The Year in Special Operations - 2009 ed

The Year in

Special OperatiOnS

2009 Edition

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IntervIew: Lt. Gen. John F. MuLhoLLand, Jr., uSa

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The Year in Special Operations 2009

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In the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, with almost 3,000 people dead and smoldering holes in Lower Manhattan, western Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon, it must have

come as an unpleasant surprise to the national leadership that the U.S. military had never really created any contingency plans for operations on the ground in Afghanistan. In addition, the remote location and lack of U.S. allies in the region made a conventional military response impossible, something that Osama bin Laden likely considered when he settled there in the 1990s. Transportation and logistics limitations alone eliminated any immediate conventional military operations with ground forces. Therefore, when the idea of melding special operations forces (SOFs), CIA field operations teams, and Northern Alliance insurgents as a response was put forward, it was not exactly greeted with unbridled enthusiasm. However, with no other options available, the use of SOF units as America’s first response to September 11 was probably seen not only as a last resort, but even the only resort, and approved.

Today, however, things are very different.That decision in September 2001 led to the amazing 49-day liberation campaign of Afghanistan

that fall, and to the huge SOF contribution to the invasion of Iraq 18 months later. U.S. SOF troops have taken the U.S. military everywhere it has found success in the first decade of the 21st century, and there is little doubt that it will continue to do so into the future. The recent growth in personnel, equipment, and fiscal support is the reward for this success, something unimaginable when U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) stood up in the 1980s. The rest of the U.S. military allowed that event only at the dangerous end of a legislative gun in the form of the Goldwater Nichols Defense Reform Act and the subsequent Nunn-Cohen amendment. Today, however, the view of SOCOM and the U.S. SOF community are very different around the national leadership and conventional military.

One only need watch the news these days to see the daily contributions of SOCOM and its personnel to the overseas strategy of the United States. The rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips of the SS Maersk Alabama from Somali pirates with three aimed shots from SEAL snipers is just the most recent example of their capability and professionalism. While the rest of the world rejoiced in Phillips’ liberation, the SEALs quietly packed up their weapons and returned to their base to get ready for the next time they are needed.

Always, the quiet professionals.No longer the force of last resort or the only possibility on the table, use of U.S. SOF units is now

frequently the option of first and best choice. Their discretion, professionalism, and small footprint make them highly attractive to politicians in tight international situations with few apparent solutions. It is with that thought in mind that we proudly offer the 2009 edition of The Year In Special Operations, and hope that you will find it as interesting to read as we did in collecting the stories contained within.

editors’ foreword

John D. GreshamConsulting Editor

Charles OldhamEditorial Director

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IntervIew: Lt. Gen. John F. MuLhoLLand Jr., uSa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10By John D. Gresham

the Year In u.S. SpecIaL operatIonS coMMand: 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20By John D. Gresham

the Year In u.S. arMY SpecIaLoperatIonS coMMand: 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28By John D. Gresham

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the Year In InternatIonaL SpecIaL operatIonS ForceS: 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72By niGel West

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Contributing WritersMaj. Gen. Richard Comer (USAF-Ret)Scott R. Gourley, John D. Gresham Patrick Jennings, Ph.D., Amy P. MackGordon Stevens, Erica Tingler Nigel West, J.R. Wilson Dwight Jon Zimmerman

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The Year in

Special OperatiOnS

2009 Edition

US $5.95


IntervIew: roSS Perot

danGer CLoSe:oda 3336 In the Shok vaLLey

Pave Low’S FareweLL

©Copyright Faircount LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction of editorial content in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Faircount LLC and the Navy League of the United States do not assume responsibility for the advertisements, nor any representation made therein, nor the quality or deliverability of the products themselves. Reproduction of articles and photographs, in whole or in part, contained herein is prohibited without expressed written consent of the publisher, with the exception of reprinting for news media use. Printed in the United States of America. Permission to use various images and text in this publication was obtained from U.S. Department of Defense and its agencies, and in no way is used to imply an endorsement by any U.S. Department of Defense entity for any claims or representations therein. None of the advertising contained herein implies U.S. Government, U.S. Department of Defense endorsement of any private entity or enterprise. This is not a publication of the U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. Government.

Published by

The Year in

SpecialOperatiOnS

2009 Edition

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10 interview

U.S.

Arm

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By John D. Gresham


One of the hallmarks of America’s special operations forces (SOFs) has always been their professional

demeanor as “the quiet professionals.” It therefore makes sense that few Americans outside of the SOF community would recognize the name of Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, Jr. That is a shame, because since the terrorist attacks of September 11, there has been no more active and successful U.S. special operations leader than Mulholland. A big man, he has a gentle nature that belies very little of his impressive planning and leadership abilities. Starting out in 2001 as a colonel commanding the 5th Special Forces Group (SFG), Mulholland has made a spectacular rise to lieutenant general and command of U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). He also does not speak much publicly, which is why interviews like the one that follows give rare insight into the years since America’s entry into combat in 2001.

The Year in Special Operations: What made you want to become a soldier in the first place? And what drove you toward special operations as your eventual profession?

Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, Jr.: Ever since I was a boy, I just knew I wanted to be a soldier. There wasn’t any particular driving force for it, though my father was extremely proud of his service as a USAF fighter-bomber pilot during the Korean War. Two of his brothers also were combat aviators. Still, there wasn’t anyone driving this … it was just something I always wanted to be. Somewhere along the line, that desire became more focused at wanting to join Army Special Forces.

What were your early assignments as a young officer, prior to selection to Special Forces Qualification and Selection (“the Q-Course”)?

I was very fortunate that my first Army posting was to Panama Canal Zone in 1979. I ended up going to the 4th Battalion (Mechanized), 20th Infantry (Sykes Regulars). It was an outstanding opportunity to learn the trade as a small unit leader in an extremely challenging physical and political environment. We had some of the Army’s most experienced and demanding commanders and trainers there, such as Col. Morrie Strickland and Brig. Gen. [later Maj. Gen.] Kenneth Leuer.

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interview 11Do

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I was fortunate to be selected to join the only airborne rifle company then in theater, “A” Company, 3-5th Infantry (Moatengators), for my money one of the finest jungle units in the Army. Undoubtedly, this experience was formative and served me well as knowing what “right looked like” when I later became more responsible for training units and preparing them for operations. I loved being an infantry leader, but my heart was still set on joining Special Forces.

What are your memories of the Special Forces Q-Course when you went through in the early 1980s?

The truth of the matter is that I was very disappointed with the Qualification Course when I went through back in 1983. I knew what good training looked like by then, and candidly, the Q-Course of the day overall fell short of being what it was supposed to be. It was tough, certainly, but lacked the “graduate” level of instruction that I had expected to see. One of the most rewarding aspects of having now served in Special Forces for some time is how outstanding the Q-Course has become. One of the reasons our men and teams performed so well in the early days of Afghanistan is because of what the Q-Course trained them to be ready for. This is because of the real and enduring effort to inject the intellectual

rigor along with the physical challenges, all imparted by the best of our NCO and Officer Corps.

You appear to have had the complete SF officer leadership experience in your career, from “A-Team” captain to commanding general of Special Forces Command. Which of these jobs did you find the most enjoyable or fulfilling, and what lessons and experiences have you treasured most from having these jobs along the way?

The obvious answer that jumps right to mind is, of course, leading an “A-Team” [Operational Detachment – Alpha or ODA]. It’s just such a close bonding situation, where a small team of men working together can create such powerful effects, and you build such strong attachments between you and your teammates. They last beyond – well beyond – assignments and careers; for lifetimes. I was recently privileged to preside at the retirement of my then-senior weapons sergeant, now-Lt. Col. Bob Meginnis, this past summer.

But even beyond that, I have to say that my time commanding 5th SFG remains the most rewarding professional experience of my life. What the men of the 5th Legion did in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11 and how they did it

Then-Col. John F. Mulholland with members of 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group just prior to the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.


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are still not terribly well known to the general public, and likely will not be for some time. Similarly, what they accomplished in Iraq has been extraordinary. The honor and privilege of being associated with these magnificent men, and their families, really cannot be accurately captured in words.

Can you tell us a little about how things developed for you and the 5th SFG in the days following the attacks of September 11?

Just like soldiers everywhere must have thought, I knew that this meant war, and that it meant war in Afghanistan, and that meant the 5th SFG. Initially there wasn’t very much in the way of coherent guidance coming in, so we went about putting a plan together on our own. Without question, the most important immediate assistance we received came from the CIA. With nothing but a phone call, a senior officer and analyst flew out to Fort Campbell to provide us with enough information to begin

relevant operational planning. In the meantime, we placed four ODAs into isolation, the classic initial planning action of Special Forces operations. This is where detachments conduct dedicated operational planning, protected from outside distractions. This proved to be one of the most important decisions made because it allowed us to put the initial detachments into Afghanistan when the opportunities presented themselves.

What proved to be true throughout our experience in Afghanistan was how relevant and effective Special Forces doctrine proved in practice to be. This ties in specifically to our earlier discussion about the importance of the Q-Course and, especially, our unconventional warfare [UW] culminating exercise known as Robin Sage. From our isolation practices in preparing detachments, to establishing “area commands” built around our “C-Teams” (Battalion battle staffs), we applied our UW tactics, techniques, and procedures to great effect.

Brig. Gen. Gary M. Jones relinquishes command of U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) to Brig. Gen. John F. Mulholland during the change of command ceremony held at Meadows Memorial Field, Fort Bragg, N.C., on Sept. 30, 2005.


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Having said that, I was still very concerned. Ultimately, the decision was made that 5th SFG would stand up the Joint Special Operations Task Force [JSOTF] to run UW combat operations across all of Afghanistan. This, candidly, was worrisome to me because we had never trained to operate at what [was] an operational level of warfare. In this regard I received truly exceptional assistance from Col. Mike Findlay, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command [SOCOM] Joint Forces Command. He helped train my staff before deployment, provided our initial information management capabilities, and augmented my staff with some of his senior officers and NCOs.

Additionally, very few people then or now knew just how poor a condition SF units were in due to decades of relative neglect. The result was a significant training deficit, along with low equipment

and material readiness/availability. Lt. Gen. Doug Brown [later general and SOCOM commander], our USASOC commanding general, worked incredibly hard to turn the spigots on to equip our teams with the equipment they needed. We were inadequately resourced in so many aspects, except for the quality of the men of the 5th SFG. They were exceptional and overcame the very real and impactful shortages by applying their intelligence, talent, and magnificent ability to establish rapport with their Afghan comrades to achieve decisive effect on the battlefield.

Now, it is safe to say that planning for operations in Afghanistan evolved as operations continued. Nonetheless, I understood my mission statement from Gen. [then-Commander, U.S. Central Command] Tommy Franks, which was to remove the Taliban regime and deny al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan. The challenge

Col. James P. Nelson escorts Brig. Gen. John F. Mulholland for a review of the troops before he relinquishes command to Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Csrnko. The U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) change of command ceremony was held July 17, 2006, on Meadows Plaza, N.C.


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interview 17US

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was to translate that into operational and tactical practice in a place that we knew virtually nothing about, operating with people with whom we [SF] had no current knowledge of, in a place that was arguably one of the most difficult places on Earth to logistically support.

Finally, it must be said as we deployed that the work of our wives and families was truly outstanding. My wife, the ladies of the 5th SFG, and Lt. Col. Frank Hudson, my deputy commander, built programs and structures to support our families that saw us through operations in Afghanistan and later in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Our ladies, our families, and our rear support detachments – a job nobody wants, of course – were simply remarkable and essential to whatever success we enjoyed.

When you made the move to Karshi-Khanabad (“K2”) Air Base in Uzbekistan with Joint Special Operations Task Force-North in mid-October 2001, what did you find there?

When we fell in on K2 in October 2001, we were very fortunate to find Col. Frank Kisner [then commander of the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Fla., from Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), and today a major general] already in place with his Joint Combat Search and

Rescue [CSAR] force. This included MH-53J Pave Low special operations helicopters, MC-130 Combat Talons/Shadow special operations tanker/transports, and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment [160th SOAR] MH-60 and MH-47 helicopters supporting the bombing campaign which had kicked off earlier in the month. We absorbed the CSAR task force into the JSOTF, which we had code-named Task Force Dagger, as the JSOTF’s Joint Special Operations Air Component.

K2 was extraordinarily austere and afflicted with all of the environmental challenges of former Soviet bases. Our Uzbeki hosts were very supportive of us, though, and we worked our way through the range of challenges that surfaced throughout the deployment. Col. Kisner did an exceptional job at working with the Uzbeki air base chain of command to ensure we maintained our operational flexibility to get the mission accomplished.

The 49-day campaign in Afghanistan, in the fall of 2001, clearly ranks as one of the most decisive insurgency-based campaigns in military history. What were your impressions during the early months in Afghanistan?

In all candor, the enormity of the task in those early days was massively intimidating. There was so very much that was

Incoming USASOC commander, Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, Jr., speaks during the change of command ceremony Nov. 7, 2008.



18 interview

unknown, so much so that at times you didn’t know where to begin, what to take on. We were all very cognizant that, in the wake of the horrendous attacks upon our country, we represented America’s response to those who did us such terrible harm. At the same time, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan certainly wasn’t lost on us, nor was Afghanistan’s history with foreign armies. We did not want to fail our country or our countrymen.

I cannot tell you how critical to our success our ODAs and the men on them were. Over and over again, I was so impressed with their ability to take absolutely chaotic, incredibly dangerous situations, and bring success from those conditions. Their ability to establish meaningful rapport and operational relationships with their Afghan counterparts was simply amazing. It is important to note that not all of these were “happy” relationships. There is no guarantee that you are going to get along with your counterpart. He (or she) also has an agenda and focus that may be widely different from yours. Nonetheless, it was these SF soldiers and leaders who fashioned these arrangements that allowed us to proceed in prosecuting our campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

At another level of altitude, I was overwhelmingly impressed with how powerful and unstoppable the U.S. is when we all work together. My experience in Afghanistan permitted me to see that power. Whether it was working alongside our CIA brothers, to USAF combat controllers embedded within the ODAs bringing 21st century joint firepower to bear, or a Navy F-18 screaming down on the deck to save an ODA from being overrun; when we quit worrying about who gets the credit and just focus, it is simply awesome to see how powerful our integrated capabilities really are.

Finally, having the opportunity to command that incredible force was simply the professional highlight of my life. The men and women of Task Force Dagger exhibited enormous strength, courage, and skill during extraordinarily difficult and unique circumstances throughout that initial campaign in Afghanistan. Our country has every right to be proud of them and what they accomplished.

Following Afghanistan, you rolled right into planning and training for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Can you give us some sense of what the run-up to that operation was like?

As you can imagine, coming on the heels of our deployment into Afghanistan, taking on the new and distinctly different challenge of operations in Iraq posed its own dilemmas. 5th SFG and I were tasked with commanding Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-West [CJSOTF-W]. Maj. Gen. Gary Harrell, commanding general, Special Operations Command Central, assigned to our task force two very demanding missions. The first and highest priority mission was to conduct special reconnaissance and direct action in the western desert of Iraq in support of the Joint Force Air Component Commander’s mission to locate, target, and destroy Saddam Hussein’s theater ballistic missile and accompanying weapons of mass destruction capability. The second was to conduct unconventional warfare in support of Gen. [David] McKiernan’s Coalition Forces Land Component Command operations in Iraq to destroy the Hussein regime.

To execute these two very demanding missions meant the establishment of a truly integrated coalition joint headquarters. For the integrity and credibility of the operation, it was imperative that the headquarters be fully representative of all forces. Maj. Gen. Harrell supported this initiative completely and CJSOTF-W operated as one of the first fully integrated coalition headquarters of the war. In every case, these U.S. and coalition teams demonstrated their exceptional capability, toughness, and resolve to overcome exceedingly difficult

and ever-changing conditions to accomplish the assigned mission. This was classic application of special operations forces executing missions they were uniquely capable of doing in support of the larger campaign … really phenomenal work done by relatively junior officers and NCOs.

Looking back, what operations/missions stand out in your mind as being key to the overall success of the initial invasion run to Baghdad?

Looking back, I recall an amazingly quick and effective campaign that seized the western desert of Iraq in an extremely short time. OIF witnessed the largest special operations infiltration in history, and every infiltration was successful. Just look at ODA 551, deployed 350 miles deep into Iraqi territory, right up in the Karbala Gap, and surrounded by Iraqi forces … That was a notable story in itself. And while the missiles and WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] were not where we expected to find them, the operational design and execution of operations in the western desert unquestionably served to alleviate strategic concerns of key regional allies and other countries.

Once the main force ground units crossed into Iraq and began their run toward Baghdad, all eyes were on those tough fights. Special Forces A-Teams were in the thick of those. Meanwhile, in the western desert and unknown to virtually everyone, there were a series of exceedingly difficult and nasty close-quarters fights waged between U.S. and coalition special forces and special operations units from the Saddam regime. These were hard-core loyalists operating, in terms of capability, very much on par with our teams. These fights between Iraqi special operations troops on trucks with heavy machine guns and our own SF and SAS [Special Air Service] teams mounted on Ground Mobility Vehicles [specially modified HMMWVs] and Land Rovers sometimes took place at ranges as close as 10 meters. In all, it came down to the incredible and magnificent work being done by small teams of tough, hard, smart professionals supported by unrelenting and professional staffs always working to assess current circumstances and doing the necessary things to get the mission done.

Having recently taken over USASOC and having had a couple of months to look things over, what is the current state of the command?

Army special operations forces are unquestionably one of the most relevant combat formations in the U.S. military today. We are all humbly proud of the work our men and women are doing, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all around the world. Overall, USASOC is in pretty good shape. Our units are deployed and fully engaged, the schoolhouses are making new warriors, and we are working to ensure that our families have what they need to stay healthy at a time of war. I am so very proud to lead such a great group of young men and women, and be their voice to SOCOM, the Army, and our country.

Looking back, what credit do you give to pioneers like Aaron Bank, Jack Singlaub, and Bill Yarborough?

It is impossible to fully quantify the impact these great men have had on not just Army special operations, but on our joint special operations force … the greatest, most capable such organization in the world today. All of us have the utmost respect for the foundation these giants built for us to stand on today. Perhaps the greatest, most enduring test of their achievements is self-evident once the question is asked, “Does it endure?” Almost seven decades after the Office of Strategic Services was created, the relevance and contributions of USASOC to the security of our nation does indeed endure, and exceptionally so.


A S P E R I A N C O M P A N Y

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The year 2008 and the months following it were a time of great changes and uncertainties for the men and women of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and its

various component commands. The year began with very few certainties, many unknowns, and multiple battles to fight around the globe. Only today, well into 2009, are we beginning to get a sense of what happened over the past year. The year gave SOCOM a new commander in chief in the White House and reaffirmed that the SOCOM leadership’s course of action over the past few years has been steady and sound.

Leadership

Although top leadership at SOCOM headquarters during 2008 remained in place, subordinate leadership positions did see change. Adm. Eric Olson, the SOCOM commander, along with his deputy commander, Lt. Gen. Frank H. Kearney III, and Deputy Commander for Mobilization and Reserve Affairs Maj. Gen. David P. Burford, all continued to do their important work, providing SOCOM an uncommon level of leadership continuity compared with other unified commands. One other indicator of the nation’s satisfaction with America’s special operations forces (SOFs) came after the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. Along with retaining Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama also chose to hold on to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities Mike Vickers at the Department of Defense (DoD).

Olson, a long-time member of the U.S. Navy’s SEa-Air-Land (SEAL) teams, has been operationally active throughout his career. Olson also has Silver and Bronze Stars for heroism and gallantry, highlighted by his lifesaving performance as a combat medic during the “Black Hawk Down” firefight in Mogadishu in 1993. He is a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., and the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, Calif., and has served overseas in Tunisia and as a United Nations military observer in Israel and Egypt.

By John D. Gresham

The Year inU.S. Special OperaTiOnS cOmmand: 2008

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There were, however, significant changes with the various SOCOM service component commanders around the world. In November, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Wagner turned over the command reigns at U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) to Lt. Gen. John Mulholland. Mulholland, who just eight years ago was a newly frocked colonel in command of the 5th Special Forces Group (SFG), has amassed one of the most impressive combat records of any SOF leader in military history. In July, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) said goodbye to their founding commanding officer, then-Maj. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik. Replacing Hejlik, who has been promoted to lieutenant general, is Maj. Gen. Mastin M. Robeson. In addition, Naval Special Warfare Command (NAVSPECWARCOM) also had a change of command, as Rear Adm. Joseph D. “Joe” Kernan handed over his duties to Rear Adm. Edward G. Winters III. Finally, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has quietly and capably led the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) since 2003, has been relieved by Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, a long-time Navy SEAL.

The regional SOF component commanders also were shuffled in 2008, with a number of America’s best and brightest special operations leaders being rotated into real-world contingencies across the globe. At Special Operations Command-South (SOCSOUTH – located at Homestead Air Reserve Base, Fla.), Brig. Gen. Charles

“Charlie” Cleveland was relieved by former 5th SFG and Joint Special Operations Task Force-Iraq (JSOTF-Iraq) boss, Brig. Gen. Hector Pagan. Cleveland then moved across Florida to MacDill Air Force Base to take over from Mulholland as Special Operations Central Command (SOCCENT) commander. In Europe, another change-out took place when McRaven left to take over JSOC and was replaced by Maj. Gen. Frank J. Kisner, USAF. Kisner is one of the most experienced SOF aviators in Air Force Special Operations Command, and as a colonel commanded the aviation component of Task Force Dagger for then-Col. Mulholland in 2001.

In addition, several new SOF component commands came into being as this edition was being prepared. AFSOC was given its first numbered air force to help provide additional command and control capabilities to combatant commanders. 23rd Air Force was stood up on Jan. 23, 2008, with Brig. Gen. Richard S. “Beef” Haddad as its first commander. Haddad was himself relieved by Col. Marshall B. Webb in April, and then assigned to command Special Operations Command-Korea. With the standup of U.S. Africa Command in 2008, Special Operations Command-Africa (SOCAFRICA) headquarters was also stood up in Stuttgart, Germany, under the command of Brig. Gen. Patrick M. Higgins, USA. Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan (CFSOCC-A) was stood up in early 2009,

OppOsite: A Combined Joint special Operations task Force Joint tactical Air Controller (JtAC) (left) prepares to coordinate with aircraft to support troops on the ground in Afghanistan. JtACs are the liaison between the ground troops and the aircraft above that provide close air support. leFt: lt. Gen. Robert W. Wagner, outgoing UsAsOC commander, returns the final salute during the UsAsOC change of command ceremony Nov. 7, 2008. RiGht: A Marine Corps Forces special Operations Command operator oversees a raid on an enemy complex by Afghan commandos and U.s. forces in the Zerkoh Valley near parmakan, Afghanistan, in July 2008.

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with Brig. Gen. Edward M. “Ed” Reeder Jr. in command. Reeder is a longtime SF officer, a past commander of 7th SFG, and Olson’s former executive officer. As part of Obama’s renewed emphasis on operations in Afghanistan, CFSOCC-A will be a key component in near-term U.S. strategy in the region.

One other interesting leadership story has been the growing influence and importance of SOF leadership outside of the special operations community. While the decades since the creation of SOCOM have provided enhanced and expanded career opportunities for SOF officers, their core competence across the full spectrum of military operations has made them very desirable outside of the special warfare community. Military units and organizations that would never have considered the idea of including SOF professionals in their command teams before September 11 are today clamoring to grab some of the best and brightest SOF talent for their own leadership positions.

When McChrystal was relieved at JSOC in August, he went straight to the Pentagon, where he ran the Joint Staff for DoD. As this publication was going to press, however, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had tapped McChrystal to command U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where, if confirmed by the Senate, he will be the point man in the fight against the Taliban. Another example is Vice Adm. Robert S. “Bob” Harward, who is now the deputy commander, United States Joint Forces Command. Another Navy Special Warfare professional who is making a name outside the SOF community is former NACSPECWARCOM boss Kernan, who stood up the new U.S. 4th Fleet for SOUTHCOM in 2008. Kernan’s 4th Fleet had a spectacular year, making new friends from Texas to Haiti with a series of successful humanitarian relief operations, along with enforcing a highly effective maritime quarantine over drug traffickers in the region. And MARSOC’s first commanding general, Hejlik, was given a promotion to lieutenant general and command of one of the Marine Corps’ most important units, the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) at Camp LeJuene, N.C. Nothing better demonstrates the primacy of SOF leadership in the present than the fact that the Marines would place responsibility for their largest warfighting force in the hands of their first senior SOF component commander.

All these officers are seasoned SOF professionals, which has given them a level of leadership ability and situational awareness that is the envy of almost every other unified commander in the U.S. military. There is clearly a leadership renaissance among today’s U.S. SOF officers, something they are providing across the full spectrum of American units and contingencies worldwide. Given the numbers of SOF leaders rising out of the present U.S. conflicts, SOCOM and DoD can count on having a deep and wide “bench” when it comes time to reach out for new SOF leaders in the years ahead.

Payoff: new caPabilities

One of the defining qualities for SOCOM since its creation in the 1980s has been its ability to fund research, development, and procurement of SOF-specific equipment and services. Thanks to the Nunn-Cohen legislation passed in 1987, SOCOM has its own funding line in the DoD budget, allowing the command to buy things critical to its unique roles and missions. Many of these include small items, like lightweight high-volume patrol rations and modifications to existing systems like the M16 combat rifle, which resulted in the popular M4 carbine that is used today throughout the U.S. military.

The year 2008 was characterized by a number of the larger SOCOM Title 10 efforts becoming fully operational, and making major contributions to SOF operations worldwide.

UAVs

Perhaps the most visible has been the exponential growth of SOCOM’s fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which is rapidly becoming one of the largest among all the American unified commands. AFSOC is today operating everything from the MQ-11 Raven UAV, which is small enough to be carried in the backpack of a combat controller, to the largest unit of the ubiquitous MQ-1 Predator, the 3rd Special Operations Squadron (SOS). Additional UAV systems, such as the BATMAV micro-UAV system, are so small that they could fit into a box of breakfast cereal, while the 3rd SOS is planning procurement of the new MQ-9 Reaper, an enlarged Predator with much greater range and ordnance-carrying capability.

MAnned AircrAft

A major SOCOM procurement program has been an initiative by Wurster to homogenize the varied and aging AFSOC fleet of C-130-based systems around a single model of the Hercules: the C-130J. Already in use as the base aircraft for the highly successful Commando Solo aerial broadcast system, plans are now afoot to produce SOF tanker/transport and gunship versions of the Hercules in the next few years. However, within SOF aviation, 2008 will likely be remembered as the year that the multi-decade investment in tilt-rotor technology finally began to pay off, as the CV-22B version of the Osprey finally became operational.

GroUnd Vehicles

In the decades since Desert Storm, SOCOM units have made use of a variety of ground vehicles, from ATVs and modified light trucks to highly modified HMMWVs known as Ground Mobility Vehicles (GMVs). While the GMVs have proven to be excellent for

secretary of defense robert Gates (middle) speaks with lt. Gen. robert W. Wagner (right), commanding general of the U.s. Army special operations command, and col. curtis Boyd, commander of the 4th Psychological operations Group (Airborne), during a visit to fort Bragg, n.c., oct. 23, 2008. Gates toured several facilities used to train Army special operations forces during the visit.

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patrolling and general SOF operations, they have proven inadequate in occupation environments like Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly when faced with the growing threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). This has resulted in SOCOM procuring two new vehicles, specifically designed to deal with IEDs and other heavy weapons. The first, bought for the SEALs, is a five-man Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, similar to those used in Iraq by conventional forces for patrols, convoy escorts, and other duties. More intriguing has been the acquisition of 16 Stryker Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), each of which can carry nine fully loaded Rangers. Being used by one company in the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Stryker IFVs provide a level of mobility, protection, communications, and fire support never before seen by U.S. SOF units.

SubmarineS

The unique requirements of SOF operations in the maritime environment have led to a major expenditure of SOCOM Title 10 dollars over the past few years, most of which have gone into supporting the conversion of four Ohio-class (SSBN 726) ballistic missile nuclear submarines into cruise missile and special operations platforms. Able to fire up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and support up to 66 SOF personnel, the four “SSGNs,” as they are called, are all operational and conducted their first patrols in 2008, using the same forward deployed blue-gold crewing plans as were common during the Cold War.

Overall, SOCOM Title 10 funding is actually on a gradual decrease, due to several large programs like the SSGN conversions being completed.

Forces and Training

U.S. SOF has obviously done a critical job in operations since September 11, and clearly deserves additional force structure that is needed to deal with the range and number of commitments in the years ahead. The good news is that planned SOCOM-wide unit and personnel expansion is well along and still scheduled to be completed in FY 2013. In FY 2009 alone, over 1,300 military and 220 civilian personnel will be added to the SOCOM roster, which is authorized to a total of 55,890. The majority of the new personnel – more than 1,100 USASOC and 400 MARSOC – are going to new formations, including a new SF battalion and a new 4th Battalion of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) flying MH-47 Chinooks. Of the USASOC personnel, 444 are being used to form the new SF battalion, and similar manpower increases will occur each year until all five of the active-duty SF units have four such units. Many of the new civilian hires are headed down to the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), which is presently in the process of moving from Hurlburt Field, Fla., to MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa.

AFSOC is actually seeing a temporary decrease in personnel due to the retirement of the last of the MH-53 Pave Low SOF helicopters in 2008. There is also likely to be a small decrease in flight personnel assigned to operating variants of the Hercules as the new C-130Js come online with their three-man flight crews. However, the overall AFSOC personnel count is due to rise in the next decade as new units flying the CV-22B Osprey are activated. In fact, the early operations of the CV-22B have been so successful that AFSOC Commander Wurster is actively exploring accelerated delivery of the aircraft, which is tied closely to scheduled production of the Marine Corps version of the Osprey.

rG33 crew members from CJSOTF deliver the new vehicles to SOTF-C. The new vehicles are state-of-the-art combat-ready assets to CJSOTF. They will be sent down range for use by Special Forces members and should help greatly reduce the number of casualties due to ieD attacks.

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Another part of SOCOM that is experiencing growth and prosperity is JSOU. Led by its president, Dr. Brian Maher, JSOU is rapidly growing its curriculum and staff, especially with distance learning and other online programs. JSOU also stood up its Joint SOF Senior Enlisted Academy in 2008, which is to provide SOCOM senior enlisted professionals the chance to develop their skills and leadership in a learning environment attuned to the real-world needs of the special warfare community.

OperatiOns and training

While 2008 was much like the years going back to 2001 with regard to public airing of details of present-day SOF operations, which is to say very little, it is impossible not to have noted the variety of recent special operations involving U.S. units, capabilities, and personnel. Key in understanding the nature of contemporary American special operations is this simple point: that most U.S. SOF operations around the world are actually focused on training, equipping, and advisement. Nowhere has this been

more obvious and successful than in Colombia, and the nation’s battle against the FARC terrorist group.

In the decade since President Álvaro Uribe was elected and put his “Plan Colombia” into effect, one of the key elements to the Colombian military’s growing success against the FARC has been a generous dose of U.S. aid funds as well as training by American military personnel. Key among these have been U.S. SOF personnel conducting what are known as foreign internal defense (FID) missions, providing training in real-world warfighting skills and professional development for personnel. SF teams, frequently from the 7th SFG at Fort Bragg, N.C., often conduct the Colombian SOF FID missions. AFSOC’s 6th SOS based at Hurlburt Field has also provided critical SOF aviation skills.

The ultimate final examination for Colombia’s emerging SOF capabilities also came in 2008, with two spectacularly successful operations that stunned the world. In March, Colombian SOF forces killed the deputy commander of the FARC, Raúl Reyes, with a precision airstrike and cross-border raid into Ecuador. In addition to killing Reyes and almost two

a U.s. air Force MH-53 pave Low helicopter from the 20th expeditionary special Operations squadron sits on the tarmac prior to a final combat mission at Joint Base Balad, iraq, on sept. 27, 2008. the pave Low was retired after nearly 40 years of service to the air Force.

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dozen of his confederates, the Colombian forces captured intact a laptop computer packed with everything from FARC membership and donor lists to documents implicating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in direct financial and logistical support of the insurgents. Later in 2008, the rescue of former presidential candidate and senator Ingrid Betancourt, three American civilian contractors, and 11 Colombian soldiers in a lightning snatch operation in which no shots were fired was the top news story worldwide.

The two aforementioned special operations, combined with a campaign of less public raids and counterinsurgency efforts, very nearly broke the FARC in 2008. Nobody who understands the implications of the Colombian successes of last year can help but conclude that they now have a highly competent SOF community, capable of planning and executing world-class missions in a very challenging environment. That they can today is a direct result of a decade of discreet training, assistance, and support by the U.S. government and the U.S. SOF community, of Plan Colombia and President Uribe.

In the days just prior to this book going to press, there was one more very public demonstration of U.S. SOF capability and strength: the rescue off of Somalia of Capt. Richard Phillips of the container ship SS Maersk Alabama. After a week being held hostage at the hands of Somali pirates, Phillips was saved by three near-simultaneous headshots to his captors, fired by SEALs from the guided missile destroyer USS

Bainbridge (DDG 96). Inserted discreetly, and their identities still concealed from the public, the SEALs demonstrated once again for the world that U.S. SOF warriors are quiet professionals who do their jobs well, and then quietly avoid victory laps for the media.

Friends recognized and remembered

The year saw two beloved aircraft, the classic MH-53 Pave Low and the AH-6C Little Bird, retired after decades of service to the nation. Both aircraft lasted long enough in service to see their replacements, the CV-22B Osprey and AH-6M Little Bird, respectively, enter service and begin proving their worth. Interestingly, the Pave Low that was sent to the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, was the oldest surviving example of the type, and actually flew on the Son Tay Raid in 1970.

One other goodbye was more human, in the form of Olson awarding the U.S. Special Operations Command Medal to outgoing Sen. John Warner, R-Va., when he left office in January 2009. Warner, who served in both the Navy and Marine Corps during World War II and Korea, was also a former secretary of the Navy. An elder statesman in the U.S. Senate, Warner was a staunch supporter of the military who gave special attention to the SOF community, especially during the critical fight to create SOCOM in the 1980s.

The guided-missile destroyer Uss Bainbridge (ddg 96) tows the lifeboat from the Maersk Alabama to the amphibious assault ship Uss Boxer (LHd 4), in background, on april 13, 2009, to be processed for evidence after the successful rescue of capt. richard Phillips. Phillips was held captive by suspected somali pirates in the lifeboat in the indian ocean for five days after a failed hijacking attempt off the somali coast.

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2 8 USASOC yeAr in review


The Year inU.S. armY SpecialOperaTiOnS cOmmand: 2008

2008 was the kind of year special operations forces (SOFs) warriors live for. Busy, intense,

effective, and rewarding are all words that reflect the course of events that U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) encountered last year. The largest of the service components that make up U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), USASOC is undergoing an impressive cycle of growth and transformation while providing the bulk of the warfighting (SOF) personnel for America’s present overseas military commitments.

By JOhn D. GreShAm

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Leadership

On Nov. 7, 2008, Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland took over command of USASOC from Lt. Gen. Robert W. Wagner. Mulholland has been a SF officer for over 25 years and has commanded Green Berets at every level, from “A Teams” to Special Forces Command (SFC) itself. Best known for leading Task Force Dagger (and 5th Special Forces Group) into battle in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), Mulholland most recently led Special Operations Command-Central (SOCCENT) for Gen. David H. Petraeus at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). He joins USASOC Command Sgt. Maj. (CSM) Parry L. Baer, Mulholland’s senior enlisted advisor at 5th SFG during the invasion of Iraq, in watching over the most powerful and diverse SOF community in the world today.

Mulholland arrives at a time when USASOC is growing substantially, as the Zone 4 expansion plan that developed from the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is beginning to show results. All five of the active-duty SFGs are being given a fourth SF battalion, along with additional units being added to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR – “the Night Stalkers”), Civil Affairs (CA), and Psychological Warfare Operations (PSYOPS). There also is consideration of another growth program, known tentatively as “Zone 5,” which would give the two Army National Guard SFGs (the 19th and 20th) fourth battalions as well.

A pair of notable retirements took place in 2008, those of USASOC commander Wagner and deputy commander Maj. Gen. Gary L. Harrell. Wagner will be remembered for his long service with the Ranger community, and was the longest-serving commander in USASOC history. A founding member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, he was the regiment’s first operations officer (S3). Harrell will be remembered for his service as the SOCCENT commander during the largest SOF operation in history, the opening of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

John F. Kennedy speciaL WarFighting center and schooL (JFKsWcs)

In June 2008, Maj. Gen. James W. Parker handed over command of the JFKSWCS to Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Csrnko. Over the past few years, Parker has taken the JFKSWCS through its greatest transformation since Gen. William Yarborough commanded the center in the 1960s. Virtually every piece of courseware has been revised and updated, incorporating digital delivery, distance learning, and computerized systems to maximize training capacity, efficacy, and graduation rates. Parker’s passionate pursuit of these goals has been driven by the realities of the Zone 4 personnel growth plan, which requires the training and sustainment of an authorized SFC personnel base potentially 60 percent larger than existed on September 11. Similar growth is planned throughout USASOC, and Parker moved mountains to make JFKSWCS ready to supply the SOF warriors that USASOC and the nation need to undertake their roles and missions in a dangerous world.

Csrnko previously commanded SFC and 1st SFG at Fort Lewis, Wash. Csrnko is joined at JFKSWCS by his deputy commanding general, Brig. Gen. Bennet S. Sacolick, and CSM Kurt D. Lugo in taking the school and center to the next planned set of challenges. This is producing the needed flow of SOF personnel to fill the newly authorized units and billets authorized by the Department of Defense (DoD) after the 2006 QDR. One measure of this challenge is that the SF Qualification Course (known as the “Q Course”) since 2008 has needed to produce more than 400 new SF soldiers every year to build each new

active-duty battalion, while producing enough replacements to sustain the existing force of Green Berets.

speciaL Forces command (sFc)

SFC had another busy year in 2008, with Brig. Gen. Michael S. Repass taking over command of SFC from Csrnko, along with CSM Mario G. Vigil relieving Baer. In addition, on Nov. 17, Chief Warrant Officer 5 (CW5) Bruce R. Watts took over as the third chief warrant of SFC, having previously served in the same position at 5th SFG. Repass and Vigil spent much of 2008 getting the first new SF units in two decades ready to stand up. Based upon the Zone 4 growth and modernization plan, 5th SFG stood up their 4th Battalion in August, with 3rd SFG beginning the formation of their own 4th Battalion with a planned August 2009 stand-up date. 10th SFG is due to stand up their 4th battalion in 2010, with 1st and 7th getting theirs in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

opposite: one of the 160th special operations aviation regiment (soar) mh-47gs now entering the regiment. the new helicopters and the stand-up of the 4th Battalion are two indicators of the heavy tasking and importance of the night stalkers. aBove: a mass drop of the 75th ranger regiment.


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The result of the Zone 4 program will be an active-duty SF force by 2013, able to deploy up to 300 “A” Teams, as opposed to only about 180 on September 11. In addition, 7th SFG will move south to its new home at Eglin Air Force Base in 2011, making room for the growth of 3rd SFG and other USASOC units at Fort Bragg. And should DoD see the wisdom of adding additional battalions to the 19th and 20th SFGs of the National Guard, SFC might have 420 ODAs to quietly do their valuable work around the globe.

75th RangeR Regiment

2008 once again saw the 75th Rangers acting as America’s fire brigade in the war on terrorism and providing one-of-a-kind infantry skills and capabilities to the nation. In command since 2007, Col. Richard D. Clarke and CSM Douglas O. Pallister took the regiment through an eventful year, which included changes of command in all three of the

75th’s battalions. 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment got its new commander on July 1, when Lt. Col. Brian Mennes assumed command from Col. Lee Rudacille. Sixteen days later, 2nd Battalion, 75th got their new boss when Col. Erik Kurilla relinquished command to incoming commander Lt. Col. Mark Odom. Kurilla spent the rest of 2008 at the National War College and is scheduled to take command of the regiment from Clarke in 2009. 3rd Battalion, 75th had its change of command on May 29, when Lt. Col. Daniel R. Walrath assumed command from Col. Sean M. Jenkins.

The 75th Ranger Regiment continued its high level of tasking around the globe, with much of its work still supporting clandestine missions that must remain classified for some time. Nevertheless, the Rangers clearly have been busy, as shown by recent awards and decorations being presented. On May 2, 800 Rangers from 1st Battalion, 75th gathered at Hunter Army Airfield, Ga., to award 10 Bronze Star Medals for valor, three Joint Commendation Medals for

Soldiers of the 5th Special Forces group (a) train iraqi SWat members on routine patrol and gun range procedures, march 14, 2009.




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valor, three Army Commendation Medals, and numerous other awards for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then on Sept. 27, Spc. Joe Gibson of the 2nd Battalion, 75th was awarded a Silver Star for Valor while on a classified raid in Iraq on April 26, 2008. During the insertion into the target area, Gibson and his force came under heavy enemy fire that wounded two Rangers. Gibson helped rescue one of the Rangers, who survived his wounds, and then returned to the fight, where he fought a terrorist armed with an AK-47 and an explosive suicide bomb belt hand to hand, eventually killing the enemy with his personal weapon. Gibson later re-enlisted in the Army and continues to serve.

The years since September 11 have seen significant upgrades in the equipment of the regiment, from Javelin guided missiles to the Ranger version of the Ground Mobility Vehicle (GMV-R – based on the HMMWV). The regiment is also upgrading its ground mobility assets with the addition of 14 to 16 Stryker armored infantry fighting vehicles. Reportedly assigned to a company of the 2nd Battalion, 75th, the Strykers will be operating in Afghanistan in 2009.

160th Special OperatiOnS aviatiOn regiment (160th SOar – “the night StalkerS”)

New leadership came to the Night Stalkers in 2008, when on May 27 Col. Clayton M. “Clay” Hutmacher took over as the 11th colonel of the regiment from Col. Kevin W. Mangum, after three years in command. Welcoming Hutmacher to the Night Stalker leadership team is the regiment’s 8th CSM, Ernest “Jake” Elliott, who has held the position since March 6, 2006. Joining Hutmacher and Elliot as the regiment’s 2nd chief warrant is a legendary Night Stalker and aviator who recently made his own mark in regimental history: CW5 David Cooper. Cooper is a 15-year veteran in the regiment, watching over 340 other warrant officers, and has flown AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters throughout his Night Stalker career. For his actions in Iraq on Nov. 26, 2006, when he protected more than two dozen SOF personnel and three helicopters trapped on the ground from six heavily armed enemy gun trucks and dozens of insurgent fighters, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Presented on July 11 by SOCOM Commander Adm. Eric Olson, the DSC was the first awarded to a living recipient since Vietnam.

There also were some changes in the rest of the regimental leadership in 2008, highlighted by a pair of back-to-back change-of-command ceremonies held on July 11 at Fort Campbell, Ky. Lt. Col. Van J. Voorhees Jr. took command of the 1st Battalion. In addition, Lt. Col. Thomas R. Drew assumed command of 2nd Battalion (the “Darkhorse Night Stalkers”) from Lt. Col. John

lt. gen. robert W. Wagner, then-commander, U.S. army Special Operations command, passes the regimental colors to incoming commander col. curtis Boyd, 4th psychological Operations group, during the group’s change of command ceremony at meadows Field, July 13, 2007. col. ken turner relinquished command to Boyd.


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R. Evans Jr. In addition, on July 17 at Fort Lewis, Wash., Lt. Col. Michael J. Hertzendorf assumed command of the 4th Battalion from Lt. Col. James C. Dugan, the unit’s founding commander.

The 160th SOAR has the distinction of being the most heavily tasked SOF unit on the planet, something they have dealt with since their creation as Task Force 160 back in 1980. Like other highly utilized and leveraged units in USASOC, the regiment has been enlarged with the addition of its 4th Battalion, and continued deliveries of the newest SOF version of the Chinook heavy transport helicopter: the MH-47G. In addition, 2008 saw the retirement of the old AH-6C Little Birds and the introduction of the new A/MH-6M Mission Enhanced Little Bird (MELB). The M-model MELB has many of the features the Night Stalkers have wanted for decades, from a new communications suite to a search and targeting FLIR system.

4th Psychological Warfare oPerations grouP (4th Pog)

Boyd, the commander of the 4th POG, got some new help on Dec. 9 when CSM Fernan T. Castelo assumed responsibility from CSM Steven L. Carney. Castelo moves into his new position from the 1st Psychological Operations Battalion, where he was the battalion CSM. Carney retired after 27 years of active duty and almost six years as the 4th POG’s top enlisted leader.

95th civil affairs Brigade (95th ca Brigade)

On Aug. 1, the 95th CAB held a change-of-command ceremony for Col. Ferdinand Irizarry II, where he passed command of the unit to Col. Michael J. Warmack. Irizarry

a u.s. army civil affairs team 621 team member performs security checks near the town’s medical clinic. iraqi and u.s. forces conducted a humanitarian and medical assistance visit to the town on aug. 20. civil affairs team 621, Bravo co., 96th civil affairs Battalion, fort Bragg, n.c., operationally assigned to combined Joint special operations task force-arabian Peninsula in support of operation iraqi freedom, facilitated the humanitarian-aid distribution by iraqi security forces.


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was the first commander of the 95th CAB when the unit was redesignated from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion in 2006, and will continue to work at the Pentagon as the military assistant to the under secretary of the Army. Previously, Warmack had commanded the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (CABN). Together with CSM Melvin Bynum, Warmack presided over one of the most interesting years in the recent history of U.S. CA.

The highlight of 2008 was the creation of a new USASOC CA unit: the 98th CABN. Part of the overall growth of the U.S. SOF community, the standup of the 98th is part of a major CA expansion originally called for by the 2006 QDR. Stood up on March 14 at Fort Bragg, the new unit is commanded by Lt. Col. Ray Malave, has a primarily Latin American focus, and will operate mainly under U.S. Southern Command.

“Although today marks the activation of this fine organization, it does not start today,” Malave said. “The history book for the 98th Civil Affairs Battalion, the ‘Bridge Between’ Battalion, has a few pages already written.”

What Malave was saying was that at the time of their activation, the men and women of the 98th CABN were already conducting operations for U.S. Central Command. In addition, the 95th CAB stood up another new CABN, the 91st, in April 2009.

The 95th’s units that are already downrange were recognized in 2008 for the performance and valor of their personnel in several ceremonies. On July 25, personnel from Company D, 97th CABN were awarded a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars each for valor and service, and two Purple Hearts, for action in Afghanistan. Another ceremony on Sept. 25 honored the 97th CABN’s Team 745 with a Silver Star and two Bronze Stars for a Nov. 2, 2007, firefight with 300 Taliban fighters.

Earlier in 2008, the 95th CAB began a program of outreach that included its first Global Civil Affairs conference. Held between March 17 and 20, the event hosted 400 professionals for discussions and networking across the Army’s entire CA community. Geared with a focus on tactical CA operations and civil reconnaissance, the conference also included an exposition hosted by the group Friends of Civil Affairs. The conference provided the attendees with a chance to look over tools, concepts, and techniques used for effective civil reconnaissance. This included new digital camera and global positioning systems with moving map software.

One month later, the 95th CAB held their 3rd annual U.S. Army Special Operations Command Multi-Cultural Expo at Fort Bragg, which included the Friends of Civil Affairs 10th annual “Around the World” run. Based around the theme of “Celebrating Our Cultural and International Diversity,” the exposition is designed to show the various backgrounds, cultures, and contributions of the 95th CAB’s soldiers, family members, and civilian employees. The exposition also included ethnic food tasting, displays, music, and dancing from countries around the globe.

USASOC heads into 2009 and its 20th year of service to the nation with a strong roadmap to the future, and a mandate for growth and modernization. Clearly, some time early next decade, a new round of upgrades will be needed, including the planned Group 5 expansion proposals for Army Reserve and National Guard SOF units. There also will be the need for new ground mobility and aerial platforms, both of which will be significant draws on the SOCOM Title 10 funding line when they go into development and production. Nevertheless, USASOC goes into the future with incomparable leadership – at headquarters, out at the component units, the schoolhouse and in the personnel pipeline – and a recent record that is the envy of SOF professionals and politicians around the globe.

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3 6 SFC Year in review


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In 2008, the U.S Army Special Forces Command (SFC) began the expansion of the basic force structure of the active-duty Special Forces Groups

(SFGs). Beginning in August 2008, SFC stood up the first of five new SF battalions that make up its gains under the Zone 4 growth plan that came about after the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). In addition, SFC got new leadership at headquarters and maintained its roles and missions around the globe in what was a busy and interesting year.

Leadership

On June 17, Brig. Gen. Michael S. Repass took over command of SFC from Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Csrnko. Previously, Repass commanded 10th SFG and was executive officer at Special Operations Command-Europe. Assisting Repass is SFC’s new Command Sgt. Maj. (CSM) Mario G. Vigil, who relieved CSM Parry L. Baer on April 17. Vigil had previously been the senior enlisted advisor at 5th SFG. A 1975 graduate of the “Q-Course,” Vigil was originally trained as a Special Forces medic (18D).

The Year inU.S. armY Special ForceS command: 2008By John D. GreSham

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SFC Year in review 37


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1st special Forces Group

1st SFG held a change of command ceremony on July 17, where Col. Randolph R. Binford accepted command from Col. Eric P. Wendt, who is deploying to Iraq to serve with the Multi-National Corps. Binford previously commanded a battalion in 3rd SFG, along with serving in Afghanistan. He joined the new 1st SFG CSM Jeffery D. Stigall, taking over from Michael A. Sherlock, who transferred to Special Operations Command-Korea. CSM Stigall previously had been CSM of 3rd Battalion, 10th SFG at Fort Carson, Colo.

The soldiers of 1st SFG spent much of 2008 training and exercising with numerous and diverse U.S. allies in the Pacific Rim. 1st SFG participated in a pair of Joint Cooperative and Training (JCET) operations in the Philippines. Operation Balance Piston, which ran from July to September, was just one of the dozens of JCET missions that SFC conducted with 25 allied nations in 2008. In August, 1st SFG took part in Ulchi Freedom Guardian in South Korea. The world’s largest computerized war game, Ulchi Freedom Guardian primarily focuses on defending Korea in a series of synchronized staff exercises. The 1st SFG also led the development in 2008 of new personal combat techniques with the Modern Army Combatives Program. The group is also beginning preparations to stand up their 4th Battalion, which is scheduled for 2011.

3rd special Forces Group

On July 10, 3rd SFG welcomed a new commander, Col. Gus Benton II, who had previously commanded Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF)-Afghanistan and 2nd Battalion, 3rd SFG. Benton relieved Col. Christopher K. Haas, who took over as director for legislative affairs at U.S. Special Operations Command. For the soldiers of the 3rd SFG, 2008 was a year to remember, and to get ready for the future. On Dec. 12, an awards ceremony was held where 19 Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, two Army Commendation Medals, and four Purple Hearts were presented to members of ODAs 3312 and 3214 for actions from July 2005 to November 2007, and to ODA 3336 for a single firefight in Afghanistan on April 6, 2008. In addition, earlier that same week in a separate ceremony, 43 Bronze Stars and 39 Army

Commendation Medals were awarded to 3rd SFG soldiers for other actions.

3rd SFG also began in 2008 to get ready to stand up the second of the new active-duty SF battalions for SFC under the Zone 4 growth plan. Currently scheduled to stand up in August 2009, the process of building 4th Battalion/3rd SFG actually began this past year, with the standing up of the battalion/company headquarters teams and the formation of the first of 15 new ODAs.

5th special Forces Group

It is no secret around the U.S. SOF community that 5th SFG covers what many consider the most distant, difficult, and meanest area of responsibility (AOR) in the world today for U.S. Central Command. The first SFG committed to the fight after September 11, what Lt. Gen. John Mulholland proudly calls, “the 5th

opposite: a 1st special Forces Group soldier with counterparts from the republic of Korea during exercise Key resolve. 1st sFG spent much of 2008 training with different allies along the pacific rim. above: special Forces medics (18d) from operational detachment alpha (oda) 3111, 1st battalion, 3rd special Forces Group (airborne), provide critical first aid to casualties from a simulated roadside bomb blast during a convoy training exercise at the high desert special Warfare training center in hawthorne, Nev.

SFC.indd 37 5/8/09 3:46 PM



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Legion,” was the logical choice to be the first group to receive a fourth SF battalion under the Zone 4 growth/modernization plan. The expansion actually began in June 2007, when SFC stood up a three-man cell to plan the manning and equipping of the new battalion. Over the next 14 months, the cell worked to help stand up the new battalion and company headquarters teams, along with 15 brand-new ODAs.

On Aug. 8, the 4th Battalion of the 5th SFG was stood up at Fort Campbell, Ky. with Lt. Col. Bill Raskin in command. The new battalion is providing an immediate benefit to 5th SFG and its commander, Col. Chris Conner.

“The additional battalion will provide 5th Group more flexibility with engaging partner forces in the Middle East and Central Asia – its regional focus – and allow soldiers more dwell time at home station between combat deployments,” Conner said.

Finally, as they have since 2003, 5th SFG spent most of its time downrange, deployed, and engaged. This included splitting the job of providing the headquarters for CJSOTF-Iraq with 10th SFG for six months of 2008.

7th Special ForceS Group

For the soldiers of 7th SFG, 2008 meant groundbreaking on a new home and getting ready to move. As a result of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission, 7th SFG is scheduled to move to a new home at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. In November 2008, a letter of understanding (called a Record of Decision) was signed between the Army, SOCOM, and the Air Force to prepare for when 7th SFG moves in 2011. Currently, $380 million has been allocated for new facilities construction at Eglin Air Force Base, along with upgrades and modifications to the vast and varied range system.

7th SFG Commander Col. Sean Mulholland and his soldiers also got several chances to recall the recent valor and service of their group in a pair of awards ceremonies in April 2008. On April 17, a mass decoration ceremony was held in which three Silver Stars, 22 Bronze Stars, and 21 Purple Hearts were awarded. Then on April 30, Master Sgt. Brendan O’Connor was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) for his actions in Afghanistan on June 22, 2006. A 20-year SF

oDa 5332 and iraqi SoF personnel participate in close-quarters battle refresher training at the SF shoot house located on Basrah air Base. 5th SFG’s regional focus in the Middle east and central asia made it a natural to be the first SFG to stand up a fourth battalion.

SFC.indd 38 5/8/09 3:46 PM

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veteran, O’Connor is only the second living DSC recipient since Vietnam, and was awarded for his actions during a 17½-hour-long firefight against more than 250 Taliban fighters.

10th Special ForceS Group

10th SFG spent 2008 with their heads down and their backs into their jobs, staying engaged in both Iraq and across the European AOR. They continued to split headquarters duties with 5th SFG for CJSOTF-Iraq, along with conducting a wide range of combat and training operations. This included refresher training in the 10th SFG’s specialty: mountain warfare. There also was community outreach in Iraq, where Group Chaplin Maj. James Griffin taught schoolchildren in Iraq, along with sharing his experiences with stateside students in Colorado Springs upon his return.

There also was time to honor a 10th SFG soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Sean Howie, with the 2008 First Special Service Force Frederick Award for professionalism and courage under fire. During his 2007 deployment to

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above: capt. patrick Flood, previously a 7th Special Forces Group team leader, is awarded a bronze Star for valor by lt. Gen. robert Wagner, then-commander of u.S. army Special operations command at Fort bragg, N.c., april 17. riGht: oDa 9522 and iSWat conduct a patrol on Mullibiyah ridge Jan. 10, 2008, to investigate three reported cave/cache sites and disrupt insurgent activity in western Ninewah. the 19th SFG oDa conducted foreign internal defense missions in the Ninewah province of iraq to develop select iraqi Security Forces’ counterinsurgency capability in order to contribute to the establishment of a stable environment.

SFC.indd 40 5/8/09 3:47 PM

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Samarra in Iraq, Howie spent 215 continuous days in combat operations. Finally, 10th SFG has also begun work on standing up their 4th Battalion, which is scheduled to take place in 2010.

Army NAtioNAl GuArd: 19th ANd 20th SpeciAl ForceS GroupS

In 2008, the two Army National Guard (ANG) SFGs have quietly and professionally backed up their active-duty brethren and done the jobs that have been needed when and where required. In addition to conducting overseas missions like JCETs, both groups have been actively engaged alongside active-duty SF units. When decorations were handed out at the big award ceremony for 3rd SFG troops in December, there were 19th SFG soldiers there to pick up their fair share of the medals. The 20th SFG had their own recognitions, including a Silver Star awarded to Chief Warrant Officer 3 James B. Herring, detachment commander of ODA 2084, who extracted his team from a Taliban ambush.

rememberiNG robiN moore

Like every other year since September 11, 2001, SFC has lost personnel in the line of duty. 2008, however, saw the loss of a truly unique member of the SFC family: author Robert “Robin” Moore. Best known in popular culture for writing books like The French Connection, Moore was the author of the defining book about SF: The Green Berets. When The Green Berets was published in 1965, it was a bestseller, inspiring the hit song “Ballad of the Green Berets” (for which Moore co-wrote the lyrics) along with inspiring a John Wayne movie of the same name. Moore passed away on Feb. 21, 2008, and was given the honors due to a member of SF. His is the defining book about SFC and its soldiers, and he will be long remembered for his contributions to the community.

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Soldiers of the 5th Special Forces Group stand guard during an open casket viewing for novelist robert “robin” moore in hopkinsville, Ky., march 1, 2008. moore was the author of The Green Berets, which was made into a movie staring John Wayne, and he is also credited with co-writing the song “ballad of the Green berets” with barry Sadler.

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4 4 AFSOC YeAr in review


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Commander of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) Lt. Gen. Donald C. Wurster gives his people

three prime directives: to employ the force, to take care of AFSOC’s people, and to work on the future – to both recapitalize and modernize the AFSOC force structure. Wurster is known for keeping his focus and demands the same of his people: “I want you to work on the future for the command, not necessarily the things in your in-box. Most of the things in your in-box came from elsewhere and can often take up all of your time. Work most on the things AFSOC needs to get done. Put current warfighting, recapitalization, and transformation issues first; and work on moving those items into your out-box. Those things are our mission and our command’s future. Put most of your time into them and the things you need to do for others can have the time you have left over.”

AFSOC’s people have followed the commander’s intent throughout 2008. The clearest winner is the command’s future prospects for new aircraft and an eventual increase in capability to perform its missions around the world. While

these advances foreshadow growth and greater versatility in special air support to special operations forces’ (SOF) missions, the constant demands of fighting the current wars have also gotten plenty of attention. AFSOC’s operations staff and AFSOC’s subordinate units have amassed a tremendous record of achievements in fighting the wars while winning noteworthy organizational and individual awards. AFSOC’s 2008 results make for a more visible, more robust, and real future while simultaneously achieving a very high-octane present.

REBUILDING THE FORCE

The year 2008 will long be remembered as a revolutionary paradigm shift, watershed, this-changes-everything year for Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). The command’s efforts to recapitalize and modernize its aging and worn out fleet won approval and funding support from both the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and from U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) during this year. The

By MAj. Gen. riChArd COMer (USAF-ret)

A BAnner yeAr: AFSOC 2008

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unprecedented support of both parent commands has allowed AFSOC to move acquisition programs to earlier dates on the calendar. “Moving programs to the left [acceleration] instead of to the right [delays], has never happened before to AFSOC,” said AFSOC’s Deputy Director of Plans and Programs, or A5, Col. J.D. Clem.

Maj. Gen. Brad Heithold, the AFSOC A5 when interviewed and now commander, Air Force Intelligence, Survelliance and Reconnaissance Agency, credited first a strong sense of support of AFSOC’s missions and its needs for new aircraft by the command’s home service, the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force added more than $4 billion to AFSOC acquisition accounts over the next five years, completing most of the needed modernization and recapitalization of the command within that period. “The help we’re getting from the Air Force budget has made the difference in our re-scheduling of aircraft acquisitions. We have to give our parent service a lot of credit on this. SOCOM has also come through in helping get the light and medium-lift aircraft we need to support special operations where C-130 aircraft won’t fit, or create too much visibility of operations,” Heithold said.

On the schedule prior to 2008, it was going to take until 2020 for AFSOC to buy its 37 new MC-130Js to replace the more than

40-year-old fleet of MC-130E/Ps, old aircraft all produced in the Vietnam era. Now, those replacement and modernized C-130Js will be purchased by 2016 – thus providing capability four years earlier and allowing the older aircraft to be retired at approximately 50 years of age. Additionally, whereas the procurement of AFSOC’s 50 CV-22s was going to stretch out over 10 years, until 2017, now they will all be delivered by 2014. Most of those changes were done with USAF help. SOCOM has, on its side, budgeted to provide AFSOC, within five years, 35 of its planned non-standard aircraft – one- and two-engine aircraft better suited for remote and small airfield operations. With these new planes, AFSOC can expand its operational scope to many places in the world where C-130-sized aircraft are not suitable.

Perhaps the greatest support for modernizing the special operations air fleet came in the form of a programming shift by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, mandating that money be allocated from other budgets to buy up to 17 new fixed-wing gunships in AFSOC. As the current eight AC-130H and 17 AC-130U gunships are flying more than twice the expected wartime utilization rates, they are wearing down quickly and are in need of large-scale depot maintenance much earlier

OppOsite: An AC-130H gunship flies over Hurlburt Field Nov. 15, 2007. the AC-130 gunship’s primary missions are close air support, air interdiction, and force protection. these heavily armed aircraft incorporate side-firing weapons integrated with sophisticated sensor, navigation, and fire control systems to provide surgical firepower or area saturation during extended loiter periods, at night and in adverse weather, and are flying twice the expected wartime utilization rates. AbOve: Malian and senegalese military forces rehearse infiltration and extraction maneuvers alongside special operations forces and european partner nation military forces with Cv-22 Ospreys from the 8th special Operations squadron as part of the joint training exercise Flintlock in Mali, Africa.

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than programmed. AFSOC is working hard to ensure no loss in gunship coverage in the wars by procuring the new gunships. They are also determined to base the new ones on an aircraft type different from the C-130 – a move that would make gunships deployable and functional from a much larger set of airfields than is true today. Once selected for production, the new gunship is currently funded and scheduled to be combat capable in only two years, with all 17 being purchased and in some part of the delivery chain within the next four years – a rapid acquisition.

AFSOC staff members, quick to praise the “big Air Force” for its help on the acquisition schedule, also readily admit that the change originated with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ demands that the services emphasize irregular warfare (a rubric encompassing the core SOF missions of unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, stabilization operations, and combating terrorism), as much as conventional warfare. Gates’ order that the services provide equivalent emphasis in budgeting, doctrine, and education of irregular warfare-oriented forces as they do with preparing for future wars with peer nations has changed things the most. It was another strong

argument for the Air Force to move money into AFSOC acquisition accounts (begun long before Gates relieved the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force for other reasons). All funds now in AFSOC’s acquisition programs count as Air Force support of irregular warfare forces. Taking advantage of the virtual windfall of help from the Air Force, SOCOM and AFSOC have cooperated to also provide the funds needed to add the SOF modifications for the new aircraft.

The additional aircraft and the expanded operating environments of global operations to counter terrorism and violent extremist groups mean that AFSOC will need more people who are trained and part of the special operations culture. While needs analysis indicates, according to the AFSOC A5, an increase of just 3,000 people, the Air Force and SOCOM have so far provided for about two-thirds of that, or just under 2,000 people. Also provided for is a new organization for indoctrination and training, the Air Force Special Operations Training Center (AFSOTC), headquartered at Hurlburt Field and conducting classroom and training events at all AFSOC units around the world. The AFSOTC will take on indoctrination training for all new AFSOC people and operational training for those in missions that have numbers

Members from the 320th Special Tactics Squadron freefall after jumping from the back of a 1st Special Operations Squadron MC-130H Combat Talon II at Daegu Air Base, Republic of Korea, March 19. The high altitude, low opening jump training is in preparation for the group’s annual operational readiness exercise which affords unit members an opportunity to practice wartime skills necessary for their ability to survive and operate.

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too small to have formal schools in the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command. These would include any of the advanced skills training of the combat controllers, the training of combat aviation advisors who train partner nations in special air warfare, and aircrew training where there are too few aircraft to assign some to a formal Air Force school. (See article “Hero School.”)

EMPLOYING THE FORCE

Early in 2008, 1st Special Operations Wing Commander Col. Brad Webb traveled to Balad Air Base, Iraq. He took on temporary command of the Provisional Wing there for a little more than a month while the actual Provisional Wing commander, Col. Greg Lengyel, traveled to the United States to attend some meetings and take some leave. This “swap” gave the Hurlburt wing commander a brief chance to command much of his own wing while it was deployed and being employed in the war. Webb was slightly perturbed by the current method of deploying his airmen to the battlefront, which made him, the home wing commander, the only member of his wing of 6,000 people who was normally not deployable to go and fight the war. The exchange of time with Lengyel had partly solved Webb’s problem.

The swap out of the wing commanders is a small example of how the basic facts remain the same for Air Force Special Operations Command. It’s a relatively small command among Air Force major commands – about 13,000 people and 120 combat aircraft – and they’re continuously engaged in the wars. Also, AFSOC’s aircraft are arranged in small fleets of unique airplanes providing specialized air power to special operations missions, so its assets are in demand and must maintain continuous presence in current combat operations. Hence, many of AFSOC’s units must divide themselves up at the squadron level, keeping part of the squadron always at the front and part of the squadron at home to train and sustain normal life. Unlike the rest of the Air Force, which rotates among whole wings, with each wing getting more than a year at home before returning to the war on four-month rotations (many with the home wing commander going forward as well), the majority of AFSOC’s squadrons never completely redeploy home. So, small units of as few as 12 aircrews and eight aircraft conduct perpetual, simultaneous operations at home and in combat, and the AFSOC squadrons don’t rotate forward on a schedule – they never fully go home, and they never fully go forward.

This situation is now seven years old, and the results are strong concentrations of combat experience in the AFSOC units. These are expert maintainers and aircrews, ready for the execution of ever more complex missions. The crews of the MC-130E/H Combat Talons, while providing combat mobility and re-supply, know how to get through the weather, land on the dirt, and can get in and out of places other C-130 crews wouldn’t think of going. The MC-130P Combat Shadows carry fuel to helicopters through difficult canyons at low altitudes while also providing theater-wide mobility and support. Members of combat operations AFSOC special tactics teams are spread throughout SOF ground operations, providing air expertise and connectivity to close air support and rescue capability. Gunships over-watch it all, and on many nights shoot their entire munitions loads, emptying their magazines over battlefields where sizeable numbers of their enemies have come to die.

The men and women of Air Force special operations thus continue in the “Long War,” where persistent insurgents and terror networks create the need for AFSOC’s combat skills. AFSOC aircrews have amassed literally thousands of combat sorties from many austere and improved airfields. Often the aircraft have operated at or above the designed maximum weights and in sand that gets into everything, from hydraulic fluids to fuel to computer keyboards. The environment wears out the aircraft and puts stress on the subsystems. Keeping it all going means some people are doing a lot of hard work quickly and effectively. “Our maintainers continue to amaze us all,” Wurster said.

The most significant organizational award in AFSOC in 2008 has to be the Department of Defense Phoenix Award for the most outstanding large maintenance organization in the U.S. military. The winner of the award is the 1st Maintenance Group of the 1st Special Operations Wing (SOW) at Hurlburt Field, Fla. While winning this accolade, the Hurlburt maintainers supported combat operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq every day of the year, and were taking care of the oldest

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and most highly used fleet of aircraft in any wing’s inventory in the Air Force.

The DoD news release described the 1st Special Operations Maintenance Group’s work:

The 2008 winner of the Phoenix Award for field-level maintenance is the Air Force’s 1st Special Operations Maintenance Group, Hurlburt Field, Fla., which distinguished itself by accomplishing superior aircraft maintenance supporting the generation of 3,200 combat sorties that flew nearly 14,000 hours over hostile territory. Challenged with a $336 million modification program and the bed down of two new weapon systems at home, the 1st Special Operations Maintenance Group was able to generate 4,200 training sorties that produced more than 3,100 combat ready aircrews needed to fight the Global War on Terrorism. Despite an imposing operations tempo, maintenance personnel throughout the group still supported 65 off- and on-station training and exercise commitments highlighted by a revamped training program that saved 98,000 labor hours per year and accomplished more than 33,000 training events. Their accomplishment is even more significant in light of the

fact that AFSOC’s inventory is made up of aircraft most in need of recapitalization in the U.S. Air Force. The average aircraft in the Hurlburt wing is more than 30 years old, with many of the oldest being veterans of combat in Southeast Asia and more than 40 years old. Those older aircraft, the MC-130E Combat Talon I, the MC-130P Combat Shadows, the AC-130H Spectre gunships, and the MH-53M Pave Low helicopters, also saw the USAF’s highest

utilization rates in combat operations. These aircraft represent the smallest number of each aircraft type in the smallest of the several unique fleets of aircraft in the U.S. Air Force, meaning they also had the smallest logistical support infrastructure for their support as well. “These aircraft require lots of hard work, leadership on the flight line, together with great knowledge of their systems, to keep them flying. Our people work tremendously hard and make great things happen – forward deployed at training exercises and at home station – every day. I can’t give them much rest and I only wish I could reward them as much as they truly deserve,” said Col. Pete Robicheaux, the 1st Special Operations Maintenance Group commander.

The aircrews naturally had their moments in the spotlight as well. The gunship squadrons from Hurlburt conducted combat missions every day of 2008. Sometimes these missions were no more than patrolling in case they were needed. They were airborne and ready and sometimes very much needed. Notably, Maj. Chad Bubanas won the 2008 Cheney Award for the USAF’s Most Meritorious Flight of the Year for an AC-130H gunship mission, flown during 2007 in Afghanistan, where he and his crew worked to help save the crew and passengers of a downed Army helicopter and also supported several special operations units on the ground. Other gunship crews, flying the AC-130U Spooky gunship over Iraq, helped Iraqi forces in the battle for Basrah, earning several Distinguished Flying Crosses and winning praise and thanks from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki. The U-model gunship crews, in fact, accounted for almost a quarter of all the combat action medals awarded in the Air Force for 2008.

Modernization of AFSOC’s aircraft bore first fruits in operations, as did the new PC-12 airplanes (called nonstandard aircraft or NSAv – airplanes smaller than C-130s) of the 319th Special Operations Squadron (SOS). These aircraft provide SOF mobility to small fields and also provide other capabilities. They flew a total of 4,800 combat hours supporting ground forces that captured more than 1,500 insurgents in the combat zones.

AFSOC also grew its tactical mobility capabilities in the 27th Special Operations Wing (SOW) at Cannon Air Force Base (AFB), N.M., which was only three months old at the beginning of 2008. The 27th SOW conducted the stand-up of a new squadron, the 318th SOS, with intermediate-sized NSAv (meaning two-engine) aircraft to provide mobility for special operations forces. Col. Tim Leahy, the wing commander, noted that it was only six months between stand-up of this new squadron, acquisition of leased aircraft, and its first deployment overseas to support SOF movements in combat zones.

Significantly, AFSOC people have created partnerships and networks internal and external to their command that provide a worldwide network of cooperation that, in turn, provides an Air Force team providing support to joint SOF operations. For instance, the 353rd Special Operations Group (SOG) in Okinawa provided the predeployment support and advance personnel to receive the first deployment of AFSOC’s newest aircraft, the NSAv aircraft, to provide mid-sized forward mobility support to ground operations in an area of the Pacific theater. The same function was performed by the 352nd SOG in Europe, helping pave the way for similar air operations in their theater. Wurster remarked that the use of the forward-deployed Special Operations Groups can facilitate joint SOF operations in forward areas, validating the wisdom of the SOCOM commander, Adm. Eric Olson, in his decision to cancel the proposed return of units to the continental

Capts. Jamie Rademacher and Jeremy Anderson, both 17th Special Operations Squadron pilots, follow another MC-130P Combat Shadow during a formation, low-level training mission at Kadena Air Base, Japan, March 2. The primary mission of the 17th SOS is aerial refueling of special operations helicopters, but it is also capable of day and night low-level delivery of troops and equipment via airdrop or airland operations.

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United States (CONUS). According to Wurster, permanent forward presence, especially for the Air Force component of SOCOM, is the right way to go, as deployments always flow through airfields and the SOGs, with their Operations Support Squadrons (OSSs), will have the right mix of people and specialties to aid in deployments, shorten bed-down times, and enable rapid transition to operations whatever the mission of SOF forces might be: foreign internal defense and training of foreign forces, humanitarian relief after natural disasters, or complex combat operations. AFSOC’s overseas positioned Special Operations Groups have each illustrated this concept.

The 352nd SOG of Mildenhall, England, supported the wars with at least one aircraft and crew for 12 months of 2008. Since the group has only nine assigned aircraft, that’s a significant amount of its capability. Still, the group, under the command of Col. Brian Cutts, accomplished a singular mission in its own area, using two of its MC-130Ps to conduct a short-notice evacuation of non-combatants from Chad, taking in the SEALs for security and bringing out 140 evacuees, including the U.S. ambassador. Basing in Cameroon, the group was first into the country and remained engaged in humanitarian operations and embassy support for two months afterward, finally returning the ambassador when the danger had passed.

Later in the year and then under command of Col. Lewis Jordan, the SOG moved quickly to support European Command when Russia invaded Georgia, moving an assessment team into Tbilisi and standing by with aircraft on alert at another base to evacuate people, if necessary. The group also launched from alert to support a flight of rescue helicopters that saved a sailor from a ship 300 miles west of Ireland, near Iceland. The bad-weather mission necessitated multiple low-level air refueling below the clouds and only 500 feet above the ocean.

The 352nd SOG collaborated with the 1st SOW of Hurlburt on the first-ever operational deployment of the new AFSOC CV-22s during Exercise Flintlock. The four CV-22s set out to prove the concept of operations of tilt-rotor capability. They flew a total of 2,300 miles one way from Florida to the middle of the African continent in two days’ time. The self-deployment proved the worldwide mobility of the CV-22s, which were air-refueled across the Atlantic and into Africa by aircraft from Mildenhall. During the monthlong exercise, the Ospreys conducted numerous training sorties and mobility for African SOF. Throughout Exercise Flintlock and enabled with tanker support, the CV-22s accomplished special operations forces troop movements exceeding 600 nautical miles without dependence on runways.

Tim Brown, of the AFSOC Historian’s Office, pointed out that the CV-22 training mission in Mali, West Africa, corresponds to a mission of historical significance and is very similar to one conducted in 1961 to train Malian paratroopers. Hence, the first mission of the Osprey mirrors the first-ever Air Force special operations deployment to train another military – a good place to begin again.

The 352nd Group’s OSS, its MC-130s, and its medical people supported the deployment for four weeks, helping prove the longer-range operating concept of the new aircraft and also proving the need for forward-based AFSOC units to facilitate operations in forward theaters.

Similarly, on the other side of the world, the 353rd SOG at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, while even smaller than its European counterpart, has also acted as a forward-deployed unit and a support base for SOF operations. Besides participating in many Pacific Command special operations training exercises, the 353rd has provided continuous

support to operations in the Philippines, including support of the first-ever deployment of the AFSOC PC-12s to the Pacific theater. The group provided continuous support to the operations in the Philippines with MC-130 aircraft and 353rd OSS staff.

Col. Dave Mullins, commander of the 353rd, said his group’s most newsworthy mission in 2008 “was the rescue of two injured Ukrainian mariners from a freighter located 850 miles north of Guam in September. A [1st] SOS Combat Talon II performed a zero-illumination drop of six personnel [one CCT and five PJs] following a five-hour flight. The jump team was a combination …” of SOG special tactics and rescue squadron personnel from Pacific Air Forces. The team performed 32 hours of medical treatment and CPR while the freighter sailed to the nearest port where the patients were transported by HH-60 to a hospital. The tremendous effort saved one of the two seamen.

In the vein of providing a staging base for joint SOF activity, AFSOC’s newly acquired base at Cannon AFB has expanded with the growth of the 27th Special Operations Wing, which this year received contingent aircraft to conduct operations and training. The wing has also prepared its base and training areas to afford SOCOM an excellent desert training area with the immense Melrose Air Force Range in eastern New Mexico. The 27th Wing, commanded by Col. Tim Leahy, has continued to transform the former fighter aircraft base into an Air Commando and SOF home base with its facilities and training areas well suited for joint desert training and providing air support for those operations. Also, the transformation of AFSOC into much more than some C-130 variants plus special tactics airmen is very apparent on the aircraft ramp. Preparations to house the AFSOC squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), both Predators and Reapers, have progressed to the point of having received the first complement of people and now being ready to conduct forward area UAV operations from the operations center at Cannon AFB. The intelligence function has also been manned and is already conducting the processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED) functions required to properly use the information coming from the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance-equipped UAVs flying those missions over the combat zones.

The 27th SOW also establishes a base for SOF training in a desert environment. The wing at Cannon hosted a number of joint training events. Together with ownership of a large desert training range for both ground movements and air-to-ground and ground-to-ground firing ranges, the wing provides support and opportunities for desert-environment training for all SOCOM components. In its first full year of AFSOC ownership, Cannon has hosted Navy and Marine component members in planning the expansion and uses of the Melrose Range. U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) also participated, and also conducted training events on the range, bringing some foreign partner forces for combined training events. USASOC held its Sergeants Major Conference at Cannon, using the range to demonstrate and test fire some new weapons.

Difficult, complex, unceasing operations were the story for AFSOC last year. AFSOC’s people proved equal to the tasks and seem to thrive when they have a lot to do. This year promises more of the same. Last year ended in a similar way to how it had begun. Concerning AFSOC recapitalization, the secretary of defense announced that although many Pentagon acquisition programs would be reduced or outright eliminated, a program area that would be fully funded is new SOF mobility platforms. Concerning AFSOC operators, Webb gave up command of the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt. His replacement? Greg Lengyel, newly assigned back in the United States from his year in Iraq.

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5 2 MARSOC YeAR in Review


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Three years after it was created, when most new commands would be filling their final billets, the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) is undergoing a

major reorganization, both internally and with respect to its role as the Marine component of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

MARSOC – with about 80 percent of its planned Full Mission Capability (FMC) – deployed to Southwest Asia on the first of four missions less than six months after its official activation at Camp Lejeune, N.C., on Feb. 24, 2006. The deployment rate rose to 15 missions in 2007 and 32 in 16 countries in 2008, with 40 deployments now on the schedule for 2009 and even more anticipated for 2010.

“The primary focus of those deployments was in support of OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom], building partnerships with partner nation forces and emphasizing relationships with those partners,” noted Col. K.T. Wooley, MARSOC assistant chief of staff-operations (G3). “The areas we have deployed to have emphasized the importance of building capacity within partner nation militaries.”

However, the nature of MARSOC deployments is evolving and changing.“When we first came into SOCOM, we were used where they most needed somebody. As we have matured,

SOCOM’s desire has been to more geographically and regionally focus our efforts,” Maj. Gen. Mastin M. Robeson, MARSOC’s second commanding general, said. “So we expect, in the next couple of years, probably starting in FY 2010, gradually to be more associated with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the littorals of Africa and Southeast Asia, although that should not be considered an order of priority.”

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MARSOC achieved full operational capability (FOC) in October 2008 with six deployable companies, three each in the 1st and 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalions (MSOBs) and 16 fully operational Marine Special Operations Teams (MSOTs) in the Marine Special Operations Advisor Group (MSOAG). Each MSOB contains nine MSOTs (three per company), although both rate four companies and 12 teams.

The original MSOAG design did not have battalions; it had two companies, comprising personnel from the Marine Foreign Military Training Unit, which was moved entirely to MARSOC. Each company had 15 teams, intended to handle MARSOC’s foreign internal defense (FID) mission.

In addition, the three Marine Special Operations Companies (MSOCs) from each MSOB were assigned to a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) – one East Coast, one West – to give the MEU a special operations capability. At any given time, one company would be deployed, one preparing for deployment, and one recovering from deployment.

“So MEU plus MSOC equals MEUSOC. But the war has changed that. SOCOM requirements have changed that,” Robeson continued, “although we haven’t jettisoned that concept. We don’t want to disassociate ourselves from the MEUs or distance ourselves from the Corps MAGTF [Marine Air-Ground Task Force].”

The change came as the MSOCs grew in importance to the success of the counterinsurgency (COIN) mission in Southwest Asia – even at the expense the MEUs. Even though the MSOCs were deploying with the MEUs, they were under the operational and tactical control of the theater Special Operations Command. As the MEU sailed into Central Command’s (CENTCOM’s) area of responsibility, the Special Operations Command-Central Command (SOCCENT) wanted the MSOC pulled off the ship for assignment to Afghanistan. But leaving them afloat to and from the region created about a three-month gap between MSOCs on the ground in Afghanistan.

“SOCOM needed two MSOCs heel-to-toe, without a 90-day gap, so they could have two MSOCs in Afghanistan at all times, doing different missions in different parts of the country,” Robeson said. In January 2009, the secretary of defense approved transporting the MSOCs directly to Afghanistan by air rather than by ship with the MEUs.

“That was a fairly major dynamic because SOCOM needs that capability in Afghanistan, but the Marine Corps at the same time was being tasked with providing a MEUSOC for X number of days to PACOM [Pacific Command] off the West Coast and EUCOM [European Command] and AFRICOM [African Command] coming off the East Coast. So meeting the CENTCOM requirement in Afghanistan meant a reduction in what the other COCOMs [combatant commands] had requested and the commandant of the Marine Corps had been tasked with providing.”

Essentially retasking the majority of MARSOC’s assets to a single command and theater of operations was not the only change for the still-new Marine special operators, most of whom came into MARSOC as combat veterans, many from force reconnaissance units.

“In 2009, we are being asked by SOCOM to provide C2 [command and control] capability, which reflects the changing and matured relationship between MARSOC and SOCOM,” Robeson said. “SOCOM has far more confidence in our ability to do the mission, the Marine Corps has a greater understanding of what they are providing in terms of value to the nation, and MARSOC has a much greater understanding of how carefully we have to plan out our training so we have no wasted days, because there is such a high demand for us to provide deployment capability to SOCOM.

“We have increased the number of JCETs [joint combined exchange training] and CNTs [counter-narcotics training] and MSOCs to

Afghanistan. Now we’re being asked to deploy our first SOTF [special operations task force], which may lead to augmenting other JMD [joint manning document] type C2 capability out there and even provide the leadership for them.”

A SOTF is a battalion-level C2, commanded by a lieutenant colonel. Its size depends on the mission, which in this case is substantial. MARSOC is being asked to provide command and control over all SOCOM assets and missions within a specified region and coordinate their operational functions. To do that, the first SOTF is expected to comprise about 180 to 200 personnel, including about 40 drawn from other services.

“We think 200 might be a little big, but they will be opening a new region and building new forward and advanced operations bases, so it will need a heavier logistics piece. Long term, we’d like to be able to do this kind of mission with 150 to 180 personnel,” Robeson said.

OppOsite: An operator with 1st Marine special Operations Battalion, U.s. Marine Corps Forces special Operations Command, rappels out of a CH-46 sea Knight helicopter at Camp Margarita, aboard Camp pendleton, Calif. the operator took part in the first-ever MARsOC Helicopter Rope suspension training Masters course, which ran from Oct. 27 to Nov. 7, 2008. ABOve: Marines with the Marine special Operations Advisor Group (MsOAG), U.s. Marine Corps Forces special Operations Command, clear a corner during the advanced urban warfare portion of their training at the Direct Action Resource Center, Aug. 25, 2008.


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Meeting those new requirements, he added, was the biggest growth issue the command, SOCOM, and the Marine Corps had to work out in 2008 and early 2009. It also meant accepting a disconnect from the original MSOC commitment to the MEUs for at least the next few years.

“I can’t go back to providing both until I reach FMC, which we’re saying will be the end of FY 11, beginning of FY 12, but one of the advantages of building and operating the force at the same time is you can significantly accelerate getting it right. Which makes FMC a bit of a moving target. More than a year ago, we realized the MSOAG, 1st MSOB, 2nd MSOB, and support group in the original design wasn’t right, so we can make the adjustments now rather than waiting a couple of years to modify and adjust.

“We had the original mission differentiations because we built MARSOC by picking up two existing battalions with guys who were very experienced and good at direct action and special reconnaissance, then recruited people to flesh out the MSOAG, and added training for FID, JCET, and CNT type engagement missions. But down the road, the ITC [Individual Training Course] will bring a common Marine special operator who can do any of those.”

With the first class of 49 new Marine special operators graduating from a six-month ITC in April, MARSOC is in the process of a significant change from the plan developed by the Corps and SOCOM before Marines became the last service in the joint command.

One element of that change is the increasing importance to the overall mission of a component unique to MARSOC among the service special operations forces – the Marine Special Operations Support Group (MSOSG). It is MSOSG that provides the enablers – human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), fire support, intelligence analysts, logistics support, etc. – Robeson considers vital to a fully operational company-level capability.

According to MSOSG Commander Col. Mark Aycock, the support group is a conglomeration of capability sets that are provided to other MARSOC units as needed, either through individual augmentation assignments or multi-member detachments. If a specific need cannot be met from within MSOSG, Aycock will go out to the larger Marine Corps or SOCOM to find the personnel he needs to execute the mission.

“I have five subordinate commands – an intelligence company with all my resident intel capability; a support component with a fire control platoon, security platoon, and communications platoon; a logistics component, with a motor transport section, vehicles, equipment, and engineers doing generator, fueling support, and a very small combat engineer capability. I also have, on the East Coast, a headquarters company that takes care of people assigned to MARSOC headquarters,” Aycock said.

“The fifth command I have is Detachment West at Camp Pendleton [Calif.], which is a microcosm of the support group,

Commandos with a Dominican Republic counterterrorism unit known as Secretaria De Las Fuerzas Armadas Commando Especial Contra Terrorismo unload off of a UH-1 Iroquois helicopter at Ciudad Del Niño. A team of Marines with U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, trained the commandos as part of U.S. Southern Command, Special Operations Command-South’s Exercise Fused Response.


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with some intel, comm, motor transport, and supply capability, although it does not have everything I have on the East Coast. Its primary function is to support, almost exclusively, the 1st MSOB at Pendleton. If necessary, I can reach out to them to satisfy a mission, but I prefer to let them stay there, supporting the West Coast.”

As with the rest of MARSOC, the MSOSG operations tempo has increased steadily since it was formed in 2007. At any given moment, about half the 450-member unit (about 80 percent of FMC) is deployed, not only to Afghanistan but to all of the geographic COCOMs as well as training centers and exercises, such as the ITC final exercise. It also is adding capabilities and changing some aspects of its mission, including the 2009 addition of six military working dogs.

“The Marine Corps has been utilizing military working dogs since World War I, so that is nothing new, but getting dogs so we have our own and can support our own operations was extremely important,” Aycock said. “We knew there were advantages to that and saw the successes the Army Special Operations Command was having, so it just seemed a natural fit and, to be honest, the deploying units were badgering us for dogs. We spent a considerable amount of energy and effort in 2007 and 2008 to get that program up and running, so having them now deployed is a big highlight.”

MSOSG also saw its profile significantly increased when its intelligence unit was nominated for the prestigious National Security Agency (NSA) Director’s Trophy.

“That is a huge honor for us, considering the intel company was only eligible for the award for the first time in 2008 and there is a lot of competition for this recognition, with three other Marine Corps units eligible. So to get that nomination the first year we were eligible was huge,” Aycock said, noting nomination is tantamount to becoming the recipient. “The NSA Director’s Trophy is presented to a unit in each of the four services, based on the best tactical SIGINT support contribution for the previous calendar year.”

While he does not see any major changes in the support group’s future, Aycock is confident MSOSG will continue to play a significant role in MARSOC for many years to come.

“I would go out on a limb and say I don’t see the support group going away in the foreseeable future. There are advantages to having high demand, low density support sets within a unit such as ours,” he said, but added he still must deal with changing demands for specific capabilities.

“We continually review and assess the capabilities we have, the growth we are slated to get as part of the original plan, and asking ourselves if that plan is right. But it takes awhile to grow more intel or other specialists. And this is a zero sum game – if I need more people in one area, I have to figure out where I can afford to reduce manpower in another element. I think we need more intel, but being a support organization, the group really can’t figure out fully what it should look like until the other side of the house is right-sized and

organized and so in a better position to say how much intel or logistics support or whatever they need as opposed to what they need now.”

That is a problem Robeson already has taken steps to address as he seeks to add enablers to meet MARSOC’s evolving mission. And his short-term answer will mean a major restructuring.

“We realized the enablers we were deploying with the companies really were as much the reason for their success as the operators being deployed, but the enablers in the table of organization were not sufficient to support 10 to 12 companies. To stay within a 2,600-man force means asking how many teams I’m willing to off-ramp to build more enablers. The first decision I made was to off-ramp a battalion headquarters instead,” Robeson said.

“Starting this spring, we will have one special ops regiment and no MSOAG; we’ll probably redesignate the MSOAG as the special ops regiment, with all four MSOBs working for it. Then this fall we will shrink from four battalions to three, taking off one battalion headquarters’ worth of structure that can be used to build enablers. We won’t lose companies or teams, just the headquarters, so the companies and teams from that battalion will be spread out among the other three MSOBs, thus taking them to four companies and 12 teams each.

“The No. 1 priority for 2009 is getting this right. We don’t have the final answer yet, although by the end of this year I expect we will know what the end state


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MARSOC will look like, with a 2,600-man cap, by rightsizing and balancing the force. There is no doubt this is the hardest thing we’re doing right now, but you don’t want this to drag out over a period of years. The choices we have are for SOCOM to lower their expectations of what MARSOC can provide or for the Marine Corps to grow the high demand, low density assets we need to rightsize the force. Or raise the top line of 2,600.”

Other changes already have been implemented in the ITC, which originally was intended to be a nine-month course, including three months of intensive language and cultural training. That was deleted as the first ITC class got under way, cutting the course to six months, although all future classes will run at least seven months. The changing focus of which Robeson spoke already has had an impact in driving MARSOC language and culture training.

“Instead of having an ITC with all the skills plus a three-to-four month intense language and culture training pipeline, we’ve cut that out for the next couple of years to accelerate the number of Marine

special operators we can develop,” he added. “Instead, I’m sending one member of each team into nine to 10 months of concentrated language training, so every team will have a strong speaker for each area in which they will operate. This is about balancing operational needs with stand-up needs and is a rather significant shift in how we will do things.

“I also have to increase the schoolhouse instructor cadre; I’m about 120 instructors short right now. We learned a lot from our first class and now will rework the program of instruction so the ITC is more refined. We need more amphibious capability in the package, for example, and a better refined emphasis on COIN and FID. The equipment-to-student and instructor-to-student ratio needs to be examined to ensure students are grasping what they are expected to do within the time limit – or grow the number of days. Those have to be worked out before we start our second course in July.”

Another change will be developing areas not addressed during MARSOC’s first three years, primarily how much cold weather/high altitude/mountain-arctic training Marine special operators

OppOsite: During training at the National training Center, Fort irwin, Calif., on March 26, 2008, a Marine with the MsOAG, U.s. Marine Corps Forces special Operations Command, conducts security while directing his partner nation role-playing counterpart what to look out for during a cordon and search of a village. AbOve: Marines with U.s. Marine Corps Forces special Operations Command enter an MH-47D Chinook helicopter from the Army’s 160th special Operations Aviation Regiment at Drop Zone pheasant, Aug. 6, 2008.


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should receive. While details have yet to be ironed out, Robeson said the command will be more aggressive in developing mountain leaders.

To accelerate reaching FMC, Robeson has set targets of at least 72 students for all future ITC classes and four classes each year, which also will require growing the number of instructors, classrooms, and equipment. Current MARSOC personnel will not be required to go through ITC, nor will experienced force recon Marines coming into MARSOC. The goal, however, is to have all other new special operators graduate from ITC in the future.

“It is a system, all of which starts with the recruiting campaign, maximizing the number of students we can push through ITC, right-sizing our organizational structure between command elements and operators, and right-sizing the organization between operators and enablers,” he explained. “And better focusing where we think we’re going to be used so we can better prepare from a language/cultures perspective to go on the ground and be successful.

“I think we can achieve that this year – it’s just a question of whether we can achieve it to the FMC level. You can grow capability on paper faster than you can grow a truly seasoned capability that can go anywhere in the world and be successful. So it is a function of the quality of the capability you want as much as the quantity. And that takes time; you can’t do this overnight.”

Robeson credits his predecessor, Maj. Gen. D.J. Hejlik, with providing both a solid framework and organizational flexibility he now can use to further mold MARSOC into as unique and effective a component of SOCOM as the Marine Corps has been for the U.S. military as a whole.

“The Marine Corps has been phenomenally supportive of MARSOC – much more so than I thought might be the case. And SOCOM has embraced MARSOC much earlier than I thought it would,” he concluded. “And that is the good news story for MARSOC from 2008-09 – that triangle of MARSOC-Corps-SOCOM is much tighter than ever before. And that will only get better in the coming months. I think 2009 will be the breakout year for MARSOC.”

A Marine with the MSOAG, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command, sights in on his target during the scoped weapons course at Camp Lejeune, N.C., May 22, 2008. This course is part of the weapons subject matter expert course that certain MSOAG initial training pipeline students must complete before being assigned to a Marine Special Operations Team.


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Naval Special Warfare commaNd: 2008A YeAr Of grOwTh And chAnge

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R eflective of the constantly changing world in which it operates, U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command (NAVSPECWARCOM) has continued a broad

spectrum of evolutionary organizational, materiel, training, and operational activities designed to position the naval element of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to anticipate and meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Representative examples of the dynamic changes under way throughout the Naval Special Warfare (NSW) community can be found in Naval Special Warfare Group 4 (NSWG-4), the maritime mobility component of USSOCOM.

Comprised of the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (SWCC) who insert/extract SEALs and provide surface support, the NSW surface component includes Special Boat Teams (SBT) 12 (California), 20 (Virginia), and 22 (Mississippi). Additionally, as part of the ongoing evolution within NSW, NSWG-4, headquartered at Little Creek, Va., recently added a fourth subordinate element when it assumed control of the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School (NAVSCIATTS), located at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

“One of the most significant recent changes is that we assumed NAVSCIATTS under this command,” observed Capt. Chuck Wolf, commander, NSWG-4. “They had worked for the Naval Special Warfare Training Center out on the West Coast. But I brought them in under Group 4 because I recognized the operational relevance that they would bring me in the pre-hostility phases of a campaign plan.”

He continued, “The concept behind that is that you can’t surge relationships; you can’t surge trust; and you can’t surge regional familiarization.”

Underlying trends over the past few years have seen a shift for NSWG-4 away from direct action (DA) missions toward more foreign internal defense (FID) missions. Simultaneously, the nature of those FID missions is also shifting to reflect changing global realities.

“After 9/11, USSOCOM was tasked with synchronizing planning for the Global War on Terrorism [GWOT] for the Department of Defense [DoD]. Obviously, things were a bit undefined at that point. And I think they have really matured into it through their GWOT series of contingency plans. Recently, USSOCOM has been designated as the

Sailors assigned to Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School (NAVSCIATTS) train personnel from the Iraqi Riverine Police Force on special boat maneuvers and weapon handling. The Iraqi force was training in a six-week patrol craft course at Stennis Space Center, Miss., in 2006.

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Joint Security Force Assistance [SFA] proponent, tasked to lead the collaborative development and integration of SFA capabilities across DoD. Well, they have recently been assigned the foreign security assistance/foreign internal defense synchronization mission as well. USSOCOM itself is now going through a process where it is trying to refine and define what that mission is and what their role in that mission should be. And this spring they are going to host a ‘Foreign Security Assistance Conference’ within the ‘Global CINC Conference,’ where they will talk to various regional commanders and regional operations officers to help define what that mission is and where to go with it. It is coincidental that NSWG-4 is already doing the mission in a number of foreign locations. And with the NAVSCIATTS piece assigned to me, we now have all phases of the operation under one command, so they are

looking to us to see if there’s something there that they can model for application to other special operations forces in other regions,” said Wolf.

Global EnGaGEmEnt

As an example of NSWG-4 operations already taking place within this mission area, Wolf pointed to command activities under way in Manda Bay, Kenya, on the northwestern tip of the Manda Islands, just off that country’s east coast.

“We’ve been there for about four-and-a-half years,” he noted. “So we are going to have a very good, very mature understanding of the Kenyan naval capabilities and the regional capabilities of other partners in that area.

Students from the Patrol Craft officer course at the naVSCIattS insert students from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHInSEC) during a field training exercise at the Stennis Space Center march 4, 2009. the mission of naVSCIattS is to provide partner-nation security forces with the highest level of riverine and littoral craft operations and maintenance technical training, while WHInSEC focuses on providing professional education and training to eligible persons of the nations of the Western Hemisphere within the context of the democratic principles set forth in the Charter of the organization of american States.

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“The African mission has changed considerably over the past few years,” he observed. “Although we’ve been in Manda Bay, Kenya, for about four-and-a-half years, we’ve run 21 training courses with the Kenyan Naval Services, Kenyan Wildlife, and Kenyan Fish and Game. And what they’re trying to do is take a fairly broad brush approach to the development of a maritime security capability for domestic issues – including poaching and wildlife violations. And then look at how the counter-piracy issue might affect a partner like Kenya, think about that ship that was ‘taken’ by pirates about 350 to 400 miles off their coast a few months ago. Think about how that can rapidly change things economically for Kenya, because if the ships are no longer pulling into Mombasa, Kenya, and then run down the coast to Dar es Salaam [Tanzania], it will have an immediate economic effect on Kenya. So the Kenyans have a vested economic interest in denying piracy in that region. And the Special Operations Command Africa commander, Gen. [Patrick] Higgins, believes that we are having a positive regional impact that extends north to the Somalia border region and south into Tanzania.

“If you look at what we are hoping to achieve in Cameroon, Africa, which is on the west coast, we are considering a similar model,” he said. “And when you look at Cameroon, you see issues ranging from gas and oil resources to piracy. Cameroon straddles that north/south trade and commerce route between the northern west coast of Africa

and South Africa. You also have British and French working in the region: The British are working in Nigeria and the French are working in Equatorial Guinea. You have got the ambassadors from Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and Liberia asking for maritime security assistance. So we are trying to address these trends of maritime instability in various regions across the African continent, where the ambassadors are coming out and asking for assistance. And that’s what I can provide them through NAVSCIATTS and also through my SBTs,” Wolf said.

“I think it’s a great lash-up, because you have got an ambassador who asks for some sort of assistance and I can send in an assessment team; I can assess exactly where the partner nation or potential partner nation stands with regards to their capacities and capabilities; we can identify training curriculum; we can identify out year events; and then we just engage along those events as long as the ambassador continues to support it. We have got very good mutual relationships not only with the U.S. State Department team but also with the partner countries,” he said.

Wolf emphasized that NSWG-4 elements are deployed well beyond Africa and across the globe, explaining, “I have a global mission. I have detachments – both coastal and riverine – supporting what I will call ‘foreign security assistance operations.’ In South America, for example, they are performing primarily counter-narcotics training and foreign capacity building with the Colombians and with the Panamanians, for example. We’re looking at Surinam. And we’ve been in Guyana.”

The Advanced Concept Technology Deomonstrator Stiletto sits pier side during a refueling before conducting counter-illicit trafficking operations in the Caribbean. Stiletto is a one-of-a-kind, experimental vessel with advanced communications and sensors.


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Some of the Caribbean activity has involved the presence of the “Stiletto” Advanced Technology Demonstration platform, which he described as “a pretty high-end advanced technology platform demonstrator incorporating advanced capabilities like new communications suites, new forward-looking infrared sensors, intercept/detection, enhanced operational picture, and video download.”

“We’re doing a [Naval Special Warfare Detachment Caribbean] deployment around Trinidad and Tobago supporting the U.S. Southern Command counter-narcotics initiatives and intercept of illicit materials and/or personnel,” he said, adding, “We’re really focused in the northern half of South America, Brazil, of course, being a new strategic ally in the region. If you look at things economically, you can talk about Brazil, Russia, India, and China being the new economic powerhouses after the European Union and the United States. So we are trying to engage with them.”

On the European continent, Wolf pointed to NSWG-4’s ongoing “Steady State Security Assistance” mission, stating, “We’ve had elements in Europe – primarily in Germany – supporting regional engagement for years.”

Carefully avoiding any characterization as an increase in operational tempo, Wolf spoke of “increased engagement” and “a more deliberate

engagement process, where I’m working with the theater combatant commander and I’m working with the theater special operations commander to make sure that countries of high interest or high priority are being engaged.”

“So I’m really not increasing the [operational tempo], I’m just refocusing the effort,” he said. “It results in a more deliberate and better synchronized engagement process.”

Materiel iMplications

Asked about NSWG-4 feedback into ongoing materiel planning processes, Wolf responded, “From a strategic perspective, we’re currently working a concept that’s called ‘Maritime Access in the Denied Environment.’ This is a concept that applies to any force that operates in the maritime domain. And the ‘denial’ aspects mean that the environment can be denied either politically or militarily.”

As an example of a politically denied area, Wolf pointed to the Philippines.

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does it support land basing. So what I’ve done is to contract a civilian platform through Military Sealift Command (MSC). And we’re working off of that. It’s not benign but it is less intrusive than a Navy capital asset. So we’re changing the way we engage and deploy.”

Referring to that platform and concept as a “maritime support vessel,” Wolf said, “It allows us the freedom to operate in an area that might be ‘restricted politically.’”

He continued, “Now, as you look at the larger construct and the possibility of going into major combat operations in an area that may be denied militarily – and there are certainly a number of those – the question becomes how we conduct operations there. And that involves a number of both materiel and non-materiel solutions. And this is where I try to stimulate industry to try to provide me with materiel solutions, and I try to stimulate the Department of Defense and my own personnel to try to provide me with non-materiel solutions: tactics, techniques, procedures, doctrinal changes, etc.”

Within those materiel solutions, the NSW surface component is looking at several classes of vessels.

“The largest, which I call the Combatant Craft Heavy [CCH], is the ‘Mk. V’ special operations craft,” Wolf explained. “It’s an 85-foot patrol boat that’s nearing the end of its service life. It’s based on some older technologies. For example, we didn’t have all of the computer technologies that we have now. We didn’t have the navigational technologies that we have now. Satellite communications were just in their infancy when we designed this boat. So what has happened is that we have done a lot of late, after-market add-ons. What we’re trying to do now is define, within that Maritime Access in a Denied Environment concept, the requirements for a follow-on Combatant Craft Heavy. And I think if you look at the Navy’s gap in capabilities, they’ve looked at the ‘Green Water’ craft and things that are smaller than destroyers and cruisers. There’s a gap there and Littoral Combat Ship may be one materiel solution. So we’re working with the Navy to try to ensure that special operations forces, in particular Naval Special Warfare and our boats, are interoperable with that platform.

“We’re also working with the Coast Guard and we’re also working with Naval Expeditionary Combat Command [NECC], the newest command in the Navy,” he continued. “And we’re trying to find similarities in requirements that mutually support our operational needs. And, although the requirement hasn’t been approved yet, that may eventually develop into a boat design/procurement/implementation process.”

If implemented, the resulting vessel program would likely be somewhat larger than the Cyclone-class patrol coastal (PC) vessels, 170-foot-long ships that began to enter NSW inventories in the early 1990s.

“The Navy has decided to ‘service life extend’ [SLEP] the PCs as well,” Wolf acknowledged. “I think they are going to be in the inventory until about 2017, maybe 2020. But again, that’s an ‘older technologies’ platform and it was not the ideal platform for the missions that we’re looking at now. For example, you have to sit off the shore of a country where you are developing a target for a long period of time. You don’t necessarily want to commit an ‘amphib.’ You don’t want to commit a cruiser. And you’re certainly not going to commit a carrier. So what is that smaller platform that we can commit, that has the freedom of maneuver but still provides that basing support we need.”

Continuing the explanation, he said, “I work in ‘detachments,’ with two boats per detachment. So if I deploy Mk. Vs, it’s usually two boats. If I deploy RHIBs [rigid hull inflatable boats], it’s usually two boats. So this would be ‘the mother ship’ that would provide an afloat staging base capability with the messing, the berthing, the long dwell time capabilities, and the very robust intelligence and communications

architecture. And from that high-end mother ship you could conduct those shorter range operations that you might need to conduct.

“I think Littoral Combat Ship is an example of a ship that was purposefully built to do those types of operations,” he added.

Another widely employed NSW surface platform is the NSW RHIB. The 35-foot, 11-inch RHIB entered service in 1996/1997, with the second of two procurement contract extensions completed this fiscal year.

“The NSW RHIB was built about the same time as the Mk. Vs,” Wolf said. “And they have been incredibly useful boats during their time. Their limitations include the fact that they were built prior to our understanding of issues surrounding shock mitigation and some of the procedures we can take to mitigate shock on the individuals who are riding in the vessel. Also, when you look at when that boat was built, you’ll see that many of the electronic systems that are currently in the inventory didn’t exist. So we have had to do a lot of after-market add-ons. Additionally, it’s an ‘open boat,’ and as we have found in many of our mission profiles over the last several years, the individuals operating those boats are forced to spend longer periods of time at sea and the open boat design doesn’t support those operations well. When you look at the human performance aspects in an open boat, at sea, at night, in lousy weather, they wear out pretty quickly. So what we are trying to do is also look at the mission profiles – the ‘over the beach’ missions versus the maritime interception/interdiction/VBSS [visit, board, search, and seizure] missions, we have seen that statistically many more of our missions have been in the VBSS rather than over the beach infil/exfil categories. But there are a wide range of missions that I have to be prepared to do within that boat class, so we have pushed through and are currently working the Request for Proposals [RFP] from industry for a ‘RHIB replacement.”

The RHIB replacement program, identified as Combatant Class Medium (CCM), recently drew 23 separate vendors to an “industry day” with Wolf expressing optimism that the upcoming RFP may draw as many as a dozen proposals from industry.

The CCM concept envisions two different vessels: a higher capability, true combatant craft, the CCM Mk. 1, and a lower capability (and theoretically lower cost) craft, the Mk. 2, for use in benign environments for FID-type missions where the full Mk. 1 capability is not needed. The currently estimated initial operational capability (IOC) for the CCM Mk. 1 is 2013 with a projected inventory of 24 platforms. Both IOC and inventory quantities for the CCM Mk. 2 remain to be determined, reflecting in part the fact that the Mk. 2s may conceivably be candidates for Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to partner nations.

Wolf also addressed the growing contributions of unmanned platforms.

“For example, we have some unmanned underwater vessels [UUVs] that we use to conduct hydrographic reconnaissance,” he explained. “When you look at ports, harbors, rivers, and near coastal areas where there might be reefs or other underwater obstructions, these UUVs replace the man that you can only put into the water for limited periods of time.”

Noting that he had just recently “accepted custody for a number of UUVs,” Wolf added, “We’re also looking at unmanned surface vessel [USV] platforms. Right now we have the ‘Seafox 1’ here on the East Coast and there’s another on the West Coast. And I think you can look at that from a number of perspectives. For example, the Navy is currently dedicating a substantial level of manpower to force protection. Guys are in patrol boats, patrolling piers, entrances to harbors, and other key infrastructure pieces. I think a lot of that can be done with unmanned platforms. They’re new. They’re conceptual. You’ve got to teach the


7 0 NAVspecwArcom yeAr iN reView


guys at the base station how to operate them and what they are looking for. But I think they will find, much like the Air Force has found with their own intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, that there is a lot of capability there. And it’s all-weather. I can put it out in a fairly heavy sea state or freezing rain and not worry about what I am doing to the individual operator. So I think there is a lot of application there. And we are working with the base here at Little Creek to see if we can initially implement it on a small scale from a force protection perspective. And then later this year we plan to do a larger technical demonstration up on the northeastern shore where we are going to implement undersea, surface, and air assets – all unmanned – in a larger exercise.”

Continuing Challenges

Asked about challenges that he sees facing his command in the coming years, Wolf responded, “The most significant challenge I have right now, because we have been so focused on the ground war, is that we have not been as engaged in the maritime aspects of foreign security assistance as some might think. It’s transparent. The war in Iraq has certainly consumed the headlines. The war in Afghanistan is now consuming the headlines. I won’t say it’s not recognized, but much of what we have done is ‘below the radar screen.’ Foreign security assistance does not draw the same attention as winning the war in Iraq or fighting al Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan – it just doesn’t.

“But that foreign security assistance is going to be the mission after the war draws down,” he said. “It was there before the war and it

will be there after the war. So there is the challenge of convincing people that maritime operations in the littoral are still relevant. And, of course, there are also financial pieces that go with that. We have extended the life of many of our platforms and we are now entering a fiscally constrained era. So it will be a challenge. It is not insurmountable, because we have good force structure and we understand the capabilities of our current platforms. So I think we can work through some of the limitations without materiel solutions. Then, when we do recover from the economic situation that we are in, we will pursue those solutions that are materiel.”

In terms of key take-away thoughts, Wolf immediately highlighted what he called “the combined team of Navy conventional surface capabilities, the Coast Guard surface capabilities, and the USSOCOM surface capabilities.”

“I think that team is becoming much more mature in concept than it ever has been,” he said. “Every couple of weeks I am dealing with the Coast Guard or NECC or the Riverine Group, or somebody from the larger Navy on the Littoral Combat Ship. And I believe that this is a good partnership, where we are collectively drawing on each other’s strengths and trying to eliminate weaknesses across the collective team.”

He concluded, “When I look at Cameroon, or I look at Kenya, or I look at the things we are doing in Iraq, I call up to the commander of the Riverine Group and say, ‘Hey, are you interested in partnering up with me at this location? Because you may eventually inherit this mission.’ So partnerships are occurring and relationships are being developed much earlier in the process. Therefore, I think you are going to have a much more effective product in the long run.”

a seal Delivery Vehicle departs its ssgn mother ship. Recent organizational changes in the locations of seal Delivery teams will benefit naval special Warfare Command both tactically and operationally.

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A nother representative example of the dynamic changes taking place within the NSW community can be found in the reorganization of Naval Special Warfare

Group 3 (NSWG-3) and the other ongoing changes within the NSW “Undersea Enterprise.”

As formerly organized, NSWG-3, the headquarters, was located in Coronado, Calif. Its subordinate SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 (SDVT-1) and SDVT-2 were located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Little Creek, Va., respectively. In addition, the SDV Training Detachment was located in Panama City, Fla.

Command leadership recognized that the geographically dispersed location of a limited number of unique assets (one team each on the East and West coasts and the schoolhouse in Florida) caused inefficiencies in planning and execution, including possible “loss on insight” from the physical separation. Another complication stemmed from the fact that excess SEAL capacity in the two SDV Teams was routinely deployed to support non-SDV Global War on Terrorism missions, thus disrupting their primary undersea mission and giving them less time to train for their mission.

In an effort to better position and employ NSW’s unique undersea capabilities to meet global needs today and tomorrow, the community convened an Undersea Enterprise Review Team (USERT) to study the situation and make recommendations for change.

According to “Scott,” an NSWG-3 operator who was involved in the 2008 reorganization process, a more optimized NSW underwater structure was identified through the USERT process; one that pointed to the benefits of consolidating all of those activities “under one roof.”

“Pete,” another NSWG-3 operator involved in the process, explained the team “reviewed the East Coast and SDVT-2, as far as what they had to offer and proximity to Washington, D.C., range availability, training availability, and asset availability. We also did that with Hawaii and we also took a look at San Diego. Taking all that into account, Hawaii turned out to be the best suited location to move ‘The Enterprise’ to.”

“We spent a couple weeks going through the data and analyzing it before we came up with that result,” echoed Scott. “Bottom line: It was all fairly tight but Hawaii edged out the other locations.”

The USERT analysis was completed in mid-July 2008.“It’s a ‘win/win’ for everybody,” Pete added. “The [NSWG-3] consolidation at

the chosen location, which is Hawaii, will include the new training detachment, the schoolhouse, and the rest of the undersea operators, which incorporates SDVT-1 and SDVT-2 operators. And the reason I say it’s a win/win is because now we are all under one umbrella. Prior to this you had the Group [NSWG-3 headquarters] here on the West Coast. You had a SEAL Team hours away in Hawaii. And you had another SEAL Team hours away on the East Coast. So continuity was one of the biggest problems we had. We took care of that by putting everything under one command. Now, if you talk about the experience level, you have the experience level of SDVT-2 added on to the experience level of SDVT-1. Moreover, since the two commands were spread so far apart before, it was hard to have all the same standard operating procedures and identical methods for conducting specific missions. Bringing everybody together has everybody singing off the same sheet of music, both operationally and tactically.”

The consolidation provided additional benefits throughout the NSW community in terms of undersea gear and equipment as well as personnel.

“Since we received some members from SDVT-2 to Hawaii, there were still SEALs out there who were not part of the consolidation,” noted Scott. “So those SEALs now are being transferred over to the squadrons. So the squadrons are not only receiving operational and tactical equipment, but they are also receiving operators to go ahead and assist them, or get rolled into their squadrons.”

NSWG-3 PrePareS for aN UNderWater fUtUre

By scott r. Gourley


www.danieldefense.com

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7 2 InternatIonal soF Year In revIew


By nIgel west

The year ininTernaTional Special operaTionS ForceS: 2008

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InternatIonal soF Year In revIew 7 3


There is now universal recognition that the kind of asymmetric warfare

conducted in Afghanistan since 2001, and then with rather greater success in Iraq, remains the only viable counterinsurgency strategy, but during 2008 the burden of that combat on special operations forces (SOFs) reached critical mass.

American Special Forces (SF), organized into five active-duty (and two Army National Guard) Special Forces Groups (SFGs) to cover all seven regions of the world, concentrate on particular regions, with the 3rd and 7th SFGs in Afghanistan. The 10th SFG, usually deployed in Europe, is working alongside the 5th SFG in Iraq, with the 3rd SFG focused on West Africa and the 7th SFG on Latin America.

In Colombia, the principal SF operational area in South America, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) has been put on the defensive after suffering a pair of stunning setbacks. In March, Colombian SOF units conducted a precision bombing raid on a terrorist camp in Ecuador, killing the FARC’s deputy commander, Raúl Reyes. Even more importantly, the Colombian ground forces sent in to assess the damage found a pristine laptop computer loaded with information that has nearly crippled the FARC’s worldwide membership and fundraising.

The second blow came at the end of June when former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who had been held hostage for six years, was released with 14 others during a raid based on intelligence developed by U.S. SF support. Among those freed were three American Department of Defense contractors – Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Thomas Howes – who had been seized by the FARC in 2005 while they were engaged on counter-narcotics air operations. While it is too soon to predict the demise of the FARC, the long-term policy of training and supporting local elite troops is now allowing the Bogotá government to challenge the terrorists in their sanctuaries.

During 2008, about 5,500 U.S. Special Forces were in Iraq and 3,000 in Afghanistan, accounting for more than 80 percent of such U.S. troops overseas, but while reductions in numbers are anticipated elsewhere among the conventional forces, the reverse is likely to be true for the SF personnel who operate closely with the local police and national army, both in a support and training role. Thus, as other troop numbers decline, the SF presence is bound to increase proportionally.

In Iraq during 2008, U.S. SF were mainly grouped into two combined joint special operations task forces (CJSOTFs), with the CJSOTF-Arabian Peninsula being the umbrella for the headquarters of 5th or 10th SFGs. A separate JSOTF operates independently, to identify and neutralize the local al Qaeda leadership.

Afghan commandos and Special Forces soldiers walk away from a village where they searched and cleared every compound. They found hundreds of kilograms of drugs and Taliban documentation in the village in the Shah Wali Kot district, Kandahar province, Nov. 5, 2008.Do

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In addition, across the Red Sea in Djibouti, JSOTF-Horn of Africa has been actively working counterterrorism and counter-piracy operations in East Africa and the Red Sea/Gulf of Somalia areas.

The two SF groups in Iraq have been rotated on an average of every seven months, and then-U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) chief Gen. Robert Wagner has said that the 5th and 10th groups would remain focused on Iraq for “a fairly long duration.” This rotation and level of commitment is clearly a consequence of planning for the long term, although since 2008 was a general election year in Washington, the subject remained a sensitive one, even after the results became known in November.

Nevertheless, the luxury of sharing the burden of the Arabian Peninsula task force between two SF group headquarters, thereby proving a constant supply of experienced, recently trained battle-hardened personnel, is not one that any other country can offer, especially as each group consists of three battalions, with a fourth for each now in preparation. Wagner noted, “We would prefer to have units be fully ready when they go there, being able to operate at a high level

of tempo and mental awareness, and then replace them with somebody else who is equally sharp. I think we can maintain a high edge by the way we rotate the force.”

Within the U.S. SOF community there is anticipation of a realignment of forces as the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are subdued, at least to a point where the local military and police can contain the violence, albeit with continued advice from allied SOF personnel. This is still some way off, as shown by the fact that during 2008, 112 Americans were killed in Afghanistan, the heaviest losses experienced since the intervention in 2001. Once this has been accomplished, the emphasis will change, theoretically allowing a shift of forces from North Africa and the Middle East to Southeast Asia and the East Asia littoral. Such SOF realignment would include specialist language and regional orientation on a scale that remains impossible while there is a high level of conflict in the Central Command area.

Another major change in U.S. SF doctrine concerns the forward deployment of units, contradicting the recommendations of the 2006 Special Operations Command Capstone Concept, drawn up during Gen.

Special operators of the NATO Quick Response Force conduct a medevac in Afghanistan.


Aimpoint on temp.indd 1 3/19/09 3:25 PM

www.aimpoint.com

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Members of the Australian Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) during an operation in Oruzgan province, Afghanistan. The SOTG has been operating deep in what the Taliban perceive as safe havens, disrupting Taliban command and control and supply routes.

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Bryan Brown’s command of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which foresaw a withdrawal of SOF personnel back to the United States, ready for deployment as part of an expeditionary task force. In the new SOCOM scheme, SOF units will be deployed forward on a permanent basis, augmented by routine rotations from the United States, a dramatic change in strategy that has been endorsed by Brown’s successor, Adm. Eric T. Olson.

There was concern, during Gen. David H. Petraeus’ “surge” in Iraq, that the temporary insertion of additional Special Forces, supported by helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), would undermine the long-term doctrine of providing support to the local police authorities. However, there has not been a corresponding drawdown of SF personnel, and the trend is in the opposite direction, with continuing participation in joint missions and additional support in the area of medical evacuation, intelligence, and communications. Then-Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, in overall command of U.S. SOF operations in the Middle East during most of 2008, has acknowledged that, “we are a natural force to continue to stay in place to train, advise, assist, mentor our counterpart force as conventional forces draw down.”

In July 2008, as a legacy to the next administration, President George W. Bush signed an executive order allowing MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper UAVs armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles to enter Pakistani airspace and target terrorist suspects who had taken refuge in Waziristan. In addition, U.S. SOF units were authorized to conduct the occasional raid over the border, one of which resulted in the elimination of an estimated 24 insurgents who had taken refuge across the frontier. Although Pakistan’s armed forces chief of army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, protested the infringement of sovereignty, there were no adverse consequences to the change in policy.

The other countries of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan have not followed the U.S. policy of trying to match conventional troop reductions with SOF replacements. However, on the credit side of the equation is the widening commitment of SOF units among the 53,000 troops from NATO, which are achieving impressive results, including the elimination of some

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150 Taliban hardliners in 2008. The prolonged deployments are placing a great strain on allied SOF resources, and turning the doctrine of short, hard-hitting tactics into a blurring of the lines between intelligence operations, routine conventional military activities, and para-military policing. While the United States has around 3,000 SOF personnel in Afghanistan, and an estimated 5,500 in Iraq, the SOF units of other, less well-resourced countries are feeling the strain. This includes Great Britain, which has around 1,000 SOF personnel in Iraq, including a squadron of the 22nd Special Air Service (SAS).

During 2008, there were some disturbing manifestations of the failures of military establishments, especially in Great Britain, to keep up with the demands for greater logistical support for SOF units. In June, four members of “D” Squadron/23rd SAS were killed when their Land Rover struck a landmine in Helmand province. This incident prompted their squadron commander, Maj. Sebastian Morley, to resign his commission and write a letter accusing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of, “chronic underinvestment” in equipment. In the incident, Cpl. Sarah Bryant of the Intelligence Corps died alongside Cpl. Sean Reeve and Lance Cpls. Richard Larkin and Paul Stout. Morley claimed that Whitehall officials and military commanders repeatedly ignored his warnings that people would be killed if they continued to allow troops to be transported in the vulnerable Snatch Land Rovers. He claimed that the four members of his squadron, including the first female SAS fatality, were killed in an incident that could have been avoided if their obsolescent, lightly armored Snatch vehicle, operating in support of the Afghan police, had been given the proper protection that had been requested from the MoD three years prior.

Morley’s bitter complaint followed other resignations from senior British SOF personnel, including Col. Stuart Tootal, Brig. Ed Butler, and 22nd SAS’s commanding officer. They and others have highlighted the loss of 34 soldiers in similar incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan in the inadequate Snatch vehicles, which were designed to cope with rioters in a Northern Ireland environment and are sometimes known as “the mobile coffin.” They have insisted the vehicles should be replaced at a faster rate. Whereas in previous conflicts, such matters would have been handled internally, a change in British law to require coroners to conduct inquests on the casualties of foreign wars has brought these policy issues before the public. The thin-skinned and noisy Land Rovers may have proved effective in Belfast, where the enemy was mostly rock-throwing youth, but in Helmand, a province inhabited by experienced jihadists, the need is for quieter, better protected all-terrain vehicles. Continuing reliance on the Land Rover restricts movements to the Afghan roads, a limitation ruthlessly exploited by the Taliban’s culvert bomb-makers.

The fact that a squadron from 23rd SAS, which is a reservist unit, has been almost permanently deployed in Afghanistan, is itself indicative of SOF overstretch, although that pressure is less of an issue than the question of supplying them appropriate equipment. This is a controversy that has raged since the MoD’s mishandling of distribution of body armor to front-line troops in Basra and a chronic shortage of night-vision sights and goggles. Incredibly, upward of 10 percent of SAS troopers were sent on night operations without this vital equipment. Paradoxically, while regular infantry units have enjoyed the new Mastiff bomb-proof vehicles, none were allocated to U.K. SOF units.

3rd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment in Afghanistan with one of the vulnerable Snatch Land Rovers that have provoked resignations of SAS officers over chronic underfunding of British SOF units.


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The situation in Afghanistan, exacerbated by the equipment crisis, has its roots in the scale of the burden being shouldered by principally American and British SOF units. There are, indeed, German KSK units in the north of the country, but their rules of engagement prevent them from using lethal force unless they are fired upon. In one embarrassing episode in March, the Germans were obliged to stand by impotently as a notorious Baghlan bomber was spotted in Pol-e Khomri. According to ISAF, he was responsible for the bomb in November 2007 that killed 79 people, detonating as local politicians and tribal leaders opened a sugar factory. He had been placed under surveillance by the elite Afghan NDS, but was able to escape through the KSK perimeter, as the soldiers were not authorized to open fire. Presently, some 2,500 Germans are deployed in the northwest’s nine provinces, between Faryab and Badakhshan, together with Hungarian, Italian, and Swedish troops and the Norwegian Quick Reaction Force.

The Australian Special Operations Task Group (SOTG), part of just over a thousand Aussie troops in Afghanistan, has been operating in the south since April 2007, although its activities went unpublicized until Sept. 2, 2008. Then news of nine Australian SAS casualties suffered in a Taliban ambush on their convoy as it returned to their base accompanied by Afghan and American HMMWVs leaked and was broadcast on a local radio in a propaganda exercise conducted by the Taliban in the Khaz Oruzgan region. This, incidentally, was the largest number of Australian troops wounded in a single action for more than 30 years, since the regiment’s deployment in Vietnam. However, in a contact firefight the previous day, rather more Taliban had been killed by soldiers from the same squadron.

According to the SOTG’s commander, Australian SAS personnel conducted 355 separate missions, some of them in support of the Dutch contingent, and called in support 38 times. A total of four key Taliban leaders were killed during those 18 months, and another seven were captured, for the loss of four Australian SF soldiers and 50 wounded. Then, in early October, while the SOTG was involved in clearing a suspect compound, a high-level Taliban commander, Mullah Khairullah Shakir, was killed. According to ISAF intelligence reports, Khairullah was a top Taliban planner, coordinating and commanding attacks, facilitating the manufacture of IEDs, and implicated in the intimidation and murder of local Afghans. He also mentioned that “the SOTG regularly operate deep within known Taliban safe havens in order to disrupt the Taliban attempts to coordinate attacks from the perceived security of these locations. During one such operation, the commandos operated for over 40 days in a known Taliban safe-haven, successfully killing or capturing five Taliban leaders and killing or capturing dozens of Taliban fighters.” One of those captured was Ahmad Shah, who was in his bed and detained without a shot being fired.

The efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan involve SOF forces from many Allied nations, and since 2001 have included Norwegian Jaeger Kommando and Marine Jaeger Kommando, Australian and New Zealand SAS, and the personnel of Canada’s Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2). While JTF2 and other allied SOF units have scored some notable successes in 2008, the problem of cross-border support for Afghan and Iraqi insurgents from Iran and Waziristan remains a challenge, although in late 2007, the U.S. Congress agreed to a request from Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. These operations, for which the president sought up to $400 million, were designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership by funding opposition groups, including the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi tribes and other dissident organizations.

Clandestine SOF operations conducted on or occasionally across frontiers carry the considerable political risk of SOF personnel being taken prisoner, but the opportunities to seize members of the Al-Quds

commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for interrogation has clearly had a deterrent effect on Tehran, manifested in a marked reduction of ordnance originating in Iran. Similarly, some incursions into Syria have greatly inhibited cross-border infiltration, and the authorization of Predator strikes has eliminated the perception of insurgent safe havens. One of the earliest victims of the new policy was Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda commander who was killed on Jan. 21, 2008, by a UAV-launched Hellfire missile, which also killed 11 others.

In Iraq in October 2008, a major helicopter-borne cross-border raid northwest of Ramadi eliminated Abu Ghadiya, a senior militant that had been active in Anbar province, a corner of Iraq that neighbors Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Some two dozen SOF troops landed at dusk in Black Hawks near the village of Suhhariyah, in the largest operation of its kind in the past five years, and conducted a significant clearance operation that prompted only a token protest from Damascus, with the foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, complaining of “aggression.” Abu Ghadiya was confirmed “neutralized,” meaning either captured or killed, after a brief firefight 6 miles inside Syria. He was later described as al Qaeda’s most prominent smuggler in Mesopotamia, suspected of having led an attack in May on a police station in western Iraq in which 11 Iraqis were killed.

Although the Syrians have paid lip service to the principle of denying foreign fighters refuge on their territory and interdicting the burgeoning traffic in weapons, money, and insurgents, the only obvious improvement would appear to be an enforcement of immigration rules to detain combat-age youths arriving at Damascus airport with one-way airline ticketing. Although SOF units in Iraq have always been able to transgress national sovereignty in hot pursuit, the slightly expanded legal interpretation of the self-defense doctrine enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter has left the target groups in both Syria and Pakistan vulnerable. The implied threat, of course, is that similar raids might be conducted against camps on Iranian territory, perhaps another factor in the perceptible recent change of attitude in Tehran. According to Petraeus, the inflow of foreign fighters into Iraq dwindled in 2008 to less than 20 a month, from a peak of more than 120 a month in 2007.

In a further development in 2008, SOF units have been deployed across the Horn of Africa to attack terrorist suspects in Somalia and Yemen. Both countries are devoid of any legal, administrative, or paramilitary infrastructure, making them attractive territories in which to establish sanctuaries and conduct training and indoctrination activities. These areas are no longer beyond the reach of armed UAVs or raiding parties, some of which reportedly have been conducted using surrogates and false flags as cover.

If the sanctuaries in ungovernable states are to become the new front lines for SOF worldwide, the ability of al Qaeda to cultivate and train new recruits will be considerably diminished, and the insurgency will become increasingly dependent on relatively inexperienced fighters. The old veterans will have succumbed to an ever-increasing rate of attrition, many to UAVs with ever-improving targeting based on real-time data fusion. Successful counterinsurgency operations of the past have owed some of what was achieved to a combination of “hearts-and-minds” activities, including medical and veterinary intervention, civil infrastructure improvement, good intelligence and communications, enhancement of local authorities, and the denial of access to sanctuaries on foreign soil. These are all objectives that allied SOF forces look on track to accomplishing, subject only to continuing political and logistical support, while ostensibly it would appear that overall conventional troops numbers deployed overseas are reduced.


8 2 saving the Montagnards


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Of all the social deviations that came into prominence during the 20th century, none arguably reflected the troubled history of human

relations more than genocide on a mass scale. The Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, the “killing fields” of Cambodia, and the Rwandan massacre are simply the best known of these scars on the history of mankind. Many others are simply forgotten or unknown. This is a story about one of those genocides, its victims, and the small group of Americans still trying to make it right for the Montagnards of Vietnam’s Central Highlands: Save the Montagnard People, Inc.

MEMORIES AND BEGINNINGS

The history of the Montagnards began in the Central Highlands of what is the modern-day Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). Referred to as Montagnard country (pronounced Mon-tahn-YARD, as deemed by the French colonials, meaning “Highlanders” – the tribesmen themselves use the term “Dega,” a combined term referring to their versions of Adam and Eve), this area was the ancestral home to a collection of different tribes that generally lived in harmony within the lush jungle and nearby farmland. During the period of French colonization in Indochina, the Montagnard tribes, a Christian (primarily Protestant) people, were given a degree of political autonomy. Sadly, it did not last.

The ForgoTTen Army:The SAve The monTAgnArd PeoPle, Inc. AT Work

By aMy P. Mack and John d. greshaM

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saving the Montagnards 8 3


In 1954, following the victory at Dien Bien Phu by the Viet Minh, Vietnam was partitioned and the Central Highlands were turned over to the new South Vietnamese government (the Republic of Vietnam [RVN]). Soon, the RVN began to usurp the Montagnards’ newly won political freedom. Montagnard languages began to be replaced by Vietnamese in the schools, and encroaching ethnic Vietnamese also informed them that to practice Christianity was illegal and that they would face persecution if they continued. The RVN government, which was heavily pro-Catholic, failed to stop the persecution, and in addition, the Montagnards were directly in the path of the early intrusions of North Vietnamese communist soldiers into South Vietnam. In response to all these threats, the Montagnard tribes began to form minority militant alliances with one another, along with militia troops for their common defense.

COMRADES IN ARMS

By the 1960s, with the Central Highlands being a key region in the fight against the invading communists, the RVN government agreed to let the U.S. Special Forces (SF – “Green Berets”) start training the Montagnard tribal militias in village defense and border patrolling. What the SF soldiers found in the mountains of Vietnam was a group of people unparalleled in fierce fighting skills, personal courage, and loyalty to allies. It is estimated that 40,000 Montagnards served with the U.S. military as soldiers, scouts, and interpreters, and roughly 200,000 Montagnard people perished by 1975. American Vietnam vets have given endless accounts of the Montagnards’ heroism and loyalty. One such veteran was George Clark, a former staff sergeant in 5th Special Forces Group during the Vietnam War, who also went on to serve as a master sergeant in the Marine Corps. “My team was getting lit up in the middle of a hot zone,” Clark recalled, “and I had gone down, as I had taken two bullets. And the ’Yards [short for Montagnard] on my team jumped on my body to protect me from getting wounded. They are the bravest, most loyal, and fiercest fighters I have ever seen. …”

Clark was one of a number of SF soldiers assigned to work with the Montagnard tribesmen, assigned to one of the mixed SF/Montagnard reconnaissance teams. “The first ’Yards I met in 1967, well, they kind of looked at me like I was a tourist; they literally taught me, instead of the other way around,” Clark recalled. “They knew what was dangerous in the jungle, they knew what to eat in the jungle, it was a give and take situation but first

I had to earn their respect. We on the recon teams would go in ahead of the battalions … and flush out the enemy … so in essence we were the bait.”

It didn’t take Clark long to earn the loyalty of his Montagnard charges. He and his recon unit had gotten themselves into a couple of heated skirmishes on the northern RVN border, had been picked up by a Navy patrol boat, and were on their way out of the area when they ran into another enemy ambush. The crossfire panicked the young patrol boat helmsman, causing him to hit an embankment and send a highly respected Montagnard leader flying onto shore into the middle of a minefield. Without thinking Clark leapt out of the boat, determined to retrieve his teammate, and managed to make his way back to the boat, getting both himself and the Montagnard warrior back alive.

“I had to disarm numerous mines as I went,” Clark recalled, “inching my way over multiple trip wires, all while bullets were whizzing past, as by now the enemy had pretty good positioning on us, as you can imagine. When word of the rescue got out,

OppOSItE: Brothers in arms are reunited. Members of Save the Montagnard people, Inc., Special Forces Association Chapter 57, and Montagnards released from a Cambodian refugee camp are reunited in Greensboro, N.C., in 2002. ABOvE: Special Forces Association Chapter 57 members and former Special Forces Montagnards who work at the Special Forces Warehouse pose for a photo in 2002.




the ’Yards just went berserk; they couldn’t believe one of us had went in and saved one of them. When the ’Yards see you do something like that. … They will follow you to hell and back. And you only get that by standing beside them and going into the fight with them. …”

Clark was one of many special operations warriors who fought alongside the formidable Montagnard people during the Vietnam War. All of them remember the Montagnards with respect and friendship, something they would turn into a personal crusade that goes on to the present day.

GENOCIDE

The end of the American involvement in Southeast Asia in 1975, along with the fall of the RVN to the North Vietnamese Army in April of that year, was the beginning of a dark time for the Montagnard people. Oppressed as an ethnic and religious minority in their homeland for the last 50 years, they had aligned themselves alongside the French and Americans for four decades. Then, in April 1975, during the final days of the RVN, they agreed to do something that would seal their

fate. At a meeting held in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, they were asked to fight as rear-area guerrillas against the communists in exchange for a promise of food, arms, supplies, and eventual sanctuary if needed. Given the atrocities committed by North Vietnamese forces during their march to Saigon through Montagnard territories, the tribesmen readily agreed.

For years, thousands of Montagnard fighters continued their fight against the communists, long after America and its allies had gone home and turned inward, away from the problems of a troubled world. In retaliation for fighting on, along with their strong religious beliefs, the SRV began a program of systematic repression and genocide against the Montagnards that continues to this day. Following the 1975 communist victory, the non-combatant Montagnards were forced into “restricted areas” and denied medical care and supplies. All books, Bibles, and anything written in the Montagnard language were burned. Called “cultural leveling,” the aforementioned practices are a central part of the SRV’s suppression and elimination efforts toward the Montagnards. Clark summarized the results: “In 1975, there were 7 million Montagnards. Today there are only about half-a-million left in Vietnam.”

Five Rhade escapees with George Clark at a safe house in Thailand in 2007.


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EXODUS

Unlike the general populations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, who were granted a blanket of sanctuary by the U.S. government to flee their home countries and immigrate to America after the communist victories in 1975, no such opportunity awaited the Montagnards. Lacking significant support from the U.S. State Department, and all but forgotten by the country that had promised them so much, the Montagnards languished and died for over a decade before anyone noticed. Then in 1986, 212 Montagnards were discovered in Thailand in a refugee camp. Thanks to the initiative of a number of Vietnam veterans and personal intervention by President Ronald Reagan, those 212 Montagnard refugees were resettled in North Carolina. The human story of that odyssey, however, was hardly as simple as the story told above.

Y Pioc Knul was one of the group that made it to America in 1986, and his personal story is representative of what the Montagnards have had to endure to survive.

“After the U.S. withdrew their troops from Vietnam, I joined the South Vietnam Rangers,” Knul said. “My town fell to the SRV in 1975, but not all the Montagnards turned themselves in. We regrouped in the jungle in 1976, and we tried to fight back, for three years in the jungle while we still had ammunition. Then we ran out of weapons and ammunition, were being chased … like chickens, hiding anywhere we could.”

Knul was eventually captured by the SRV in 1977, interrogated, tortured, and sentenced to a concentration camp for three years. He was then released and kept under house arrest in his village. Not allowed to work or practice his religion, Knul decided he could not spend his life in this fashion.

“I escaped again into the jungle,” Knul said. “I met my group in the jungle and tried to hide in the jungle. But there were too many of us, almost 200. We eventually crossed Cambodia to the Thailand border and arrived at a refugee camp.”

Knul and his group were still armed when they met up with officials from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.

“‘There is only one way we can save you …’” Knul said the Americans told him. “‘We can bring you to the United States.’ We had [a] choice of going to either California or North Carolina where the SF people were. To us there was no choice. … We were going to where our SF

brothers were. The church people there took the group they sponsored and helped find jobs for us in North Carolina. We were there for just a week or two, and already we had clothes, house, and job.”

By 1992, the remnants of the Montagnard guerilla fighters, now in Cambodia, had run out of food, ammunition, and time. A standing $400 bounty by the SRV government (called a “golden head”) had thinned their ranks to the point that only 400 or so were concentrated in five small river hamlets. However, the end of the Cold War finally began to change their fortunes. The same group of veterans who had orchestrated the 1986 relief effort swung into action, this time backed by Vice President Dan Quayle and members of the National Security Council, and soon 412 more Montagnards were on their way to North Carolina as well. Key to this and other immigration efforts from Southeast Asia was the Orderly Departure Program (ODP), created in 1979 to assist the resettlement of refugees in the United States. Though registration for the original program was closed in 1994, the United States and Vietnam reached an agreement in 2005 to allow the immigration of those people who were not allowed to do so before 1994.

Retired Special Forces soldiers and other special operations warriors have long taken the lead in attempting to keep the promises made to the Montagnards so long ago. As Clark explained, “These people are in grave danger. We’ve got to do something about this.” Thankfully, Clark and a number of his fellow Vietnam-era veterans have been doing just that through a number of Montagnard relief organizations. One of these, Save the Montagnard People, Inc., is based in North Carolina, not far from Fort Bragg.

SAVE THE MONTAGNARD PEOPLE, INc.

Save the Montagnard People, Inc. (STMP) was originally formed in Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1997 by a handful of retired Special Forces soldiers. By 1998, Clark had caught wind of STMP and was reunited by the foundation with three Montagnards with whom he had served in Vietnam. After that first visit with his old war comrades, Clark knew that making good on old promises to a loyal ally was to become his new life mission, and today he is president of STMP. Joining Clark is Y Pioc Knul, as presiding vice chairman of the Montagnard Governing Board of STMP.

Thirty-five years after he left Southeast Asia, Clark is today fighting for his Montagnard comrades and has traded in his weapons and ammunition for a new armament of e-mails and faxes. As president of STMP, Clark is leading his charges through legislative paperwork and lobbying, helping them navigate the U.S. governmental bureaucracy and political arena in an effort to extract them from the continuing repression and genocide of the SVR government. Bottom line: If Clark and his organization can get the Montagnards onto U.S. soil, their people and culture have a fighting chance of survival.

Sam Todaro, a former SF staff sergeant who retired from the Army as a SMG, has been a director of STMP for the last four years and makes a strong case for the STMP’s mission.

“The Montagnards did not get direct [U.S.] State Department support immediately following the end of the Vietnam War as they were originally promised,” Todaro said. “The first wave of them didn’t come back to the U.S. until 1986, and then they came back as refugees through church-sponsored organizations.”

The STMP foundation’s fight is not an easy one, nor is it even close to being over.

“In the latter part of last year [2008], 56 Montagnards in a U.N.-sponsored refugee camp in Cambodia were given back to the government of Vietnam, and none of them have ever been seen again,” Clark said.

A dissident group that clark spoke to in a cambodian refugee camp in 2005.


saving the Montagnards 87


BRINGING THE MONTAGNARDS HOME TO AMERICA

Since 1986, thanks to the ODP and the fierce dedication of former special operations warriors, church groups, and others, more than 5,000 Montagnards now reside in North Carolina. Each step in the process of getting the Montagnards to America from their homeland is harrowing and sometimes filled with risk. It is people like Clark, Knul, and Todaro, along with numerous other former special operators that have joined together within organizations like STMP, who lead the lobbying fight with legislators and government officials, and even go back to Southeast Asia to bring out Montagnards on their own. Clark is adamant, however, that STMP will save every Montagnard possible.

“God willing it, I am going to save the 160 ’Yards that are currently left in the U.N. Cambodian refugee camp that is about to close in April [2009],” he said. “They’ve got to be saved. I just sent a powerhouse fax to eight congressmen today … to beg, raise hell, scream … whatever it takes to save this 160 people. I don’t like it but it is what I’ve learned to do. Because that is what it takes to save lives.”

But along with the efforts of Clark and his STMP staff, there is another essential element to success in their resettlement efforts: money. Like all other nonprofit foundations, this means fundraising and finding endowment partners, something made more difficult by the present economic situation. That said, STMP is unique in that no funds from donations are ever used to pay the volunteers who staff the foundation. All of the proceeds go directly to support the Montagnards.

“No Americans will ever get paid from the STMP funds,” Todaro emphasized. “It is the love of the ’Yards that keeps me going. They were dedicated to us, are very appreciative, they are willing to work, and we owe them at least that much.”

What happens to the Montagnards when they finally reach the United States? Most settle in North Carolina near Fort Bragg. There they are living their own version of the American dream, though with a definitely Montagnard flavor, thanks to STMP and the other support groups in the area. Some examples of STMP’s support efforts include:

• Real Estate Purchase – In 2003, STMP donors raised money to purchase 100 acres of lush green farmland in North Carolina that is similar to that of the Montagnards’ ancestral highlands. By 2006, STMP members had donated $300,000 to completely pay off the entire mortgage, and proudly gave the property to the Montagnards.

• Construction – STMP has begun to add improvements to the 100-acre parcel, in the form of a replica Montagnard meeting room called a Long House, where they can teach their tribal dance and native language. STMP has also recently completed a 140-foot by 40-foot Rhrade, the same sort of home they used to live in back in Southeast Asia. These replica structures are built by the Montagnards themselves, of donated materials supplied by STMP, as close to the original specifications as is possible from their memories.

• Farming/Manufacturing – In addition to providing the Montagnards with a place to renew their cultural heritage, the land parcel also provides a means of fundraising in the form of a 20-acre farming plot. The crops raised are sold at local farmers markets, and recently a blacksmith shop has been built to allow the ’Yards to craft their own knives and other cultural artifacts.

• Scholarship Program – In 2001, a STMP member, retired Lt. Col. Carl Regan, created a college scholarship program where the only requirement is that recipients must be of Montagnard descent and attending an accredited institution. Over 1,000 Montagnard children have taken advantage of the program.

Amazingly, after all they have endured as a people, the Montagnards still feel they must serve their adoptive country, exemplified by the 127 American-born Montagnard children serving in the U.S. military.

In order to keep all these efforts going, STMP asks for your help. Their most immediate needs are financial donations, and contacting your congressional delegations to raise support for the Montagnard’s cause in Washington, D.C.

“We should be helping them because we made a commitment to them and we should follow through on our commitment,” said Clark. “We should help the people that we put in that position. You can’t say special ops without saying ’Yards!”

For more information on Save the Montagnard People, Inc., please go to their Web site, www.montagnards.org, or contact George Clark at 336-879-5014.

For more than 29 years, the top-rated Special Operations Warrior Foundation has provided full college educations to the surviving children of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps special operations personnel who are killed in combat or training.

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8 8 interview


Pain

ting

of M

r. Ro

ss P

erot

by J

ohn

Mar

tin

By John D. Gresham and erica tinGler

IntervIew: ross Perot

R oss Perot. Just say the name to an American and you are likely to get a strong reaction in

response. Presidential candidate, self-made billionaire, entrepreneur are all titles that are commonly used to describe this gentleman. He is considered by many to be the creator of the information technology (IT) and outsourcing services industries. What is less known about Perot, however, is his deep and personal commitment to the men and woman of the American military, and its veterans. Behind the scenes and with great discretion, Perot has spent a private lifetime using his resources, contacts, and personal skills to help solve problems of all types and sizes, and sometimes even save lives. Along the way he has also made a personal commitment to make sure that the stories of America’s warriors are not forgotten in the daily flood of news about finance, entertainment, sports, and politics.

BEGINNINGS

For Perot, the basis of his approach to business and life are easy to find: his family in Depression-era Texarkana, Texas. Son of a local cotton broker, his memories of his early life are key to understanding his grounding in the principles of family, faith, education, and personal values.

The Year in Special Operations: Can you talk a bit about how your young life shaped your approaches to family, business, and public service?

Ross Perot: My dad was my closest friend. We rode horses every day after school. He would pick me up at school, and we would ride horses until sunset. Not many boys have that opportunity. He couldn’t have had finer moral and ethical principles. He was in the cotton business and he had two black men who worked for him. This was in the ’30s, and he treated them as equals, with dignity and respect. He would take me, and we would visit them in their homes on Sundays. Sometimes we would go out and have lunch with them, or spend the afternoon just sitting on their front porches, or even go together to the local county fair. His word was his bond.

My mother also taught me lessons. We lived six blocks from the railroad tracks, with a sand road coming up to our house. All day long, people would come up to our door and ask for food. With money and food my mother didn’t have, she would always feed them. One day, one of the men said to my mother, “Lady, do you have many people stopping by here?”

She said, “Yes, I do.” He asked, “Do you ever wonder why?”She replied, “No, sir, I don’t.”

He said, “Come here, I’ll show you.” He took her to a mark on the curb, which had been put there by those hungry folks. I later asked her if she wanted me to wash it off. She said, “No, son, these are people just like us, but they are down on their luck. We must help them. …”

I learned many lessons like that, all the time, from my parents and grandparents when I was growing up. My grandmother was a little lady, about five feet tall, and one day she looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Son, if God ever intended you to smoke, he’d have put a chimney on your head, and I don’t see one.” That’s all it took, because I’ve never smoked a single cigarette in my life. She didn’t leave much room – we went to Sunday school and church every Sunday. The point is, it was a different sort of time during the Great Depression. Everyone I grew up around had a strong moral/ethical base, strong religious convictions, and was totally committed to trying to help others, and not just focusing on “me, me, me, me!”

I was 11 years old when World War II started, and we were all organized in my little hometown of Texarkana, because we felt the Nazis were going to hit us at any time. We were organized by block; I had special first-aid training, I was a Boy Scout, and we were all involved in the Civil Defense force. We had a level of detailed

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interview 8 9


preparation that does not exist today in case anything occurred. I had relatives and friends who were going into the military, and I had a very keen sense of what their service and sacrifices were. People we knew were killed in action. I had an uncle who was killed in World War I, and his boys grew up without their dad. It helped me have a real understanding of the sacrifices that the soldiers and their families make for our freedom.

FROM MIDSHIPMAN TO BUSINESSMAN

Perot began his service to America and the world with his entry into the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) as a member of the class of 1953. There he became president of his class, a battalion commander, and part of the committee that established the USNA honor code. He also marched in the first inaugural parade for Dwight D. Eisenhower and later led a tour of the USNA grounds for the president and his wife, Mamie. While at Annapolis, he also met Margot Birmingham, who he married in 1956. Upon graduation, Perot went out to the fleet, serving aboard destroyers and an aircraft carrier. However, the death of his father and need to care for his mother caused Perot to leave the service upon completion of his service term.

With the end of his military career, another door opened for Perot when in 1962 he formed a new kind of company: Electronic Data Systems (EDS) – the first major IT systems company. A successful salesman at IBM, Perot was concerned about all the money being made on software and services, in which IBM was not involved at the time. Seeing value in such a business, Perot originally took the idea to his bosses at IBM. Their decision would set him onto the road to becoming an American business legend.

Can you tell us a little about how you got EDS off the ground?I took my idea to IBM to see if they would like to do it – they turned

it down. Later, I was sitting in a barbershop, reading an old Reader’s Digest, and there was a quote from Thoreau that said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I said to myself, “That’s me; I’ve got to try.” I started work when I was 6 years old. My idea was to make this dream come true. That’s when I made the decision, and I started the EDS Corporation with a thousand dollars, and we “boot-strapped” it from there. Thirty percent of all the money spent in the computer industry was on software; we’re talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars a year, and that was in the 1960s.

And to help EDS grow, you hired Vietnam-era veterans as a matter of course?

Yes, but for pragmatic reasons. Most of them were 26 or 27 years old, but they were 40 in terms of maturity. They had endured leadership challenges in Vietnam you’d never endure in the civilian sector, and they were responsible for their men’s lives, not just for the quarterly profits. They were so special, because at that time most technology companies had very few leaders, mostly just a group of managers who wouldn’t know how to lead a group, even in silent prayer! I knew we had to have strong leaders and I was determined to have them. At the time there was a real shortage of systems engineers, and finding people with all the right traits was my primary focus, because we could train them to become systems engineers quickly.

It was fascinating to see the quality of their work: We had all these young tigers coming back from the battlefields of Southeast Asia [that] had been enlisted personnel in the military who could have gone to MIT or anywhere – they were so smart! Many of them studied computer science and software, but the real thing they brought was leadership, leadership, and leadership. We had an abundance of leaders so that, as the company grew, we could make it grow successfully. That was the secret for our company’s success.

HELPING POWs

With his growing wealth from EDS, Perot began in the late 1960s to take the lessons of caring and giving from his youth to a national and international level. Once again, his target for these efforts was America’s warriors, in this case a small group almost forgotten by a country and media, tired and critical of war in Southeast Asia.

In 1969, you created a group called “United We Stand,” and tried to fly supplies for our POWs into North Vietnam. What drove you to do that?

In late 1969, a lovely lady came to see me. Her name was Bonnie Singleton and she had a little boy sitting on her lap. She said to me, “Mr. Perot … this little boy doesn’t know whether his daddy is dead or alive. His dad’s name is Jerry Singleton, and we would appreciate anything you can do to help us.” I began looking into the plight of U.S. prisoners of war – POWs – in North Vietnamese captivity, and the deeper I went, I grew more concerned. We organized a group of volunteer POW wives who went to the North Vietnamese embassy in Paris and made an extended plea to their delegation that received worldwide press, not only from our country but the world.

The North Vietnamese said if we would send Christmas gifts of a certain size to the right location, they would give them to the American POWs for Christmas. We took all those boxes and several volunteer wives, and flew to Vientiane, Laos. Upon arrival, the people in the North Vietnamese embassy said, “No, we won’t let you into North Vietnam and if you try, we’ll shoot you down.” We worked with the North Vietnamese for several more days before they said, finally, “If you’ll deliver these to Russia by Dec. 31, 1969, we will accept them.”

We were receiving huge publicity all over the world about the plight of these men -- the American POWs -- and about the way they were being treated [by the North Vietnamese]. We then tried to fly to Russia, and got as far as Sweden, when the Russians said to us, “We won’t let you cross the border, and if you do, we’ll shoot you down.” We received an enormous amount of publicity, because the Russians wouldn’t let us do it and the Vietnamese wouldn’t let us do it.

Remember, the one thing that always unified the American people during the Vietnam War was the plight of our POWs. Air Force Col. Robbie Risner spent five years in solitary confinement in a box, sometimes in stifling heat up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. He was one of the real heroes of the war. When he returned home, he told me a story. When he was being released in 1973, the guard who escorted him to the aircraft said to him, “I think the biggest mistake we [the North Vietnamese] made was the brutal treatment of the American POWs.” By early 1973, things had changed for the better, and our men were coming home. One of the things that had helped improve conditions for the U.S. POWs was the Son Tay POW prison raid in late 1970, and how it scared the North Vietnamese. That leads us to another chapter of the POW story: their return.

What did you do once the Paris peace accords were signed and our POWs began to come home?

I knew in early 1973 that one of the most important things I could do was make sure they [the U.S. POWs] all received a warm welcome when they returned to the U.S. We had all their wives waiting. Soon after they returned, I received a call from Capt. Jeremiah “Jerry”

“ Eagles don’t flock – you have to find them one at a time!”

– Ross Perot

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interview 91


Denton [later a U.S. senator]. He called me to thank me on behalf of the POWs. I told him that we’d really like to thank the Son Tay Raiders within the next couple of weeks, because they were never properly thanked for their efforts. “Done!” said Jerry Denton.

The POWs were adamant that this event be held in San Francisco because they had fantasized about flying under the Golden Gate Bridge. I knew Gov. Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, had hosted POW families from California at their home every Sunday during the war. I talked to them and they were 100 percent on board. I then talked to John Wayne and he was 100 percent on board as well. I sent one of my employees, Tom Meurer, to San Francisco. He called and said, “The ideal time to have a parade is noon, because everyone comes out on the streets.” We had the Son Tay Raiders and their wives and the POWs and their wives on trolley cars [which were then on rubber tires]. We had the biggest parade in the history of San Francisco, and we had only one demonstrator, just a nutty guy running up and down the street, shouting. Col. Arthur “Bull” Simons [who commanded the Son Tay Raid] was there; he made it very clear that his men should ignore him. In the crowd was an old man – and this was not planned – wearing an overcoat and eating a hamburger. When the protester ran by him he reached into his pocket and hit him over the head with a Coca-Cola bottle. It knocked him out! The returning POWs on the trolley cars gave him a giant cheer.

That night, we held a dinner party and the POWs couldn’t have had more fun. John Wayne hosted them to a night on the town and they returned at six in the morning. The next day they took a tour on a cruise boat. One of the stipulations of the POWs was that if they went past Alcatraz, a facility similar to the one in which they’d been held as POWs, they would sing. They sang their hearts out. That was a really great weekend. If you talk to any of them today, they will still tell you stories of that weekend. Nancy and Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood were keys to the success of the event. I remember John Wayne looked squarely at Bull Simons during one of the dinners and said, “Colonel, you are, in real life, the role I only play in the movies.” John Wayne had tears in his eyes. Bull Simons didn’t have tears – he was one of the toughest guys you could ever meet – but I saw a little quiver. It was the only time I saw Bull Simons get emotional.

TELEPHONE OPERATOR

The stories of Perot’s generosity with returning U.S. service personnel became the stuff of legend over the next few decades. While he never stopped running his businesses and making money, Perot always had time for a personal phone call from a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine, and he made a point of visiting service personnel whenever he was near a base or hospital. Private citizens, family and friends of military personnel, and anyone who cared could reach out to him, more often than not finding willingness to listen and help. Along the way Perot became their friend, benefactor, and sometimes even a personal savior.

You have a reputation for being really good to service personnel, but clearly, you’ve been drawn to the special operations community. Why is that?

Actually, it is all branches of the military. Special operations soldiers are frequently in harm’s way. The Special Forces have had more than their share of the wounded over the years, and those are the soldiers that I tend to work with. In many cases, generals call me on the phone in the middle of the night about a wounded soldier. I’ve received many calls from Gens. Hugh Shelton and Wayne Downing [both former commanders of U.S. Special Operations Command – SOCOM – Shelton was also chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]; they were

deeply concerned about every soldier in their command. You can always count on special operations generals to make sure their people get the best possible medical attention … and since I’ve funded medical research around the country, if a soldier needs something special, I can go through the various medical networks and find the best qualified doctor to treat their soldiers.

Can you tell us about your role in the story of saving Sgt. David Campbell’s life in 1991?

I’ve handled a number of situations over the years, and one of the most complicated challenges I’ve had was during Desert Storm in late February 1991. I was at home on a Sunday afternoon [Feb. 25, 1991] when the phone rang and an AT&T operator said, “Mr. Perot … you’re number is unlisted, but you need to take this call.” Gail Campbell, the wife of Sgt. David Campbell, was calling. She told me that her husband had been severely wounded when a SCUD missile hit his barracks in Saudi Arabia. …

She said, “His doctor says he only has 72 hours to live.” I asked how she happened to know so much about his wounds. She said she had been talking to his doctor, Cmdr. Wallace. She gave me his telephone number. I reached Cmdr. Wallace in Saudi Arabia, and he said, “Ross, I can’t save him, but the right team of doctors can.” I replied, “I happen to know one of the top trauma doctors in the United States, and if I can get him on the phone, I’d like to link him with you.” Dr. John Weigelt was that top trauma doctor. I called him and explained Sgt. Campbell’s wounds, and gave him Cmdr. Wallace’s phone number.

A short time later, Dr. Weigelt called me, and I’ll never forget what he said, “Perot, my team can be on the next plane, but he will be dead when we get there. That’s the bad news. The good news is there are two doctors from the Reserves who are deployed to the Persian Gulf. If you get both of them into that hospital right away, they can save him. The other bad news is that I don’t know what branch of the service they’re in.” He gave me their names. I called the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon where there’s always an admiral or general on duty around the clock. That night, Adm. Thomas Robertson answered the phone. I explained the situation to him, and I gave him the name of the two doctors. He said to me, “Don’t worry, Perot; I’ll take care of it.”

One hour later, Dr. Weigelt called me and said, “You’re not going to believe this, Perot, but both doctors are in the room with him … and he’ll be fine.” Months passed and I was making a speech at the United Nations. At the end of my speech, a Marine general, Richard Neal, came up to me and started punching my chest and said, “Perot, you really fouled up my Sunday night a few months ago! I’m the person the Pentagon called, and sent out to find those two doctors.” I replied, “General, you saved his life,” to which he replied, “That’s why they call the Marines.” Thank goodness David Campbell is back home in Pennsylvania, living a rich, full life, because generals and admirals and top doctors in this country turned the world upside down and got him properly treated.

But they wouldn’t have known to do so unless you had called around and put the right people together … right?

I’m a switchboard operator! [Laughs] In that case, I was a classic switchboard operator. I’m very fortunate to have access to the people who can make a difference – just one step in a long process.

While many of Perot’s lifesaving efforts are for just one individual, other times they take on more substantial, even international proportions. This was the case in 1999 during the turnover of Hong Kong from Great Britain back to the People’s Republic of China, when he got a phone call from a Special Forces sergeant.


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Can you tell us about what happened when you got a phone call in 1999 from Sgt. Eulis Presley?

That takes us to another story, this one with a few more moving parts. It began with a phone call where I thought Elvis had been reborn. Special Forces Sgt. Eulis Presley called, telling me about 125 to 175 Nung Vietnamese (Montagnard hill tribesmen) who had been forced to flee Vietnam at the end of the war in 1975, had escaped to an island off Hong Kong, and lived there for 25 years. Now as Hong Kong was going back over to China, they were going to be returned home to Vietnam to be executed by the Vietnamese government. I called Gen. Hugh Shelton, [then] chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I said “I received a call from a Special Forces sergeant named Eulis Presley.” For 10 minutes, Gen. Shelton told me about all the great accomplishments of Eulis Presley.

I told Gen. Shelton about the call from Sgt. Presley, and he responded, “Perot, I wouldn’t be alive without these men. We have to get them out.” Then I called the State Department to see if they would let the Nungs come to the United States, and they said, “Yes, if you can have someone validate that they actually are who they say they are.” I found that Gen. Wayne Downing had all that information, having just retired as commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. I called him, and his exact response was, “Perot, I wouldn’t be alive without those men – I’ll be on the next plane.”

I said, “General, where do you want me to send the ticket?” He responded by saying, “Nobody buys these tickets but me – I

wouldn’t be alive without the Nungs.” Gen. Downing needed an interpreter, and he needed someone to

arrange for the transportation for the Nungs. I asked Harry McKillop, who has worked with me since the first flight to Vietnam in 1969, and has done some incredibly heroic things going back to World War II when he was in the Navy. He has very strong ties to the airline industry. Harry agreed to organize flights and he flew on the mission.

I asked a former South Vietnamese fighter pilot named Nguyen Quoc Dat, who was a prisoner with our POWs in North Vietnam – we call him “Max” – to be the interpreter. He was assigned all the dirty jobs in the POW camp in Hanoi, because the North Vietnamese wanted to humiliate him in every possible way. Max used his job access to smuggle food and medicine to our men who were dying. When the U.S. POWs returned home, their highest priority was to honor Max at 12 U.S. military bases. We took care of that – and that’s when I met him.

Later, when South Vietnam was falling in 1975, one of the Son Tay Raiders, George Petrie, then stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, took a large bus to Max’s house, and evacuated Max and 30 family members to the U.S.

Max worked with me until he retired, and was living to California. I called him to see if he would go to Hong Kong with Wayne Downing and Harry McKillop, to be the interpreter. He volunteered immediately. When they arrived, Wayne Downing called me and said, “Perot, the local officials won’t let us on the island, but don’t worry; we’ll get on.” Two days later, Wayne Downing called me back, and said, “The men are on their way home; we’ll be coming back tomorrow.” In reply I asked, “Just out of curiosity, how did you get on the island?” Downing said, “Don’t ask, Perot!” and then hung up.

Today, all of these Nungs are living near Fort Bragg [N.C.]. They have jobs and they are living the Special Forces’ creed, “You never leave your men behind.”

In 2004, the Business Executives for National Security asked the Nungs to attend an awards dinner in my honor. There were many interesting people at that dinner, including all the people who were involved in the Iranian rescue. The chairman and all of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff attended. I never would have dreamed they could all come to a public event with a war going on. I’ll always appreciate their presence -- that’s an evening I’ll never forget.

KEEPING FAITH: THE PEROT TOUCH

For all the giving Perot has done over the years, there was one special occasion where it came back to him, when in 1978 two of his EDS executives were taken hostage by the Iranian government. When attempts to resolve the situation through diplomacy failed, Perot made the decision to act on his own. Remembering Col. Bull Simons, who had retired a few years earlier, Perot called him and asked him if he would organize and lead the rescue of his men in Iran. Within days, Simons was selecting and training a team of EDS employees (all highly decorated Vietnam veterans) into a hostage rescue team to rescue the two executives from the Tehran prison and bring them home.

In what may be the ultimate act of employer loyalty – the Iran rescue – you go to Iran in 1979 to get your people out. Can you talk a bit about what happened?

Before I left for Iran, I visited with my mother who was dying of cancer. I explained the situation to her, and that two of my men had been falsely arrested and jailed. She looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Ross, these are your men. You sent them over there and it’s your obligation to get them out.” What does that say about her?

Days later I was with Simons and the team in our safe house, and he looked me in the eye one day and said, “Perot … see if the U.S. Embassy will allow these men to receive refuge at the embassy when we get them out of prison.” That was the biggest mistake we made, because when I talked to the American ambassador he said “No,” and two hours later, the Iranian security forces were tearing up the town looking for me. Simons then said, “Perot, I want you to go to the prison where the men are held. Visit with them, and tell them what our plan of action is, so that they know where the rendezvous point is, what they’re supposed to do, etc.”

I replied, “Colonel, the Iranians are still looking for me.”He replied, “One branch of the Iranian government is looking for

you, but another branch of the government runs the prison. They don’t talk to one another – they won’t know anything about you at the prison.”

If Bull Simons told you to do it, you did it. A rescue team member drove me to the prison where the two EDS executives were being held. It was a giant fortress, with everyone standing in front, and there were at least a hundred camera crews there. I thought, “Well, this is it.” I walked past them and they ignored me. I thought to myself, “There must be somebody else here.” I went in, walked up to the reception room and there was former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, sitting there talking to the general in charge of the prison. Ramsey leaned forward and pointed at me, and spoke to the general. The general politely arranged for me to meet with Paul Chiapparone and Bill Gaylord [the two detained EDS executives], and I then left. After I returned home, and the story of the rescue was in all the papers, Ramsey called me and said, “Ross, I thought you were Frank Borman,” [the retired U.S. Air Force colonel, NASA astronaut, commander of the Gemini VII and Apollo 8 missions and then-president of Eastern Airlines] and I said, “Thank God!”

The man who actually led the rescue at the prison was an Iranian systems engineer working in our company – we called him “Rashid.” Simons roamed the streets of Tehran and observed huge numbers of Iranian terrorist teams. Simons had the genius to have Rashid create an Iranian “terrorist” team so that Rashid, as a leader, could attend the morning meetings. There were lots of these teams all over Tehran, and


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they would meet each morning to plan their daily activities. Simons learned that the team leaders also attended, so this meant Rashid was able to go to the meetings. Simons asked Rashid to form a team to infiltrate the revolutionary movement. Before the jailbreak actually occurred, Simons told Rashid, “See if you can bribe the police chief to leave open the police armory, where all the weapons [are] stored.” Rashid paid them $100, less than the cost of a pistol, to leave the police armory open. Rashid and his team attended the next morning meeting with more weapons than you can imagine. Rashid, who by now was very well regarded by his fellow terrorist team leaders, distributed weapons around the room, and shouted “Gasre Prison is our Bastille. It is our responsibility to free the thousands of political prisoners.”

One hour later, 30,000 terrorists stormed the prison and the guards were stripped down to their long underwear [and they] never fired a shot. 12,000 prisoners were allowed to escape so that our two men could also escape.

Our team drove their vehicles over 500 miles to the Turkish border before they ran into trouble. They were within 30 miles of the border when a group of Islamic revolutionaries stopped the vehicles, pulled Simons out, and started hitting him with a rifle butt. Simons, with no comment, pulled a note out of his pocket and handed it to them. The note read, “These people are friends of the revolution; please show them courtesy and escort them safely to the border, signed, Commandant of

the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Committee,” and it had a big seal. If you were to read the seal closely, it said, “Rezaieh Religious School: Founded 1344.” Simons gave me the note when he arrived in Turkey. He translated the words on the seal to me. I can tell you that I carefully read all seals on documents now!

The point is, it could never have happened without Bull Simons. The team did it – and nobody was hurt. It was too good to be true. When we landed in Dallas, my mother was at the airport, sitting in her car just outside the exit door. She was determined to see my two men reunited with their families. Mother passed away a few weeks later.

What is there in you and your family that likes to help raise statues and monuments?

Abraham Lincoln said, “Any nation who does not honor its heroes will not long endure,” and I want to honor our heroes. I have commissioned and lent support [for] many memorials. Also, my son spent 14 years as chairman of the now-completed Air Force Memorial. That said, I’m not interested in raising statues as much as I’m interested in honoring heroes. The main thing is getting it to be something they [the subject] like. If the person being depicted has passed away, we have his buddies involved with it so it’s just perfect – and really interesting. In the case of Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, with all their unique gear, the worst thing you can do is have the canteen on the statue in the wrong place!

Ross Perot and Col. Arthur “Bull” Simons, USA (Ret.), after their return from Iran with EDS employees who had been held in a Tehran prison.


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How did you become involved with Gulf War syndrome, and help change the care of veterans from that conflict?

Following Operation Desert Storm, 13 Special Forces soldiers asked to visit with me, and I was honored to meet them. They brought pictures of themselves before going into combat and they all looked like Supermen. Now, when I saw them, they looked like they just had come out of Dachau [the World War II-era Nazi concentration camp near Munich, Germany]. They also brought pictures of their infants who had been born after their return from the Persian Gulf with terrible birth defects, such as one eye, missing legs, arms that stopped just below the elbow with shreds of a finger -- you name it.

I discussed it with representatives in Washington and they believed it was all just stress-related. I said, “It was a hundred-hour ‘non-war’ … you can’t just say it’s stress – you just can’t make that work.” I spoke to Dr. Robert Haley at the University of Texas [UT] Southwestern Medical School. He had previously worked for the Centers for Disease Control. He agreed to begin conducting research. When the federal government learned of the research, a team was sent to the medical school informing them that if they continued with research on the project that all the federal funds for other research would be cancelled. The president of the medical school said, “We can’t stop – these men are seriously wounded.” The government officials went away, and the UT team continued with their work.

UT Southwestern Medical School then built a computer model showing where everyone was located the day each of the Iraqi chemical weapons bunkers were demolished after the war, and the direction the winds were blowing. There was a direct correlation between proximity to the explosions and the sick men being downwind, extending out to 70 miles. Eventually, Dr. Haley and I were asked to speak to both houses of Parliament in Britain, because while the U.S. had 100,000 men suffering symptoms, Great Britain had 25,000 men of their own troops suffering. The British were now on board with Dr. Haley. Everyone was working in coordination. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison [R-Texas] convinced the administration and Congress to provide federal recognition and funding for treatment of Gulf War syndrome … nobody does it better than Kay!

What do you still want to do in your life? I’m busy taking care of business and making sure everything goes

well with the company. If I could have some wishes for my country, it would begin with a

strong moral and ethical base. When I grew up in the Depression, you did whatever you said you would do. Second, have a strong family unit in every home. That’s wonderful for the children. Next, fundamentally for the future of our country, is to have the finest public schools in the world. When I was a child, we were the best educated people in the world. All the inventions and the creative thinking were coming from the U.S.A. I return to three basic themes: a strong moral/ethical base, strong family units, and the finest public schools. Get those three things right, and we would fix many of the problems in our country. I’d also like for every child growing up to be a Boy or Girl Scout. Be honest, trustworthy, loyal, and help other people at all times; while keeping themselves physically strong, mentally alert, and morally straight. It would solve a lot of problems, wouldn’t it? Scouting played a huge part in my life, and I loved it.

I cannot end without mentioning my wife, Margot. I met her while I was attending the Naval Academy, and we were married in 1956. She has been a great wife, a great mother of five children, and grandmother of 15 grandchildren. When I am asked, “What have been the greatest blessings of my life?” my response is my family, including my 15 grandchildren, are my life’s greatest blessings. And my grandchildren are growing up rapidly! Three are now in college – one is planning to go into the Air Force, one into the Navy, one into the Marine Corps.

Perot has lived a great American life, and continues to do so today. He is in his office every day, and as might be imagined, continues to take and make phone calls that influence people and events around the world. He also continues to receive numerous awards that recognize his service to America, its military, and veterans. Just a few of these include:

• The Winston Churchill Award – Presented by Prince Charles in 1986. Perot was the third recipient and first businessman to receive the award, for qualities like those of the lord and prime minister.

• The Raoul Wallenberg Award – Given in memory of the Swedish diplomat for Perot’s lifetime service, especially the 1979 rescue of EDS employees from Iran. He was the first living individual to receive the award in 1987.

• The Patrick Henry Award – Perot was the first recipient of this award, which is given to a U.S. citizen for outstanding service to the country.

• The Eisenhower Award – Given for his support of the U.S. armed forces.

• Medal for Distinguished Public Service – The highest civilian award presented by the Department of Defense, for his efforts supporting U.S. POWs.

Just this past January at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., the Department of Veterans Affairs honored Perot for his years of service and support of American veterans. He will also soon be the recipient of the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, for representing throughout his life the words “Duty, Honor, Country.”

Authors’ note: A great many people worked very hard to make this interview and article possible. Special thanks go to Tina Smith, Barbara Conly, Sandra Dotson, Sharon Holman, Joe McNamara, Rudi Gresham, and Ross Perot Jr., who all gave their time and support to allowing Faircount Media Group to spend some time with a unique American: Ross Perot.

Brig. Gen. Michael S. Repass, commanding general, United States Army Special Forces Command, presents an honorary Green Beret to Ross Perot at the 2nd Annual Special Forces Symposium Banquet, April 22, 2008, while Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr., commanding general, United States Army Special Operations Command, and Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Csrnko, commanding general, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, look on. Perot was presented the Green Beret for his remarkable contributions to the Special Forces community.

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By Maj. Gen. richard coMer (Usaf-ret)

Pave Low’s FareweLL

The MH-53M Pave Low helicopters of Air Force Special Operations Command

flew their last missions supporting combat operations in Iraq on the night of Sept. 27 and 28, 2008. The retirement of the helicopters had been scheduled three years earlier when U.S. SOCOM decision-makers opted not to continue funding of MH-53s beyond the first of October and the beginning of the 2009 fiscal year.

Since their induction into the U.S. Air Force, the H-53s had lived several lives. The HH-53 Super Jolly Greens and the CH-53 Dust Devils flew combat rescue and combat special operations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. After 1975, the CH-53s moved into tactical support of radar units, and the HHs continued in rescue around the world. The first Pave Lows, as HH-53H models, were produced for combat rescue, scheduled to go to Europe, and were diverted to special operations use after Desert One in 1980. After the formation of SOCOM in 1987, all the H-53s in the Air Force were modified into Pave Lows.

None of the aircraft were young, and all were two-engine versions, originally designed not to fly above 42,000 pounds gross weight. Continuously modified and heavier with each change, the aircraft had been flying missions over 46,000 pounds as the normal operating weight since 18 of them participated in Operation Desert Storm 18 years ago. To tell the truth, I flew a number of missions in Desert Storm, and I don’t remember any in which our mission weight was under 48,000 pounds. The aircraft tend to age quickly under such circumstances. Originally designed for 3,000 to 4,000 hours of helicopter flying, they finally retired at an average of around 12,000 flying hours. To compare, many of the Marine H-53s with two engines were replaced by three-engine aircraft after an average of 2,500 flying hours.

The real story of these aircraft, however, resides in the stories of the people and their accomplishments while using those helicopters. Lt. Gen. Donald Wurster spoke of that record during the induction of one of them, aircraft 68-10357,

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into the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. His speech does the best job possible of telling the story of these venerable aircraft. Attending the ceremony were veterans of the Vietnam War – including the Son Tay Raiders Association. All other H-53 and Pave Low combat operations were also represented by flyers and maintainers of Just Cause in Panama, of operations in Bosnia, the first Gulf War, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and numerous humanitarian missions, from flood relief in Thailand in the ’70s to hurricane relief after Katrina in the southeastern United States.

As Wurster described, the H-53s of the Air Force seemed to want to go to the sound of guns, toward the action, and they never expected to retire.

Wurster has given us permission to print his speech, along with a short addendum he added after witnessing the final mission in Iraq:

“We are here today to induct H-53 tail number 68-10357 into the National Museum of the United States Air Force. This proud machine, like many others here, has a unique story to tell. Its background is

heroic, as you will hear from the speakers today, but we need to remember that it is but one of a fleet of 72 helicopters of its kind that the Air Force owned and operated for nearly the last 40 years. There are many other H-53s, many other stories of courage and daring, and innumerable actions by maintenance and support crews who made it all possible.

“This aircraft has really had two significant and different segments of service – the first as a Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter, and the second as a Pave Low helicopter serving in special operations. The Air Force originally bought 72 H-53s between 1966 and 1973. There were eight B-models with the external struts supporting the aux tanks. When the HH-53 went into production the sponsons were strengthened and the struts were no longer required. These C-models included 44 HH-53s and 20 CH-53s. Like 357, each tail number has a history. But, as a fleet, the story is a remarkable compilation of courage, daring, and the grace of a merciful Creator. Of these 72 aircraft, 22 have been lost in combat operations, another 20 crashed and were destroyed in accidents

OppOsite: Last mission. U.s. Air Force MH-53 pave Low helicopters from the 20th expeditionary special Operations squadron in-flight over iraq during their final combat mission on sept. 27, 2008. the pave Low was retired after nearly 40 years of storied service to the Air Force. AbOve: the old days: An HH-53 super Jolly Green Giant of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery squadron seen from the gunner’s position of a helicopter of the 21st special Operations squadron in vietnam, October 1972.


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due to the difficult environment in which we train and fight, and we have damaged and rebuilt 20 more. Many of the remaining aircraft have been transferred to AMARC [the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center] and we will fly the last dozen in the inventory at Hurlburt Field [Fla.] and in Iraq until they retire at the end of September this year. These statistics are pretty remarkable – a career combat loss rate of 30 percent, directly attributable to the types of missions this incredible machine can accomplish. When the training attrition is factored in, the loss rate approaches 60 percent over the life of the airframe – a testament to the difficult nature of combat rescue, or the night, low altitude, terrain following, assault mission of the Pave Low. If you add in the recovered aircraft that we managed to rebuild, 62 of 72 have hit the ground hard at one time or another, although there were a few two-time winners.

“The machines did not do the job themselves; it was the people who launched them, the people who flew them, and those who sustained and repaired them that are the real heroes of the efforts. But, the machines have seen a couple of generations of these people come and go, and always they remain … the enduring posture to respond to the nation’s call when needed. Today, I will talk about crews and heroics, but I have intentionally left the names of individuals out. It is for one simple reason: There are too many to mention, and inevitably we would miss many who deserve to be named. So, today we’ll focus on the aircraft.

“These helicopters have flown on 13 missions that earned the Air Force Cross: three for the first three chalks of the Son Tay mission in 1970 to rescue POWs in North Vietnam, six for daring rescues of downed airmen during the Southeast Asia conflict, and four during the Mayaguez recovery effort at Koh Tang Island. Of those 13 aircraft, only one was not subsequently lost in combat or to an accident. That aircraft is 357. It flew as Apple 1 to Son Tay Prison Camp near Hanoi in 1970 – carrying the famed Bull Simons and his team of commandos to rescue American prisoners. On that mission alone, 357’s crew earned one Air Force Cross and four Silver Stars; if you count the decorations of the assault force, add two Distinguished Service Crosses and 20 more Silver Stars to the count.

“During the remainder of its service in Southeast Asia, 357 was directly involved in several other noteworthy and historic actions. It was involved in 18 combat rescue missions, nine while flying as the ‘Low Bird,’ contributing to a total of 28 combat saves. In the course of these sorties, 16 more Jolly Green crewmen earned Silver Stars while aboard. Amazingly, 357 participated in a second mission for which the pilot was awarded the Air Force Cross; it flew as Low Bird on the first day of the Oyster 01 Bravo mission to recover a survivor who had spent three weeks successfully evading in North Vietnam. And, while we are counting, 357 also picked up a PJ who was awarded the Air Force Cross for dragging a survivor 150 yards through enemy territory to a

The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force’s newest exhibit, the Sikorsky MH-53M Pave Low IV, tail number 68-10357, sits on display in the Cold War Gallery at the museum in Dayton, Ohio.


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suitable extraction point. The crew of 357, taking 16 hits in the process, picked up the PJ when the helicopter who inserted him was unable to complete the recovery. A remarkable record for an aircraft who flew combat there for three years and saw action in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and the DMZ!

“Following the end of the Vietnam War, 357 was reassigned to rescue forces in the Pacific for the next 10 years – first in Hawaii, then in Okinawa. Later, it moved to McClellan Air Force Base in California, where it served in the 41st Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron until it was inducted into the Pave Low line in 1987.

“The years of the early ’80s were challenging, as congressional forces sought to revitalize the country’s special operations capability. The nation had made commitments to generate a viable force and the special operations era of H-53 history began in earnest. The first Pave Low had been built before the accident at Desert One, though the production had been canceled.

“Subsequently, the Holloway Commission made specific recommendations regarding the Air Force H-53 fleet and its future potential as Pave Low helicopters within special operations. A reluctant Air Force bore the brunt of the congressional fury that was inspired when the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and the Air Force signed a series of initiatives, including Initiative 17, which made commitments to transfer the mission of rotary wing special operations to the Army.

“Congressional action and investment eventually turned every remaining H-53 in the Air Force inventory into an MH-53 Pave Low helicopter for special operations, where the aircraft continued to serve for an additional 20 years. At one point during this series of convoluted

missteps, Army aviators were sent to the training wing at Kirtland Air Force Base, to begin training in the MH-53 to enable the Army to eventually assume ownership of the helicopters and the mission responsibilities. This represented the last straw for the Congress. The concept was scrapped, and one senior defense official was quoted as saying, ‘Giving the Pave Lows to the Army is like giving the space shuttle to Chad.’

“Based on the performance of the MH-53s in the Air Force for the last 20 years, their vision has proven accurate. But, the history of the H-53 and the Pave Low cannot be completely understood without considering the impact of Initiative 17, the actions and individuals who overturned it, and its aftermath. These were essential shaping factors in the second half of the life of the H-53 fleet. Like many other stories of courage and exposure, these need to be captured and recorded.

“During the conversion process, from CH or HH-53 to MH-53, numerous electronic upgrades were included – terrain-following radar, forward-looking infrared, ring laser gyro inertial, doppler integration, moving map display, hover coupler, and night-vision compatible lighting inside and out. Additionally, the aircraft received a much needed Service Life Extension Program or SLEP, which included crashworthy fuel tanks, self sealing fuel lines, steel hydraulic tubing, stroking seats, improved landing gear, elastomeric rotor heads, improved flight control servos, titanium blades, and a host of other improvements that dramatically increased the survivability of the aircraft.

“In addition to our depot teams who oversaw and engineered the work, there were dedicated and committed individuals that seized the opportunity presented by the Congress to improve this fleet and its

A sight that will never be seen again. AFSOC 20th Special Operations Squadron MH-53 Pave Low helicopters, stationed at Hurlburt Field, Fla., fly over the Gulf of Mexico June 12, 2008.


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ability to support national objectives. The results speak for themselves. In the first 20 years of service, the H-53 fleet endured 23 Class A accidents at the cost of 80 lives. The next 20 years of service proved as difficult in terms of accidents, with a total of 18 – but the remarkable difference was that only seven people have lost their lives in H-53 helicopters since the SLEP. Five of them were lost in a single accident in Afghanistan when a disintegrating blade slashed one of the aux tanks, igniting a fire. We had not had a post-crash fire since the SLEP 20 years earlier and scores of lives of Pave Low crew members and ground force customers have survived mishaps that would have been fatal in a pre-SLEP aircraft. Similar efforts following difficult lessons learned in the dusty brownouts and the marginal power environment of Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in rapid software upgrades and improved hover stability – significantly improving the safety of the crews in these difficult environments.

“Following 357’s conversion to MH-53 configuration and SLEP modifications, the aircraft served in several conflicts and contingencies, and until a few months ago, was flying combat missions in Iraq every day. We knew that the museum intended to induct this helicopter when it returned from battle, and we knew that somebody up here was probably chewing their fingernails off hoping that we wouldn’t smash it

before it made it home. 357 continued to fly the tough ones though, and on one mission late last spring, the crew over-torqued both engines and the gearbox in an emergency go-around from a brownout landing. But, cheating fate one last time, 357 brought the crew safely home. It was a deliberate decision that following the last combat mission, maintenance would tear down 357 and send it directly to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Everybody involved wanted to induct the aircraft into the museum without another sortie so that its last flight was a combat mission … a fitting tribute to the machine, the crews that flew her, and the maintenance teams who kept her combat ready.

“The H-53 fleet has logged countless combat hours, flown in every contingency in the last 40 years, and met the needs of national objectives time and time again. We checked the records and found that this fleet of only 72 aircraft has racked up a combat record of 140 Silver Stars. Think of that: It is an average of two Silver Stars per airframe over their lifetime. It is hard to believe that any other aircraft in Air Force history could have such a remarkable and compelling story of heroism. It also makes 357’s statistics all the more impressive.

“They have served in Vietnam, Laos, Koh Tang, Jonestown, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and the subsequent Northern and Southern Watch, Afghanistan, Iraq again, among those of which we are

A U.S. Air Force pilot from the 20th Expeditionary Special Operations Squadron conducts a pre-flight check of an MH-53 Pave Low helicopter prior to the final combat mission at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, on Sept. 27, 2008.




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permitted to speak. The H-53 is always there if there is vertical lift combat action – always there, always successful. That fact is, of course, because of the people, not because of the machine. But undoubtedly each of us sense and adopt the legacy of courage and combat when we get into these aircraft, hoping we will prove ourselves worthy to be counted as brothers in the impressive history of these helicopters.

“Four Aviator’s Valor Awards, six Cheney Awards, the Mackay Trophy twice, two Daedalian Exceptional Pilot Awards, six-time Jabara Award winner, the Kolligian Trophy three times, two Schilling Awards, two Tunner Awards, four-time Pitsenbarger winner, and one Helicopter Heroism Trophy … and those represent only the missions that won. How many runner-ups were there? Also, in the early ’90s, the crew chief for 357 was selected as the Air Force Crew Chief of the Year.

“Late last summer, tail number 794 decided to cash in her chips during a night tactical sortie on the range at Eglin Air Force Base [Fla.]. I am convinced that, like survivors of the USS Arizona, who still have their remains interred in Pearl Harbor with the rest of the crew to this day, she wanted to die with her boots on. You may not know it but, within a couple of weeks, that aircraft was slated to fly to AMARC for retirement. Fortunately, she spared the crew and some exceptional airmanship got the machine near the ground before things let go for good. As you might suspect … they don’t want to go. One of the first Kirtland B-models to retire, upon landing at AMARC, realized where it was and locked up the brakes, refusing to move any further. The pilot hovered into parking to terminate that final flight. One of our recent deliveries from Hurlburt developed a rotor system problem and forced a divert into Houston, attempting to delay the inevitable. Despite averaging about 12,000 hours per airframe, they just don’t want to go. These machines are born to combat and have proven themselves time and time again.

“Even as we speak and enjoy this quiet moment, today’s MH-53 crews are preparing to fly in combat tonight – crew chiefs and specialists scramble to get the machines ready, crews review mission details, sanitize, and step to the aircraft. They start up and depart to engage the enemy like the professionals who preceded them. All of you old heads would be proud of them. They have been on the battlefield since we started this on 9/11. Never before has this force done so much, so well, for so long. That is a tribute to the crews and the maintainers. The last chapter for the H-53 is being written right now and this story will end well. Our enemies are struck with terror at the sound of these rotor blades, they

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Donald Wurster, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, during the final combat mission of MH-53 Pave Low helicopters at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Sept. 27, 2008.

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fear the angry tracers from well-aimed mini-guns, and they sleep fitfully hoping that tonight is not the night they will come for me. The tradition continues. Let us remember the H-53 crews of today and honor their continuing efforts, like we do for those who came before them.”

Addendum for the PAve Low reunion dinner, oct. 16, 2008

“Since 357 was inducted into the National Museum of the Air Force about three months ago, the remaining Pave Low helicopters have completed their missions in CONUS and in combat.

“First, the remaining aircraft at Hurlburt Field flew out to AMARC or permanent locations for static displays. Last month, when only one Pave Low was operational in the entire United States, and three days before it was to fly to its permanent display location at Hill Air Force Base, Hurricane Ike stormed into the Gulf of Mexico. A large ship was endangered by the storm, and true to form, 369 and her crew cranked up and launched into the fury of that hurricane to attempt a rescue of the crew. They just don’t want to go.

“Finally, on 27 September 2008, the crews of the last six Pave Lows in the inventory briefed a final combat mission in Iraq. The maintainers

prepared the birds, the crews prepared for their missions, sanitized, and stepped to the aircraft. Launching in a six-ship for the last time, the crews ran combat ingress checklists, checked guns, and then broke into two-ship elements for their respective missions. Each proceeded to their targets, completed their assigned tasks, and returned to Taji to reform as a flight of six. The six-ship then returned to Balad with a final fly-by, pitched out and landed, in the manner so familiar to all of us.

“After landing and shutdown, the mood was subdued but respectful. The early dawn showed the outlines of the big birds that would never fly again. Two of these will go on display, the others will go to AMARC. Crews and maintainers traded hugs and signed their names on the machines as part of this worthy history. As I walked around the machines, I did not endure a sense of loss. It was the first time that I recognized that these machines looked war worn, and perhaps a bit tired but proud of their service, faithful to their mission and calling, and committed to the end. Their stately elegance and now-silent repose reminded me of a verse from Paul the Apostle in the letter to Timothy that says, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.’

“And they have.”

A cv-22 osprey aircraft from the 8th Special operations Squadron and an mh-53 Pave Low helicopter from the 20th Special operations Squadron conduct a flight near hurlburt field, fla., Aug. 20, 2008. the u.S. Air force retired the mh-53 in october 2008 and will be using cv-22 ospreys in their place.


10 6 SOF prOcurement


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“What has happened is that SOF has become the indispensable tool, and we have seen SOF become what we call a ‘low density – high demand’ kind of force.”

– Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen

By JOhn D. GreSham

The TiTle 10 BudgeT line:Sharpening The SOF Spear

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If America’s special operations forces (SOF) hit rock bottom on April 24, 1980, in the dusty desert of Iran with the failure of Operation

Eagle Claw (the Iranian hostage rescue mission), few people remember the real battle for U.S. SOF was won seven years later with the passage of a little-known amendment to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reform Act. What is today known as Nunn-Cohen, after the pair of statesmen senators (William Cohen, R-Maine, and Sam Nunn, D-Ga.) who sponsored the legislation, created in law what much of the U.S. military establishment and Department of Defense (DoD) bureaucracy had fought decades to prevent: the creation of a functional fifth military service, built around the special operations community.

Nunn-Cohen did a number of things for special operations, which included:

• U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) – The Nunn-Cohen legislation created a new unified command: SOCOM. Based at MacDill

OppOsite: the venerable MH-47 Chinook was vital to getting sF teams into Afghanistan after september 11, 2001. AbOve: U.s. Army sgt. John Maninga, 1st battalion, 187th infantry Regiment, 3rd brigade Combat team, 101st Airborne Division, scans down Route tampa with a 5.56 mm Modular Weapon system (MWs) special Operations peculiar Modification (sOpMOD) M4 while conducting a foot patrol in bayji, iraq, during Operation iraqi Freedom. the sOpMOD M4, developed to suit sOF needs, has become a mainstay infantry weapon for all U.s. forces.


The C-27J provides the highest degree of tactical utility for a medium cargo aircraft in its class. Now we’re enhancing the C-27J with the agility, performance and flexibility to provide today’s SOF warfighters with the support they need for missions where failure is not an option. The result is the AC-27J Stinger II. It provides tactical effectiveness and airlift efficiency needed to minimize risk and maximize responsiveness. The C-27J Team stands ready to support today’s SOF warfighter 24/7.

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Air Force Base, Fla., SOCOM would be commanded by a four-star general or flag officer, and have overall control and ownership of the various service SOF component commands.

• Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities (ASD/SOLIC&IC) – To provide DoD-level support and oversight for SOCOM, a new service secretary-level position was created by Nunn-Cohen within DoD: ASD/SOLIC&IC. More than any other feature of the 1987 legislation, the ASD/SOLIC&IC made it clear that the special operations community was going to become a de facto fifth military service.

• SOF Title 10 Funding – To guarantee that SOCOM and its component SOF units have the specialized equipment and support services required by their roles and missions, Nunn-Cohen provides SOCOM with its own funding stream under Title 10 of the U.S. Code.

It is this last item, the SOCOM Title 10 funding line in the annual U.S. federal budget, that has given the U.S. SOF community both strength and capability over the past two decades.

SOF TITLE 10 FUNDING: WHY?

As far back as World War II, the core parent services have done their best to deprive the SOF community of personnel and funding. Much of this animosity came from SOF units being “different” from the mainstream military as well as the perception that top-line personnel and funding were being “wasted” in the clandestine arena of unconventional warfare. Despite world-class operations and results in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, the U.S. SOF community was hammered in the 1970s, denied personnel, funding, equipment, and force

Air Force CV-22 Ospreys lift off from a Kirtland taxiway. Special Operations Command’s need for this transformational aircraft helped keep the program alive, despite ill-informed criticism.


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structure. The failure of the Iranian Embassy hostage rescue mission at Desert One in 1980 simply highlighted the erosion of talent and capabilities within the community. However, despite the obvious need to rebuild SOF capabilities in the 1980s, U.S. special operations suffered continued negligence through much of the decade. The U.S. Air Force (USAF), for example, spent much of the 1980s trying to kill programs like the MH-53 Pave Low SOF helicopter, and even disestablish SOF units committed to joint (inter-service) roles and missions.

The result was that when U.S. SOF units were asked to lead the way during Operation Urgent Fury, the 1983 invasion of Grenada, their performance was decidedly mixed. While some of the problems of Urgent Fury were addressed by Goldwater-Nichols in 1986, the more material shortcomings, such as inadequate communications, limited SOF aviation support, and even things as simple as good maps, still needed attention. The sad truth was that while Goldwater-Nichols directed DoD and the military services to take proper care of the SOF community, the leadership of the American defense establishment simply ignored the guidance for another year. In response, Nunn-

Cohen in 1987 made the aforementioned reforms a matter of federal law, something that the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and military service chiefs would from that time on defy under penalty of criminal prosecution.

SOF TITLE 10 FUNDING: MEANING

Title 10 of the U.S. Federal Code, for those unfamiliar with the budget process, is in essence the operating manual for DoD. As such, it provides legal oversight and guidance for everything from the Uniform Code of Military Justice to the annual budget process. In particular, DoD and each of the military services has its own budget line for research, development, and procurement under the code, which allows each to buy service-specific (and joint) equipment, supplies, and services. What Nunn-Cohen did in 1987 when it was signed into law was to create a budget line for SOCOM, enabling the command to buy SOF-specific gear and services for their unique roles and missions.

For those who may see this entire discussion about budget authority as nothing more than a paper chase and an exercise in

Special Forces soldiers maneuver a Ground Mobility Vehicle (GMV) over the mountainous terrain outside Hawthorne, Nev. The training environment closely resembles obstacles they will encounter in Afghanistan during their deployment. The GMV has been one of the success stories of SOF procurement.


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moving money from one account to another, something needs to be said right here. The ability to commit and spend money is perhaps the ultimate power within the federal government. When the characters in the movie The Right Stuff said, “No bucks … no Buck Rogers!” they were speaking the truth. Starving the SOF community of funding was the ultimate weapon of the military services to eliminate special operations from the American military scene. By giving SOCOM its own line of funding, along with the other measures laid out in Nunn-Cohen, Congress was giving the U.S. SOF community the ultimate survival tool.

“It comes back to the fractured command structure that we saw during Desert One,” Cohen said in a 2006 interview for this publication. “I was convinced you had to have a command created with a four-star officer in charge with budget authority that could not be shoved aside by those in the parent services. This had to be a joint command unto itself. And from the beginning, I saw that money is power, so having budget authority means being able to control things.”

SOCOM and its component SOF units would need highly specialized equipment, weapons, supplies, and support

services, everything from state-of-the-art helicopters and firearms to specialized rations and tasked satellite imagery for training and planning in order to carry out its specialized missions. This raised another issue.

Historically, the military has learned that specialized procurements need to be overseen by professionals who have themselves used what is being bought. Since the 1920s, naval aviation professionals have overseen every facet of carrier and aircraft development and procurement for the Navy, and so it has developed within SOCOM. By giving procurement authority and oversight to SOF professionals within SOCOM and its component commands, operators in the field get what they really need, when they need it.

SOF TITLE 10 FUNDING: EXAMPLES

So what kinds of unique things has SOCOM’s Title 10 funding line allowed the SOF community to buy over the years? Quite a few useful items, as the following list indicates:

• Special Operations Aviation (SOA) – Long before Goldwater-Nichols and Nunn-Cohen were conceived, the lack

Team members from the 820th Security Forces Group at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., carry the Scan Eagle unmanned aircraft system (SUAS) after a demonstration to highlight its capabilities Feb. 7. Air Force Special Operations Command is the lead command for SUAS and has been working with the team to prepare and certify them to employ the system. One area of rapid procurement growth in SOCOM is in unmanned aerial vehicles.


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of SOA-specific aircraft was a critical shortcoming for U.S. SOF units. Specialized capabilities like in-flight refueling for helicopters, high-end electronic countermeasures packages, and precision navigation systems simply were not part of the equipment of most conventional military aircraft. So initially, SOCOM concentrated on procurement of heavily modified existing airframes like the C-130 Hercules, H-6 Little Bird, and H-60 Black Hawk. Later, more specialized modifications like the MH-47 Chinook became lynchpins of post-September 11 SOF operations. The CV-22B Osprey is a new development entirely, with SOCOM having helped create the original specification for the Osprey based upon the planned parameters of the 1980 Iran hostage rescue mission. SOCOM has also been able to procure non-standard aircraft like the Polish M-28 Skytruck and the Pilatus PC-12/U-28A for its specialized needs.

• Vehicles – One of the most important additions to American SOF capabilities since the inception of SOCOM has been increasing the mobility of ground units in the field. Nightmare situations for teams like ODA 525 and the British Bravo 2-0 during Operation Desert Storm led SOCOM to procure specialized vehicles for SOF teams needing greater mobility and carrying capacity than mere muscles could provide. Initially, these consisted of off-the-shelf buys of civilian vehicles like Land Rovers for 10th Special Forces Group (SFG). By the late 1990s, SOCOM had contracted with the Letterkenny Army Depot in Pennsylvania to produce a modified HMMWV variant: the Ground Mobility Vehicle (GMV). Introduced in 1998 to 5th SFG, the GMV has become an outstanding success story. SOCOM has also procured a number of SUVs, light pickup trucks, and ATVs to provide mobility when stealth and SOA limitations are factors.

• Armament – For much of SOCOM’s first two decades, units have been using variants of existing weapons from their conventional brethren. However, it did not take long for SOCOM to begin adding its own special features to existing systems like the classic M16 combat rifle. Because of weight, space, and tactical considerations, a short-barreled carbine version of the M16 with a telescoping stock, the M4, was created for SOF units. To this was added the SOCOM-designed MIL-STD-1913 Rail Interface System (RIS), known by its popular name, “the Picatinny Rail,” after the arsenal in New Jersey that developed it. The Picatinny RIS allows for the addition of sights, sensors, lights, and other accessories to weapons like the M4, and has become a standard with conventional military forces and police units across the globe. More recently, SOCOM has begun fielding its first real SOF-specific firearms system, the SOF Combat Assault Rifle, or SCAR. Able to fire either NATO-compatible 5.56 X 45 mm or 7.62 mm ammunition in a variety of configurations, SCAR is rapidly gaining interest from other services and nations.

• Other Equipment and Services – Along with “big” things like aircraft and weapons, SOCOM also regularly procures SOF-specific equipment and services critical to accomplishment of its assigned missions. One area of rapid growth has been in the area of unmanned aircraft systems, ranging from small man-portable aircraft like the RQ-11B Raven to more substantial UAVs like the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper. These have also included precision airdrop systems for both resupply and leaflet delivery, based upon GPS-guided parafoil designs. SOCOM today is also a leader in the development of high-density ration systems, to reduce weight and volume for deployed SOF units. SOCOM also procures specialized services and support, as it did prior

The FN SCAR, shown here in 5.56 mm SCAR-L configuration, is a SOF-specific weapon that is arousing interest from other services and nations.


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to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, with a bulk buy of 1-meter resolution satellite imagery that was critical for planning.

SOF TITLE 10 FUNDING: SUMMARY

Clearly, in the years since the creation of SOCOM, the command’s own Title 10 funding line has been a critical factor in its wide-ranging successes. From Panama to Mogadishu, the ability of the U.S. SOF community to design and procure its own systems and services has provided the national leadership with options that simply would not have existed had SOCOM not created them. At times, it has been America’s critical edge when nothing else was available.

One story in particular illustrates this point. In the fall of 2001, when then-Col. John Mulholland was sending the first Special Forces “A-Teams” into northern Afghanistan, there was only one helicopter available to him for the delivery and resupply of the troops: the MH-47 Chinook. Those aircraft flew the longest and most difficult combat helicopter missions on record, with a single round-trip to Bagram (near Kabul) taking 11 hours and needing three in-flight refuelings. Despite having only six MH-47s available for operations in northern Afghanistan, the unique abilities of the Chinooks to operate at high altitudes (over 19,000 feet above sea level) and refuel in flight was the critical edge America’s SOF forces needed to get into the fight after the attacks of September 11.

Former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen, one of the architects of the Nunn-Cohen amendment that made SOCOM what it is today.

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116 Hero scHool


By Maj. Gen. ricHard coMer (UsaF-ret)

HERO SCHOOL

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In a time of continuous and unbroken war-fighting, the units in Air Force Special

Operations Command (AFSOC) need their newly assigned people to be “combat ready” as soon as possible. A program exists that delivers new people to AFSOC operational units who are fully mission ready at the moment of signing in at the front desk. That program is also, surprisingly, the program that has the most recruiting challenges, historically the highest attrition rate during training, and provides new people for the most dangerous missions in all of Air Force Special Operations. During 2008, AFSOC also recognized this program’s high degree of success and has moved to adopt its methods in its organic, in-house training programs for many of its weapons systems. Success should be imitated.

THE SYSTEM WORKS

A new combat controller cannot possibly arrive at an operational unit with less time in service or at a lower rank than did Senior Airman Zach Rhyner. In April of 2008, Rhyner found himself deployed in the mountains of Afghanistan with a team of Army Green Berets. For his part in the action, Rhyner received the Air Force Cross, second in combat awards only to the Medal of Honor. Here is some of what he did, derived from the medal citation and other sources:

Rhyner directed and controlled 50 “danger close” air strikes and strafing gun runs while wounded and under intense enemy fire during a gun battle against a well-trained insurgent force. The deadly and violent battle lasted more than six-and-a-half hours against an enemy force estimated at 200 fighters. Rhyner, who was pinned down on the side of a 60-foot cliff, held his ground amidst a flurry of bullets and rocket-propelled grenades striking all around him. He quickly and instinctively returned suppressive fire, which assisted the remainder of his element to find positions of cover. Rhyner maintained his composure despite the intense incoming enemy fire, and immediately directed multiple 2.75-inch rockets and 30 mm cannon strafing runs from AH-64 helicopters against enemy positions less than 200 meters from friendly forces.

Rhyner was hit three times by 7.62 mm rounds in the opening exchange of gunfire. He was wounded once in his left leg and struck twice to his chest, only to be saved by his equipment mounted on his load-bearing vest. Ryhner continued to calmly and effectively return fire on

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Combat controllers and pararescuemen from the 720th Operations Support Squadron Advanced Skills Training Flight at Hurlburt Field, Fla., off-load a UH-1 Huey from the 6th Special Operations Squadron during a combat search and rescue training scenario on the Eglin Air Force Base range Sept. 13, 2007. AST is the last phase of training for combat controllers before they go to operational special tactics squadrons. In June 2008 the AST Flight became the Special Tactics Training Squadron.


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the enemy with his M4 rifle and directed precise danger close air strikes from A-10, F-15E, and AH-64 attack aircraft. On multiple occasions, under sustained and effective fire, Rhyner courageously placed himself between enemy forces and wounded soldiers to lay suppressive fire and allow fellow teammates to retrieve critically wounded and dead team members from the line of fire. Rhyner integrated seven helicopter lifts through the objective area to conduct medical evacuations and team exfiltration.

Rhyner suppressed enemy positions with a total of 4,120 rounds of 30 mm cannon fire, 450 rounds of 20 mm cannon fire, nine AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 162 2.75-inch rockets, 10 GBU-38 bombs, one GBU-31 bomb, and two GBU-12 bombs. Additionally, he fired more than 100 rounds from his M4 rifle to deter the enemy’s advance and protect his team. Rhyner’s team leader directly attributed the entire team’s survival to Rhyner’s skill and poise under intense fire while wounded during this harrowing six-and-a-half hour battle.

Rhyner’s story is compelling, but it isn’t all that rare. There are many such stories in the recent history of

special tactics and combat controllers, but most of the men involved have made it up to four stripes before receiving Silver Stars, much less the Air Force Cross. Junior enlisted personnel in the Air Force are filling the role of battlefield airmen admirably. The training and preparation provided by AFSOC’s Advanced Skills Training (AST) system at Hurlburt Field, Fla., has been radically revised over the past few years and those revisions have paid off in combat capability. It’s worth the trouble to look at how this program has evolved over the years, to learn its lessons and see if those lessons apply to other career fields or weapons systems.

TRANSFORMING TRAINING AND AIR COMMANDO INITIATION

In the past nine years, Air Force Special Operations Command has reorganized and revamped how it finds, indoctrinates, and trains new combat controllers. In doing so the command has pioneered a new paradigm for its organic training of people. The combat controllers of AFSOC’s 720th Special Tactics Group experienced a U.

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STTS students undergoing training at Hurlburt Field, Fla. Today, combat controllers are fully combat ready upon assignment to their units.


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serious shortage of trained people in the late 1990s. Their missions and deployments had grown in size and in number while sizeable increases in the number of people who began training did not produce the needed increases in numbers of graduates. Recruiters sent more volunteers, but after a year, the output of successful graduates and qualified combat controllers showed no increase. As Air Force Special Operations Command pushed for action to solve the problem, the command did not have authority over most of the training courses or the living situations of the prospective trainees. Cooperation from Air Education and Training Command (AETC) would be essential to re-engineer the pathway to this career field. While the combat controllers took great pride in the fact that very few in the Air Force were inclined to apply for their jobs and that still fewer could complete the training and qualify, they also needed more people. Change was clearly needed to find a way to increase their numbers, but the proper changes to create the desired results were not so clear.

Late in the year 2000, Col. Bob Holmes, the 720th Special Tactics deputy group commander, set out to find the solution. The training pipeline for Air Force combat controllers was then and remains today one of the most demanding in the U.S. military. The combat controller has to be able to parachute out of airplanes with the Army Airborne, to scuba dive and conduct riverine operations with the Navy SEALs, to call in air strikes as a joint tactical air controller, and to conduct air traffic control at the most austere airfields to ensure de-confliction and air safety in the middle of chaotic combat. Lt. Gen. Clay Bailey, the commander of AFSOC at that time, listened to Holmes’ request for a measure of control of Army Airborne School, Navy Dive School, and several Air Force schools and agreed to see what was possible.

Bailey sent a delegation of his staff to Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, to look into the attrition rate of the combat controller pipeline and to communicate with Air Education and Training Command to see what could be restructured for better results. With them, Holmes sent his recruiting and training officer, 1st Lt. Christopher Larkin, a combat-experienced combat controller who was 12 years an enlisted combat controller before getting his officer commission. The trip resulted in a proposal to move the prospective combat controllers to Hurlburt once they finished the basic courses.

Larkin proposed that the advanced courses – Pre-Scuba, Combat Diver, Military Free Fall, and others – become a phase of training called Advanced Skills Training. For this phase of the training, the candidates would be assigned to Hurlburt Field. The team conceded that the INDOC Course, later renamed the Selection Course, should remain at Lackland and under AETC, and that this course would remain a good first hurdle. Other basic skills training such as Army Airborne, Air Traffic Control, and initial Combat Control School remained also as a method of proving the candidates merited the move to Hurlburt. The move from the home of AETC to the home of Air Force Special Operations would then be an effective signal to the trainees that they had changed their surroundings, their cultures, and their futures.

Previously, for a period as long as two years, the candidates were home based at Lackland and had large spaces of “casual time” between the course dates, living on the large base with little organized to keep them busy, physically fit, or mentally focused on their future as combat controllers. Holmes and Larkin reasoned that the candidates needed the culture of combat controllers to motivate them during the waits, and the presence of the operational controllers at Hurlburt would help them keep their goal in view and would provide them with role models and perhaps even mentors – all good things from which young airmen could benefit.

Agreement came quickly at the major command level and in April of 2001, not long before September 11, Larkin became the first flight commander of the Advanced Skills Training Flight at Hurlburt Field. There wasn’t any dedicated equipment and he had to beg for meeting rooms from the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron to bring the trainees together for classes or meetings, but he did have them together with qualified combat controllers to tell them and show them what their futures held. Soon thereafter, most of the people from Hurlburt and almost all of the qualified combat controllers were deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom, and newly promoted Capt. Larkin found himself as the ranking combat controller on the base. He began calling on the retired controller community to provide the instruction and mentoring needed. As he moved back into a combat unit a year later, the AST had just begun to produce graduates.

The very sound ideas of total immersion into cultural assimilation and team unity for the trainees worked. The attrition rate fell, the candidates succeeded to a much greater degree, and the career field of combat controllers began to fill. The numbers began to come up just in time; however, because of September 11, requirements for combat controllers grew. The success of the revised pipeline could be seen as providential in that the new system was in place exactly when it became most necessary to increase output of the training.


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Five years later, the combat-ready squadrons of combat controllers acknowledged that the new controllers are fully combat ready upon signing in at the units. Gone are the orientation and processing-in requirements that meant not deploying the new controllers for four to six months. They now can deploy to combat immediately if required, and in fact they do so regularly and routinely. Attrition from the program at Hurlburt has itself virtually vanished. Today, the retired senior enlisted combat controllers among the Special Tactics Training Squadron (STTS) faculty have over 150 years of operational experience, sharing their maturity with the young and eager candidates. The program continues its evolution.

Success has inspired investments over the past six years. The AST Flight has grown into the Special Tactics Training Squadron, which unfurled its new flag in June 2008. Additionally, SOCOM and AFSOC invested in a new building to house the squadron with its own equipment for the candidates to use instead of having to borrow from other units on the base. AFSOC has also added other training programs into the squadron, including training for security forces, combat aviation advisors, and other AFSOC airmen who will deploy to combat in jobs performed largely on the ground. Chosen as the first commander of the STTS quite naturally is Maj. Chris Larkin, returning from a combat tour and staff duty in AFSOC headquarters. When asked if he had foreseen the squadron having several missions and such success, Larkin responded, “This is a result we couldn’t even have hoped for back in 2000. I get to live the dream.”

APPLYING THE LESSONS TO A WIDER FORCE

The success of AST has had even more far-reaching effects. The lessons learned from the training of the combat controllers are benefiting the other parts of Air Force Special Operations Command. The present AFSOC commander, Lt. Gen. Donald Wurster, has directed that the lessons of the AST be applied to other AFSOC weapons systems, emphasizing Air Commando cultural immersion and institutionalized training for weapons systems that are small in number and do not have formal schools in Air Education and Training Command.

To accomplish this, Wurster ordered the institution of the Air Force Special Operations Training Center (AFSOTC), and placed Col. Paul Harmon in command of the new organization in October 2008. The very large task of expanding AFSOC training for new aircraft and new areas of the world, increasing the numbers of people in the command by 25 percent, and making them into Air Commandos has now been given more structure with those responsibilities being consolidated in the AFSOTC.

In a still larger context, traditional AFSOC aircraft flying squadrons with forces continually deployed for combat operations have also conducted in-unit training of new personnel and have had to prioritize where the aircraft and instructors must go. The result is always the same and always predictable. Training is delayed or canceled and new people cannot qualify in their mission and rotate to the front. Rotations seize up. The same situation occurs in peacetime when units performing in-house training decide their highest qualified instructors must represent the unit at all joint training events. The temptation to use up the experienced people and give little experience to the new ones is as old as flying squadrons and is a proven method of avoiding risk. In AFSOC’s current situation of continuous combat, such training stoppages are detrimental to the mission and cannot be tolerated.

Additionally, such unique training programs as creating new combat aviation advisors (CAAs) for the 6th Special Operations

Squadron before were left to the unit to perform in house, but with orders to more than double the number of CAAs in short order while conducting multiple missions down range, the ability to assess and train large numbers of new people overwhelms the squadron’s capacity. Similarly, aircraft training on AC-130s or other aircraft that are too small in number to have formal AETC schoolhouses will be included in AFSOTC’s 19th Special Operations Squadron which will have dedicated instructors and aircraft for training. AFSOTC will also contain the USAF Special Operations School at Hurlburt to conduct initiation and history courses to educate new Air Commandos on the rich heritage and accomplishments of Air Force special operators. With all of the tools, Harmon and his training center thereby keep things organized and provide the new Air Commandos their formal training while segregated from the operational units but also keeping them close enough to learn and be motivated by their new operational culture.

Albeit with a lot to accomplish, Harmon’s new unit has a head start as the STTS moved from the Special Tactics Group to join the AFSOTC, and Larkin is one of his subordinate commanders. Harmon himself has years of experience both in AFSOC and in AETC. He’s seen the difficulties of in-unit training with scant resources and he’s seen the need for immediate combat readiness in new people. Training traditionally loses in an operational unit commander’s allocation of resources, and that has often been the case in training new gunship crews, new combat aviation advisors, or conducting the training in the Special Operations Division of the Air Force Weapons School.

With the formation of the AFSOTC, a long-standing tension between training and operations achieves some separation. With the persistence of long-term combat and with AFSOC’s continuous deployment of parts of almost all of its operational squadrons, the need to institutionalize training and separate it from operations has grown to be acute. Now Harmon’s task will be to populate his training center with the proper complement of instructors with combat expertise so the training given to the new people going through the AFSOTC courses truly prepares them for their missions. His task will not be easy, but the emphasis from the top in the form of AFSOC commanders’ intent will give the AFSOTC the ability to grow its instructor force and achieve a balance that will ensure eventually that AFSOC can continually feed the fight without using forever the same limited numbers of qualified people, using one set of people until they are literally used up.

Long-term sustainment of combat capability means long-term programs for training new people. The Advanced Skills Training experience is one AFSOC has learned from and one that the new AFSOTC can put to good use as it remodels programs to assess and train people for other AFSOC missions. The nine years of experience of people like Larkin are well placed within the new organization, the lessons of the past are fully acknowledged, and the future becomes a bit brighter.

It will take some time for AFSOTC to fully accomplish all that is expected, because just to gain flying instructors from the flying units will require those squadrons to upgrade replacements, then transfer people to the new schoolhouse. It took time for AST and the combat controller pipeline to evolve. The AFSOTC will take time as well. But as in the case of AST, the improved results from taking the time and making the changes needed, will result in improved combat capability in a number of Air Force Special Operations Command weapons systems. The new Special Tactics Training Squadron illustrates what can be achieved by taking the time and the trouble to get it right.


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milyIn 2006, the situation in Iraq, and in Anbar province in the west, was dire verging on

disaster. No less a person than the respected Marine Corps chief of intelligence in Iraq, Col. Pete Devlin, had filed a secret report that summer stating, in part, that there were no functioning government institutions in Anbar and that the power vacuum was being filled by insurgents from the terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq. At that time, the most violent city in Anbar province was Ramadi, where, in the words of embedded AP reporter Todd Pitman, the “sheer scale of violence … was astounding.” No one better knew the reality of the situation in Ramadi than Petty Officer Michael Anthony “Mikey” Monsoor,

By dwight Jon ZiMMerMan

PETTY OFFICER MICHAEL A. MONSOOR ANd OPERATON KENTUCKY JUMPER

“I truly thought he was the toughest member of my platoon.”– Delta Platoon Commander Lt. Cmdr. Seth Stone

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the heavy weapons machine gunner and communicator in Delta Platoon, SEAL Team 3.

Born in Long Beach, Calif., on April 5, 1981, Monsoor was a devout Catholic of Christian-Arab descent who grew up in Garden Grove, Calif., the third of four children of George and Sally Monsoor. His family had a history of military service. Both his father and older brother served as Marines, and his grandfather served in the Navy. Though not an “A” student or gifted athlete, it was his determination, resolution, respect for others, and a desire to protect people that made him stand out. Monsoor enlisted in the Navy on March 21, 2001. Following basic training, he attended Quartermaster “A” School, where he earned his quartermaster rating. After a tour of duty at Naval Air Station, Sigonella, Italy, Monsoor entered Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training in Coronado, Calif. He was forced to withdraw when he suffered a broken heel. He returned in 2004 and graduated at the top of his class in March 2005. The next month his rating changed from quartermaster to master-at-arms and he was assigned to SEAL Team 3 Delta Platoon. In April 2006, he and his platoon arrived in Anbar province.

Anbar province, which stretches from Baghdad west to the borders of Syria and Jordan, contained at the time about 600,000 people, most of whom lived in or near the provincial capital of Ramadi. The predominantly Sunni province also accounts for 30 percent of Iraq’s land mass and includes the major city of Fallujah. Fallujah had been the site for Operation Phantom Fury in November 2004. Though the operation was a coalition success against Iraq’s insurgent and terrorist forces, the high number of civilian casualties and the damage and destruction of about half of the city’s homes made it, with respect to the civilian cost, a Pyrrhic victory.

In 2006, Ramadi became an important battleground for what was described as “both a litmus test for the counterinsurgency effort in Iraq and a laboratory” in a broader strategy to secure the area and allow local Iraqi authorities to regain control of the region. Col. Sean MacFarland, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, was made overall commander of the operation to subdue Ramadi. Among his duties, he was to partner with Iraqi army and police units and train and mentor them in the conduct of

counterinsurgency operations. With the experience of Fallujah a fresh memory, MacFarland’s instructions were broad: “Fix Ramadi, but don’t destroy it.”

Because his force was relatively small, MacFarland chose an incremental block-by-block approach to eliminate the insurgents and win over the local sheiks and residents. Targeting the places where enemy activity was strongest, he set up outposts designed to protect and secure areas his troops had fought. In April 2006, Monsoor’s 19-man platoon was deployed to Ramadi and assigned to Task Unit Bravo, part of the U.S. Army 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment (1/506th). The unit was assigned the Mulaab area, one of the most vicious neighborhoods in Ramadi. They were tasked with a broad range of missions, among them patrols, raids, and providing sniper cover for search and seizure operations.

As the heavy weapons machine gunner carrying a Mk. 48, Monsoor’s position was immediately behind the point man when the team patrolled. This enabled him to provide heavy suppression fire to protect his platoon from a frontal enemy attack. Because he was also the team’s communicator, on 15 of the missions he carried a double load of ammunition and communication gear that collectively weighed more than 100 pounds. Yet even when temperatures topped 130 degrees Fahrenheit, he never complained.

No mission – even the rare one in which they did not come under fire – was boring. Of all the missions he was on, only 25 percent did not result in an enemy attack. Thirty-five of the missions erupted in firefights so fierce the streets were described as being “paved with fire.” One such time occurred during a patrol on May 9. One teammate, caught in the middle of the street during the firefight, went down with a bullet wound to the leg. With another SEAL member providing additional cover fire, Monsoor, firing his Mk. 48, dashed out into the street to rescue his teammate. Continuing to fire his machine gun with one hand while pulling the wounded SEAL with the other, and with insurgent bullets kicking up dust and concrete all around them, Monsoor managed to drag his teammate to safety without either of them being hit. For his courage under fire he was awarded the Silver Star.

When he wasn’t on the streets, Monsoor was above them, stationed in a rooftop sniper post. There, acting in his role as a communications

OppOsite: in an undated photo, Master-at-Arms 2nd Class (seAL) Michael A. Monsoor participates in a patrol in support of Operation iraqi Freedom. LeFt: Monsoor (left) on patrol in support of Operation iraqi Freedom. Monsoor served as the heavy weapons machine gunner and communicator in Delta platoon, seAL team 3.


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specialist, he spotted enemy positions and called in support fire. As the weeks went on, the coalition forces were slowly changing the tactical situation for the better. Monsoor’s contribution to the effort through his examples of leadership, guidance, and decisive actions caused him to be awarded the Bronze Star.

With the situation beginning to tip in favor of the coalition forces, MacFarland decided the time was right for the next step. Code-named Operation Kentucky Jumper, it was a combined coalition battalion

clearance and isolation operation in southern Ramadi using integrated American and Iraqi forces. The operation was scheduled to commence on Sept. 29, 2006.

As he had always done before each mission, Monsoor attended mass. Father Paul Halladay, the chaplain stationed in Ramadi at the time, conducted the service, which was on the feast day of St. Michael. As the mission of the archangel is that of protector, his prayer has relevance to those about to do battle:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of GodCast into hell Satan and all evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.Amen.

Monsoor’s assignment was to serve as the machine gunner of a combined force team containing four SEALs and eight Iraq army soldiers. The team was tasked with a supporting role as a sniper overwatch element guarding the western flank during ground operations. The morning was clear, with good visibility. They quickly found a rooftop location that gave them a good field of view for spotting and picking off any insurgent counterattacking force that might approach from the west.

Using tactical periscopes to scan for enemy activity, they soon spotted a group of four insurgents armed with AK-47 assault rifles conducting reconnaissance for follow-on attacks of the ground force. The snipers promptly engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding another. Not long afterward, a mutually supporting SEAL/Iraqi army team killed another enemy fighter. After these two actions, area residents supporting the insurgents began blocking off the streets around them with rocks. The purpose was twofold: to warn away civilians and to alert insurgents that sniper teams were operating in the area. In addition, someone in a nearby mosque using a loudspeaker called upon insurgents to join together in an attack on the coalition troops.

The first attack on their position began in the early afternoon. Suddenly a vehicle loaded with insurgents firing automatic weapons charged the building. The SEALs promptly returned fire. One of the attackers shot a rocket-propelled grenade that hit their building. Though the SEALs and Iraqi soldiers knew the insurgents would follow up with additional attacks, the team chose to carry out its mission and refused to evacuate. After reassessing the situation, the officer in charge, a SEAL lieutenant, identified the insurgents’ most likely avenue of attack, and positioned Monsoor with his heavy machine gun on the roof outcrop overlooking it. Monsoor’s location was near the rooftop’s exit and between two SEAL snipers. This hide-site allowed the three SEALs maximum coverage of the area.

Monsoor was using a tactical periscope when an insurgent managed to sneak up and hurl a hand grenade onto the roof. The grenade hit Monsoor on the chest and bounced onto the rooftop. Monsoor was just a couple of steps away from the exit and could have leaped through it to safety. But there were three other SEALs and eight Iraqi soldiers nearby.

“Grenade!” he shouted, and threw himself onto it. The grenade detonated as he came down on top of it. Shrapnel hit the two SEALs closest to him, wounding them. But Monsoor’s body had absorbed most of the blast. A medevac was called and within minutes, carried the three wounded away. Miraculously, Monsoor was still alive when the medevac returned to the field hospital. But his wounds were mortal.

The actual Medal of Honor prepared for presentation posthumously to Monsoor, who sacrificed himself to save his teammates during combat operations in Iraq, Sept. 29, 2006. The medal is pictured with the Navy Special Warfare (SEAL) Trident. Monsoor’s parents accepted the nation’s highest military honor on behalf of their son during a White House ceremony April 8, 2008. Monsoor was the first Navy SEAL to earn the Medal of Honor for actions in Iraq and the second Navy SEAL to receive the award since Sept. 11, 2001. Monsoor was the fourth armed forces service member to receive the Medal of Honor since the beginning of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.


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The only help possible was provided by Father Halladay, who arrived in time to give Monsoor last rites. Thirty minutes after he had acted to save the lives of those with him, Petty Officer Michael Monsoor was dead.

The lieutenant who was the officer-in-charge on the rooftop with Monsoor remembered, “He never took his eye off the grenade. His only movement was down toward it. He undoubtedly saved mine and the other SEALs’ lives, and we owe him.”

Out for respect for the SEAL who had fought with them, members of the 1/506th held a special memorial service in his name. Iraqi army scouts, who Petty Officer Monsoor had helped train, lowered their flag in memorial and then sent it to his parents.

His body was taken to California and he was buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. As his coffin was being carried from the hearse to the gravesite, the pallbearers walked between two rows of SEALs. When Monsoor’s coffin passed, each SEAL, gold trident badge in hand, slapped it down deeply into the wood casket’s lid, embedding it. By the time the coffin arrived at the grave site, observers said the lid appeared “as though it had a gold inlay.”

Petty Officer Michael Monsoor was gone. But two years later, the nation showed that he would not be forgotten. On April 8, 2008, in a ceremony at the White House presided over by President George W. Bush, Petty Officer Michael Monsoor’s Medal of Honor was presented to his parents. He became the third serviceman in the Iraq war, and first from the Navy, to receive the country’s highest medal for valor. Also on that day, California Congresswoman Zoe Lofren read into the Congressional Record the account of Monsoor’s life and his self-sacrifice, adding, “An ancient historian once wrote, ‘The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet not withstanding, go out to meet it.’ Madam Speaker, these words could speak no better for the personal commitment of warriors like Petty Officer Monsoor, whose service and sacrifice in the face of evil cannot be forgotten.”

On Oct. 29, 2008, Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter announced that DDG-1001, the second ship in the Zumwalt class of destroyers, would be christened Michael Monsoor. And, four days earlier, on Oct. 25, Monsoor, SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy, and Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, who all were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for their courageous actions in Iraq or Afghanistan, were honored with plaques in a rededication ceremony of the Semper Fi

Marine Monument in San Clemente, Calif. It was the first time in the park’s three-year history that both Navy and Marine personnel were honored together. Sara Monsoor, Monsoor’s sister, attended the ceremony and later said, “I think that it is wonderful that they want to add him to this park with the Marines. … My hope is that when people come here, these plaques inspire them to find out their stories and really inspire them to live their lives like these men did.”

Perhaps most importantly, Ramadi is no longer the dangerous city it was during Monsoor’s tour of duty there. Though much work has yet to be done to improve life in Iraq, that already things are much improved is an additional testament that his life, given to save his teammates, was not sacrificed in vain.

The Medal of Honor citation presented by President George W. Bush to George and Sally Monsoor April 8, 2008, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. In addition to his posthumously awarded Medal of Honor, Monsoor also received the Silver Star when he exposed himself to heavy enemy fire to rescue and treat an injured teammate in May 2006.


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In 1988, Demitri Zacharov was a 25-year-old soldier serving in a Soviet Motorized Rifle Regiment

stationed on a small, gray mountain just outside Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Today, a typically cold Chicago winter afternoon, the 46-year-old Afghansti, a Russian term for veterans of the Soviet Afghan War, sat quietly on the bench looking out toward the frozen mass of Lake Michigan, smoke curling from his cigarette, thinking about the question just asked. “I know of this place,” he said, “the Shok Valley. We did not go there. There were no good roads and death was certain.” He tossed his cigarette down, ground it under his boot and continued, “For us, the war was an asylum and Jalalabad was our cage.”

Out of the numerous historical lessons that can be drawn from the failed Soviet war in Afghanistan, the necessity of engaging the population and developing a true national army that is willing to leave their bases and fight for their own country is one lesson the United States understands and has embraced wholeheartedly. Of all the elements of the growing Afghan National Army, the men of the Commando Battalions are, without a doubt, among the very best. Their strength is born from their close relationship with the soldiers of the U.S. Army Special Forces (SF) who train them. Indeed, so effective are the commandos, that Taliban fighters respectfully refer to them as “the wolves” and, as the men of 3rd Special Forces Group, Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 3336, can tell you: When the wolves and their SF brethren decided to test the Taliban in their Shok Valley stronghold, the Taliban knew trouble was coming.

Because of its remote nature – there are no roads leading into the fastness of the area – the Shok Valley, along with the lone village perched high above the valley floor, made for a perfect base for the fierce insurgent force called Hezeb Islami al Gulbadin, or HIG. Founded by Gulbadin Hekmatyer, HIG has been in the thick of regional conflict since the Soviet invasion, going so far at one point as to oppose both the Taliban and the United States at the same time. In 2008, an American

think tank reported that HIG had been, after initial coalition successes, “sidelined from Afghan politics but has recently reemerged as an aggressive militant group, claiming responsibility for many bloody attacks against coalition forces and the administration of President Hamid Karzai.” Deciding that HIG’s hold on the area must be challenged, coalition planners decided to launch a daring raid into the heart of the Shok Valley stronghold with a combined force of Afghan commandos and their Special Forces counterparts. The battle that followed was both a test and a testament to their skill and bravery.

The Afghan/American force, built around the Special Forces soldiers of ODA 3336, was assigned to take out specific high-value targets within the HIG organization. The insurgent group was known to be solidly entrenched and was guarded by a corps of well-trained foreign fighters. Intelligence estimates concluded that HIG had been stockpiling weapons and ammunition in the fortress-like village since the Russian invasion some 20 years before. The village itself is a series of multi-storied structures built along a rise of terraced hills perched well above the valley floor. At one edge of the village was a precipice that dropped almost 100 feet to the next lowest level.

Even though no coalition force had ever entered the valley, ODA team leader Capt. Kyle Walton and team sergeant Master Sgt. Scott Ford had every confidence in their commando counterparts. “We eat, sleep, and train with these commandos,” said Walton. “We die with them,

By Patrick Jennings, Ph.D.

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too. These guys are close friends to us. At the outset of the attack, I lost my interpreter, and we were as close as anyone.” Staff Sgt. Luis Morales, the team’s intelligence sergeant, was equally proud and confident of his men. “We have such a big rapport with the commandos we’ve trained and they have such a loyalty to us.” So strong is the bond that the Afghans, Morales noted, “try as hard to protect us as we try to protect ourselves.”

As they crafted their plan for the 130-man assault force, Walton and Ford knew their commandos would be backed up with the tremendous firepower and tactical knowledge of the ODA, and the force multipliers a Special Forces “A” Team brings to the fight, like helicopters and fixed-wing close air support. Nearly every member of the Afghan commando team had some combat experience. Others had a vast amount of experience, such as Walton’s interpreter, who had six years of war experience, time with six SF teams, and hundreds of firefights. Overhead, the assault force could rely on two F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft piloted by men from the 335th Tactical Fighter Squadron (TFS) and a flight of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.

Well before the sun came up on April 6, 2008, the men of the assault force were carefully going over their pre-combat checks, and the plan was briefed one last time. The team was composed of Walton, Ford, Staff Sgt. Dillon Behr, Staff Sgt. Seth Howard, Morales, Staff Sgt. Ronald Shurer, Staff Sgt. John Walding, Sgt. David Sanders, and Sgt. Matthew Williams. Attached to the team were Air Force Staff Sgt. Zachary Rhyner, the Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC), and a young specialist named Michael Carter, a combat cameraman attached to the team to photograph this mission. Once their gear was ready and the mission briefed one last time, a flight of CH-47 Chinook helicopters lifted the men from their base, up high over the mountains that hulk over Jalalabad, and into the shadowy depths of the Shok Valley.

The mission was challenged almost from the start. Unable to land on the valley floor, the assault force had to jump from the hovering Chinooks. For Morales this was fine. “I feel comfortable with my feet on the ground,” he said. “I don’t feel comfortable in the helicopter – we can’t control what happens there. But on the ground we have a plan, we go in and do it, and the rest falls into place.” The plan called for the team to slip into the village unannounced, and as they worked their way up the terraced cliffs to the first set of houses, it seemed like they just might make it. Suddenly, automatic rifle fire ripped down from above and the team found themselves caught in an ambush. The rest of the plan, as Morales might say, would now have to fall into place.

The initial burst of fire struck at roughly the halfway point along the long line of troops; the target was the C2 element, or command and control node, cutting the team into three sections. The C2 element, a small but crucial group of soldiers, contained the detachment commander; an interpreter; Behr, the team communications specialist; Rhyner, the JTAC; and Carter, the combat cameraman. Walton’s interpreter, the veteran of six years’ combat, fell dead, and next to him Behr was hit in the leg. Carter remembered, “We started taking fire from almost every direction. It seemed like 360 [degrees] and that’s when rounds started impacting … everybody just started contact, started firing.”

Walton, Rhyner, and Carter began laying suppressive fire and quickly found cover in a small cut etched in the cliff face. The C2 element was pinned down by enemy fire. Behr, still very much in the fight and engaging enemy positions, was about 15 feet away from Carter and Walton when a second round smashed into his arm. A man from one of the assault teams made his way to Behr and had just begun to perform first aid when he too was felled by enemy fire. Acting quickly, Walton slipped out from the face of the cliff and unleashed

OppOsite and abOve: Members of Operational detachment alpha (Oda) 3336 of the 3rd special Forces Group recon the remote shok valley of afghanistan where they fought an almost seven-hour battle with terrorists in a remote mountainside village.

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a hail of suppressive fire to cover Carter as he rushed to the fallen soldiers and pulled Behr to a safe position. The two men then shifted positions, this time Carter laying down fire as Walton rescued the second soldier.

Farther up the hill, Staff Sgt. David Sanders, with the lead assault element of Afghan commandos, quickly identified the buildings the enemy was using for protection. His commandos threw out a fusillade of fire to relieve the C2 element. Sanders could not maneuver but could keep the insurgents from flanking the rest of his team. Back with the C2 element, Walton knew he would need air support to relieve his beleaguered command, but also knew his communications sergeant was out of the fight and worse yet separated from his gear. Once again Walton, this time with the help of the JTAC, exposed himself to lay down fire and cover Carter as he dashed out retrieve the critical radio. With the radio in hand, the JTAC and the team commander quickly established communications with the F-15s prowling overhead.

Standing next to Rhyner, Walton quickly surveyed his compact but violent battle space and made the decision to bring the Eagles in “danger close.” Walton recalled that he “was standing next to the combat controller, and when we got

Above: Afghan National Army 201st Commando Kandak prepare to deploy on their first mission in southern Afghanistan, Feb. 19, 2008. The Afghan commandos are among the very best troops of the Afghan army, born from their close relationship with Special Forces troops. RighT: Staff Sgt. Zachary Rhyner, then an airman, was awarded the Air Force Cross for his actions in Shok valley, April 6, 2008.

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to a place where we could talk, he called in close air support, and the F-15s rolled in immediately. I knew my guys were up there, and I know that when you call in danger-close air, you are probably going to get injured or killed,” said Walton. “I called back to Sanders and asked if he was too close. He said, ‘Bring it anyway.’ Bombs started exploding everywhere. When I called to see if he was still alive, all I could hear him saying was, ‘Hit them again.’” Every commander knows that calling for danger close air support is a rare event; Walton was forced to call for danger close bomb runs nearly 70 times before this fight was over.

Circling high overhead, Capt. Prichard Keely, a weapons system officer, and Maj. James Scheideman, a pilot from the 335th TFS, maintained constant communication with the assault force on the ground as they battled the insurgent force. The Strike Eagle’s targeting pod gave the F-15 crew a powerful vantage point. Keely noted that, “I could see people with weapons moving around on top of the houses.” For the men on the ground, there was no doubt the distant F-15s were keeping them alive and safe. Keely, along with Walton and the JTAC on the ground, had the crucial job of coordinating the ballet of fast-moving fighters, slower ground-attack aircraft, and even slower helicopters.

Far below the Strike Eagles the men of ODA 3336 continued to battle for their very existence. Using every weapon available, Walton called for additional support from two AH-64 Apache helicopters that continually slipped in using their 30 mm chain guns to clear the roofs of gathering insurgents. All the while Walton’s men returned fire. Team members recall going through masses of ammo in addition to the bombs that were dropped and the rounds the aircraft were firing. According to Walton, the team’s fire and that of the commandos was controlled and accurate. Much to Walton’s chagrin, the weather was closing in and his close air support might be called away. Since there was no way to be sure they could get out of the valley that night, the ODA was careful not to waste their limited ammunition supply.

Walton and ODA 3336 were in need of a miracle, and one arrived in the form of a massive explosion that dragged everyone’s attention from the growing fight. A bomb struck a large building and the resulting blast blew the entire structure apart. “Good guy or bad guy, you’re going to stop when you see that,” said Morales. “It reminded me of the videos from 9/11 – everything starts flooding at you, debris starts falling, and everything gets darker.” Further down the trail, below the C2 element, Staff Sgt. Seth Howard used the jaw-dropping blast as a diversion to move closer to the fighting. Once he gained a better position, Howard, a trained sniper, began picking off insurgents. Howard directed his small commando assault team to pin the insurgents so he could U.

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Capt. Prichard Keely prepares for takeoff in his F-15E Strike Eagle Feb. 23 from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. In April 2008, Keely, a 335th Fighter Squadron weapons systems officer, and his aircrew from the 335th FS provided close-air support for ground forces during a massive firefight in Shok Valley, Afghanistan. The 335th FS was deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.


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maneuver his sniper rifle and a recoilless rifle to different positions. “They had been hunting us and now we were hunting them too,” said Walton. “What turned the battle was Seth [Howard] and his element.”

By this time, Keely was directing two A-10 Warthogs toward the battle, when he noticed more insurgents pouring down the valley toward the fight. He called down to Walton who then knew he had to get out of this fight right away if only because of the wounded. Once more, Walton called on Carter, this time to join Sgt. Sanders, the team engineer, to find a way down to the valley floor. The route was treacherous. “We had to ‘Spider-Man’ down the cliff to find ways,” Carter said. “There were 20-foot, straight-down drops. It was just a bad place to be.” Although the route was bad, Sanders assured Walton he could get the wounded men down the cliff.

Once their escape route was identified, Ford set up the medevac and organized the less seriously wounded to carry the more critically injured down. While organizing the commandos, Ford was shot in the chest plate by sniper fire. Undaunted, he leapt to his feet and let loose a hail of covering fire. An insurgent sniper caught Ford in his sights and fired. Down the hill Ford reeled from the impact as the sniper round tore through his left arm, nearly severing it. With a tourniquet around his arm, the team sergeant climbed down the mountain and continued to organize the medevac. As Morales slipped down the cliff, he glanced over to see Walding, one of the assault team leaders, calmly carrying his leg, which had been severed by a sniper shot, down the difficult incline.

High above the raging battle, Keely and Scheideman remained in the fight for three

Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, U.S. Army Special Operations Command commanding general, pins the Silver Star on Staff Sgt. John Walding during a ceremony on Dec. 12, 2008, for his valorous actions in combat. He received the Silver Star with 18 fellow soldiers from 3rd Special Forces Group.

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hours. The F-15 joined up with a circling tanker, refueling twice before being relieved by two other Strike Eagle aircrews. While the peak of the fight had passed, it was difficult for Keely to leave before it was truly over. “We had run out of gas and we had run out of munitions,” he said. “You just wish there was one more thing you could do to keep those guys safe.”

As the last of the wounded made their way down, Walton, Howard, and Carter remained behind to cover the team and retrieve mission essential equipment. “There were a lot of guns around where everybody had been shot,” said Howard. “It kind of became an issue that there were too many guns up there and we didn’t want to leave them in enemy hands.” Carter braved a hail of fire to retrieve these weapons and other equipment – leaving the cameras that had been shot to bits during the initial minutes of the battle. Carter gathered equipment and began throwing it off the clif f, while Howard continued to pick off enemy combatants, covering the medevac. Eventually alone, and with less than a magazine of ammunition left, Howard slipped away, but only after his team was safely down the mountain. Reportedly, by the end of the fight, between 150 and 200 insurgents were killed. Almost every member of ODA 3336 was injured, along with several Afghan commandos. Amazingly, despite the ferocity of the battle, only two Afghanis were killed.

Once in the valley, the men of ODA 3336 and their friends from the commandos were evacuated to nearby hospitals. Once in the medical system, the men found themselves separated from their team and their comrades. ODA 3336 would not stand together again for nearly eight months. It would be Dec. 12, 2008, at Fort Bragg, N.C., when, in one of the largest awards ceremonies since the Vietnam era, the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) awarded 19 Silver Star Medals, two Bronze Star Medals for Valor, two Army Commendation Medals for Valor, and four Purple Hearts. At the center of the ceremony were the men of ODA 3336, who were presented with 10 of the 19 Silver Stars.

Prior to the awarding of the medals, the story of these men was told once again, narrated by members of 3rd Special Forces Group who told of the daring feats of each Special Forces

soldier. “As we have listened to these incredible tales, I am truly at a loss for words to do justice to what we have heard here,” Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said. “Where do we get such men? … There is no finer fighting man on the face of the earth than the American soldier. And there is no finer American soldier than our Green Berets.” Mulholland was confident that

many people simply wouldn’t believe the courage displayed by the men arrayed before him. “If you saw what you heard today in a movie, you would shake your head and say, ‘That didn’t happen.’ But it does, every day.”

The editors are indebted to USASOC’s Janice Burton for the use of quotations and information derived from her story “Fierce Battle Above Shok Valley Earns Silver Stars.”


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When someone from outside the military envisions a special operations forces

(SOF) soldier, the image that comes to mind is a combination of many things – perhaps a bit of Sgt. Rock of comic book fame thrown in with a dash of Hollywood superhero and mixed with clean-cut looks and a triathlete’s physique. While “that” SOF soldier might exist, the reality, the real silent professional, is far more interesting and exciting, because that soldier is someone you might actually pass on the street, never knowing he was among the elite. This is a story about one such soldier.

Enter Chief Warrant Officer 5 (CW5) David Cooper. One might easily mistake him for a veteran firefighter, a job he once held in Cincinnati, Ohio, years ago before entering the Army in 1985. What you might not realize in passing this average fellow is that Cooper is among the very best helicopter pilots in the Army, currently the senior regiment warrant officer for the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), known as the Night Stalkers, or that on Nov. 27, 2006, one single but desperate word tested his skill, training, and mettle to the limit and beyond: “Mayday!”

The day began like so many others in a combat zone like Iraq. A mission long in the planning was given a green light and the assigned elements began their final briefs and equipment checks. For Cooper, this meant reviewing meteorological reports, poring over route maps, and thoroughly checking every inch of his sleek AH-6 “Little Bird” helicopter. Developed during the Vietnam War as a

light observation craft, the OH-6 Cayuse helicopter gained its fame operating in the dangerous hunter-killer world of “pink teams.” A pink team was composed of one OH-6 helicopter and two AH-1 Cobra helicopters. While the two Cobras hovered at a distance, the lightly armed OH-6 would drift just above treetop level as if searching for enemy positions; in essence, act as bait. If the enemy bit by firing at the OH-6, the Cobras would sweep in and destroy the position. Flying the OH-6 in Vietnam took skill, courage, and a bit of insanity, but the soldiers who flew them were professionals.

Fast and nimble, the AH-6 of today, while it is essentially the same airframe of 40 years ago, features a more powerful engine and improved avionics, including an embedded Global Positioning System (GPS)/inertial navigation system and forward-looking infrared (FLIR). The AH-6 can be armed with two seven-tube, 2.75-inch rocket launchers and a pair of six-barreled M134 7.62 mm “miniguns,” each with up to 2,000 ready rounds. The 160th SOAR is the only unit in the Army to fly them and their crews are as skilled, courageous, and professional as their Vietnam predecessors. In fact, the Night Stalkers may be the finest combat aviators in the world today, given their training, experience, and constant flying of combat missions.

Because of his experience, Cooper was scheduled to fly as the lead pilot for the mission, something for which he was eminently qualified. He was originally flight-qualified in AH-64 attack helicopters with the 2nd Squadron, 6th Cavalry at Fort Hood, Texas, the first Apache unit to operate

LittLe Bird – Big FightCW5 DaviD COOper aT War By Patrick Jennings, Ph.D.

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in Europe in the 1980s. He later served in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and led the airborne escort for Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf during the armistice negotiations at Safwan Airfield following the cessation of hostilities. In late 1994, Cooper applied for and was selected for training in the AH-6 Little Bird, and was assigned to the 160th SOAR at Fort Campbell, Ky. Cooper has seen extensive combat while flying Little Birds for the Night Stalkers, including providing support for the 75th Ranger Regiment during its spectacular seizure of the Haditha Dam complex in April 2003.

This day, Cooper was leading a flight of six Night Stalker helicopters: his flight of two AH-6s, two MH-6 troop-carrying Little Birds (each with four SOF ground personnel aboard), and two MH-60 Black Hawks, the latter also loaded with SOF ground troops. They were going after a known terrorist leader in a house north of Baghdad, officially tagged as a “foreign fighter facilitator.” As the flight lifted from the pad at its base near Baghdad in the early afternoon the sky was clear and blue, ceiling and visibility unlimited, with the temperature comfortably in the high 80s. As the flight swung north, the SOF raiders checked their equipment, while in the cockpits all seemed in order – the Night Stalkers and their passengers were on the prowl.

As the flight crews busied themselves with cockpit management tasks, the mission was jolted to action by the unexpected cry of “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!” from the AH-6 on Cooper’s right.

“Other than in the movies,” Cooper said, “I had never heard that on the radio.”

Below, an insurgent had launched an RPG at the flight and struck a lucky blow at the passing Little Bird – lucky for the insurgent because such a shot is difficult – and for the Little Bird because the warhead failed to detonate. Still, the AH-6 had lost its tail rotor, making control difficult and requiring the crew keep their airspeed high to keep the helicopter flying in a straight line and to land immediately. Fortunately, the landscape below was mostly flat, open desert, so the pilots were able to make a “running landing” at 60 to 65 knots.

The remainder of the flight quickly landed near the downed Little Bird and set up a protective perimeter while Cooper loitered overhead to ensure the area was secure. The special operators quickly exited the helicopters and established a defensive position as the aircrews extracted their comrades from the damaged ship. All told there were 20 special operators on the ground, along with the four

MH-6 pilots. The injured Little Bird crew was loaded aboard one of two MH-60s and then both Black Hawks returned to base. The rest of the mission force would wait for the downed aircraft recovery team to extract the damaged aircraft for return stateside for repairs.

By this time, Cooper had landed with the rest of the flight to await the recovery team. The small team was on the ground for about 40 minutes when a number of trucks with anti-aircraft machine guns mounted in their beds approached their location. The senior ground force non-commissioned officer (NCO) asked Cooper to get airborne and check them out to see whether they were “friendlies” or not. As if on cue, the gun trucks began to fire on the small U.S. force. Cooper and his copilot took off and quickly realized the jarring extent of the threat: There were six gun trucks mounting twin-barreled, ZPU-2 14.5 mm heavy anti-aircraft machine guns about 800 to 1,000 meters away from the crash site. Each gun truck was crewed by four or five men – the enemy force totaled between 20-30 men.

“They were small pick-up trucks with a huge gun in the back that looks like it’s launching volleyballs at us – and there are six of these trucks,” Cooper said.

As Cooper and his copilot swept across the desert avoiding enemy fire, the situation grew worse. More than two dozen men occupying a small house about 800 meters from the downed helicopter began to fire at Cooper’s AH-6 and the team on the ground with everything from AK-47s to rocket propelled grenade launchers (RPGs). So completely focused was Cooper on the threat from the gun trucks that he didn’t notice the new threat at first.

“My copilot was pointing out the guys in this house – ‘Hey, they’re shooting at us!’ I thought he was talking about the trucks [and said] ‘Yeah, I know they’re shooting at us, I can see them.’ He said, ‘No. Look down. Them! Them are shooting at us.’”

Opposing them, the U.S. troops were armed only with light infantry weapons that could engage the enemy fighters in the house, but not those in the gun trucks. The flat desert terrain made the situation worse, as it offered little cover for the beleaguered Americans. So desperate was the situation that Cooper’s copilot was shooting out the right side of the helicopter with his rifle.

It was immediately apparent that Cooper would have to defend the ground force from the more distant gun trucks with his lightly armed Little Bird. As soon as the AH-6 had lifted into view, the enemy fighters on the trucks directed all their fire toward his aircraft. Cooper knew his job was to

draw fire, but was equally aware that the 14.5 mm rounds thrown out by the ZPU-2s would easily shred his ship. Still, the Little Bird was not without talons, and Cooper soon turned his two six-barreled, 7.62 mm miniguns that fire about 3,000 rounds per minute and 2.75-inch rocket pods loaded with a mixture of flechette, high-explosive, and smoke rounds on the enemy positions. “I was making multiple runs at the trucks and multiple runs at the house, taking calls for fire from the ground forces,” Cooper said. Meanwhile, the senior ground force NCO had already called back to their base asking for the Quick Response Force (QRF) to be launched. While the QRF began to organize immediately, it took a while to get Night Stalker aircrew out of crew rest and ready to fly.

Cooper heard over his radio that a U.S. Air Force F-16 Falcon was circling overhead at about 12,000 to 15,000 feet above ground level, but could not from his high altitude separate friendly forces from enemy or non-combatants from combatants. Cooper was convinced that he and his copilot were the only support available to defend the ground force. Maneuvering his ship aggressively at very low level, Cooper could see and hear the enemy’s fire. “When those rounds go past

OppOsite: two 160th special Operations Aviation Regiment AH-6 Little Bird helicopters take off for a mission at a forward-deployed location in southern iraq during Operation iraqi Freedom. As Cooper demonstrated, the diminutive Little Birds punch well above their weight. ABOve: Chief Warrant Officer 5 David F. Cooper, 160th special Operations Aviation Regiment.

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they sound like a snap, but this sounded like – and I’m not making this up – this sounded like being on the inside of a bag of popcorn in the microwave,” Cooper said. “I was initially scared, but then you calm down, you’re getting your job done, and there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to be killed this day. This is it, this is how it ends. All right? Got it.”

After roughly 15 minutes of grueling cat-and-mouse combat, Cooper was low on ammunition and slipped back to the American position. “I came back around and landed at the crashed AH-6. We left the helicopter running and me and the copilot jumped out and began taking rockets from the crashed AH-6 and putting them into our rocket pods,” Cooper said. The other four Night Stalkers jumped up to help them reload in a hail of gunfire from the house and gun trucks. Then the Little Bird was airborne again. There were no orders sending them up, but Cooper and his copilot knew it was their duty to protect the men and aircraft on the ground.

Once again the AH-6 flicked around the battlefield, playing hide-and-seek against the enemy force. “Varying altitude and airspeeds, banking left and right, again I’m just acting like a crazy man in that helicopter so they cannot get a bead on us,” Cooper said. “I’m flying anywhere from five feet to 75 feet, 10 knots to 120 knots, doing whatever I can.”

After another 15 minutes of continually attacking through a curtain insurgent fire, Cooper was again low on ammunition and now also on fuel. Back on the ground, the special operations troops were furiously defending their ground and covering the grounded MH-6 crews as they transferred the ammo from their ships and the downed AH-6 to Cooper’s Little Bird – an action that would earn each of them a Bronze Star with “V” device for valor. “They were able to get the machine gun rounds … they were able to get more rockets out for me. I had help so it went much faster, and this time I’m able to take some minigun ammo with me. We transferred about half of it, because I was scared to death that I was going to crash way out there somewhere and take all of that good minigun ammo with me,” Cooper said, “and I did not want that to happen, because the ground guys can use that same ammo in their machine guns.”

Cooper’s Little Bird turned skyward again, skimming over the desert floor, guns roaring at the insurgent stronghold in the house. The ground force was low on ammunition, and Cooper’s AH-6 had almost used up the full combat load of all the Little Birds, but after landing yet again, loading the last of the minigun ammunition and with the other Night Stalkers carrying out a hot refueling as well, Cooper was ready to enter the fight one more time. About this time the QRF, more AH-6s (one flown by the two injured aviators who had originally crashed, after

Cooper poses for a photograph in an AH-6 Little Bird helicopter. An AH-6 pilot and the senior warrant officer of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Cooper was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry in combat during a ceremony on July 11, 2008, at Fort Campbell, Ky.

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they dodged the flight surgeon and ran to the first available ship) and more F-16s were inbound, when Cooper and his copilot sighted another truck, this one headed north toward the house. Now accompanied by the newly arrived AH-6s, Cooper rolled in on the truck, putting guns and rockets on the target, obliterating it and its passengers. With the QRF now on site, an exhausted Cooper and his copilot flew the war-weary ship back to their base, amazingly undamaged from their trials of the past several hours. That night an aircraft recovery team, escorted by Cooper flying his sixth and last sortie of the day, safely extracted the damaged AH-6.

As the fight began to wind down, high above the battle in his F-16, Air Force Maj. Troy Gilbert finally got a bead on the now withdrawing gun trucks, and decided to drop well below accepted altitude and get his Viper into the fight. As he roared down to 3,500 feet he spotted two trucks racing from the house. Gilbert twisted around and strafed the lead truck, then turned and went after the second. In normal conditions, this kind of high-angle strafing attack would have started at about 5,600 feet, but Gilbert likely felt he did not have time to climb and hit the second truck in time, and started the second attack at only about 2,800 feet. Tragically, he was too low to recover, and the F-16 slammed into the ground, killing Gilbert. Gilbert was later posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Roughly seven months after the fight, Cooper was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award

for valor. His copilot was earlier awarded the Silver Star. Cooper’s award is the first ever presented to a Night Stalker in the regiment’s distinguished history, and was the first since Vietnam that was not posthumous. At the ceremony, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Wagner, commander of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said of Cooper’s actions that day, “Imagine what would have happened had he not defied all odds and heroically flown into a heavily armed gauntlet attracting fire to himself in order to divert deadly enemy fire from his teammates and then, most courageous and heroically, rearming and refueling on site to continue the fight. Unbelievable courage, brilliant presence of mind, selfless saving acts under the most demanding combat conditions … a true hero in every sense of the word.” Cooper accepted the award as one might expect of a silent professional. He did not forget those Night Stalkers who were on the battlefield with him, as he thanked them for working together that day. “I accept it on behalf of all Night Stalkers, past, present, and future.”

Editors’ note: Anyone who understands the roles and missions of the 160th SOAR knows that they often operate in a clandestine world that is totally incompatible with the public telling of their stories. This story is a rare exception to that rule, and a special thanks is owed to Lt. Col. John Clearwater, Carol Darby, Walter “Ski” Sokalski, Kimberly Tiscione, and, most of all, CW5 David Cooper for making it possible to tell.

Cooper is presented the Distinguished Service Cross by Adm. Eric T. Olson, commander of United States Special Operations Command, during a ceremony at Fort Campbell, Ky., on July 11, 2008. Behind them is Col. Clayton M. “Clay” Hutmacher, commander of the 160th SOAR.

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British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it “the soft underbelly of Europe.” War correspondent Ernie Pyle called it that “tough old gut.” “It” was Italy. The two-year Italian campaign of World War II was heartbreakingly brutal. Fighting in rugged terrain

that gave all advantage to the German defenders, Allied gains were too often measured in yards and high casualty rates – at one point the price paid was an average of one casualty for every two yards. In November 1943, the Allied advance had stalled at the formidable Winter Line, located about 70 miles south of Rome. These fortifications that stretched from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic Coast included the main Gustav Line, supported by the Bernhardt and Hitler lines. American 5th Army Commander Lt. Gen. Mark Clark was determined to breach the German defenses and reach the Liri Valley, the “gateway to Rome,” before the onset of winter. He code-named his plan Operation Raincoat; as it turned out, an appropriate name, because it rained for days before and during the attack.

Strategically, Clark recognized that Italian topography granted him few options. He later wrote, “There was only one sector on which we could move in strength; that was on either

OPERATION RAINCOATBy Dwight Jon Zimmerman

The FirST Special Service FOrce and The BaTTle FOr MOnTe la diFenSa

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side of Mount Camino, beyond which lay the Liri River Valley leading to the Italian capital. To reach the Liri Valley, we first had to drive the Germans off the Camino hill mass, which included Mount Lungo, Mount la Difensa, Mount la Remetanea, Mount Maggiore, and a little town called San Pietro Infine. … We had little choice but to blast our way through the narrow Mignano Gap adjacent to Mount Camino, and [German theater commander, Field Marshal Albert] Kesselring knew it despite our feints along the coast and elsewhere.”

Operation Raincoat’s success depended on the early conquest of the German fortifications on Hill 960, Monte la Difensa. The mission to capture la Difensa went to a recently arrived unit as tough as the Italian terrain. The unit was originally assigned to conduct large-scale guerilla operations in occupied Norway. Following the cancellation of that, it participated in what proved to be bloodless landings on the Aleutian Island of Kiska that had been held, and then abandoned, by the Japanese. Now, and for the first time, the unit with the misleading name of the First Special Service Force (FSSF) was going to see combat.

Even among the special operations units formed in World War II, the FSSF was unique. A bi-national Canadian-American unit, its leader, Col. Robert T. Frederick (West Point, 1928), who had given the unit its innocuous name in order to disguise its purpose, requested that volunteers be “single men between ages of 21 and 35 who had completed three years or more grammar school within the occupational range of Lumberjacks, Forest Rangers, Hunters, North Woodsmen, Game Wardens, Prospectors, and Explorers.” Frederick was also willing – even eager – to accept troublemakers from other units. It became a perverse point of pride for some “braves,” as they called themselves, to state, “I got into the Force without a criminal record!”

The Force’s training was designed to prepare the men for operations in cold weather and mountainous regions. To say that the training was physically rigorous was an understatement. An official Canadian report noted, “The programme of physical training was designed to produce a standard of general fitness and stamina capable of meeting the severest demands made upon it by fatigue of combat, unfavorable terrain, or adverse weather. This physical training has been built up to such a pitch that an ordinary person would drop from sheer exhaustion in its early stages.” The braves learned how to ski, climb steep slopes, and travel long distances over rugged terrain while carrying a rucksack and weapons with a total weight of more than 70 pounds.

The “Force,” as it was informally called, was classified as light infantry. It contained a total of 2,400 men. The combat echelon included the Force Headquarters and three regiments of two battalions each. Each battalion was divided into three companies, each company into three platoons, and each platoon into two sections of 12 to 16 men each. Officer and NCO appointments were integrated, without regard to nationality, on a proportionate basis to personnel of both countries. The only exception to this integrated arrangement was that the service echelon was composed entirely of U.S. personnel. This was because the unit would be supplied through the U.S. Army G-4 system. Thanks to the unit’s unique administrative position as part of the general staff (which meant Frederick reported directly to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall), Frederick was able to requisition for his men weapons, vehicles, and supplies that other, less well-connected units could only envy. It may have been light infantry, but it was heavily armed light infantry.

The First Special Service Force’s administrative classification placed it outside the control of Lt. Gen. Leslie McNair’s Army Ground Force (AGF), a fact that did not sit well with McNair. Before the Force could be deployed, McNair insisted that it prove it was up to AGF standards.

On June 15, 1943, an AGF inspection team arrived to certify the Force was qualified for commitment overseas. The inspection included road marching, physical fitness, and individual tests on military subjects. Minimum passing grade was 75 percent. The braves’ scores were literally off the charts – the average score for the unit itself was 125 percent. On some tests, like those that measured strength and speed, individuals scored as high as 200 percent. Frederick had so thoroughly trained his men that tests designed to assess night operations proficiency proved to be child’s play; the braves were so skilled in the use of map and compass that they never got lost, no matter how dark the night or unfamiliar the terrain, and regardless of weather conditions. In its report to AGF headquarters, the inspectors stated that

OppOsite: A “brave” of the First special service Force (FssF) fires his Johnson light machine gun (LMG) in italy. the Johnson LMG was used only by FssF, Marine Raiders, and paramarines during World War ii. AbOve: the command post of FssF in January 1944, during the mountain campaign in italy.

“You can’t be here. it is impossible to come up those rocks.” – captured German captain on la Difensa




the First Special Service Force “was ready for combat.” Additionally, they informed Frederick that the Force demonstrated the coordination and teamwork of a championship professional ball club.

Their extraordinary physical condition, and their many technical and combat skills, would be put to the test in the capture of la Difensa.

La Difensa was part of a 6-mile long, 4-mile wide complex of steep peaks and ridgelines averaging about 3,000 feet in height and known as the Camino hill mass. La Difensa formed the “forward position” facing Clark’s troops, and as its name suggests, seemed designed for defense. The northeast face was particularly imposing. Near the top was a cliff 200 feet high with a 70-degree slope, and above that was a series of six ledges, each averaging about 30 feet in height. Only after all that was overcome was the summit reached.

Defending the mountain were about 400 men, including the veteran 3rd Battalion, 104th Panzergrenadier Regiment and elements of the 3rd

Battalion, 129th Panzergrenadier Regiment. The 115th Reconnaissance Battalion was held in reserve. The German defenses were formidable. Interlocking machine gun and mortar positions were dug into the rock, making them impervious to artillery fire. Narrow trails and natural approaches were mined and covered by well-camouflaged snipers. German forward observers could call down accurate artillery fire, and forces on one hill could count on support from other units stationed on nearby summits and ridges. The only weakness in la Difensa’s defenses was on the northeast side. Deemed impassible even by locals, this part was lightly guarded.

The FSSF arrived in Naples on Nov. 19 and was quickly transported to the staging area. Frederick was told the Force would be assigned to II Corps and attached to the 36th Division. Its mission was to take la Difensa on Dec. 3 and then press forward and take Monte la Remetanea. Simultaneous attacks by X Corps and the 36th Division

Five men of a machine gun squad from the 2nd Regiment, FSSF, prepare their “10-in-1” ration supper in the extreme cold of the Apennine Mountains near Radicosa, Italy.


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would be conducted against Monte Camino and Monte Maggiore respectively. The attacks would be preceded by combined air raids and artillery barrages.

While his men got ready for their first battle, Frederick conducted reconnaissance. He then devised an audacious plan of his own, one that called for speed, surprise, and shock to swiftly overcome the enemy. He decided to attack at night and directly up the steep northeast slope. If things went as he believed they would, his men would conquer la Difensa before the Germans realized what had happened.

The artillery and air attacks began on Dec. 2. About 900 guns delivered high-explosive, white phosphorous, and smoke shells in what was the largest artillery barrage at the time. During one hour alone, 22,000 rounds blanketed la Difensa. Though participants later said that it appeared as if “the whole mountain was on fire,” the results would prove mixed. Some areas suffered heavy casualties, while other, more well-protected emplacements experienced no greater discomfort than a loss of sleep.

The task of seizing the mountain was given to the 2nd Regiment under the command of Canadian Lt. Col. D.D. “Windy Willy” Williamson. Supporting it would be the 3rd Regiment, commanded by the polo-playing Texan, Lt. Col. Edwin A. Walker. The 1st

Regiment, under West Pointer Lt. Col. Alfred C. Marshall, was held in reserve. At approximately 1800, the 2nd Regiment began its assault. Scaling rope ladders and groping for hand and footholds in the rain-slick rock wall while carrying a pack and weapon load that “would have forced lesser men to the ground,” the 600-man force silently made its way to the summit. By 0430, three companies had reached the summit undetected. As they were preparing an assault line, some men tripped over loose stones placed there by the Germans to provide a warning.

Suddenly, the night sky was illuminated by red and green flares. As one participant later said, “All hell broke loose.” The German defenders frantically worked to reposition their emplaced weapons to address attack from the unexpected quarter. Though the braves came under heavy fire, it was uncoordinated; surprise was on the Force’s side. The braves advanced, breaking into smaller units to conduct fire and maneuver assaults against one German strongpoint after another. By 0700, the Force was in possession of the summit.

The original plan called for the Force to promptly exploit the success with an attack on la Remetanea. But exhaustion, a lack of ammunition, and the fact that it would take at least six hours to get sufficiently resupplied caused Frederick, who had accompanied

After the battle of Monte la Difensa and the other battles of the mountain campaign, the FSSF was redeployed to Anzio, Italy, where the unit continued to make a name for itself. Pictured here is presentation of Silver Star medals to three men of the FSSF at their headquarters on the U.S. Army’s 3rd Division front, Nettuno, Italy, in March 1944.


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the battalion, to suspend that part of the assault until Dec. 5. The Force reorganized and consolidated its position on la Difensa in anticipation of the German response. Because the British X Corps’ 56th Division had failed to take nearby Monte Camino and would not succeed in doing so until Dec. 6, the braves on la Difensa were subjected to punishing mortar, long-range machine gun, Nebelwerfer six-barrel rocket artillery, and sniper fire from both Camino and la Rementanea. Adding to the Force’s plight was the constant rain and sleet and brutal cold.

Supplying the men on the summit became a supreme test. Because mules could not handle the steep grade or treacherous footing, everything had to be hand carried. At one point, Frederick sent down a special request for medical supplies: six cases of bourbon and six gross of condoms. When this request reached II Corps, the outraged quartermaster demanded to know what exactly the Force had discovered on the top of la Difensa that called for prophylactics and liquor. As Geoffrey Perret wrote in There’s a War to be Won, “Alas, what the braves had found wasn’t party-loving, free-spirited women but coldness so intense it froze the sweat under a man’s clothing the moment he stopped moving. A shot of bourbon would help warm him up. The condoms were for protection against the incessant sleet that the howling wind blew down rifle barrels.”

The next two days became a chaotic, seesaw battle under some of the worst weather conditions imaginable in which each side attempted to gain the advantage over the other. Finally, on Dec. 5, the Force launched an attack on la Remetanea with two reinforced battalions. The attack was stopped at the mid-way point by a desperate German defense. But that defense proved to be a thin – though hard – crust. A follow-up attack early the next morning encountered light opposition. By noon the next day, the braves had captured Remetanea. During the next two days, they conducted mopping up operations.

On Monday, Dec. 6, in tidy, precise penmanship and punctuation, Frederick wrote a dispatch to his command post. The only hint of his exhaustion was the fact that he erroneously dated the message “November 6”: “We have passed the crest of 907 [la Remetanea]. We are receiving much machine gun and mortar fire from several directions … Men are getting in bad shape … I have stopped burying the dead … German snipers are giving us hell and it is extremely difficult to catch them.” He concluded by writing, “I am OK, just uncomfortable and tired.”

The Fifth Army’s left flank was secure, but it was a costly victory. The Force had sustained more than 30 percent casualties, with 73 killed, nine missing, 313 wounded or injured, and 116 incapacitated from exhaustion and exposure.

The official history of the Italian campaign noted, “The mission against la Difensa was fully suited to the First Special Service Force. It took advantage of the Force’s special training in night fighting, mountain climbing, cold weather, and lightning assault. No conventional unit, without special training, could have accomplished the mission.”

Clark and the rest of the Fifth Army were in awe over the unit’s accomplishment. He and his planners estimated that the FSSF would take la Difensa in three days. It was captured in two hours. In its first real battle, the First Special Service Force’s reputation as an extremely capable and hard-hitting raiding force for mountain operations was made.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who knew Frederick from their general staff days and who was the person who ordered Frederick to organize and command the unit, paid a visit to the area shortly after the capture of Mount Camino. In his book, Crusade in Europe, he wrote, “I was taken to a spot where, in order to outflank on these mountain strongpoints, a small detachment had put on a remarkable exhibition of mountain climbing. With the aid of ropes, a few of them climbed steep cliffs of great height. I have never understood how, encumbered by their equipment, they were able to do it. In fact, I think that any Alpine climber would have examined the place doubtfully before attempting to scale it. Nevertheless, the detachment reached the top and ferreted out the German Company Headquarters. They entered and seized the captain, who exclaimed, ‘You can’t be here. It is impossible to come up those rocks.’”

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The ideological conflict between the United States and communist Soviet Union known as the Cold War officially

went “hot” on June 25, 1950, when tanks and troops of the communist North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and invaded democratic South Korea. North Korea’s leader, Kim Il Sung, dreamt of uniting all of Korea under his banner; and he almost succeeded. But U.N. troops, led by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, successfully stopped the North Korean advance at the Pusan Perimeter and then routed the communists with the dramatic amphibious landing at Inchon. After MacArthur ordered his troops north, it appeared that Korea would become a united country – but under South Korean rule. But that dream also was shattered when, on Oct. 19, 1950, the first contingent of more than a million troops of the “Chinese People’s Volunteers” – in reality the Chinese Communist People’s Liberation Army – crossed the Chinese/North Korean border of the Yalu River. This force brought two things into North Korea. The first was 260,000 troops to help North Korea fight the United Nations troops. The second was contagious diseases.

News of the first became brutally evident in November 1950, when the Chinese troops attacked the outnumbered American and South Korean units and forced a long retreat out of North Korea that did not end until those troops stabilized a defensive line south of Seoul, the South Korean capital. But news of deadly contagious disease outbreaks did not reach MacArthur’s headquarters until January 1951.

As it was preparing a counteroffensive to drive the communists completely out of South Korea, CIA-controlled agents operating behind enemy lines began sending reports of disease epidemics among the military and civilian populations in the communist controlled territory.

When the allied troops recaptured Seoul and advanced to the 38th parallel, they discovered a civilian population decimated by epidemics of typhus, smallpox, and typhoid. In addition, thousands of captured Chinese and North Korean troops were found to be ill with these and other contagious diseases. Reports quickly made their way to MacArthur’s top medical officer, Chief of the Public Health and Welfare Section of Supreme Command Allied Powers (SCAP) Brig. Gen. Crawford F. Sams. Some reports indicated that entire villages were wiped out by disease. He also received transcripts of prisoner debriefings. In a 1979 interview, Sams recalled that the POWs stated such things as, “Half my unit’s sick. [Men] turned black when they were dying.” Mentions of victims turning black shortly before their death particularly worried him. It suggested that bubonic plague – “the Black Death” – was in Korea.

When the United Nations troops entered the Korean theater of operations, they were vaccinated for a variety of diseases they were expected to encounter. The one exception was bubonic plague. Bubonic plague vaccines then available conferred immunity for only a short duration. As a result, vaccinations for the disease were conducted on an as-needed basis. Because the plague threatened both the United Nations troops and approximately 23 million civilians in South Korea and it would take time to produce sufficient vaccine to inoculate

OppOsite: A smear showing the feared barbell-shaped yersina pestis bubonic plague bacteria. AbOve: brig. Gen. Crawford F. sams, unlikely special operator for a single, extremely important, mission.

“ if we find that this disease is for sure the bubonic plague, then i’ll have no other choice than to order the immediate and complete withdrawal of our troops from the Korean peninsula.“

– General of the Army Douglas MacArthur

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everyone, confirming the presence of bubonic plague became a top priority.

In February, as news of the epidemic outbreaks became generally known, the North Koreans and Chinese Communists launched an aggressive propaganda campaign regarding them. According to Peking Radio and the People’s Daily, the United Nations forces were conducting biological warfare – dropping canisters filled with insects carrying cholera and other diseases and that germ bombs and artillery shells were being used to infect civilians and troops with smallpox and plague. Kim Il Sung demanded that U.N. commanders Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway and MacArthur be tried for this crime against humanity and he issued an emergency decree calling for the National Extraordinary Anti-Epidemic Committee and other bureaucracies to destroy the insects. At the same time, the communist authorities refused requests to allow independent health inspectors from the International Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations into the infected areas.

MacArthur and his commanders knew the charges that they were conducting biological warfare were false. The truth was that North Korea’s rudimentary healthcare system had collapsed under the combined weight of thousands of infected troops spread throughout the country, a large displaced population, contaminated water, unhygienic living conditions, and other problems. Before he could refute the charges, MacArthur needed proof – an unimpeachable firsthand report from the most senior medical authority possessing experience in dealing with bubonic plague. Only one man in the entire theater fit those criteria: Sams.

Sams’ early military career was rather eclectic. Born in East St. Louis in 1902, he enlisted in the Army during World War I and served one year. In 1922, while attending the University of California at Berkeley, he enlisted in the California National Guard as a private. A year later, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry. He transferred to the Field Artillery and in 1925 graduated from the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, Okla. Wishing to pursue a medical career, he resigned from active duty in December 1925 with the rank of captain. While attending medical school, he was re-commissioned first lieutenant, Field Artillery Reserve. Upon receiving his medical degree in 1929, he was commissioned first lieutenant, Medical Corps, and ordered to active duty; within two years he accepted a commission in the regular Army Medical Corps. In 1941, he became the first medical officer and one of the first line officers to qualify as a U.S. Army paratrooper. During World War II, Sams saw service in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. In October 1945, Sams, now a colonel, was assigned to be SCAP’s top medical officer. Three years later, he was promoted to brigadier general. Over the years, Sams gained vast experience in broad-scale public health issues. He treated bubonic plague epidemics in December 1941 in Haifa, Jaffa, Palestine, and later in Port Said, Egypt. It was this personal experience that was needed now.

Having gotten the ball rolling by alerting the senior members of MacArthur’s staff of the possible outbreak of bubonic plague, Sams was not about to take to the sidelines now and he volunteered to lead the mission into North Korea. On the one hand, since he was the only medical doctor with hands-on experience dealing with the disease, it made sense. But the political stakes of such a move were enormous. If the theater’s surgeon general, and a general officer, were killed or captured during the operation, the communists would achieve an immense propaganda coup. Nonetheless, MacArthur agreed and signed off on it.

Reports indicated that bubonic plague victims were concentrated in hospitals in and around the North Korean port city of Wonsan. A joint CIA and Navy operation was quickly organized. The CIA’s Z Unit,

based in Tokyo and led by Maj. Jack Y. Canon, was in overall command. Leading the small team into North Korea was one of the Navy’s most outstanding junior officers in the war, Lt. Eugene F. Clark. Clark, who entered the Navy during World War II, was a mustang, commissioned from the ranks. Described as having “the nerves of a burglar and the flair of a Barbary Coast pirate,” Clark led the reconnaissance team on Yonghung-do Island in Flying Fish Channel in advance of Operation Chromite, the amphibious landing at Inchon on Sept. 15, 1950. For his role in Chromite, he was awarded both the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit. Clark received a second Silver Star for the Sinuiju Operation, a series of CIA-sponsored intelligence gathering raids up the west coast of North Korea. It was in this operation that Clark became the first to discover Chinese Communist troop presence in the country.

Assisting Clark would be Lt. Cmdr. Joung Youn of the South Korean navy, who had helped Clark at Inchon and in the Sinuiju Operation. Like Clark, he also received two Silver Stars and the Legion of Merit for his role in those missions. Joining them would be a third Korean, a native of Wonsan and the chief of the Wonsan area spy network, known by the nom de guerre “Ko.”

Every mission needs a name, and in honor of the general who initiated it and who would accompany them, Clark christened the mission Operation Sams.

Operation Sams began at the end of February 1951 when the team boarded at Pusan an APD – one of four high-speed transports that the Navy had refitted for special operations missions. This particular APD also included the kind of medical laboratory Sams would need. Needless

Sams treating a Japanese encephalitis patient. His experience treating bubonic plague epidemics was vital to the operation.

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to say, everyone connected to the mission was properly vaccinated. As the APD made its way north, nine teams were inserted in the Wonsan area. Their purpose was to provide real-time reconnaissance and other assistance to Clark’s team once it landed. The mission itself was simple: Upon landing (at night), Sams would be taken to where there were infected patients. One would be selected and brought aboard the APD. If for some reason transporting the patient was not possible, then Sams would conduct on-the-spot examinations and draw enough blood samples for later analysis.

Operation Sams encountered problems almost immediately after the APD rendezvoused with the destroyer Wallace L. Lind (DD 703), tasked with supporting the mission, off Wonsan. The seas in the area during this time of the year are often rough, and for almost two weeks the ships were forced to remain on station, a situation made perilous by harbor mines that broke free from their moorings and floated out to sea.

During this time, the team established a forward base on one of the islands off the coast of Wonsan where the CIA had a secret base to monitor its agent network in the region. Clark began conducting reconnaissance, attempting to find a suitable landing site. Unfortunately, the communists, fearing another Inchon-style amphibious assault, had constructed an in-depth defense network along the beaches and harbor of Wonsan that included mined beaches, barbed wire, and gun emplacements. Several times their scouting boats came under fire. Sams, meanwhile, was examining the island’s inhabitants. He discovered many cases of typhus and smallpox. From the survivors he learned that epidemics of these and other diseases had been so severe that only about 10 percent of the population had survived. Then, the

team discovered that an even greater danger awaited them on the mainland. The communists knew Sams was coming.

During his search for a suitable landing site, Clark also attempted to establish radio contact with the recon teams. It was then that he received devastating news. Of the nine teams sent out, all but two men from one team had been captured or killed. Their radios also picked up North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) broadcasts that cited Sams by his name and rank and gave some details of the operation – information that could only have been provided by captured members of the recon teams. Despite the increased danger, the team decided to continue with the mission.

Clark finally found a promising landing site south of Wonsan, near the small village of Chilbo-ri. Final arrangements were quickly made. The Wallace L. Lind would take them to Chilbo-ri, where they would transfer to a whaleboat. Once the whaleboat neared the shore, the team would transfer to a black, four-man rubber raft that the whaleboat towed and paddle onto the beach. There they would rendezvous with the two surviving agents.

On the night of March 12, the team left the island, boarded the Lind, and headed south. After the destroyer got into position beyond radar range about 20 miles off the coast, the team transferred to the whaleboat. As the team approached the coast, one of the Korean agents on the whaleboat established radio contact with the agents on the mainland who gave landing instructions. But Clark and the others became suspicious when the agents on the mainland proved unable to give the correct responses to code words transmitted from the whaleboat. The decision was quickly made to abort the landing that

USS Wallace L. Lind during the Korean War. The ship would face heavier seas than this during Operation Sams.

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evening and return to the Lind. The team subsequently learned from a radio message sent by the two surviving agents that they had been in contact with communist troops using one of the captured walkie-talkies. Had the Operation Sams team continued ashore, they would have landed in a trap.

The team now had to make the toughest decision of the mission. The captain of the Lind recommended that the entire mission be scrapped. He felt that if they continued their chances of survival were nil. But Sams insisted that one more try must be made. Clark, Youn, and Ko also volunteered to make another attempt.

The next night, the Lind once again got into position 20 miles opposite Chilbo-ri and once again the Operation Sams team embarked for shore. As the whaleboat approached the coast, the men could see the lights of a truck convoy heading down the coastal highway toward their landing site; the convoy was also spotted by naval aircraft flying a night mission. Suddenly the ground shook with the sounds of explosions as the airplanes bombed and strafed the convoy. The possibility of encountering dispersed communist troops who had abandoned their trucks, in addition to avoiding the regular patrols, added yet another complication to the mission. As the team paddled the rubber raft toward shore, Sams later noted, “it was with some trepidation that we finally approached the beach.” This time they were successful in establishing contact with the two agents and, upon receiving final instructions, safely beached.

The team linked up with their two agents and a small group of other Korean CIA agents. Sams was taken to a cave located a few yards from the village. There he began interrogating agents who worked as hospital staffers and had seen the patients suspected of carrying bubonic plague. Meanwhile, Clark, Youn, and some of the other agents silently ambushed and eliminated a North Korean patrol in the village. Sams was then able to conduct examinations of patients in Chilbo-ri. He discovered that the village itself had been turned into a makeshift hospital whose medical support service ranged from primitive to non-existent.

Sams had hoped to spend two additional days in the area, visiting other villages in order to gather as much information as possible. But the agents based in North Korea dissuaded him, stating that the risk of discovery and capture was far too great. Nonetheless, Sams was able to confirm epidemics of typhus, typhoid, and smallpox. And most importantly, he determined that there was no evidence of bubonic plague. As it turned out, the “Black Death” plague was actually a virulent form of smallpox known as hemorrhagic smallpox. The reason it was mistaken for bubonic plague was because it also causes the body to turn black as the victim nears death. Though circumstances prevented him from bringing back a body for further lab study, Sams later said, “I felt confident in my clinical diagnosis of the cases.”

The team successfully returned to the Lind the following evening. After they reboarded the ship, Sams radioed a brief message to headquarters in Tokyo summarizing his findings. Upon his return to Tokyo, Sams submitted a full report of his mission. In addition to an official announcement released to the international press, Sams presented his medical findings to a special United Nations commission and other public forums. Though the communists would continue their propaganda campaign with additional charges, the Operation Sams mission had effectively destroyed the accusations’ credibility. And because Sams had proved that bubonic plague was not in the theater, U.N. forces could continue operations without the risk of encountering that deadly disease.

In the following weeks, through his own findings and additional confirmed reports, Sams was able to determine that because of North Korean inability to control the epidemics, the North Korean prewar population of 11 million had shrunk to about 3 million people.

The success of the mission resulted in decorations for Clark, Youn, and Sams. As it turned out, Operation Sams was Clark’s last mission in Korea. He soon left the theater on a new assignment. In recognition of his efforts on the mission, he was awarded the Navy Cross. Clark retired from the Navy in 1966 with the rank of commander and died in 1998 at the age of 86. Youn was awarded his third Silver Star. He went on to participate in more special operations missions in Korea. In 1970, he retired from the service due to wounds suffered in the war and moved to the United States. Sams was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Sams returned to the United States in 1951 and retired from the Army in 1955. He died in 1994 at the age of 92, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Va.

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The GreaTeST COmmandO raid

HMS Campbeltown seen on the morning of March 28, 1942, scuttled and with her bow thoroughly embedded in the dock gate. The shell holes and blistered paint at the bow and beneath the stacks attest to the vicious shellfire she withstood on her one-way trip. Also evident is a swarm of Germans inspecting the ship, and the extra guns, armor, and splinter protection fitted to her.

OperatiOn ChariOt

T here is a memorial on the quay in the port of Falmouth, on the southwest tip of England, just 3 feet high and facing

France. The words on it are understated:OPERATION CHARIOT

From this harbour 622 sailorsand commandos set sail for

the successful raid on St. Nazaire28th March 1942. 168 were killed5 Victoria Crosses were awarded.

It is a discreet physical memorial for one of the most successful British commando raids of all time, and mute testimony to what actually happened on the far shore in France in 1942.

BACKGROUND

In May 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, damaged in an engagement with the battlecruiser HMS Hood and battleship HMS Prince of Wales and needing repairs, had been sunk while making for St. Nazaire in occupied France. St. Nazaire was the only port on the Atlantic coast with a dry-dock facility, the Louis Joubert Lock (Forme Ecluse Louis Joubert – also known as “the Normandie Dock”), large enough to accommodate her. With Bismarck destroyed, attention shifted to her sister ship, Tirpitz. If Tirpitz ran loose in the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill feared, “The entire naval situation throughout the

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operation chariot 15 3


world would be altered.” Given the losses of the Hood and destroyer HMS Mashona in the Bismarck engagement, along with almost 1,500 sailors, keeping Tirpitz at bay was a top priority.

British naval thinking on containing Tirpitz was immediate, lateral, and preemptive. If Tirpitz was damaged, the only dry dock she could use remained the Normandie Dock. Remove it, and Tirpitz would have to run the gauntlet of getting back to Germany through the chokepoints that would become the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom “gaps.” Faced with this, Hitler might not risk trying to use her in the North Atlantic. The Normandie Dock at St. Nazaire was, however, an almost impossible target. The port lay 6 miles up the River Loire, all of it heavily protected, especially the central channel, with its lethal shallows on either side. Still, the need to keep the Tirpitz out of the Atlantic overrode all other considerations.

From May 1941 to January 1942, the British ran through a number of possible options for what became Operation Chariot. On Jan. 16, 1942, everything changed when Tirpitz left the Baltic and took position in a fjord near Trondheim, Norway. Bombing missions against her failed, so on Jan. 26, Churchill held an emergency meeting with the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound. Within 24 hours, the Combined Operations Directorate and its charismatic chief, Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten, was tasked with planning and executing Chariot.

The Chariot plan, delivered in just four days, was simple and audacious. Like a latter-day Trojan horse, a surplus destroyer disguised and packed with delayed-action explosives would ram the gate of the Normandie Dock. Commandos in motor launches (MLs) would attack other key installations around the dock area. The MLs would then pick up the destroyer’s crew and commandos, and escape to an escort of destroyers waiting out at sea. The Royal Air Force (RAF) would provide a massive bombing raid as cover as the force went in.

The attack force would avoid the German defenses, focused on the main channel of the Loire, by going in across the shallows on a spring (high) tide and on the flood (coming in), going in between midnight and 0200 hours. There was only one short window when all these requirements were met – the end of March, just seven weeks away. For almost a month, the Admiralty refused to provide a destroyer for Chariot. Mountbatten retaliated by threatening to cancel the operation, and the Admiralty finally offered the aging HMS Campbeltown (formerly the USS Buchanan, DD 131, loaned to Britain under the Lend-Lease Act).

On March 3, the Joint Chiefs gave Chariot the green light. In joint command would be Lt. Col. Charles Newman, leading the commando force, and Cmdr. Robert Ryder, running the naval operation. Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Beattie would command a heavily modified Campbeltown. Campbeltown’s topweight was lightened to reduce her draft; small-caliber guns were added, steel plating was added to protect the bridge, gunners, and commandos on deck, and 4.25 tons of high explosives were hidden in her bows to prevent a German discovery. To delay the Germans reacting during the approach up the river, two of Campbeltown’s four stacks were removed and the other two cut back and sloped, so she resembled a German Type 23 Mowe-class destroyer.

The commando force was divided into three groups, each with its own targets; Group One would land by ML at the Old Mole, Group Two by ML at the Old Entrance, and Group Three would go ashore

on Campbeltown. Each commando unit would comprise three parties: an assault team to eliminate immediate opposition, a demolitions team, and a heavily armed protection team. A key element of Chariot was a raid by 350 RAF bombers as a diversion. But just days before the raid, the bomber force was cut back to just 62, and to minimize French civilian casualties, most of their targets would be away from the St. Nazaire docks. Both Newman and Ryder feared that this would alert rather than divert German defences. They were right.

At 1400 hours on March 26, 1942, the MLs slipped out of Falmouth and into the English Channel, followed an hour later by Campbeltown with two destroyers as escort. At 2000 hours the next evening, March 27, the Chariot force was 65 miles from St. Nazaire, where Ryder and Newman transferred to MGB 314 to use as their operational headquarters. The escorts slid away, and the force began its run in. Two hours later, at 2200, they saw the navigation light from the submarine HMS Sturgeon blinking the letter “M.” They were dead on course and time. The Chariot force was laid out in a two-column attack formation: The MLs of Commando Group One were on the port side and those of Group Two to starboard. Newman and Ryder’s MGB 314 was ahead and leading. Between the two columns was Campbeltown, carrying Commando Group Three, followed by ML 298 and MTB 74. Along with its modified outline, Campbeltown and the launches flew the German flag, and the signaler on Newman and Ryder’s MGB 314 carried captured German codes and signals to delay the response of the German defences.

At 2330, Lt. Nigel Tibbits, in charge of the explosives packed into Campbeltown’s bow, activated the time pencils on the charges, while upriver the diversionary bombing raid lit the sky. The flotilla passed the Le Croisic radar station, and by 0045, they had slid undetected under the 75 mm gun battery on the Pointe de Gildas. Twice Campbeltown touched bottom on the shallows but kept going. For precious minutes, their luck held: Then a German patrol boat as well as lookouts at St. Marco spotted the flotilla but, initially at least, their report was ignored. As Newman and Ryder feared, however, the bombing raid raised German suspicions as soon as it began. Between midnight and 0100, the St. Nazaire German defense headquarters issued three warnings of a possible parachute landing or sea assault.

At 0120, as Campeltown passed the Les Morees Tower, the report from St. Marco finally got through. Searchlights suddenly reached across the river, and within seconds, they picked up the gray shape of Campbeltown. But since the Campbeltown resembled a Mowe-class destroyer with a German ensign flying, the German gunners hesitated. Then two batteries fired star shells over the force as a warning, and shore stations flashed challenges at Campbeltown,

MGB 314 signaled back, “Wait,” with the purloined call sign of a German torpedo boat, then “Urgent ... two craft damaged by enemy action. Request permission to proceed to harbor without delay.” The German heavy gunners hesitated, then fired again. In reply, MGB 314 signaled, “You are firing on friendly ships.” The German gunners hesitated for the last time. As Campbeltown and the light launches entered the mouth of the River Loire itself, German fire raked the river from both sides. Ryder gave the order to return fire; Campbeltown and the launches lowered their German flags and raised the White Ensign.

The game was on.MGB 314 and ML 160 traded fire with the shoreline guns, while ML

270 attacked the searchlights illuminating Campbeltown. The German

Op Chariot.indd 153 5/8/09 11:00 AM



fire slackened, picked up again, and the flotilla began to take casualties. MLs burst into flames as German shells ruptured their fuel tanks, and burning fuel spilled across the water. Near the outer harbor, the guard ship Sperrbrecher poured intense fire on the flotilla, while in reply, MGB 314 raked her bow to stern as she swept past. The German gunners singled out Campbeltown and her main gun was hit, killing the crew and the commandos around it. On the bridge, Beattie calmly ordered, “Stand by to ram,” then Campbeltown ripped through the anti-torpedo net in front of the Normandie Dock at 20 knots and smashed into the gate. It was 0134. Campbeltown was just 4 minutes behind the planned time of collision.

Campbeltown was firmly embedded in the dock gate; Beattie began to evacuate his crew. The battle around the destroyer was still raging. The protection and demolition teams of Group Three went over the bows and raced for their respective targets; the key mission – destroy the pumps and switchgear that controlled the filling and draining of the dry dock. Even if the Campbeltown explosives didn’t detonate, the destruction of the pumps would put the dock out of commission for months. Below decks, the Campbeltown’s crew opened the sea cocks to scuttle her.

Quickly heading for the German gun positions, Group Three came under a withering fire and began taking casualties. The port assault team sprinted to their objective, the 20 mm guns on top of the pumping station, and blew up the guns. They then turned to take and hold a key position, “Bridge G,” which was Group Three’s way to the reembarkation point on the Old Mole. The other Campbeltown assault team, already down to 10 fighting men, destroyed four gun emplacements and a string of oil tanks, then waited for the signal to withdraw.

MGB 314, having landed Newman and Ryder, moved to pick up Campbeltown’s crew. The other protection and demolition teams closed on their targets, all suffering increasing casualties. At the northern end of the dock, six men were killed by fire from ships inside the drydock, while another was killed storming one of these ships and silencing its guns. The time fuses on Campbeltown were

ticking, Group Three had done its job; but Groups One and Two were running into disaster.

The River Loire was ablaze with burning fuel, and German fire from shore positions and gunboats were cutting the attack force to pieces. The guard ship Sperrbrecher, which MGB 314 had shot up earlier, leapt back into action, shooting up the rest of the MLs as they came upriver to unload. Group One, in the port column, was supposed to land its commandos at the Old Mole, which would also be the de-embarkation point. ML 477 came under heavy fire and her engine room was set alight. ML 457 managed to reach the Old Mole and land its commando party – the only successful landing on the Old Mole. ML 307 came under heavy fire just as it passed the Old Mole and its commander pulled out, its crew trying to rescue men from ML 447.

The fire was murderous, with blazing fuel, debris, and the burning hulks of MLs now littering the river. In the confusion, ML 443 overshot its target, turned back and tried again, the narrow window of time in which the MLs could land their commandos effectively closed. ML 306 couldn’t land at the Old Mole, considered the Old Entrance, then pulled out to the anger of the commandos still aboard. ML 446 also overshot its landing, tried again, then its commanders decided the carnage on the Old Mole made it impossible.

Group Two, in the starboard column, were supposed to land at the Old Entrance, but the German fire made this all but impossible. Of the 89 commandos from Group One who should have landed at the Old Mole, only 15 made it. Of the 50 commandos in Group Two, only 14 managed to get ashore. ML 192 was hit four times and began to blaze, while ML 262, badly damaged, made a run for the open sea. ML 267 was hit and set alight, and ML 268 was hit in the fuel tanks and exploded. ML 156, already damaged on the run in, was caught in crossfire, which destroyed her steering and engines, though she managed to escape. ML 177, at the rear of the column, landed its 15 commandos, helped MGB 314 pick up Campbeltown’s crew, including Beattie and explosives expert Tibbits, and then began to head downriver. Almost clear, she was struck by enemy fire and burst into flames. Beattie survived.

The remains of one of the Chariot force’s MLs smolders in the Loire. The force’s small vessels suffered heavily in the attack.


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Tibbits did not. At the rear of the two columns, MTB 74 fired a pair of delayed action torpedoes at the lock gates of the Old Entrance, made sure they sank to the bottom, then took off with some of Campbeltown’s crew, and headed downriver. Under incredible fire, it stopped to pick up additional survivors, was hit and destroyed.

An hour after Campbeltown had rammed the Normandie Dock gate, the battle was still raging, both on land and on the adjacent river. Ryder, in charge of naval operations, had boarded MGB 314 to review the naval situation. The original disembarkation point, the Old Mole, was still in enemy hands, and his launches were being decimated. He gave the order to pull out. At his headquarters point near the Old Entrance, Newman, in charge of the land force, ordered the men he had left to fight their way through the town to make for open country and head south for Spain. German reinforcements were already pouring into and surrounding St. Nazaire. By mid-morning, most of the men, including Newman himself, had been captured. Only five of the commandos from Operation Chariot made it to Spain.

As dawn broke over St. Nazaire, German search teams at the Normandie Dock failed to find the concealed explosives in Campbeltown’s bows. Thinking the hulk safe, by mid-morning German officers and their guests were clambering over the destroyer and staring at her battered bows. Beattie, who had commanded Campbeltown and been aboard ML 177 when she blew up, was picked up after several hours in the freezing water. By 1030, he was landed back at St. Nazaire and taken

for interrogation. Tibbits had set the fuses on Campbeltown’s explosives at 2330 (with an eight-hour delay), and even given a margin of error Campbeltown should have blown up by 0900. German photographs of captured commandos taken that morning show men badly injured but smiling because of the knowledge that Campbeltown would soon blow up. Now, however, Beattie, like Newman and his men, feared the worst: that their men had been slaughtered and Campbeltown’s explosives had failed to do their job.

At 1035, Beattie’s interrogator began taunting him about the British inability to see the futility of launching anything as flimsy as a destroyer against the massive Normandie Dock gates. At that precise moment, Campbeltown’s 4.25 tons of high explosives finally erupted. The entire dock area shook, huge blocks of concrete hurtled high into the air, and a massive black smoke cloud drifted up and across the St. Nazaire sky. Two days later, MTB 74’s two delayed-action torpedoes blew under the lock gates of the Old Entrance. Operation Chariot was, at that moment, a complete, albeit costly, success. Six hundred twenty-two men took part in Operation Chariot, of which 168 were killed and 200 (most of them wounded) taken prisoner. Seventy-four British decorations were awarded, including five Victoria Crosses – one on the recommendation of a German officer who visited Newman in a POW camp. The Normandie Dock was totally out of action, and was not finally repaired until 1950. The Tirpitz never haunted the Atlantic, and would herself fall prey to other British special operations missions in the years ahead.

Why are these men smiling? Because these captured commandos from the operation are alive and well and expectantly awaiting explosion of 4.25 tons of high explosive aboard Campbeltown that will signal mission accomplished.


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