The mission's commander, Lt. Mike Murphy, then made the final decision to let the three goatherds go, obeying the military's ROE (Rules of Engagement). It is certainly possible that the book's ghostwriter, British author Patrick Robinson, who had made a name for himself in part by writing Navy SEAL fiction, could have interpreted the input of each SEAL as a "vote" instead of a discussion. It is also likely that Lt. Murphy would put a lot of value on Luttrell's opinion, given that Luttrell had more combat experience, but in the end, as the mission's commander, the decision was ultimately Murphy's and this is in line with what the movie depicts


Is that accurate about combat experience?

It's absolutely accurate that ground force commander will listen to the experienced guys on the team. It's not different from any other closely knit group dynamic.

The story is a way of covering up a total failure in leadership on many levels.....

Good men died because dudes above them with egos and dreams of climbing the ladder failed to put together a competent plan. Or maybe wouldn't have even known what that was anyway.

Marcus isn't the "bad guy" in all of this, he was lucky enough to live through it. But, now has to bear the burden of continually re-telling the narrative of lies for the rest of his life. All the while living with the memories of his dead teammates and the other men who died trying to save them. All so that his leadership wouldn't lose face and have to answer for the obvious errors in the plan and execution of the mission.

NSW turned the whole thing into a giant recruiting tool, and man did it work.

Oh yeah, I get that…but curious if Luttrell was the team member with most combat experience?

The inability to establish comms during their extraction was due, I had thought, to the team's poor choices as far as radios and redundancy.  Despite being counselled several times on which radios would likely work in their proposed site location, and which would not.

The podcast seems to be claiming the radios worked OK; it was the TOC fucking off that missed their cries for assistance.  Which is a considerably different story.

Aside, and this is borrowing from what I remember Sylvan writing here, about either Wanat or Keating, the issue isn't that a small team got nearly wiped out. That happens, although tragic when it does, of course.  LPs get overrun sometimes.

What turned this into a controversy and bury-everything-with-medals fest, is getting the QRF and 16 special operators blown out of the sky.  That's most definitely not supposed to happen.

No clue if this guy is full of BS or has actual insider info.

The idea that the TOC monkeys were fucking off and not paying attention is ridiculous and no serious person would suggest it. Anyone pushing that idea doesn't know shit about fuck.

https://youtu.be/1oh3tmsoG3E?si=o4E1WvLN7KKOwRqe

If you look hard enough, you might find a post by a team guy on another forum that addresses the radio issues on this op.  I can't find it right now but I've posted it before.  

BLUF, carrying handheld radios and depending on those to do satcom is foolhardy at best.  

This.

When my unit deployed there we were sold a bill of goods that the PRC-148 MBITR was good for SATCOM.  What we found out in reality was that the MBITR pushed at 5 watts, and was marginal at best.  I personally chewed a patrol leader out after a TIC, several years after ORW, for not communicating.  He was trying to transmit on an MBITR and dint have the power. We put the word out the PL would talk on TACSAT on the -119, a 20 pound beast that was pushing 20 watts, and talk FM to his own dismounts.  We usually bungee corded the 119s into the vehicles. Basically, we made precisely the same mistake and fixed the problem.  As an aside,  I dont know what that radio is they were using in the movie but it isn't either of the two choices discussed.  

I have no doubt, several years prior to our deployment, that the Marines learned the same lesson the hard way, as what people were told and trained on in CONUS wasn't reality.  I am highly highly skeptical that the issue was a TOC guy not at his post.  What Darack said was the issue dovetails precisely with my units experiences with -148s and -119s.  I am sorta curious if they made comms checks, if they had comms, or drove on without.  As in if it didnt work in the TIC it probably never worked. A lack of wattage doesn't just resolve itself due to magic.

Helicopters:

In the Big Army of the 1990s, we trained that the scout helos, OH-58s, would get eyes on the LZ, make the cherry/ice (hot/cold LZ) call, and if necessary, run FA call for fire or direct in AH-64s.  All of this would happen before the UH-60s came in with troops.

Again, according to Darack, in the movie there was a TIC involving AH-64s, and therefore the UH-60 didn't take off. In reality there was no TIC, the AH-64s were in the air, along with the UH-60s, they tried to get the chinook to slow down, the chinook was in a rush, and flew in ahead of the attack aviation.  I am very skeptical that there were any SAM-7s. Far more plausible is that three cells, each with a PKM, RPG, and rifleman or two, maneuvered in an ambush, and a fourth went to the most likely LZ.

There is a tremendous amount of experience that was written down with respect to compromised recon teams that came out of the Vietnam War.  In general, it isn't really sound to insert a team of infantry, QRF, hatchet force, etc, from a helicopter until you have radio/visual confirmation of where the recon team is and where they are going.  If someone is being chased North to South, you would want to insert south, so the team inserted can set up a perimeter or ambush and guide the friendlies in, and not have to fight through the enemy to get to teh friendlies.  Clearly if Luttrell was being chased North to South down the hill, time saved in inserting early would be lost once you realize they are behind Luttrell, and behind the enemy, and have to move slowly as they can get ambushed.  But the situational awareness mist be established first. In an air cav unit, it might be a loach, cobra, pink team, etc.  It might be a FAC or in the case of MACV-SOG, a covey rider, which is a trained former team leader in a fixed wing aircraft.   In conventional units, an OH-58D or AH-64 precedes the assault aviation.   Nowadays, probably a drone or UAV. But in teh air, letting the assets that do it well develop the situation, you can go at 120mph and retain many options. Once you land you are down to 2 mph and you had best be right, as your optiosn dwindle.

Every Navy SEAL I've ever known would blast an Afghani without even thinking about it.

MBITRs doing satcom was a long running urban legend in the teams, we continually fought it and tried to get them to bring the 117f as well (obviously any mission a comm guy was on there was no debate about it, they *had* to bring a 117f), but somebody somewhere had sold them a bill of goods about what the radio could do and all they wanted was DM-C125 antennas so they could always have satcom.  It is technically possible to do it with the MBITR, I've done it myself, but the radio was never certified for it, didn't do it correctly, and pushing 5 watts UHF was really never enough to hit the bird reliably.

You can't just leave it at that, do tell.  The Jesse Ventura threads were always a laugh with people defending Kyle.  The made up Superdome sniping and killing carjackers stories were hard for his defenders to explain. Always suspected the bulk of his story was made up.

My limited experience was that radios didn't work well in the Kunar, regardless of whatever wattage they put out. When I was up near Pakistan we had a serious retrans net COP-FOB-COP-FOB and even then reliable comms down the valley were dicey except with a few solutions. A lot of effort was spent to set up satellite shots and then BFT messaging for shots down to J-bad.

I discount the story of the TOC fucking off. It sounds atrocious, but almost certainly didn't happen. I think it's far likelier that as others have stated the radios didn't work. That was the working assumption when I learned about ORW and read some of the SIPR documents about it - the discussion was always that the radios didn't work and rather than abort the team kept going without a solid PACE plan.

One bad op and you want to condemn the whole SEAL community?

How many success stories have they had that you or I never heard about or ever will?

Your reasoning is flawed.

It was a lot of shit. A cumulative effect. He was the intel liaison for the SEAL det and came to the meetings of all the S2/G2 movers and shakers in TF-Ramadi. Meeting was chaired by a Marine Captain. The room was half Marine, a guy from 3rd ID, A guy from the KS guard, Kyle and sometimes another sailor, occasionally some guys from the police advisor mission, sometimes the FBI dude, and me, a civ at the time. Averaged a dozen people but could surge up to 20 if there was shit going on
 Anyway, Kyle would drop these fucking whoppers in the meeting when sometimes half the fucking room was out there on the op. The one I think that got him sent back across the river was when he claimed he took out 3 insurgents from his rooftop. I fucking snort laughed because I was right fucking below him tearing down an LP and I didnt hear shit. No one fired a fucking shot. The Marines had their helmets off and were playing soccer with kids in the street. A boot Lt and his Plt Sgt were giving out “micro grants” to the business owners, it was chill as fuck and this ding dong claimed he was dropping bad guys and the rest of us missed it.

You gotta remember, in 06, 07, 08. These guys like Jocko and Kyle weren’t famous. They didnt have internet gun nerds touching themselves under the blanket to their pictures and movies and podcasts. They were anonymous nobodies like the rest of us. Now they got movies of their tall tales or are getting an MOH for shit that was their goddamn fault to begin with. Whatever man, fuck it.the wars are over. i feel sorry for motherfuckers that sell their soul for a buck.

We had a member here that went by Wolfdog technologies that may be who you're speaking of.  

Haven't seen anything from him in 10ish years.

This thread is a good read. For you guys in the know, for taking the time to post.

Ditto.

Word is the legend nickname came from him being a legend in his own mind.

Beyond a certain point, one has to conclude that if anything the government tells you is true, it's more by happy accident than intent.

Footage that they won’t release.

It takes a few years but it sounds like all the services were making lemonade of lies from the lemons of the mistakes.

Propaganda, protecting budgets, etc etc.

It is pretty depressing and goes way beyond whether somebody fought like a lion or ran away.

LCS is a disaster and has been for 20 years, and nobody will ever be held to account.

The way I look at it, I joined to serve, went where my country asked me to go and did the things I was asked to do. I don’t know of anything I ought to be ashamed of.

I’m not going to lie about anything, but I am not responsible for what some politician, or snake oil salesman, in or out of uniform, said then, or now.

The SEAL in the original video that started the thread stated unequivocally that it was Luttrell's first time in combat. He emphasized that at the end when he was telling other SEALs to come forward.
Whether that's correct or not, I don't know. I've never read the book and only watched part of the movie, which struck me as pure and poor Hollywood, regardless of its source material's validity. Ditto plus for American Sniper, where I both read the book and watched the movie. Neither was well done or convincing.

The connective thread among this and several other controversial SEAL specific incidents seems to be that from the 90s on, the Navy saw the SEAL mystique as a valuable "Brand" for recruiting(much like  Top Gun) and this created a downward pressure that resulted in mid level NSW commanders being averse to bad publicity either in individual behavior or mission failure.
Several whistleblower/investigative reporter types point to this mission as the watershed event that became the template for future coverups, naming Semansky as the coverupper-in-chief.

How much of all this is internecine backbiting and jealousy, or profitable exploitation of the conspiracy theory fascination about necessarily top secret events like Special Operations, or pure anger at the prosecution of the GWOT is very hard to say.

I didnt read that post as "condemning the whole community"

More like "This was an avoidable tragedy, which should remind .mil to use special units for missions that use their special skill sets"
vs using the NAVY Seals in a landlocked desert mountain country.

I love reading all the drama. I was on the other side of the country but I remember when this happened. Everyone went ape shit after learning the helo went down. Our air got pulled too. I was just a fresh faced kid.

Wait, how was Luttrel mainly responsible for the stupidity?

Wait, how was Luttrel mainly responsible for the stupidity?

At the end of the day, all men are just men. That some good men died and some less-good men didn't is a shame.

I have experience in eastern Afghanistan and it shaped me as a man. I have experience with SEALs in other countries that has shown me that they are just men, like anyone else. Men are flawed.

agree

Marcus Luttrell is a man of valor.  period.  no knocks there whatsover IMO.

my only rub is -- he 'allowed' the navy and Hollywood to craft an untrue / sensational version of what happened for public consumption.

there are probably a lot of reasons for that -- many that will never be fully made known.

 

thanks for sharing that perspective -- taking the time to post.   any other perspectives on your time there -- i would read with interest.  

Do you think this is the only mission or operation they crafted an untrue/sensational version of? How often do you think we get told the truth about anything?

They lied about this like they lie about everything.

We like the lies. And they need us to like the lies. Because if we started demanding and getting the truth, they would lose a lot of power.

speak for yourself -- i prefer the truth in all things

in my family / business / (when i was in the Army) / whatever -- i can only make good decisions when i have correct information

(i realize you are using the 'man on the street' for 'we' in a general sense  ...  not us specifically)

and all of what you opine otherwise -- irrelevant to this SPECIFIC case.   ML 'became famous' perpetuating a story he knew was largely fabricated.

i CAN hold him responsible for some of that.  Jessica Lynch for instance has come out VOCALLY saying much of what was reported was totally WRONG.

Has ML ever done that ??   to 'correct the record' so to speak ?  i don't think he has

I think it became a matter of “you use what you have”, which is how even USAF PJs ended up conducting DA missions in Iraq.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to expect USAF and USN units to adapt given the overall high quality of the individuals that make it through the pipeline.

DoD wide, there’s only so many operators available, even in an organization as large as the U.S. Army.  The op tempo being what it was (from those I’ve spoken with in the SOCOM community), I can see why the teams and others were tasked out like they were.  

You and I interpret valor differently.

I was involved in one of the elements that responded to a helo that was shot down. Happened during my 03-04 deployment.  Was looking for it online because I thought the events were rare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_and_accidents_during_the_Iraq_War

Seemed to have happened more frequently than I remembered....

But anyway this is the documentary they made about it.

https://vimeo.com/162677100

What about if he ran from the fight?

Victory Point has been recommended in this thread and is free on Audible with your account.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GT8GMKX?tag=arfcom00-20

Beltfeds > SPR

Piss poor excuse for ditching his teammates.

Just like Chapman, we won't know what happened until the predator footage is released.

don't know about that.  i wasn't there -- nobody here was either.  in any case -- falling back to a more defensible position when outnumbered under heavy fire is always a course of action anyway.  units 'run from a fight' as you say for many reasons.  especially a lightly armed reconnaissance unit.  

Moreover -- here is his Navy Cross citation.  the second highest award a person can earn.

Citation reads :

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism in actions against the enemy while serving in a four-man Special Reconnaissance element with SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team ONE, Naval Special Warfare Task unit, Afghanistan from 27 to 28 June 2005, in the vicinity of Asadabad, Konar Province, Afghanistan. Operating in the middle of an enemy-controlled area, in extremely rugged terrain, his Special Reconnaissance element was tasked with locating a high-level Anti-Coalition Militia leader, in support of a follow-on direct action mission to disrupt enemy activity. On 28 June 2005, the element was spotted by Anti-Coalition Militia sympathizers, who immediately revealed their position to the militia fighters. As a result, the element directly encountered the enemy. Demonstrating exceptional resolve and fully understanding the gravity of the situation and his responsibility to his teammates, the unidentified SEAL fought valiantly against the numerically superior and positionally advantaged enemy force. By his undaunted courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and absolute devotion to his teammates, Petty Officer Luttrell will long be remembered for the role he played in the Global War on Terrorism. Petty Officer Luttrell's courageous and selfless heroism reflected great credit upon him and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

-------------------

so yeah -- i'll stick with :  Marcus Luttrell has valor.  

Throwing medals at something doesn't make it positive.

I bet Dakota was cool before he was seduced by Palin poon

Anti-coalition militia?

That write up doesn't really say what he did.

Not sure exactly what options he had. I assume he was father down the hill then the rest of the team, hence was able to bail. If so his other option was to head up the hill, and die with whatever remained of his team.

Curious about the claim that another team member was able to survive the ambush and for multiple days afterwards.