I've studied a lot of military history, and one thing that has always struck me is how many times there has been severe loss of life and other disasters because of stupid actions by battlefield commanders.
And I've lived a lot of military history (23 years Army) and it's always struck me how many times armchair commanders are quick to label actions as stupid without any actual experience or first hand knowledge of military operations.
I heard a report that using elite forces to go after a mid-level islamofascist leader is like (my words) using a bar of gold to pound in a nail (even though people still would have gotten killed if it were regular troops.)
From what I've seen, the group of SEALs were an immediate reaction force used to back up a Ranger operation. I've personally seen SEALS and other Spec Ops troops go in for mid level targets based on their superior ability to put something together quickly and quietly.
Also, why were so many people in one aircraft? Obviously they should have been split up in several smaller helicopters.
Obviously? One helicopter means one small landing zone, means quicker insertion, means better coordination. The more helicopters, the more space and or time would be necessary and the more difficult coordination would be. I was on one insertion with just 2 Chinooks and because one bird ended up facing the opposite way from the opplan we had double coverage on one half of the perimeter and none on the other (and that was an SF exercise). And you think 4-6 Blackhawks would work better?
And the more vulnerable the group would be on the ground. There have been very few helicopters shot down, so it would not be considered a large factor compared to speed of coordination on the ground to engage the fleeing Taliban.
The chinook is a big dumb slow target when landing. What were they thinking?
That the risk of being shot down was minimal compared to the better C3 needed for the pursuit operation.
Things go wrong sometimes. There was nothing wrong with what was done, it was just unfortunate what happened. Perhaps there was a leak, perhaps the bad guys just got lucky....no plan can cover everything that could possibly happen.
