whitehall
Diamond Member
Luttrell's book "lone survivor" gives you an insight into the psychology of SEALs. Luttrell says that SEALs are never billoted with other (inferior?) services because they might blurt out secrets in their sleep. Does anyone buy that hollywood dialog? The fact is that in Luttrell's case the SEALS were killed on a recon mission and the rescue chopper landed in RPG range and was destroyed. It was a operational and leadership mistake. The point is that SEAL Team 6 was flying with Afghans in a big operation. I hate to say it but while SEALs were worried about blurting out missions in their sleep their leadership was forced to share info and underestimated (as usual?) the network of Afghan intelligence. Alqueda might have had RPG' in place when they hovered over the LZ.
I found Luttrell's bluster to be obnoxious (as well as the fact that he hardly mentioned the scores of men who were killed trying to extract him in his book) so I put it down after a a few chapters.
Aside from that, you act like it's hard to get an RPG in Afghanistan. They didn't need to have RPGs "in place" when they are already carrying them.
Bluster is good and the truth is important. Read the book. Luttrell's experience is probably the only modern SEALs account of combat in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a big place and you need the RPG's in range of the helicopter at the right time. My guess is that the fix was in.