Gonna analyze that?
At first brush my thoughts were a question.
What support is available to the A teams?
Severely restricting a team's movement is usually related to support. 2 miles is pretty close indicating perhaps they only have 60mm mortars.
SFers are trained to pick fights they can win whenever possible. It sounds like those teams in the boonies have little or no hope of reinforcement, and air support may be a coupla hours away. Those teams should be held back somewhat for their own protection.
Sending a few guys from one A team, with no support, into or near a mosque holding one of aq's top leaders for a quick look...does not sound wise to me.
"Force Protection" is seldom heard outside military circles, but it is a big buzzword these days. The direct action teams are a combined task force. The one that got saddam had three armor battalions available for backup...not to mention unlimited air support. The job got done and no GIs were hurt. A lone A team, out in the boonies, cannot project that kind of power.
We lost a lot of complete SF recon teams in SEA. They only had air support. The lessons learned are still fresh in military minds. We are not going to send our guys into situations we "know" they cannot fight their way out of.
Under orders, we also went into Somalia with air support alone. Again that was a tactic that did not work well. There, Clinton and Les Aspin refused to give our SF forces tank support...though it had been requested three times.
Nobody wants to repeat those errors.
Do not take the aggressive talk by staff officers too seriously. The most successful SF Operations are well thought out, well planned for, well trained for including rehearsals, and have all possible support available.
The bottom line is battles are most easily won with overwhelming fire superiority. I like the combined arms approach.
On March 3-4, 1969 the NVA attempted to overrun an outpost of the Ben Het SF A camp near the Laotian border. We had a platoon of three M-48 tanks from B Co, 1-69th Armor, 2 SF, and about 75 Montagnard fighters on the West Hill. Artillery and air support were available.
The NVA attacked this tiny force with a several day artillery barrage followed by an armored assault led by 10 Russian tanks and a (later) estimated force of at least 6,000 men. The SFers used artillery and air strikes masterfully. The NVA were beaten off.
SF A teams can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds...but they cannot do it with M-4 rifles. They need support. I was one of the 2 SF on the West Hill of Ben Het (that got our names in the book Green Berets at War.). I like the successful combined force tactics used there and again to get saddam...Let's not discard those tactics that are working for us. |
