Is that to say your buddy in the 9th ID was unimpressed by the 101st and 5th SFG (A)?




 
I've run across several photos of A-teams using airboats in the delta down there. But there's no doubt Teams 1 and 2 thoroughly dismantled the VC's infrastructure, particularly in War Zones C and D, the Iron Triangle, the Mekong, and within Phoenix working with the PRUs.

He was warned not to look at the 9th ID River Rats as dirtbags, just because the had longer hair, and didn't seem to care about Army regulations as much like the 101st did.

He started his 1st of at least 5 tours as an advisor with SF I think in 1964.  Stood up 101st's LRP Company when they arrived.

He was an XO in 101st, doing re-supplies at the Brigade level from what I recall.

He went down to Command a unit in 9th ID, and after working with them and biting his tongue for a while about uniforms and grooming, said they were some of the best soldiers he ever worked with.  There's a History or Discovery channel piece on his unit, when he got pinned down under a crashed Huey skid in fecal-infested rice paddy water at night, crushing his shoulder.  Other guys had to lift the bird off somehow and get him out, while one of them (Ed Eaton) held off enemy with a broken stock M14 with Starlight on it that lost zero in the crash.

He actually didn't like SOG, because when he was in SF, he trained so many Chinese mercenaries who came down for the cash to send back home, got them worked into teams, learned battle drills and patrolling skills, then SOG came and snatched them with more pay.  He tried to warn them that they were basically going to their deaths, because attrition was so high in SOG.  They usually couldn't resist the money, which they were sending to their families back home.  He naturally became friends with these guys as he trained them, so it was hard to watch so many of them die when they could have just stayed with their A-Camps and whatever programs they were running in their AOs.

You can watch the account of the helicopter crash here:

Once you shine a light on something, it is essentially impossible to make it go dark again.  Ain't happening, might as well wish for unicorn jizz topping on your leprechaun shit flavored ice cream.

+1 I don't know how he lives with himself.....

 
Yeah SOG had all the priority, no doubt. Air assets, vehicles, personnel - you name it. Those dudes truly had an autonomic universe within that Special Project and they paid their indig very very well. But like you said, the attrition rate was daunting, even for the Straw Hats.


Thanks for the video links; I'll get back to ya.

Quick comment regarding the whole Recon, Force Recon, MARSOC/Raiders, what is special ops and what isn't sidebar discussion a few pages back, it's kind of a hard question to answer...it depends on the time frame and other factors really, and it isn't perfectly clear to a lot of people IN the Recon community.  One of the reasons for this is due to the Marine Corps reluctance all along to convey any sort of "special-ness" to any unit.  Up until very recently, with the permission granted to MARSOC to take the Raiders name and informally wear the old Raiders patch, the Marine Corps refused to issue or permit a device, patch, or anything else that advertised that a Marine was any sort of Recon, let alone tabbing one unit as special operations or not.  Pretty much the only outward indicator permitted was the wearing of the Navy/Marine Corp Gold Parachute Wings device and/or the Scuba bubble.  However even these didn't mean you were defacto recon, as either COULD be worn by non-recon types if they graduated either school (jump or dive) and performed the pre-requisites and served in a billet requiring them.  Walking around with gold wings didn't necessarily mean you were Recon, you might have just been a rigger.  The Marine Corps simply never designed or authorized an equivalent of the SEAL Trident or the Ranger tab.

Furthermore, there isn't 100% agreement on what makes a Marine "Recon" or not inside the Recon community!!!!  Now, the general consensus is that for you to be considered "Recon" you had to earn the actual Reconnaissance Man MOS, 0321.  Historically there were only two ways to do this...you had to graduate BRC/ARS (Basic Reconnaissance Course or Amphibious Reconnaissance School...it's been called both at various times, and the entire schoolhouse relocated several years ago), or you had to earn it OJT and have the granting of the MOS signed off on by superiors.  The OJT route was more common for Recon Marines from the Nam era and other old timers, less common in later years.  More and more, it was required that you graduate BRC to earn the MOS.  

But it should be noted that there are exceptions to that, guys who are kind of gray area, and once again, it's not 100% agreed upon...some MOS holders don't hold the bar that high, considering anyone who served in any Recon unit to be Recon MOS or not, no matter what.  I don't happen to share that view, but I totally acknowledge there isn't a formal set in stone answer.  It's much like the whole SEAL/early day UDT argument x1000.

So, who can go to BRC?  Someone may have to corect me if this is wrong, because I'm no historian, but I believe that in order to get a coveted slot at BRC you had to belong to one of four units: 1) Force Recon, 2) Recon Battalion, 3) Radio Recon, and 4) STA Platoon.  Of those, I know that the STA guys earn the MOS, but don't know if they consider themselves to be "Recon" when they do.  I think we have a STA bubba or two here, maybe they can chime in.  But without a doubt, if you were Force, Battalion, or RRP and you graduated BRC...you were a "Recon Marine", end of story.

Now, are any or all of them "special operations"?  Again, it's not like there is a hard fast definition or a master list of who is or who isn't special operations.  Until the Corps stood up MARSOC (beginning with Det 1) the Marines simply did not play in SOCOM.  They did not want to surrender control of their assets, even though the conversation raged over and over through the years.  So prior to MARSOC, really the only way one could definitively say "yeah, I'm in a specops unit" was if you were on a MEU that earned their SOC qual (Special Operations Capable).  If you were part of the MEUs SOC elements, pretty safe to say you were specops, at least in the Marine Corps eyes.  Additionally, there were teams in the Recon units not on MEUs that were deploying doing joint task force missions that anybody would nod and say "yeah, that's specops".  And really, if you were in Force, I think everybody pretty much considered you specops.  

Nowadays, we have MARSOC which is obviously special operations, but the Marine Corps has rebuilt their internal recon capability as well.  Is modern Force Recon no longer specops just because MARSOC stood up and is inside MARSOC?  Specops isn't an official label, it doesn't go on your DD-214, so I would argue that if you are doing specops type missions with a unique unit geared towards it, and historically was considered specops, you're specops.  That'd be my stance, but as always, you'll find other answers and none of them are "official."

But really, when you span all the decades, there's more confusion than anything about the whole "what is or isn't cool guy shit" question, because as I said, the Marines never concerned themselves with differentiating a set of individuals as cool guys.  The Corps never thought that way until they bit the SOCOM bullet with MARSOC.  Hell, they even changed all the secondary Recon MOSes a few years back, further confusing alot of the old timers.  My DD-214 has 8652 (parachute qualified recon man) on it.  That MOS doesn't exist anymore...it ported over to 0323 and went from being a secondary to a primary MOS.  A LOT of the old timers aren't even aware that whole MOS switch happened, so you ask an old dual cool guy if he was an 0326 and he'll tell you no, even tho that's what his DD-214 would read if he got out today.

ETA: And this really only covers the whole Recon discussion...people always sleep on the Scout Snipers as being part of a MEUs SOC elements, and they do a LOT more than just sit on top of buildings and pop people's tops, so I do consider them to be special ops, all day long.  They obviously go to their own school, which is world renowned and cool enough.

 
Interesting stuff. I think it all boils down to the Corps not wanting to declare any Marine more special than another, meaning that any 0311 can do any op tasked to him/his unit. But when that SOCOM cash-flow started to filter into NSW, AF, and Army channels, it's easy to see how the Corps finally gave in.


In my eyes, Force is certainly a SOF outfit.

Definitely that was always the Corps mentality, you're all fucking riflemen, and nobody is better than the other.  That being said, obviously people knew, and there was certainly a bit of shine that came with being Recon.  And if you were in one of those units, while most guys didn't look down on anyone else (note that I say most) most guys kind of had a different swagger to them around base.  But every era is different too, so.....

Not knocking at all what you consider to be SOF or not, but in general I think to the individuals in the various units, be it Force, Battalion, Radio Recon, STA, Snipers, Anglico, they really could give a shit what anyone else thinks about them being SOF or not.  They know, and that's pretty much all that matters to them.  If anything, people having long discussions about whether X, Y or Z is specops or not is kind of amusing.

 
No doubt.


 

My info is dated, but...

It probably did occur, but I'm not aware of any STA Marines attending ARS/BRC.  As was usually the case in the Marine Corps, it seemed to be not a matter of policy, but an issue of not enough billets in the classes.

Most people don't realize this, but many--in my platoon, most-- STA Marines did not get to attend Scout/Sniper school.  That includes Marines whose issued weapon was whatever version of the M40 was current.  Graduates came back and formed an informal training program within in the platoons.  The Marine Corps simply did not hold enough courses for all to attend.  We were told it was a funding issue.

Compare that to the way I understand the the Army works it-- a soldier will not carry a sniper rifle until after graduation from sniper school.

I know the Marine Corps' attitude on formal training has changed for the better. (As in more is available). For example, I attended what was then called "the High-Angle Fire package" which was a few days tacked onto the Scout/Skier course at the Mountain Warfare Training Center.  Now, there is an actual Mountain Sniper course.   One of the prerequisites is graduation from S/S school.  Hopefully, there are many more billets available at the various S/S schools.

ETA-- I never heard of a STA Marine that considered himself to be Recon.

There is a difference between doing recon patrols (Marines in both STA and line platoons do those) and being Recon.

Yep, it looks like the number of SEALs in Vietnam at once was usually mid-high double digits.

There is an interesting documentary about a unit of 9th ID called "Brothers in War."  It's on Netflix streaming.

At least one guy in my class was STA.  That's why I mentioned that they get slots.  They may not get them anymore, it might have been rare for all I know.  And again, kind of speaks to the Corps attitude towards it IMO.  For the record we also had a foreign Officer in our class.  He graduated...to a man I think we'd all consider him "Recon", even though he never served in a Recon unit.  Really, it isn't as hard and fast a thing as say the SEALs treat it...like I said before even in the Recon community there are disagreements on it, especially for the old timers.

It's the same in the Army.  Most guys who get put on the gun have not been to Fort Benning, and just work into the Platoon's Sniper Sustainment training program, which is run by the guys who have been.  They are almost always NCOs in the Sniper Section.

In my first Scout Sniper Platoon, we had a 9-man Sniper Section.  Everyone had been to Fort Benning and got the B4 identifier but one, who had been twice and was one of the better shooters/snipers/recon guys.  The cadre at Benning didn't like him for some reason, so they would purposely work with the walkers on stalk lanes and burn him that way, because they didn't like what he was doing, even though it worked well.

Anyway, out of those 9, at least 3-4 went to the USMC Scout Sniper Instructor course at Quantico, and all said it was a far superior course, mainly because the instructors were actual professionals who would demonstrate the tasks before teaching them, including day 1 out on the bleachers on one of the ranges.

"At this course, you will learn how to deliver precision long range fires up to 1000m with the M40A1 Sniper System on a man-sized target......

.....shot rings out from one of the instructors laying in the prone in front of them....................ding (at 1000yd iron maiden sil)"

That's how they kicked off the class.  The sheer volume of shooting and getting in spotting time were the biggest takeaways for the guys.  I think they got 5 weeks of shooting in from an 8 or 9 week course.  Benning varied between 3-5 weeks, depending on what year it was, with a lot less shooting, with fat instructors from 29th Infantry (training unit at Fort Benning) looking to homestead in that area of Georgia.  A lot has changed since then and GWOT, but that course has always had a stigma to it.

In my 2nd Scout Sniper Platoon, 1st Special Forces Group ran a SOTIC MTT for some of us (myself included), where we primarily focused on shooting and spotting, since we already were Reconnaissance soldiers making bread and butter on physical fitness, Land Navigation, observation, target detection, range estimation, camouflage, calling in indirect fire (we did this live as part of the Battalion's annual training cycle), etc..  Our Platoon Leader in that unit was prior enlisted, had been to both Benning and SOTIC, and the Sniper Squad Leader had been to Benning and 1st Group's SOTIC when he was a Sniper in 2nd Ranger Battalion.  We had a very formal, regular planned Sniper Sustainment Program in that Platoon, so life was good for a Sniper on the DMZ in Korea with 1/506th Infantry at that time.

The Marines have MOS-awarding Scout Sniper Courses at their main hubs at Camp Lejeune, Camp Pendleton, Quantico, and Hawaii.  The Army only has Fort Benning, even though the Army is significantly larger.  This is a huge mistake in my experience.  Each Combat Division should have a Training Detachment that runs:

* Designated Marksman Course
* Scout Sniper Course
* Scout Sniper Instructor Course
* Sniper Employment Officer Course

Fort Benning should only be for training the trainers.  The Army Marksmanship Unit has worked hard for decades to run training courses across the Army, and has at times offered training specific to Commander's requests at the unit-level, but the Army really needs Division-level courses made permanent, in addition to Battalion, Brigade, and Division-level competitions.

On the SOCOM side, the story is a bit different.  Ranger Regiment has one of the best Sniper Programs in existence, where they will send guys out to every training opportunity they can get if you are in a Sniper Platoon, including civilian schools run by prior military or competitive shooters like at Rifles Only.

SF also takes advantage of training opportunities outside the military, and has the SF Sniper Course (formerly SOTIC), which is a very top notch course that has evolved over the years, starting initially with a lot of input from the USMC Scout Sniper Instructor Course, mixed with European Sniping courses from UK and others, then UW aspects woven into it.

1st Special Forces Group's internal SOTIC at Fort Lewis was a really great course, and they won the Special Operations Sniper Competition year after year for several years in the 1990s, to the point that the senior SOTIC cadre from Bragg went out to Lewis to see what was in the water so they could work it into the course at Bragg.

There have been a lot of big changes in the sniping community, all mostly because of real-world experience being gleaned and integrated back into the school houses and units, even though there was a resistance to change within in many cases.  The old "lay in the prone and shoot KD ranges with M40s and M24s" being displaced by shooting from positions and more urban work using SR25s/M110s is one of them.

This thread is a fascinating read for a civilian.

I finally got around to watching the movie last night, because of this thread.  Even if the movie was exactly how it went down with no embellishment, there was more than enough clownshoes crap on display to make me ask "Really?  You botched this from beginning to end this badly and felt you wanted to make a movie about it?"  Something tells me if I thrived on the whole modern uber-ninja mystique and I fucked up a recon op that badly I wouldn't want to advertise it to the entire world.  Knowing from several of the in-the-know posters here that in reality it was actually a lot worse just makes me shake my head that someone would want to write a book about it to begin with.

IIRC he always said it was to keep his teammates names remembered. To tell their story or some such.

But yeah. When you say it that way. Seems like it could have been easily buried. Should have been with nothing more than Purple Hearts being awarded. I'm sure in the course of the wars that's happened plenty of times to "conventional" troops.

But the SEAL mystic drives the machine.

I watched the movie on youtube the other night.  Not going to pay for that fiction.

The really sad thing is that they tried to elevate this failure, portraying all sorts of things in attempts to make them look squared away, and failed even bigger.

A lot of accuracies leaked through though.

Sleep EAt Lift commandos was portrayed well, off in their part of the compound catching z's.

Intentionally failing with their commo plan on all levels, from planning to lack of redundant systems.

Taking only a 4-man element with one dude carrying one primary radio.

The firefight was fabricated, as were most of the injuries to Luttrell.  I'm starting to think the only accurate parts of the contact were:

Luttrell hiding in the crevice.  Murphy going out on the ledge.  Axelson getting separated from his weapon in an RPG blast, and trying to beat feet out of there, with his sidearm his only defense.  After the initial mad minute of fire down on them from the guys who tracked them from their insertion, they were hunting down anyone not remaining in the kill zone, which included Axelson, Murphy, and Luttrell.  The fact that Luttrell retained his weapon seems to indicate that he was not as affected by the RPG impacts and PKM fire, whereas his mates seem to have lost their carbines/SPR quickly in the melee.

In the Patriot Tour, he said the movie is not how it went down, and that he hid when Murphy was calling out to him after being shot and fell out of his view.  He said he put his weapon down, and plugged his ears so he wouldn't have to listen to them execute Murphy.  I can imagine being in his shoes based on the nature of what happened, but can't imagine taking the course of action he has afterwards, although I do understand wanting to preserve his teammates' memory and cast it in the best of light.

Reality:

Attached File




Fantasy:

Did you just love the helicopter raid and firefight at the end when the dirty peasant kid threw the knife to Luttrell just in the knick of time to allow him go stab his opponent and survive?


Bwahahahha. I was like "holy shit, how did this get made??"

If you don't read anything else in the thread, read this post with those pics.
eta; and Luttrell had a cameo in the movie.

I think I fell asleep around the time that the goat herders showed up, and I still haven't finished it.

I tried to go into the movie and just enjoy if for what it was... a Hollywood movie that has as much in common with the actual events, as Jarhead had with the Gulf War.

Spend the time on this thread and you will be well informed on the topic and some ancillary issues as well.

If all ejse fails wave your Novenber flag!

The most egregious departure from fact to fiction was the scene with Eric Bana and the QRF shootdown.

The part in the movie where there was a second TIC and the apaches took off, and the blackhawk QRF with SEALs on board could not depart was a complete fabrication.  Unlike the shootout scene, there are witnesses to this.  Unlike the scenes with Luttrell, this does falsely accuse US personnel of screwing up, which they did not, to make some other people look better then they deserve.

According to Darack, what happened was:

Late in the morning Marines of 2/3 heard the 'soft compromise.'  A few minutes later it went loud.
SEALs tried to E&E. SEAL LNOs collocated with Marines tried to do a call for fire but bad comms prohibited that. The SEALS were in range of USMC artillery.  Bad comms will kill you that way. (I was in a situation or two like that and we fired show of force munitions like illume and smoke, but perhaps theMariens had different SOPs.  May not have helped either way. We'll never know)
Marines did not have the authority to launch QRF until SOF in Bagram initiated. The battlespace owner (2/3 Marines) should arguably have had C2 of the operation.  Preventable C2 snafu.
The SOF HQ did not give an order and Kristensen launched on his own initiative at 1530 local, hours after comms had been lost and hours after hard compromise.  In all likelihood Luttrell was the only one alive at this point.  

Three UH-60s, callsign Skilful, two AH64s, call sign Shock, took off from Jalalabad once they got the word the SOF helicopters were launching from Bagram. There was no "other" TIC.
24 Marines (G/2/3) and 3 SEALs embarked on the UH-60s.  They got as close as half a mile of the SEALs and MH47s, according to the commander of 3rd platoon, G/2/3, 1st LT J. Bambey, before the MH47s pulled away with their superior speed.  A-10s were overhead the target at 15000 feet and were requesting permission to conduct CAS. This was denied and the 47 went in without support.  
The two AH-64s had eyes on the MH47 when it was shot down but didn't have the speed to keep up with them. They were a couple miles behind at that point. Darack specifically said the Shock pilots  "watched in horror" as the MH47 went down.  Couldn't have been more then 1-2 minutes away.  No need to not prep the objective, or send the Apaches in first, as the top of that hill was nowhere near where Luttrell was anyway.

Everything above is in Darack's book and was based on the interviews with about a dozen Marines from 2/3 Marines.

The idea that there was some other TIC and no QRF from Jbad is complete nonsense.  Other then to whitewash away the fact the Eric Bana character made some bad decisions, and the SOF leadership made no decisions/late decisions, it wasn't necessary to fabricate whole incidents.  IIRC the speed the QRF responded was grossly exaggerated as depicted in the movie.

Somewhat off-topic but what the fuck is the point of "show-of-force"? If I'm in hard-contact and I call for CAS or arty, and some dickhead back in his air-conditioned office orders a show-of-force instead, I wouldn't be happy at all. That just seems so goddamn lame, it's not even funny.

Maybe one of you guys whose been there can help me out with this.

We had fast movers do shows of force when we were too close to the enemy to drop their ordnance.

I have to say, what we really could have used on those F-16s instead of the (IIRC) 500 pounders would have been something really small and guided, like a 25 pound JDAM.

Shows of force can also be used when there are civilians around.  The problem is that it seemed to be a signal to the bad guys to run away and live to fight another day.  It was just one of many frustrations.

I noticed that as well.

The SEAL mentality and organizational culture is this when dealing with the Army:

The Army are a bunch of wale feces, lower than SEALs in every regard.  If they have something to offer in terms of support that SEALs can't provide themselves, they will grudgingly accept, then demand how to manage it.

That was pretty cheap, especially when you understand the culture in TF 160 and among Apache drivers/gunners.  Their whole mission in life is to support the guys on the ground, and they live for it.  Many have gone over to Warrant Officer/Flight School specifically to support their former MOS, and I've seen that from guys in 11 series, as well as 18 series.  Dudes have jumped over many hurdles and sought waivers when told "no" over and over again, just to be able to do that mission.

The Lone Survivor's portrayal of Army Aviators is the exact opposite of my experience working with them across multiple deployments and continents, and that culture dates back to Vietnam, where air crews were known to risk everything to bring people back home, even against orders.

 
That scene, among all the rest in that movie, is what irked and pissed me off the most. When I saw that part, I literally blurted "That's fucking bullshit!" out loud.

 
Sounds like what you needed was 2.75" rockets and 20mm, Cobra style.

Fair question.

You have a ground unit that is in trouble, and comms is bad, to the point that if a soldier is wounded CASEVAC is a problem.  You want to apply combat power but you aren't really sure where the friendlies or enemies are so you cant throw HE down, but you want to get the enemy to back off. The enemy backing off provides time and space for the guy on the ground to reestablish comms, break contact, pop a signal mirror or whatever, or maybe let the QRF show up. Hopefully without fratricide the friendlies.

The dickheads in the office arent downgrading your phaser from kill to stun.  We are trying to apply force to help you while mitigating the fact you failed to do the one task you needed to stay alive...keep the radio working....so as to supply friendly and enemy locations and help steel go where it needs to go.

An example:

If a recon team was E&Eing and had comms, they can call in CAS and indirect and all is good.  Suppose they are on the run and the radio is destroyed, and the enemy is in hot pursuit, and you cant see where they are. You cant really do nothing, but you wouldn't drop bombs.  Maybe a covey rider :) or helicopter goes in and buzzes the area to slow down the pursuit, or you offset a little bit and fire some illume or smoke, or drop flares.

In your example there is no reason for show of force.  Now, suppose you are the guy on the ground, the radio got damaged, are out of smokes, cant get a penflare through the canopy, and higher has no clue where you are.  I may fire some indirect near you, but if I don't know where you are I may toss some smoke rounds or buzz the AO with a plane or A-10 or Spad or apache or cobra or whatever.  The idea is the bad guys may realize HE is pending and they may hesitate a little.   Understand if in your present state someone gets wounded, he's going to die as you aren't getting medevac either.  Put yourself in the position of the counterrecon element or bad guys in general. If an A-10 buzzed you, or a round or two of indirect smoke landed near you, how would you react?  You are a guerrilla and the war is for the duration for you, and a SoF could change the equation from 'advantageous' to 'not worth the effort' real fast.  Increases uncertainty at least.  It is unnecessary assuming you have comms.  (If you didn't have comms you should have fixed your problem and we wouldn't be resorting to this.  But you knew that.) Call for fire and/or nine line and steel on target.

 
The assumption was that comms were five-by-five, the guys were all accounted for, but in somewhat of a static fighting position. Or in such a fix that it didn't warrant pulling back to forfeit the terrain advantage to the enemy (high point), but the enemy is assaulting into them or maneuvering, and they need to break that push.




Case-in-point, there seemed to be a ridiculous number of SoF flybys in Michael Golembesky's book, Level Zero Heroes. It seemed to work the first few times but Terry figured it out pretty damn quick after that.


 

I don't think you understand how CAS/arty works.  There is no "some dickhead in his air conditioned office" that decides the support.

 
I realize that's a bit dramatic. Specifically, I was referring to what Michael Golombesky wrote about in his book, Level Zero Heroes. It seemed his team had a clear picture about where they were taking fire and requested CAS but higher-higher often overruled the request to drop hard-bombs and relied instead upon a SoF.




Apologies if I'm out of my lane here.


 

Apaches were great, but we didn't always have them.  I really wonder how things would have been different with small, precision guided munitions.

Kind of like a hellfire missile from an F-16.

Believing a Muslim instead of a hero....sickening.

Believing that diatribe instead of the facts posted... Sickening.

Oh no worries, I'm just horsing around.    I have been that dickhead and the rule of thumb is support the guy in the fight as much as you can but dont kill the innocent.  

I have read that book.  The higher is probably a field grade, like a major or LTC, in a TOC, which in practice is probably air conditioned.

It is a leadership issue.  Different people are willing to accept a different level of risk.   This is why guys like Sylvan like rotary wing and I am a huge advocate of mortars. The bigger the asset the higher rank the approval and the more of a grey area you get in if civilians are in.  

In that situation we are talking about collateral damage and dropping bombs in and around civilians.  That is not really this situation.  I dont want to get too deep into RoE. Restrepo has a good depiction of what goes wrong when you kill kids.

In general, if there are good comms and no civilians, you push the assets to the man in the fight and he controls it.

My discussion re this is in the case of the Lone Survivor mission, SoF may have been better then nothing at all. I am not saying SoF would have been a better choice then Call for fire.

I think someone mentioned awhile back that the individuals did not have personal radios, which I find troubling.  The A-10 was overhead at some point before the QRF and if the TOC pushes  them the internal FM frequency they could make contact and help tremendously.

show of force is a retarded justification for a retarded close air support system.

Nothing says, "we can't do shit to you" like a "show of force"

fucking retarded and people say it like it means something. Only a fucking moron would say "I did a show of force and saved the day"

US mil, like US LE, always tell the only side of the story.

 
I thought you might say something along those lines.

 
Now that I think about it, I believe the CO in that book was intact a major or a light colonel and he was constantly surrounded by a local entourage of commanders who had pretty heavy influence over his decision-making process. And of course those dudes had family ties to Terry. I think you can see where I'm going with this.


Anyways, Luttrell's recce team obviously had shit comms and because of that and the fact that civilians were nearby, I can totally understand why no one wanted to drop bombs.

lol

 

Pretty big talk as I know you never held the job.
When the platoon leaders truck was hit by an IED and you can't get a coherent thought from the ground call sign, tell me how it's done big shot.
Done it myself and been thanked for it later.
You want to call people fucking morons?  When did you deploy in a maneuver battalion and make these calls?

Held which job?  Senior ground commander in over a dozen firefights?

Show of force is a demonstration of impotence.  It says only two things:

I have no idea where you are.
I know where you are, but I can't kill you.

When you do a show of force you show the enemy your inability to kill them NOTHING fucking more.  

the fact that an enemy may have broken contact in conjunction with a show of force is a correlation, not a causation.

If you can kill your enemy, you kill them.  You don't fire a fucking warning shot.

Now.  What was your job down range?

Those of us in East TX bave seen how ML lives and what he does for groups other than his own.  He a good man imho, glad he made it home. May God watch over the families of bis comrades.  I wouldn't want to explain to the average mouth breather how after i fired every round i had, for self preservation i scavenged mags off the bodies off my dead friends either.

So the military officials who take statements are "mouth breathers"?  

And if you really don't want to explain what happened for the "mouth breathers", writing an entire book about it is a funny way of going about it.

so if you actually fought in afghanistan and don't believe the bullshit you are a "mouthbreather"

Welcome to the board, Mr. Kerry.

Anything bigger is always appreciated in Texas!

I don't think anyone here is implying they're not glad he made it home or that they are happy about how this whole situation occurred. I think people are saying that it's sad that filmmakers and authors (and to some extent Navy/NSW) severely distorted the facts used the "story" of  this tragedy as a propaganda tool. If you don't learn from your mistakes they will be repeated and more lives will be lost needlessly. I think those "in the know" are sharing their knowledge for that reason alone, not to tarnish anyone's image. There needs to be accountability, not honoring fuck ups that get men killed.The fact that Murphy got a CMH IMO does a disservice to the honor of all those who have actually earned it. And ML might be a great guy, but if it wasn't for a complete stranger literally saving his ass he likely wouldn't be breathing today, and that man has had his entire life turned upside down.

I'm thankful that those who actually know what happened have brought it to light and exposed the truth.

Ive held your job.  Advisor.  Been the senior guy in firefights too.  2LTs held the same job you and I did as a field grade.  Try a little humbleness. It wont kill you.

"If you can kill your enemy, you kill them."  I know that.

You ever been a field grade in a US unit downrange? Senior guy in a TOC? S3/XO in combat? Have you sat on one end of a radio and had to provide command and control for someone else, or were you the guy outside the wire all the time? C2'd more then a few TICs/IED strikes myself, not counting the ones I was in, and C2'd a couple where the comms dropped off in the middle of things.  

Go back and read the past couple of posts.  Better yet, let me explain it to you.

You are the senior guy on the radio in a battalion or brigade piece of battlespace.  The maneuver unit calls in a TIC or hits an IED and THEN LOSES RADIO CONTACT. Or radio contact becomes intermittent.

Now what?

Please explain what you do.  Im pretty certain you've done it never, unless you have some C2 experience you'd like to share, which means you DONT get to insert yourself in the conversation Im having with someone else and CALL ME A FUCKING MORON. Have some class.
Frankly, you shouldnt be saying that of anybody regardless of what their experience is.  Tone down your volume, man.  Go drink some decaf.

You can roll a QRF which will get there sometime.
You can do nothing
You can throw some HE around when you have no comms with the friendlies, don't know where they are, don't know where the enemy is.  The jets will refuse the mission, the Artillery will too, and you're just throwing high explosives around with no situational awareness-waiting to frat somebody.  Not even remotely feasible as a course of action
Or you can go for SoF while you wait for the friendlies to sort out their comms. Sometimes the enemy breaks contact, sometimes they dont. I dont need the correlation/causation speech.  I know how often it works.

Feel free to say what you might do, knowing you never made those calls. I have seen guys in my TOC make those calls, made a few myself, AAR'd it with the guys who came back in when the fight was over, and we refined our tactics, techniques, and procedures based on what the guys in those fights thought.  I'm not making this stuff up.  Most of the time, when the guy in the fight loses comms he is trying to shoot bullets, fix the comms, and solve immediate problems, and gets task saturated and he/she appreciates the TOC pushing combat power in the blind as much as possible.  

If you have comms you call in HE on the enemy.  No kidding.  We all know that.  If HE is an option and you go for SoF, that's dumb, unless we have collateral damage issues.  That's a separate issue.

Ive made my points, Im out. Go insult somebody else. I was having a conversation with someone else and you really didnt add anything.