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via FoxNews.
The American freelance photographer kidnapped by Al Qaeda militants in Yemen in 2013 was 'murdered' Friday during a U.S. special operations rescue mission inside the country after it was learned that his life was in imminent danger, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said in a statement.A try doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is failure or success. A hostage rescue was attempted and it failed.
Luke Somers was still alive, but badly injured when the team reached him, a Yemeni national security official told Fox News. The official said Somers was shot by militants. None of the special forces members were injured.
This is the second rescue attempt in the past few months that I've heard about that ended in failure.
The question must be asked. Have the terrorist learned SOCOM's playbook? If they have then what does that mean? Remember it usually flows like this. First the enemy evades, then he resists and finally he attacks.
We've gone through the evasion and resistance phase. How soon before the enemy decides to setup an ambush for our Special Operations Forces?
I sense a Blackhawk down incident coming. Over reliance on SOCOM, mixed with operational arrogance, driven by the desire to get a "win" and show military strength by politicians will lead to heartache.
You heard it here first.
This is off topic but those rat bastards did it again-
ReplyDeletehttp://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/jk-army-foils-militant-bid-to-enter-camp-kills-three-in-operation-encounter-still-on/
I was expecting something bad but this quickly and in this fashion, thats the mystery.
Still, democracy has to be upheld that those twitter pics in the article are worth a thousand words themselves.
Deleteit just a matter of time before some guys on the ISIS side dangle an american hostage as bait and leak out his whereabouts to entice the american's specops team..
ReplyDeleteone should learn not to underestimate the enemy , always.. learn from the debacle of Shayetet 13 in Lebanon where whole team of naval commando was wiped out by hezbollah ambush.. or from US's own failure in their 2001 delta force attack on kandahar compound (mullah omar hideout) , or from the failed french DGSE hoatage rescure leaving 2 operators behind to be executed by enemy..
didnt someone ancient used to say that War is deception ?
Bloomberg
ReplyDeleteBarking Dog Foils Rescue as Hostages Killed by al-Qaeda
have you noticed how much of the story is leaking? they're talking to whatever news media they can. that itself is suspicious. the talk about how one of the hostages died on the CV-22 and the other aboard ship? the talk about how they didn't launch until they had authorization on Fri afternoon US eastern time? about how a barking dog foiled the op?
Deleteits all bullshit in my opinion. i want the real deal not some strategically placed press accounts designed to cover ass.
Don't forget that ISIS has been getting all kinds of captured Syrian and Iraqi military equipment. Some simple 14.5mm AA guns would do serious damage to an Osprey. It may be faster than chopper in level flight, but at landing or take off it is just as vulnerable...maybe more since most only have a single .50 on the rear-ramp for suppressive fire.
ReplyDeleteGod help us if they have captured a Syrian ZSU-23-4 and turn that on a rescue team.
preaching to the choir on this one. i've been beating on this drum for awhile now. Marine Air solution? they're talking about arming MV-22's! the problem with that? for every pound of firepower you put on the plane is one grunt that can't fly. you talking about putting a rifle squad on the ground thats a man short because you have to put missiles on your troop mover? bad planning leads to bad solutions leads to dead Marines.
DeleteArmed V22 ? i assume the V22 need more armour first before having armament on board.. maybe they can create a gunship version of V22 instead of saddling weapons to the troop carrirs Ospreys..
Deleteif i recall correctly, the sudan debacle was caused by militia's AK47 bullets penetrating osprey's floor and critically wounding 4 SEALs inside..
Looks like they dismounted some distance away and came in on foot and a dog? alerted the bad guys.....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-the-raid-in-yemen-went-wrong/ar-BBgqH91
Who says they haven't akready mounted an ambush with some kind of fake info to drag socom info mounting an operation that ended in bad failure ... Check your sources
ReplyDeleteAs I have predicted before, this is what happens when one plays political showmanship with elite units, whose advantages are built upon the secrecy of their actions.
ReplyDeleteThe nonsense behind the post-OBL shooting, Benghazi, among others and how politicians failed to lead by example by committing to opsec is solely to blame here.
Oh wait, i thought all terrorists were stupid, carpet worshipping cavemen? /rolls eyes/ Empires and their hubris, underestimating their adversaries.
"Oh wait, i thought all terrorists were stupid, carpet worshipping cavemen? "
DeleteThe professionals who carry out these rescue attempts rarely, if ever, think that way. They've long since learned better.
For a different view of this (with which I personally am inclined to agree as a non-SME) see Hognose's post: http://weaponsman.com/?p=19459
I think inevitably an infantry soldier (like Solomon) is likely to initially think about this differently than a small-team, special ops soldier (like Hognose). We are all oriented to think mostly like our training.
I beg to differ.
DeleteFirst of all, most special-ops teams are made up of infantry men who carry out particular types of missions. Face si also that selection process is based mostly on infantry Skills.
Second I've read the article you mention and would agree with most points except that hostage rescue does not depend only on enemy hesitation (that would be too easy) and that in today's day and age even the ones in the know do talk after the facts (see the OBL raid).
Finally one cannot understate the fact that the political establishment in most western countries has tended to put too much emphasis for PR and other reasons on successes of so called SOCOM operations and units and trying to silence some of the epic failures of these units. And Im not talking out of my ass when I say this. This has reached a point in the US where the country is stuck with a spec-ops infrastructure which is totally oversized and overpriced and nobody really has any idea anymore what to do with it. Those responsible for this are largely those who advocated for the revolution in military affairs back in late 1990s and early 2000s when they advocated for an invasion of Iraq with a expeditionary force that was totally undersized. The structural changes that have been taking place within the U.S. armed forces ever since all stem from this initial assessment.
Tomorrows threats are not to be faced with today's means, which can be seen already with the whole ISIS debacle ... You can organize raids and fail dramatically like in raqqa in July, but you can't beat ISIS just with SOCOM operations on he ground.
In your first paragraph I think you misunderstood me. I carefully wrote that infantry soldiers will think *initially* in a particular mode. They think according to the doctrine they know and use best. That will change with different training, doctrines, and experiences. My initial perspective as a light infantry soldier certainly changed when I transferred into a reconnaissance role.
DeleteAlso you added a modifier that Hognose didn't use. He doesn't suggest that success depends *only* (your addition) on enemy hesitation. But if you define success as saving the hostage (something that doesn't have to be exclusively the case, as he notes) then you'd better hope that the enemy doesn't kill the hostages before all else. No matter how good your surprise, the enemy has to be assumed to be prepared for an attack, and be prepared to kill the hostages immediately. So you'd better hope that for some reason, any reason (could be distraction, remorse, or whatever), that they hesitate that moment that you need to kill them first. They have the advantage being already in place and ready to kill the hostage (or so we must assume).
You're right. Was my understanding of what you wrote. I get your point but what I meant to say was that success has many reasons and hostage rescue in environment like ISIS is not the same as against Somali pirates. Also don't underestimate the political context of any such operation.
DeleteAs for doctrine sure infantry is a specialist job but then again it's the missions that can vary thus the know how and skills needed. The more varied your skills and experience the better you're armed mentally to confront a new situation. Training for a limited array of highly technical missions isn't always the best way to go.
Personally I think that it's us and the French who realized this better than others maybe for similar reasons (limited reasons). The French for example sent in one of their special ops units into basic infantry fighting against taleban for months doing the same job as regular infantry, living and operating out of FOB. Back to basics just like us after 2006.
Not saying we are better prepared or anything for hostage or special ops operations but we got operators who haven't forgotten the basics of their trade and that's the trade of a infantry man
Easy to see after the fact that these raids are very dangerous and full of surprises. Looks like US wasn't aware of the presence of the other hostage. Interesting to see that the dismount 10 km (7 miles) from V22s, no reason given. A friend of mine says 2 US SEALS were killed but I can't find it anywhere to confirm.....all reports are US suffered no causalities.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30366455
This is the reference about the Ansariya 1997 debacle.. Total overconfidence and underestimating your enemy were the case here..
ReplyDeletehttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/11/israel-13-years-later-army-admits-commandos-ambushed-in-lebanon-were-compromised-by-information-leak.html
By Martin Regg Cohn
Toronto Star Middle East Bureau
ANSARIYA, Lebanon - Sixteen elite Israeli
naval commandos emerged from the
Mediterranean blackness, primed for a
secret mission to wipe out Hezbollah
guerrillas from the Islamic Resistance on
their home turf.
Slipping out of their rubber dinghies just
before midnight, they crossed Lebanon's
main coastal highway past Sidon, 50
kilometres south of Beirut.
The commandos would not have seen the
Hezbollah banner just down the highway:
``Jews, you will not return home except in
coffins.''
In fact, 37 Israeli soldiers have died so
far this year in Lebanon, the worst death
toll since Israel retreated in 1985 to its
self-declared security zone - a
15-kilometre strip hugging the
international border. This week, two more
Israelis died in a daring Hezbollah attack
near the border; but the gravest setback
by far came here last month at Ansariya,
deep inside Lebanese territory.
Laden with high-tech explosives, the
highly-trained Israelis from Unit 13 began
the arduous four-kilometre trek uphill
past ripening pomegranate trees, then
turned into a citrus grove. Before they
could begin booby-trapping a dirt road
travelled by Hezbollah commanders, they
walked into a trap laid down specially for
them.
Most likely tipped off by a double agent,
waiting guerrillas on high alert detonated
hidden bombs, then cut down the commandos
in a hail of gunfire. As the explosions
and tracer bullets turned the darkness
into light, the hunters became the hunted.
By daybreak, they were gone - 11 evacuated
by helicopter in bodybags, including two
dead doctors. Four wounded survivors
barely made it to the rescue helicopter,
which also took a hit and limped across
the border to an emergency landing.
A 12th casualty was left behind -
compounding the humiliating defeat in
Lebanon and igniting a fresh political
debate in Israel. The imagery of defeat
could not have been starker.