What significant impact does imitation of equipment/uniforms have on legitimate SMUs?

It was the phrasing that made me ask that question
It was the phrasing that made me ask the question, a play on words thing.

Sounds familiar.

I've spoken to him before and helped him out with some VA paperwork issues.

He's a good dude.

King Leonidas?

Pretty much where I'm at with nearly everyone in this country right now. So much BS/"spin" everywhere. The Truth has left the building...

faggot.

Died like Day 1 of the fight.  

Got outmaneuvered.  

Lame.

Got nothing to add to this shit sammich. Anything I could say would just be talking out of my ass... just like it is for most. The subject is not my hill to die on.

And this is where I am.  I read the book and saw the movie.  Very entertaining, incredible story.  However, a couple things just didn't seem right.
First, the goat herders.  Just seems odd that our finest special operators can't hide from goat herders.  In retrospect, they are the money shot.  Everything goes to shit if they are not a central part of the story.  Without them, there is plenty of blame and even negligence, and this story is unfortunately becomes like many others in the GWOT.  Possibly, medals are awarded without it, but the story needs them.  It places the team from being on the offensive to being on the defensive.

Second, I can distinctly remember in the Summer of 83, at age 14 being given this exact scenario by my uncle...on a super secret mission and get spotted by elderly person and/or child who pose no direct threat to you, what would you do?  Let them go? Kill them?  My cousin had the answer to just tie them up and write yourself a note with the location that you left them so your would not forget them.  I find it hard to believe that NSW has not considered this as a possibility and have contingencies.  The military has proper standards to fold underwear and mil-spec plastic eating utensils for MRE's but has nothing to say if a mission becomes compromised?  The Newsweek article mentioned that they did not have rope.  WTF?  Nothing at all to restrain a detainee?  All that web gear and nothing?  They would not have to secure them to a rock or tree, just restrain them to slow them down.  They could have tied each one to a goat.  It would be a position that they are intimately familiar with yet it would still hamper the speed of their movement.

Third, being prior blue water navy, (but please correct me if I am wrong) I can not fathom a NSW Lieutenant deferring an operational decision to a vote of his subordinates.  They are not some JV football coach asking his team if they want to go long on 3rd and 1 from their own 15 yard line.  These are professionals.   I understand that in chaotic scenes, whether in battle, or emergency scenes, decisions are only as good as the information provided.  But the LT had the same info that his crew had.  I can accept getting everyone's opinion prior to executing some goat herders, but to put it to a vote does not display leadership.  It actually creates wiggle room for the team leader to later say, "it was a decision WE made" to share some blame.  Leadership would have said, "this is what we are doing... and I take full responsibility of that decision."  I can not accept placing a solution to this type of scenario up to a vote.

These issues have always been troubling to me.  Not to doubt the story told in Lone Survivor, just how they make the perfect story.  The perfect scenario for an Ethics 101 final exam.  Compromised on a secret mission by someone posing no immediate threat, decision must be made, let go or kill, no middle ground.  A vote takes place, on the side of "American Values" and ends up with the largest loss of SEAL life in a single day.  Perfect story for a movie.

I then read the Newsweek article and this tread.  The single most shocking thing that has disturbed me the most was the picture of ML taken by Gulab.  The injuries and events of what occurred on the mountainside are not consistent with the photograph.  Shootout with up to 100 fighters, being shot,  falling down a mountain,  falling 90 feet, broken back, broken bones, etc.  I was expecting a bloody mess, scrapes, scratches, swelling, bruising, etc.  I've seen falls down one flight of a carpeted, residential stairway with more trauma that that pic.  That pic does not match the story.  Period.  This combined with multiple people on this very thread that have additional classified info gives me pause to believe that the book, the movie, and the story that ML is telling is factually accurate.  I don't know if this story originates from the "lone survivor" or NSW or maybe even higher up.  ML could just be playing his part, perhaps following his final order to tell the story that has been created.  I do not know who to believe.

The way I read that is hilarious
Sparta

In every Recon unit I was in, not only did we have very detailed plans for how to deal with compromise, those plans were then vetted by our higher, when we did the back-brief before executing the mission.  Teams would actually compete for missions, with the better ones with better planning and contingencies who knew what they were doing being rewarded with more difficult missions or missions at all, and the others maybe sent back to planning.

Getting compromised by goat herders is not a new thing, and I imagine battlefield scouts in ancient times probably had contingencies for dealing with them, disguises, movement windows, etc.  In every unit I was in, we carried flex cuffs or even zip strips, which weight nothing, and slip easily in between the MOLLE webbing on your gear.

They were going to get compromised either way.  Shah's turdbags had already tracked them from where they dropped ropes (and didn't camouflage the ropes adequately.

LOL yeah that was pretty good

Another thing I've never shared before you might find interesting.

A buddy of mine was going through the SF Q Course with a guy who was a cousin of one of the dead from Luttrell's team.

The instructors were showing a video of what not to do, and what the consequences are of really bad planning and execution while conducting Reconnaissance.

They showed that video with Shah's fart-sniffers stripping the bodies of their kit, and showed the ID cards.

This kid sees his cousin's ID card, and breaks down in tears, while the SF Instructors continue on what a colossal abortion this mission was, not knowing the kid had a relative on the team.

My buddy felt terrible for him, but I think he drove on and went to Group.

Amen to that.

I don't know about a vote, but working with SF, since they're all experienced professionals in their areas (at least by the time they're on an ODA), it's fairly common to get everyone's input, although the final decision is up to the commander.  But he very well may go with the majority opinion if it makes sense to him, even if it isn't his preferred solution.



 

I sincerely hope that no one in this thread has revealed classified info.  I'm down the road from Ms Private Manning right now, which is as close as I want to get.

Don't they have some kind of "rock of shame" or something where they put names of the guys they want to be disassociated with?

Absolutely.

A soft compromise is one of many examples of a situation that falls short of a troops in contact, but the probability of a direct fire firefight is ratcheting up from unlikely, toward increasingly likely.
A couple others that come to mind is when a vehicle hits a mine or an IED, a vehicle breakdown, you see bad guys with binos scoping you out, motorcycles following, a lot of people where there usually arent any, or noone where there are usually alot.

The short answer is the same for many situations: get on the radio call the TOC and inform them of what is going on. Get help.

In general, if it is a strong unit looking for trouble, mass combat power but do it a little ways away to not spook the bad guys.
If it is a weak unit trying to stay out of trouble, it is show of force time.  Artillery is great, and a smoke round or illume round is a great way to tell the locals that you know they are  there and the friendlies have more combat power then they can handle.  It is also pretty quick.--can defuse a situation lickety split. Jets dropping flares also work wonderfully.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it all starts with comms.  If your communications don't work, fix it.  If you aren't in contact, have bad comms, and drive on regardless, you have accepted a lot of risk and in this case you have taken a lot of options off the table.
If I recall correctly this fight was in artillery range of a nearby USMC FOB and all that quick-responding firepower goes for nothing if you cant talk to them. At a minimum, if commo craps out your ability to get medevac just disappeared and someone will usually be unhappy about that.

In the movie they were pretty casual about missing commo windows.  I don't know that is how I'd feel about it.

Comms applies to every line unit, too.

Probably ties back in with how they draw from a broad range of Navy rates that could be everything from cooks to divers to machinists rather than from infantry/combat arms MOSes, so there's no fundamental groundwork of foot soldiering.

I seem to recall hearing Ventura's on that rock, as is the "No Easy Day" guy.

Makes one wonder how big that rock is, with all the mixed fame/infamy they seem to acquire.

The idea that I would just blow off maintaining comms goes against everything I know in that setting.

They should have had an MSS with both overwatch and radio relay like I said.  When those fart lickers set up on them, the overwatch element could have sniped them suppressed like it was cool, and alerted them in advance that they were about to need to break contact quick.

Total agreement.  Blowing off comms goes against everything every line unit knows from day one.

Something as basic as standing watch stateside still means you get checks with the other elements of your unit and that somebody gets checks with command.  Blow it off and somebody comes over from the next post to find out wtf is going on.

Overseas, even in a relatively secure area, something as simple as standing watch is ramped up x1000 and if a unit/vehicle/element doesn't respond, it's time to wake them the fuck up in a dynamic manner or find out what the hell happened.


Actually conducting an operation, losing comms is the kind of thing that changes the plan.  Just saying "fuck it" is insane.

Even as an amtracker, where we'd lose radios on the AAVs to water exposure (stateside) and the unexpected (overseas/Iraq), you already have a comm plan inside the unit even if it's just hand signals, and somebody gets and maintains radio comms with higher.


From a few pages back, I can't fathom the reason to bring the laptop with.  From a line unit perspective, that's the kind of thing that belongs back at the CP tent.  You don't bring that kind of shit with.  If for some reason you hypothetically did, there's a destruction plan for that kind of thing the same way there is for vehicle radios if your mission has gone totally tits up; and even then if you have some kind of critical intel source with you, you should be rolling in enough force to be able to have time to destroy it.  A fire team carrying that kind of data seems crazy.

 
Reaching back to SOG's heyday in Vietnam, the recon teams with the best reputations were ALWAYS rewarded the most difficult missions. Those teams' success invariably rested upon the shoulders of the One-Zeros and their ability to delegate tasks, and plan for every contingency. It's a strange thing to talk to these guys and have them tell me how difficult it was being a dependable One-Zero and how that translated to more and more difficult and dangerous missions.


I'm certain it was the same for LRRP/LRP/Ranger, Force Recon, Project Delta, and ST1 and ST2 guys.

I fucking love you.  Total homo.

RE: loss of comms

I was our platoon RTO for about 6 months.  There were 2 times I lost comms with our company RTO, both during training.

EVERYTHING stopped until comms were back.  First time it was my mistake as I didn't switch channels at the correct time.  Took about 5 minutes of panic checking everything out until the former RTO bailed my ass out.

The other time there was no regaining comms with the PRC-77 as we were deep in the jungle and just could not get a signal out.  Even throwing my field expedient 292 into the trees didn't help as I couldn't get it more than 5 feet off the ground.

Of course the fucking cadre with their little fucking Motorolla handhelds could talk back and forth to each other, laughing at us...

 
I had a squad leader that realized one of the brass from another platoon was fucking with us. He once called the officer a "boot" over the radio because he wanted to come pick up our corpsman while we were 10+ miles out on a foot patrol from our forward COC for an FMF pinning ceremony at the company FOB.


The officer tried to have us go on unnecessary patrols and missions before and after our post scedulue to tire us out.




We went on one of the patrols he told us to co on whIle he was OOG in the COC.


30 minutes into the foot patrol mission that had no mission we went into a house. We all of a sudden lost our fill on the 119F . Had to call in on the 148 to RTB .


 

Interesting thread.

On the topic of SEALs not being ideal for landlocked missions, I remembered reading a quote from an admiral a little while back about the Navy refocusing NSW towards water based operations. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere so I hope it's not a dupe.



http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=1144

Again, not a .mil guy, but this is the right thing to do.  The Admiral isn't wrong either, if you watch the international news(I like France 24) it sure sounds like there's plenty of aquatic work out there, especially Somalia, Libyia, and shit, Syria has coastline.  Aren't we still fighting Islamic terrorists in the Phillipines?

As a filthy civilian, my move would be to focus heavily on <50mi of the shoreline, and spend a metric shitload of time with MARSOC/Recon to make for one very versatile Navy/Marine SF, and "keep thing in house" so to speak.  The result would be like having an anphib/floating Delta, but with more capability(I don't know exactly what Deltas is, but I would think they are more specialized in assault type actions).  Am I retarded?

 
Try telling SEALs they're not cut out for landlocked operations...

That wasn't my intent.  If there's a mission that they're well suited for in a landlocked country, then by all means use them, but their primary focus should be water based operations, they're Sailors ffs.  That's what I meant by focus heavily, I didn't say entirely.

On a few occasions several years ago, I heard older enlisted SEALs separately express concerns that the teams were losing skills related to scout/swimmer, SDV, and other water borne duties because of the focus on heliborne and vehicle borne raids that they were doing in the GWOT, specifically in Iraq.  There was heavy focus on training for CQC.

Getting good at the specialized skills --including insertion skills-- is time intensive, and training time was understandably being spent on what they would be doing in Iraq.

I have seen a similar quote about the Marine Corps turning its focus to the Pacific.

 
No I totally agree, it's just that after GWoT, I think it'll be difficult to set them aside for such a set-piece mission profile and not include them on inland targets. But like you, I'm just a civilian puke so what do I know, lol.

 
Makes perfect sense and it's why they were established in the first place. But it could be argued that a successful SOF outfit will evolve to accommodate the AO in which they work, so I can't say I blame them for learning how to work away from the water.

Ok well thanks for that contribution.

Is the Warrior Princess on it? I assume these guys have reunions. That would be awkward once Kristin Beck showed up.

The JSOTF-P mission ended last year.

Definitely can't blame them for wanting to go where the war was.

But I did hear there were some issues about NSW not wanting to use SBUs on rivers in Iraq because they were "strategic assets."  I heard those missions often fell to Army engineer units (because they had boats) and that it was even a partial cause for the creation of the Navy's Expeditionary Combat Command, specifically the Coastal Riverine Force.

 
Translation: Those ops weren't SEALy enough. Pass that shit on to those peasant Army loafers until the Navy can stand an outfit up just for such missions.


 

 
Did Beck ever really do anything worthy of being PNG'd?

They were good about policing up their trash. I assume they policed up some brass, just the amount we would get would be more than just a handful, but not enough to get really excited for.

Pretty accurate.  I think that mission was seen more as maritime security with little potential for direct action.

I don't know but atleast she can pee with the women at Target now.

Shameless bump.

 
Yeah I agree; doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Same thing happened in Vietnam.  SEAL contributions to SEA are much less than most people assume.  Army and conventional Navy riverine units down in IV Corps had a substantial task list in dealing with the Mekong Delta region. I know a guy who was in 9th ID that was with the Riverine Units in between SF and 101st, and he seemed to have as much regard for the Riverine Patrols as he did for SF and 101st.