prisoner,” “solitary confinement,” “captivity” — fill in the blank — there are going to be adults behaving badly. Men in actual captivity gladly pull together tightly to protect and assist each other to endure the ordeal. They provide mutual comfort, compassion, and motivation. There is a program to be onboard with under such dire circumstances, it’s called RESIST.

As stark as this setting looks, it is not even to the level of true solitary confinement.

We in prison had not eaten or slept for days prior to our capture; now we were pretty much sporting key tones in our blood. A guard came through periodically and, one box at a time, he offered us a morsel of food if we could answer a question correctly. He asked me but I stuck out. He asked the man to my right who answered correctly. Knowing full well that the guard was playing a cruel game with him, he held out his hand up through the hole in his box to play along. The guard left.

“(Whispers) Geo! He gave me food!”

“Shut the f**k up man…”

“No he really did — hold out your hand.”

We both reached toward each other straining to extend our arms as long as they could be extended… and indeed there was food there! I broke the share apart and reached toward the brother on the other side of me, reaching and waving until our hands bumped and then he had food too. That was a small victory in the grand play of things, and a monstrous demonstration of compromise and compassion among humans in impending peril.

How isolated can a body really feel at home with the Inter-web and the fecal-ton of high-tech communications apparatus that we have? At home is where most Americans would rather be than any other place on the planet — except Disneyland; most people would rather be at Disneyland because that place is… well, it’s just really a pretty joyous place in comparison to most other places on Earth. In fact, it’s probably just about the happiest place on Earth — that I do fancy!

POWs suffer the worse torture, one that is mental: the curse of fate unknown. POWs don’t know if they will live or die from a moment to another. They don’t know if they will ever be alright again. Then there is us; we are trapped like scurvy bilge rats in our paradises. We know we are going to be alright. No really, we are going to be alright. We DON’T have to fire an FPF through our windows every dusk to scare off the barbarians who want to break in and steal our toilet paper. We don’t need to hoard ANYTHING!

Panic hoarding, a manifestation of puerile ignorance and of a fundamental absence of discipline.

“Gladys… Darin Stevens across the street just pulled up to his house with an entire case of those tiny cocktail onions! Get in the car — were going to the Piggly-Wiggly!!”

Panic is a by far a deadlier and more contagious “virus” that anything COVID-19 portends. When you let yourself get into a state of panic you have just ended any hope you have of gracefully resolving any situation. If that situation is a life-or-death matter, you have compromised your ability to sensibly work through it and have surrendered yourself to the whims of fate — whatever happens just… happens. You no longer have any influential input toward the outcome — good freakin’ luck with that!

Panic Hoarding: “Why do I have 14 cases of canned asparagus in my pantry?”

Finally, a mystery far greater than the Coronavirus antidote: where did the toilet paper frenzy come from? Who is responsible? You know there is only one person that started it and I want them to step forward like an adult and identify themselves.

I mean “corona” doesn’t sound like “diarrhea” — not even remotely! If all the toilet paper in the world were to vanish tomorrow, do you know how many people would die? None, that’s how many. Just maybe only those who die in car crashes racing to the Piggly-Wiggly to hoard more toilet paper that isn’t even there.

Oh, my God, with honor,
geo sends

Heavy Breach Cell: The Secret Weapon of Delta Force

I’m put squarely in mind of an amazing brother of mine who went by the call sign “Crapshoot.” It is the vision of him I see just past his breaching through an incredibly thick steel vault door with a Broco exothermic plasma torch.

Crapshoot half crawled and then was pulled out of the hole in the door like a rat. His face was black and he was coughing, having pulled his gas mask off at some point during his ordeal. He had crawled in there with a full leather welder’s apron on over his combat load. It hung down to his knees and was spattered with slag burns.

His hair and mustache were singed and he had smoke coming off him… somehow. He was helped up and sat down with his back up against the concrete bunker. One man was left to stay with him while he rested for a spell and traded the contents of his lungs for actual air. He cradled his rifle in the crooks of his elbows like a man whose hands were burned.

One by one we wormed through the hole in the gargantuan portal door. We all regarded Crapshoot in a positive manner as we passed him: a sap on the leg or the shoulder, a punch in the arm, and a compliment for a job well done. Crapshoot had an imitation grin on his face, but otherwise closed eyes that were so glad to be done fencing with a demon for the last 20 minutes.

A cartoon I did in honor of Crapshoot’s breach through a vault door. It depicts him standing with welders leathers and mask (A-TM) offering to assist our 2-Troop with their share of the breach.

Those were the days of the inception of the Hardened Deeply-Buried Targets (HDBT) problems. The target set that included hunting and accessing nuclear weapons cached in deep underground structures was a unique one, and we had to invent a way to cope with approaching and destroying such threats.

With already full plates on our hands, the HDBT problem was a heaping ladleful of mashed potatoes that started to flow over the edges of those plates. I distinctly remember thinking of my brothers and me as engines that the unit kept trying to put bigger and bigger transmissions on. And when the transmissions weren’t spinning fast enough they just kept trying to soup-up that same engine time and time again — eventually, that engine is going to throw a rod and blow!

It is not unusual for a thrown rod to actually punch through an engine block, especially if the engine is a Japanese POS like this.

If Rod Serling will imagine, we have a fully kitted-out operator ready to lay down some original smoking scunion. Now he has to affect heavy breach operations — how much more can be piled onto this guy?

We practiced chopping through heavy steel vault doors and several feet of reinforced concrete wall — and doing it all while down in bottomless holes and (seemingly) endless tunnels and drifts. So many problems are associated with that sort of work.

In the realm of being nearly overburdened with equipment, all paratroopers are familiar with this painful trudge from their impact point on a Drop Zone (DZ) to a Rally Point (RP); in some cases, the trudge can be thousands of meters — Airborne All The Way!

The atmosphere deep underground may be poisonous or nonexistent; we had to wear open-circuit pressed air or closed-circuit oxygen rebreather systems — all heavy and cumbersome affairs. Now, a breacher wielding a welding torch has to drape himself in a full posture of leather floor-length aprons to be protected against molten slag. Everything was hot and heavy and men keeled over out “cold” from overheating. It was dangerous work, I’m here to tell you.

A closed-circuit rebreathing apparatus used in the mining industry.

Every heavy breach seemed to sport its own personality, each being a major brain-buster to defeat, as well as a physical nightmare to tackle. The buzz phrase for every event became:

“HOLY CRAP — NOW WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO??”

Beyond learning the function of the breaching tools, systems, and apparatus, the pattern of maneuver was on us to figure out. As with most special operators, the temptation was very often too great for the pipe hitters who were responsible for pulling security while the brothers breached. Security kept letting themselves get sucked into the breaching work like they were on the Event Horizon of a Goddamned Black Hole!

I mean some folks might be happy as a pig in shit that they are not caught up in a particular struggle within their eyeshot, but pipe-hitters seeing their bros having a tough time with a thing are all in. “Sucks being you” is an expression that is vigorously filtered through the Unit’s personnel firewall. Indeed, it occurs to me that I may have never heard: “Hey, can you give us a hand over here?” a phrase that is simply not necessary with pipe-hitters.

Delta brothers all pitched in to help dig out Gear-King Markey-Mark “COS” Stephens when his gear collapsed on him in our team room.

The matter ultimately came down to this: the men can no longer be expected to fight and breach. The decision was clear, though it gave rise to the next problem — how to remedy that issue into a cogent solution. The answer in, my what-it’s-worth, opinion was brilliant: We outsource all our breaching to the Chinese! I’m absolutely kidding about the Chinese; I actually wouldn’t even outsource rectal boil lancing to those haters.

The Unit formed another internal group that was to be the dedicated heavy breach cell. The men to handle the work (this was the brilliant part) were 18-Charlie Engineer sergeants from the Green Beret (GB) Groups. It was a stellar deal for the GB Engineers who wanted to be in the Unit but were not necessarily able to pass the Selection and Assessment trials. It also provided a sergeant major with a leadership position to fill, thus allowing him to remain in the Unit.

Such was the fate of a master sergeant (MSG) getting promoted to sergeant major (SGM, Smadge) in Delta. There was no guarantee that there would be a position in the Unit for the new SGM, resulting in him being reassigned outside the Unit — even back to Big Army! That horrifying threat alone was enough to make a brother resort to snorting crushed glass.

A photo of me snorting some lines of crushed glass rather than going back to Big Army.

The new 18-Charlie GB engineer pipe-hitters did a bang-up (no pun intended) job. Well, they did an absolutely remarkable job at an ultimately stellar level. Not only did you have a shit-hot team of heavy breacher bubbas, you still had all the treasure trove of skills and abilities that Green Berets — arguably the most versatile race of people on the planet — bring to every situation.

“By George (no relation), I do believe I am one brilliant son-of-a-bitch!” suggested the Unit commander regarding his decision to establish the heavy breach cell.

“Yes Sir, I do believe you are ready for the post-examination!” brown-nosed his suck-up executive officer.

“How did the breaching get done before the heavy breach cell came to the Unit,” a junior operator once asked me.

“We did it ourselves — we had to. We slung our assault rifles and we breached,” I replied to the incredulous little brother.

It sucked, really (REALLY) truly sucked, but I’m glad I was involved at the inception of the heavy breaching capability. I respect my time standing around in pissing rain with 70 lbs of assault kit and breaching gear hanging off me while staring at a failed breach:

“HOLY CRAP — NOW WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO??”

In fact, the huge concrete core-cutter barrel did grind its way through the approximately three feet of solid concrete. The cutter was shaped like a huge three-foot hardened steel cup that mounted to the wall hydraulically, spinning and cutting deeper into the concrete as we dumped a steady stream of water into the hollow of the cut. It was a welterweight chore to keep it running.

A large core-cutter barrel mounted to anchor rails above it spins hydraulically and cuts into the concrete barrier.

“WATER UP!” and a pipe hitter with gat slung across his back came jogging up toting five-gallon water cans — one in each hand.

“HEY, YOU PHUQRZ NEED TO GET BACK ON SECURITY — DROP THOSE WATER CANS!”

With the cut complete the core cutter barrel was yanked out of the hole, but the concrete core slid right out of the barrel and lay there in the hole like a giant plug — enter:

“HOLY CRAP — NOW WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO??”

“By God… that is enough!” hissed the Grinch.

The Grinch (L) seen here in Iraq with sorely-missed, dearly-departed brother Tom Greer AKA Dalton Fury AKA Red Fly.

The Grinch, who was always already pissed off from the very beginning of EVERYTHING, had had enough. He stomped over to a Pinzgauer and started thrashing around with lumber and cargo straps. He configured (I am not shitting you) a battering ram with a 4 x 4 wooden beam strapped firm to the bed of the Gauer protruding about three feet past the edge of the Gauer.

“STAND CLEAR!” someone hollered as the brothers pulled back away from the wall. Grinch backed the Gauer until the ram was just touching the concrete plug. He lined up, then pulled forward about 40 feet, put it in reverse and — slowly at first then picking up speed — he headed at a healthy clip toward the wall aiming for the plug.

6 x 6-wheel drive Austrian Pinzgauer rough terrain vehicle.

The grinch spanked the plug hard and popped it right through and into the building with a helluva din. It had taken one shot, just one shot — badass Grinch!

“I hope nobody was standing in front of that thing!” I shouted to the grinch in the pissing rain.

“I do!” the Grinch certainly shouted back at me with a look on his face that was just a smidge south of enchanting.

We pipe-hitters threw breaching gear away, snatched our gats forward, flung a baker’s bushel of bangers into the gaping hole, and started pouring through the tunnel in the wall, heads-first, spitting lead.

In Delta, it was good to be king, even while snaking through a concrete tunnel in the pissing rain.

Breach affected through a solid concrete wall with a core-cutter saw.

By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends

My brother MSG Gaetano “Guido” Cutino (KIA) languishing momentarily in the bed of our breaching Pinzgauer.

Delta Force’s Combat Diving Break

During my nine months in-country hunting drug cartel kingpins in Colombia, the country held its presidential elections. My three-Operator team and I were sent back to the U.S. until the elections were over, and the incumbent’s policies supported having gringos back in-country hunting its drug lords. It seemed legit, and I was ready for a break somewhere where yucca root was not the meal staple — a burger was in order!

During the couple of weeks I was back, my Squadron Sergeant Major lamented to me with words to the effect:

“Geo, we need to swap you out with someone else on that mission. You’ve just been gone waaay too long and you’re missing too much training.”

I took a moment to press-check my pulse and count backwards from 10 to assess my cognizant function.

“Training, Sergeant Major? Training? I’m operational in South America hunting drug lords. Training is the thing you do for years to get to where I’m at right now. But, go ahead and replace me. Let’s see… the only other Spanish speaker you have is Wookie, and he is already on my team along with Thor from B squadron — their only Spanish speaker.”

Now, I’m not usually that monumental in my asshole-ery, but the Smadge’s logic seemed to flip-flop like a computer logic gate out of sync with the system clock.

The elections were held. The same president won and his policy regarding the Great White Hunters carried over to his new tenure. Back to the hunt I went — the Wookie, Thor, and me.

When I pulled that mission completely out of South America and returned to my squadron, it was a cinch to fall in-step again with the pace of the brothers, albeit being 20 pounds lighter. It was easy because the squadron’s fast train had continued to speed along without me, and coming home it was just a matter of — alll aboard!

But what happens when the entire squadron is plucked from its training cycle to suddenly go operational together? Coming back, the training calendar is trashed; all the scheduled training plans — the trips away to special skills schools and the like — are all canceled and the squadron operations cell has to gin up some new activities really fast.

Such was the case when A squadron was scrambled same-day of alert to Mogadishu Somalia to shore up the efforts of our C squadron. Upon return to Bragg, we essentially had nothing planned. I mean we could gin up endless training right there on our totally self-sufficient little city of a compound in the pine woods of Bragg, but operations asked us to all come up with hip-pocket training ideas that took us away from Bragg.

“Good-Deal” Samuel Booth Foster immediately piped up with the best good deal trip just off the top of his head —”Let’s go on a scuba diving trip to Key West Florida!” That stuck fast and hard. There were seven of us in the squadron who were Combat Diver qualified from Key West, Sam and I having served there as cadre prior to Delta. We could get support from the dive school and honing our special skills was justification enough to let us go.

Being the wet blanket that I was, I lamented to Sam that it seemed like a boondoggle trip with no real merit, and perhaps just a sukoshi north of being dishonest. Good deal Sam, bad deal scram-Sam — without the slightest hesitation because hesitation was not in Sam’s composition — rationalized his thinking to me thusly:

“Geo… look at what the hell you just did this month. It’s ok to take a break once in a while. I mean… one time them, one time us — go on a combat deployment for the country, go on a scuba junket for yourself. Uncle Sam’s pockets run deep, homes… he’ll recover from this excursion.”

Finally, it all seemed to make sense to me after a quick mental inventory of the two axiomatic truths that defined Samuel Foster:

1. Sam is smarter than all living things

2. Don’t ever (EVER) endeavor to reason or trade wits with Sam.

“Just take a deep breath and relax, Geo; this will all be over soon… very very soon.”

Sam had always been hard to argue with even before Somalia. After Somalia he was impossible to counter, as I had seen him in a pristine psychopathic state, quintessentially devoid of fear while under fire. Where I had flailed incoherently for cover in a mortar attack, Sam walked calmly and deliberately to cover and concealment while wearing the exact same expression that he wore that very morning while sipping coffee in the mess tent.

A mag light shined through the “cover” I had dived behind. It was Sam’s maglight and he was shining it through my “cover” to demonstrate that I had taken cover behind a thin veil.

“You do realize this protective barrier of yours is a mosquito net, don’t you Geo? I mean, do you feel safe back there? Because if you do feel safe I’m totally fine with it — hhhhhah ha ha ha.”

I wanted to punch him in the face as hard as I could.

“Did you see the size of the hole in Matt’s head? He was dead before he hit the ground.”

Now I wanted to punch him in the face even more than just a minute ago; Matt had been a longtime friend of mine; we had both gone to dive school together.

Sam and I were both certified Dive Supervisors, meaning we had the authority to plan and execute dive operations with military divers. Sam was, in fact, a Dive Medical Technician (DMT) being that, by origin, his Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) was 18D, Special Forces Medical Sergeant. A Dive supervisor and DMT were all we needed to execute our dream Scuba Diving vacation…

We got a tremendous discount from a brother, Jeff B., who both Sam and I knew well from our days together as instructors at the dive school. Jeff had retired from the Army and stayed right there in Key West owning and operating a commercial charter boat for tourist excursions. All of our air tanks and dive equipment were free of charge on loan from the dive school; it was a standard respectful courtesy that the school extended to all of its alumni — fuckin’ SF!

U.S. Army Special Forces Underwater Operations academy in Key West, Florida. (U.S. Army)

By doctrine, Sam couldn’t perform both Dive Supervisor and DMT duties simultaneously, and I wasn’t a DMT, so I was the permanent supervisor for all the dive operations and Sam was the DMT. I can tell you, I didn’t like being the supervisor for this pack of clowns. Everything was a big joke because we were on vacation after all. For me, diving was still serious business and I was responsible for the safe conduct of all the dives no matter how big of a joke they were.

A couple of more spirited warriors had hit the bottle kind of hard the night before and sported a mightily nice hangover that morning. That right there was just the wrong condition to be going under compression and breathing pressed air. I wanted to bail hard on the supervisory role, but we were using military gear so I was trapped — like a rat!

“This will all be over soon, geo… very very soon.”

A typical charter vessel for rent in Key West for scuba diving excursions.

At some point en route back to shore post during the first day’s dives, one of the brothers gestured to Cuz, another brother lying on the deck. He happened to have been one of the Bacchus boys from the night before. Upon hearing the symptoms that our no-feel-good guy was experiencing I felt only compelled to reply:

“Well, shit me! I’ll be rolled in gunpowder and shot from a cannon — so, sounds like symptoms of the Bends (Decompression Sickness), and I thought I heard the distinct sizzling sound of my goose being cooked.”

I sent Good-Deal Sam over to assess Cuz for the Bends. We were going to have to get him to a Hyperbaric Treatment Chamber; luckily (LUCKILY) the dive school operated the only one from Key West to Miami. After a lengthy assessment, Sam returned to me, and he had brought along his usual cavalier smug face.

An aspect of the training at the Special Forces dive school.

“His pussy hurts but he’ll be fine. I suggest we ground him this evening and make him go beddy-by early,” was Sam’s snottily-delivered but wise and spot-on suggestion.

After the last dive, as I was exhaling in relief, Sam reported that brother Cuz was having trouble with equalizing pressure in one of his ears. In fact, the dilemma was not like the painful pressure of ears that will not clear down at depth; his ear had cleared at depth and equalized with his sinuses, but it had failed to equalize again during ascent. He had what Sam described as “reverse diver’s ear squeeze.”

It seemed comical to me at face value, but at another face value — Cuz’s facial expression — it was no triffle: Cuz was in magnificent agony. The prognosis was that Cuz was going to have to remain horizontal for a period of time until the pressure in his middle ear finally equalized with ambient pressure. That meant that there was no way he was going to be able to fly back with us the next day.

We all flew out the next day leaving one man to stay behind with Cuz. But the one man who should have stayed with him — Sam — who was qualified to treat him sure as hell wasn’t going to stay back with him, nosirree-Bob! That just wouldn’t have been a good enough deal. And as the saying went: “Good deal — Sam; bad deal — scram!”

By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends

The Intriguing History of the Term Special Operator

Operator – someone who operates.

In the civilian world, that could be someone operating an excavator, a wheeled tractor, and other similar heavy equipment. Historically, the term applied to people who worked in the old-school telephone centers and operated the manual telephone switchboards that were necessary in order for someone to call another number.

In the military, conversely, the term operator has come to be associated with troops serving in Special Operations Forces (SOF). A Navy SEAL operator, a Special Forces operator, a Marine Raider operator has become standard nomenclature, even in official communique and statements.

But what’s the actual origin of the term? For many in the spec ops community, an operator is someone who is serving or has served in one of the Joint Special Operations Command’s (JSOC) Special Mission Units (SMU). This would apply to members of the Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, also known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), 24^th Special Tactics Squadron (24^th STS), Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), or one of the other smaller, blacker SMUs.

The office of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) historian, however, posits that the term originated from within the Green Beret community. In support of this claim, there is a document from the late 1950s. Dated April 2, 1959, the document’s headline reads: “The Code For the Special Forces Operator.” It includes 10 provisions by which a Green Beret must abide. They range from the volunteer and highly dangerous nature of Special Forces – during the Cold War, Special Forces Operational Detachment Alphas (SFODAs) were designed to remain behind enemy lines once the Soviet mechanized onslaught had been unleashed on Western Europe; their role, as it is today, was to organize, train, and lead indigenous forces in waging an Unconventional Warfare (UW) campaign against the Communists – to superb physical fitness, soldiership, and professionalism, among other things.

“I realize,” the document’s sixth provision states, “it is my responsibility as a Special Forces Operator to undergo more intense and more rugged training than is required of the average soldier of the United States Army.”

The document was signed by Captain Albert Clement, 1^st Company, 77^th Special Forces Group (SFG), and witnessed by John Hanretty. The 77^this one of the original Special Forces Groups and the predecessor of the modern-day 7^thSFG.

So, there it is. According to the existing historical evidence, it is the Green Berets who have the claim over the term “Operator.” Does a title matter, though? Not to those who operate.

‘Black Hawk Down’ documentary shines new light on the battle that claimed 19 American lives

A new documentary/war movie about Operation Gothic Serpent, also known as the Black Hawk Down incident, offers a fresh perspective on the battle that cost 19 Americans their lives.

Retired Air Force Colonel Randall Larsen worked with retired Brigadier General Bill David, who fought in the battle, to produce “Black Hawk Down: The Untold Story.” The documentary showcases the actions of the 10^th Mountain Division. The 10^th Mountain Division, alongside Marines, were the first to deploy to the war-torn country in 1992 as part of Operation Restore Hope, meant to ensure that humanitarian aid sent by the U.S. and the United Nations was distributed to the starving Somali civilians and not stolen by the warring factions. They failed to accomplish this, which is why Task Force Ranger deployed.

The operation took place on October 3-4, 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia. The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was hunting down Mohamed Farrah Aidid—a Somali warlord responsible for much of the chaos and bloodshed in the country’s civil war—and his key lieutenants. JSOC’s Task Force Ranger was comprised of Delta Force’s C Squadron, B Company; 3^rdRanger Battalion; Air Force pararescuemen and combat controllers; a small sniper element from SEAL Team 6; and a helicopter detachment that included MH-60 Black Hawks and AH-6 Little Birds from the 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (160^th SOAR).

Although not a part of Task Force Ranger, the 2^ndBattalion, 10^th Mountain Division was also deployed to Somalia to provide conventional support and serve as the quick reaction force (QRF) to the American commandos in case they ran into trouble. The 10th Mountain QRF was sent in alongside Pakistani and Malaysian U.N. peacekeepers (the force was accompanied by a number of Delta operators). According to Delta Force operators, the QRF was pivotal in the rescue of the stranded Task Force Ranger, but neither the book nor the movie acknowledged its role.

Colonel Larsen told the Army Times in an interview, “As I started peeling the onion and looking into this thing I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is an incredible story and I didn’t know it.’ I’d read the book when it came out. I’d seen the movie. I’d sat in bars with Bill and kind of heard it a little bit.”

Operation Gothic Serpent has been dubbed a debacle of great proportions. And politically, it was. But the military portion of the operation should be considered a success. Task Force Ranger did accomplish its objectives (capturing a number of high-value targets), and in the process killed more than 1,000 enemy combatants. NEWSREP’s own George Hand and his Delta squadron deployed to Mogadishu immediately after the battle to assist their comrades.

Colonel Larsen, who also served in the Army during his 32-year military service and fought in Vietnam, has also produced a documentary. It’s titled “Operation Whitecoat” and focuses on conscientious objectors who volunteered for military biological experiments from the 1950s to 1970s.

Earlier in March, “Black Hawk Down: The Untold Story” was screened at the International Spy Museum and the Army-Navy Club. You can pre-order it on Amazon.

This article was written by Stavros Atlamazoglou

Feature image: Delta Force A Squadron operators kitting up for operations in Mogadishu (Image courtesy of George Hand)

Tunnel-mapping tech may be the most important special operations gear of the 21st century

Recently, NEWSREP Editor-in-chief Jack Murphy reported on the U.S. military’s standing plan to infiltrate Iranian underground bunkers housing integral elements of the nation’s nuclear apparatus. If war between the United States and Iran were ever to come to fruition, these facilities (commonly referred to as hardened and deeply buried targets, or HDBTs) would be among America’s top priorities. But taking them out of commission would require a more dramatic approach than America’s preferred method of warfare by ballistic missile.

Many of these HDBTs are constructed deep underground, often by tunneling into mountains. The natural barrier provided by 2,000 feet of rock would, in some cases, render even America’s bunker-busting munitions useless. Instead, infiltrating and destroying these facilities would fall to America’s elite counterterrorism unit, the 1^st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, or Delta Force.

Although Delta has been training for these potential underground combat operations in Iran for years, the risks associated with such an operation have grown in tandem with the increasing number of potential enemy states—including North Korea, China, and Russia—all of which maintain (or are rumored to maintain) sizable underground facilities meant to shield against weapons of mass destruction and potentially afford protection to command and control elements from surveillance or engagement.

Soldiers of 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, prepare to clear a corridor during subterranean operations training. (U.S. Army)

As Jack Murphy pointed out in his NITRO ZEUS piece, “Numerous countries have sought to conceal and protect vulnerable military resources underground inside facilities hardened with reinforced concrete, vault doors, internal environmental systems, and more, such as the United States has done at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex.”

Put simply, fighting in enclosed spaces deep underground, where communications are limited and the stakes are at their highest, isn’t just a tactical nightmare, it may also become a pervasive part of what nation-level warfare looks like in the 21st century.

It’s likely with this concern in mind that America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has issued a request for information regarding advanced technologies and methodologies that can be employed for the “3D mapping and surveying of underground environments.”

“What makes subterranean areas challenging for precision mapping and surveying, such as lack of GPS, constrained passages, dark or dust-filled air, is similar to what inhibits safe and speedy underground operations for our warfighters,” said DARPA Tactical Technology Office (TTO) Program Manager Timothy Chung. “Building an accurate three-dimensional picture is a key enabler to rapidly and remotely exploring and searching subterranean spaces.”

If you’ve seen the film “Prometheus,” this effort may seem familiar. In the movie, crew members deploy floating drones that use lasers to quickly map out the subterranean cave complex they’re exploring.

It doesn’t seem likely that DARPA’s cave-mapping drones will defy gravity like those depicted in “Prometheus,” but with small drone technology rapidly advancing, a “floating” mapping device doesn’t seem entirely out of the question. Of course, propulsion is far from the only technical hurdle faced in this initiative. Maintaining connectivity to the operator, processing the data captured and rendering it in a usable manner, and even concerns about battery life versus added weight are among the litany of hurdles developers will need to either mitigate or eliminate in order to make such a device a reality.

A soldier assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, provides security during subterranean operations training. (U.S. Army)

In many ways, special operations war-fighters operating in these tunnels will be doing so without any access to external digital or communications infrastructure, meaning the mapping system will need to be entirely self-contained between the probe and the operator’s gear. Cloud computing or outsourcing any of the computational work via any sort of network simply won’t work beneath 2,000 feet of rock

The challenges DARPA faces in this endeavor are not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination, but a breakthrough in this sort of technology could provide American and allied forces with a much-needed advantage in what would be sure to be brutal fighting inside confined spaces. America’s special operations troops may be the best trained in the world, but training doesn’t stop bullets. In tunnel warfare, a defender’s familiarity with the space, the terrain, and any potential hazards can offset a significant training advantage had by the attackers.

Despite not quite garnering the same sort of attention as programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or new hypersonic missiles, tunnel-mapping technology may prove to be the most valuable tech in America’s war-fighting arsenal. After all, fast-moving missiles may help win a conventional war, but the only way to win a nuclear one is to prevent it from starting in the first place.

Feature image courtesy of the U.S. Army

No sh*t, there I was: Delta operator strafed by his country’s own F-16 Fighting Falcon

Most of us have never had an air superiority fighter strafe us during a gun run. I would venture that most of us would not care to have that happen to us—not at all. Even a simulated gun run is a trouser-crapable event, especially if it catches you by surprise. Such was the case with my crew and me at the Nevada Test Site.

The test site was where my next career began following my service with the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. On this day I led a group of nuclear scientists and support crew to the northwesternmost corner of the test site, where an above-ground nuclear detonation—called Schooner—had taken place years ago.

A taxi line of badassery heads for the runway. (Photo courtesy Geo Perspectives LLC)

The objective for the following two days was to collect radioactive soil samples containing post-blast byproducts at regular intervals across a swath of ground. Please don’t ask me to explain anything beyond that. Most of the nutty experiments that nuclear scientists dream up push my brain to near-vapor lock.

I hadn’t really signed on for collecting dirt samples in tiny plastic pipets for two days, but I fancy myself one who rises to the nation’s causes at every opportunity. “I shall collect this dirt and put it into tiny pipets to the best of my mortal ability,” I told myself as I paired up with another scientist to work as a team.

“So how did we want to dig this hole?” the doctor—who I called Daktari—inquired.

“With this trowel that Dr. Joyce gave me?” Dr. Joyce was the task leader who had developed the experiment and presented it to Sandia National Laboratories. She set up shop on the tailgate of a pickup truck we brought and waited for dirt.

“No, I mean do we want to dig straight down to depth for our sample, or do we want to sneak up on it from an oblique angle?”

Glancing around for a sharp stick to jam in my eye, I answered, “Look, Daktari, I don’t want to dig any holes at all, Ann Frankly, I hadn’t planned on getting as scientific as you over digging a hole in some dirt. What say we just take the direct approach and go straight down?”

An interesting thing about these 100-pound heads—nuclear physicists and rocket scientists—is that they don’t get offended easily. It’s like they’re too smart to get offended by the petty misbehaving of a chunk of ice from the Early Pleistocene whose welterweight cranium only ever weighed in at 88-ish pounds.

“Hey, Daktari, this is kinda fun. Can you dig it?”

Daktari returned a gaze that was every bit as enthusiastic as that of a slumbering sloth. Another thing about these geniuses: They had a strange sense of humor. They were not as pie-in-the-face as much of my material. It seemed like jokes required at least the first three dimensional planes of the Space-time Continuum before they would decide if they would give it any of their fourth-dimension time.

I looked around. The Nevada Test and Training Range was about five miles to our north. Fast-movers (fighter jets) maneuvered in the distance, twisting and writhing in various patterns. I could just barely see that they were F-16 Fighting Falcons. If ever a jet truly physically resembled its name, it was the F-16.

Satellite view of the Schooner Crater with a range meter revealing its 934-foot diameter (Photo courtesy of GoogleMaps).

“Howz by yooz, Dr. Joyce?” I playfully inquired as I took a break from ol’ happy there, overthinking his six-inch dirt dive. It was good to check around to account for everyone and what they were doing. Visitors were not permitted in these remote areas unsupervised. There was just too much crap (radiological contamination) and too many opportunities to get into dire straits on these atomic bombing ranges.

On that note, I am quite certain the next time someone asks me if I glow at night as a result of exposure to this radiation, I shall immediately and without qualm or reservation shatter their pelvis and let them bleed out slowly through their anus. All apologies, but that is simply how I feel about it.

Dr. Joyce had racks and racks of small metal stands arranged on the truck’s tailgate, into which she had placed rows of pipets. She carefully recorded each one in her growing ledger. She was definitely invested in her program and well organized. It was completely admirable by my estimation.

“Nice racks, Doc.”

“Excuse me?”

“The racks. They’re nice. How they each can organize 10 pipets in a row like that…it’s…nice.”

“Oh, well yeah, I guess.”

An F-16 Fighting Falcon lifts off from Nellis AFB during the 2014 Aviation Nation air show. In the background rests a B-1 Lancer bomber. (Photo courtesy of Geo Perspectives LLC).

Being the social white dog turd that I was, I felt it more advantageous to the project to return to the dig with chuckles. The hours wore on and the urge to sing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” or “99 Bottles of Beer” became almost overpowering.

Then it happened.

I stood with a man from the other dig team some 20 meters to the west side of the truck, answering some trivial questions. I was facing the truck as we chatted. Beyond the truck where Dr. Joyce toiled was a low ridge about 2,000 meters away.

An F-16 taxis back in from a mission during a Red Flag exercise. Reg Flag is an annual training exercise for pilots in aerial combat (dogfighting). Photo courtesy of Geo Perspectives, LLC.

Suddenly a motion just over the ridge caught my eye. I recognized instantly that it was an F-16. It had, in a split second, popped over the top of the ridge and dove toward us, low and at breakneck speed. I opened my mouth to shout a warning—GUNS, GUNS, GUNS—but the jet closed too quickly.

I only had time to slam my palms against my ears. Though there was no noise yet, I knew the roar would be ear-shattering when it came. And it came. My vision blurred a bit as the jet swooped overhead, blotting the sun for an instant. Then the roar of the engines came crashing down on us.

I just managed to jet (no pun) a glance at Dr. Joyce’s face as the sonic crash completely trashed her racks of pipets. She wore an expression as though she had just been zapped by a fallen power line. The entire crew was in shock and completely petrified.

The falcon went immediately nose up and launched itself vertically, corkscrewing in a victory roll as it climbed. I extended both my arms up toward the jet shooting him the double-digit epithet until he was just a pinpoint in the sky.

NTS map segment showing the location of the Schooner Crater in the remote NW corner of the site. The border is highlighted in red. The Nevada Test and Training Range is to the north (Gold Flat). Photo courtesy National Security Technology LLC.

“We’re dead. That jet just killed us.” I grinned at all the eyes that were on me. Dr. Joyce’s mouth would not actually close again for the next couple of days. None of her soil sample pipets had actually opened, spilling contents, and her sterling record-keeping enabled her to quickly restore her world order on the tailgate of the truck.

The F-16 circled back at a greatly reduced speed, passing very low above our position, this time wing-walking in salutation. I raised my arms again, but with fingers extended in V-for-victory symbols of peace toward our murderers. Many months later the jet’s gun camera footage made it to my management and I was gifted a viewing. There I stood, double peace signs extended, looking like former POTUS Richard Milhous Nixon.

It was good to be king even for a day, even if only of a swath of radioactive dirt.

Dr. Joyce…oh, brother. The first thing she said to me the next morning was, “OMG, I still can’t get over that jet yesterday. It was just the most amazing thing I’m sure I’ve ever experienced.” She confided that she awoke during the night thinking of that event, and it was again the first thing she thought of when she woke up. I appreciated and was pleased by her outlook.

I dropped them off at their accommodations for the last time. We bid each other goodbye.

Daktari gave me the thumbs-up signal. “Thanks for everything, Geo. Take care, and don’t do anything stupid!”

“No worries, Daktari. My mind doesn’t really even function in that…dementia.”

He shot a glance back and chuckled. “Good one. Not bad!” The day had not been lost.

Later, I studied a topographical map of our location and postulated that the F-16 had very likely dropped into a canyon far south of our location and followed that contour before busting out of the canyon and turning west toward our shallow ridgeline. There, the pilot recognized his target would lie some 2,000 meters west from the crest of the ridge.

A satellite image of the canyon route that the pilot took to sneak up on our location. Terrain roads and washes snake along the floor of the canyon where it runs from SW to NE (photo courtesy of GoogleMaps).

And that, mes amis, is the very essence of our nation’s badass Air Force.

By almighty God and with honor,

Geo sends

Operation Urgent Fury, The U.S. Invades Grenada

On this day in 1983, members of the 1st and 2nd Ranger Battalions, 82nd Airborne Division, Marine Corps 8th Marine Regiment, US Army Delta Force and Navy SEAL commandos invaded the island nation of Grenada. The small island, located about 100 miles north of Venezuela was under strife after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was placed under arrest and executed. The military operation, conducted with members of the Jamaican forces as well as troops from the Regional Security System overwhelmed the Grenadian and Cuban forces in the country in a matter of days.

However, despite the battle being basically a cakewalk for the U.S. forces, the operation brought to the forefront, several flaws in the US warfighting machine. The inability to communicate between the services, the lack of joint interoperability and coordination would bring sweeping change to the way Americans go to war. This would lead to the Goldwater-Nichols Act and soon the creation of the Special Operations Command.

Background to Invasion:

Grenada had been a colony of the United Kingdom but it was granted its independence in 1974. Maurice Bishop led the New Jewel Movement which was a Marxist-Leninist organization and he seized power in 1979. However, Bishop was a relatively moderate in terms of foreign policy and it upset the more hard-line members of the military. On October 19, 1983, military junta members arrested Bishop and executed him, his partner Jacqueline Creft, along with three cabinet ministers and two union leaders. The new head of the government was Hudson Austin.

President Reagan justified U.S. intervention by stating that the American government was worried about the fate of the 600 U.S. medical students going to school at St. George. The Iran hostage fiasco had been resolved less than two years before.

Interestingly enough, the Grenadian people supported the U.S. invasion, the government of Austin was ousted and replaced with a democratic regime. The date of the invasion, October 25 is now a National Holiday in Grenada.

Cuban Dilemma:

At the time of the invasion, there were nearly 800 Cubans on the island. Fidel Castro at different times, identified most as construction workers while at others calling them soldiers. The Cuban commander, Colonel Pedro Comas, later said that he issued most of the construction workers with weapons for self-defense. The Cuban soldiers and “construction workers” were forbidden to surrender to the American forces. There were some stories floated around afterward that the construction workers were actually Cuban Special Forces or Combat Engineers.

SEAL Recon Mission Ends in Disaster:

Two days before the planned invasion, the SEALs were tasked with doing a reconnaissance of the island. Members of DEVGRU or SEAL Team 6 with Air Force combat controllers were parachuted at sea to conduct a reconnaissance mission on Point Salinas. Something went horribly wrong and as a result, four SEALs drowned. The bodies of Machinist Mate 1st Class Kenneth J. Butcher, Quartermaster 1st Class Kevin E. Lundberg, Hull Technician 1st Class Stephen L. Morris and Senior Chief Engineman Robert R. Schamberger were never recovered.

The survivors continued on with the mission but their boats flooded and the mission had to be aborted. A second mission on October 24, likewise was beset by bad weather, so very little of the needed intelligence was gathered.

25 October – Invasion:

After departing Hunter Army Airfield at midnight and refueling in Barbados, A&B Companies of the 1st Ranger Bn conducting a classic airfield seizure by parachuting at Pointe Salinas airport. The original plan called for an air-land seizure. They learned while in-flight that there were obstacles in the middle of the runway. The 2nd Bn of the Rangers would be closely behind the 1st and jump in.

The Rangers began their assault at 0530 and received antiaircraft fire from Russian made ZSU 23-2 as well as BTR-60 Armored Personnel Carriers. Accurate fire from the Rangers’ 90mm Recoilless Rifles and AC-130s suppressed the antiaircraft fire and knocked out the APCs. After securing the airfield, the Rangers moved on and took the heights surrounding the airfield.

By 1000 the obstacles were removed and reinforcements (Carribean Peace Force troops) began unloading and other aircraft began to airland on the strip. Beginning at 1400, elements of the 82nd Airborne Division (325th Abn Inf) began to arrive and land on the ground and began spreading out. Landing in the aircraft was a bitter pill to swallow for the 82nd. They pride themselves on being airborne and when the US next seized a major airfield, in Panama in 1989, the 82nd would get their jump. Even though the Rangers seized the airfield again, they would not be denied. And although some of their heavy drops ended up in the ocean, they would get their combat jump.

The Grenadians attacked with a Motorized Rifle Company with three more BTR-60s but the Rangers 90mm and the Air Force AC-130s drove them back. Four Rangers, looking for the medical students at the True Blue campus, got disoriented and were killed in an ambush. The students were later found but only 140 were located, the rest were at the campus at Grand Anse.

Meanwhile, the Pearls Airport was captured by SEALs from SEAL Team 4 who came ashore just after midnight and Marines from the 2 Bn., 8th Marine Regiment who flew in on CH-46s and CH-53s. They encountered light resistance and swept it aside easily.

Elements of SEAL Team 6 captured Radio Free Grenada unopposed, however, soon after capture, they were attacked by Grenadians in armored personnel carriers. The frogmen were forced to evade by cutting a hole in the chain link fence and swimming out to US ships. Two SEALs were seriously wounded in the action and were medevaced by helicopter to the USS Independence.

Due to the lack of good intelligence, the raid by Delta Force on Fort Rupert and Richmond Hill Prison nearly turned into a disaster. Delta commandos and C Co. of the1st Ranger Bn were tasked with the taking of these two targets with helicopters from Task Force 160, now known as the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The Night Stalkers were flying UH-60s and MH-6 “Little Birds”.

The raid of Fort Rupert was very successful, several members of the People’s Revolutionary Council were captured. The raid on the prison at Richmond Hill, where political prisoners were held was another story. The ground was very steep, too much so to land helicopters. There were also several anti-aircraft guns on site. One helicopter was shot down and the pilot killed. Several of the commandos were wounded. The Rangers sent reinforcements to assist in the Delta commandos in safely exfilling the area.

SEALs conducted a rescue operation for Governor General Paul Scoon from his mansion in Saint George. They entered the area unopposed but a counterattack by Grenadian forces supported by BTR-60 APCs had the SEALs trapped inside. The US forces called in air strikes with AC-130 gunships, A-7 Corsair strike planes, and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters. The SEALs were forced to hold inside the mansion for 24 hours.

The next morning 250 Marine reinforcements with M-60 tanks relieved the SEALs and were able to bring Paul Scoon safely out. The Marines then overwhelmed the enemy opposition.

The fighting continued the next day as the 82nd Airborne pushed out the perimeter around the Salinas airfield. They got into a huge firefight with the Cubans and lost two dead and six wounded. The Cubans were pounded with airstrikes and artillery, and their resistance quickly faded after that.

By Day Three, the major fighting was over and the island secure.

UN, US Reaction:

President Reagan stated the purpose for the invasion was to protect American citizens, including medical students, living on the island. The reaction in the US was that the operation was justified.

In the UN, however, the situation was much different. From Wikipedia,On 2 November 1983 by a vote of 108 in favour to 9 voting against (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, El Salvador, Israel, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the United States), with 27 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly adopted General Assembly Resolution 38/7, which “deeply deplores the armed intervention in Grenada, which constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of that State.”

Free elections were held less than 14 months later and the vast majority of the people in Grenada voted for the Grenada National Party and a government was formed led by Prime Minister Herbert Blaize.

The majority of US troops would be pulled from Grenada by December. The lack of usable intelligence and the issues with communication were things that pointed to massive changes that needed to be made.

From Wiki also, The Goldwater-Nichols Act reworked the command structure of the United States military, thereby making the most sweeping changes to the United States Department of Defense since the department was established in the National Security Act of 1947. It increased the powers of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and created the concept of truly unified joint U.S. forces (i.e., Army, Air Force, Marines, and Naval forces organized under one command). One of the first reorganizations resulting from both the Department of Defense analysis and the legislation was the formation of the U.S. Special Operations Command in 1987.

Photos: DOD