Major Hat Tip to Rohan. via SkyNews.
The operators from Seal Team Six were being flown by a crew of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, according to US officials.Terrible news.
One source says the team was thought to include 22 Seals, three Air Force air controllers, seven Afghan Army troops, a dog and his handler, and a civilian interpreter, plus the helicopter crew.
Afghan officials at president Hamid Karzai's office said 31 US special forces and seven local soldiers died in the attack on the Chinook.
A senior US official has confirmed the helicopter was apparently shot down by insurgents.
I wonder what the Insurgents have identified in our operations that have them getting so much success lately?
I also wonder if they are purposefully targeting only US helicopters or if our allies are operating differently --- the last three helicopters to be shot down have all been by RPGs....have all been US and have all been Chinooks.
Something is off here. I just can't put my finger on it.
UPDATE*
LEX is thinking along the lines of my previous post and with his experience in aviation I'm becoming more positive that these can't be RPG ambushes that our guys are flying into. This from his blog but read the whole thing....
A night-time catastrophic hit with a “rocket” is pretty unlikely, unless that rocket had a guidance system, in which case we’d call it a Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPAD) rather than a rocket. The Stinger missiles that the US provided the Afghan mujahadin back in the 80′s are well beyond their service lives.
I’d sure like to know who is providing the Taliban this technology now, there’s a reckoning due.
Salute to fallen heroes, and prayers for those they left behind.
According to reporting by Fox, it was apparently a daytime raid. If this is the case, such a raid would make helicopters, especially Chinooks, much more vulnerable to RPG fire.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I agree that there's starting to be a disturbing trend of U.S helos going down in combat. I think that one of two things are happening. 1) The enemy is being supplied with better weaponry or better training from and outside player, probably Iran or Pakistan, or 2) American spec-op helicopter raids are rapidly increasing both in frequency and risk, making losses due to enemy fire more likely.
Another thing that disturbs me is generally when our birds have taken RPG hits in theatre, the damage caused by them isn't usually enough to cause the total loss of the vehicle and crew. There are many instances of helicopters taking RPG fire and still being able to make hard landings so that some or even all of the occupants survuve. There's even photos out there of blackawks and chinooks that have taken RPG fire and still returned safely to base. Such large loss of life in this incident would seem to indicate that the Chinook was probably hit at a relatively high altitude, which would strongly suggest MANPAD over RPG fire.
ReplyDeletei wonder how much the pakistani military is helping out, we know pakistan is no "ally", and they have more than enough capabilities to take down our helos, they could be easily filtering it to the taliban, or the ISI.
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