Modern American Snipers (35 page)

The team made a three-hour march to the extraction zone—which was only reached by helicopters that flew beneath power lines and took heavy fire, wounding one pilot.

Despite multiple injuries, every American soldier escaped with his life. All but three of the partnered Afghans survived.

Along with the ten SF soldiers, the ODA's Combat Cameraman was also awarded the Silver Star. And Rhyner, the CCT, received the Air Force Cross—just the third CCT to ever earn the medal. Two other Americans earned the Bronze Star.

*   *   *

SEAL Team Seven Platoon Leading Chief Petty Officers Joseph Molina and Thom Shea were each awarded Bronze Stars with V devices for leading SEAL sniper teams in defense of a pinned-down SF ODA in July 2009.

Their QRF stormed over a ridgeline and, following a day-long battle, the ODA was able to escape unscathed. The SEALs accounted for twenty-two kills, including a high-angle, eleven-hundred-yard shot by Shea.

During that deployment Shea's BRAVO platoon was credited with 174 kills and six HVT captures. Shea also received a Silver Star during the deployment and returned to the States to serve as the Officer in Charge of the SEAL Sniper Course. Now a CEO and ultramarathon runner, he retired in 2014 following twenty-three years of service as a SEAL.

Molina too earned a Silver Star on that tour. The Southern Californian led his platoon through a two-day battle in which they eliminated fifty-six insurgents while taking no losses. His platoon was credited with 181 kills during their six-month deployment.

*   *   *

SF soldier Chad Brack—an unapologetic nontheist existing in an overtly religious domain—earned his Silver Star with a series of life-saving and heroic actions over a three-day period in May 2011.

ODA-3332 was paired up with indigenous SOF of the 1st Company 2nd Commando Kandak, who cleared the Nuristan Province villages of Awlagal and Chapo. However, they were outmaneuvered by Taliban insurgents who had the team trapped in the valley below, utilizing the high ground supplied by three enveloping cliffs.

Sgt. 1st Class Brack gave up cover to throw down suppressive fire with his Mk 13 Mod 5 .300 Win Mag—including keeping the heads of two enemy snipers down—allowing the combined SF/Commando force to scramble to a more defensible position.

After fending back another attempted ambush, the SF sniper put the enemies nearby command and control position on notice by sending precise fire their way. He then swapped to his M4 to cover the retrieval of a wounded friendly solider and again set about denying the enemy snipers—this time buying time for the arrival of AH-64 Apaches which promptly obliterated their hide—as directed by Brack.

Later, the insurgents cleverly attempted to shoot and set off explosives left on a nearby roof during the initial clearing operation. Brack braved the fire to snatch them.

Finally, he braved the way up front to lead their escape from the valley—urging forward the Afghan SOF whose performance had instilled little confidence throughout.

In addition to the Silver Star, Brack has twice been awarded the Bronze Star, as well as a Purple Heart and numerous other commendations.

*   *   *

While American SOF across the board enjoyed more than its share of victories in Afghanistan, the undisputed champion of the AO was the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

SEAL Team Six had waited a long time for this … its entire existence in fact.

While Delta Force and DEVGRU notionally ranked side-by-side atop the nation's counterterrorism hierarchy as its preeminent direct action components, history spoke loudly to the contrary.

Whether down to merit or the men in command who made the call, Delta traditionally got the coveted mission taskings while SEAL Team Six got the consolation prize, if not the shaft altogether.

Even its position as the dominant hunter-killer unit in Afghanistan that it had been “gifted” was—well, not exactly a stocking full of coal, but perhaps at the same “gee, thanks” level of a package of socks from Grandma.

When JSOC gave its initial order after September 11, two Delta Force squadrons rotated through the country, one of them getting the first shot at bin Laden.

It was only when it became obvious that the serious CT work was going to take place in Iraq that Delta truly pulled up their stakes and replanted itself in the new theater. That left DEVGRU to slog it out in Afghanistan, a war zone that had frozen over operationally since its opening flurry, lacking both political will and ready targets.

While far busier than it had been at any point previously with endless three-month rotations for its squadrons and continual real-world ops—including some groundbreaking missions—there had to be that familiar sense of envy when it looked over to see how the other half lived.

In the mid-2000s, Delta Force broke new ground and shattered previously held beliefs about operational limits. Its operators brought dread, chaos, and lead in equal portions as it surgically dissected terrorist networks, blasting through doors and demonstrating its CQB prowess in live combat.

The sailors of SEAL Team Six, meanwhile, trudged through the snow and hiked miles on end across the spines of unforgiving mountain ridgelines in hopes that an al-Qaeda player of note had stuck his head out of hiding or wandered back across the border.

*   *   *

DEVGRU did get its tastes of the blistering intensity of Iraq that was Delta's nightly existence—certainly enough to see what it had been missing.

A Warsaw Pact–trained sniper terrorized American troops in Iraq, killing several Army soldiers in the process. A number of snipers volunteered to take on the countersniper assignment, but one Black Team sniper from Red Squadron threw himself into the mission.

A former SEAL sniper instructor explained, “If you're on the glass all the time, it's going to happen, it's just a matter of when. Some guys slack off, but if you have the key attributes—you're patient, conscious, alert, and don't get fatigued—you'll get the results. This guy had them and he got them. He set up in a hide for six days drinking tea. He waited the sniper out and sure enough, a barrel finally appeared through the wall. That was all it took. He shot him right down the hole.”

That was just one in scores of kills taken by ST6 in Iraq. Task Force Blue worked the western half of the nation and set its sights on putting bomb-making networks out of business the JSOC way—rapid successions of raids targeting midlevel and local leaders, which branched out through the network's spiderweb of connections as they snapped into focus.

Ultimately, DEVGRU killed and captured hundreds in these efforts while helping to drastically curtail IED attacks on coalition forces … but it's all relative.

SEAL Team Six's primary focus was Afghanistan and Afghanistan was not the place to be—not if you're at the top of the CT food chain anyway. But then, eventually, it was.

*   *   *

DEVGRU had not only been the victim of the Army's institutional grasp over the nation's SOF hierarchy, some felt that it had also long suffered due to institutional issues much closer to home.

ST6 founder Richard Marcinko's rogue legacy had impacted the unit's standing in the wider special operations community—an effect that lasted for decades after the end of his command (Marcinko had only actually led the unit from '80 to '83).

Marcinko was brilliant in his theories but arguably less so in realizing them. A unit such as SEAL Team Six requires iconoclastic, independent risk takers … but also extremely professional, dedicated ones. While he may have found the sorts of cowboys he needed, he issued them black hats rather than gold stars and they readily followed his lead.

Robert Gormly was the first in a succession of officers who worked hard to retain the unit's edge but also sharpen its shark-toothed roughness into a finely honed blade. He faced a steep uphill climb.

Upon arrival, SEAL Team Six's XO warned him that despite Marcinko's boasts to the contrary, the unit had not been trained to an elite standard. Challenging exercises were often ended early because “as soon as things got tough, Dick would step in, abort the exercise, and take the troops drinking.”

Another ST6 officer of the era recalled similar sentiments about the actual readiness of the unit, with whispers suggesting that it was “all show, no go” in those formative years.

It was said Marcinko had assembled a “personal fiefdom” around himself. Highly motivated and gifted SEALs could be turned away while “shit birds” were pulled into the flock and the officers (outside of Marcinko) were undermined, creating “a rigid meritocracy married to the worst sort of personality cult … that brought out the worst portions of cronyism, backstabbing, and flattery.”

Gormly gave the arrogant yet underperforming maritime CT unit a reality check, requiring it to train and maintain standards in line with its extraordinarily demanding mission requirements.

However, Marcinko had assembled the unit from the ground up and his influence remained deeply ingrained in its DNA. The rogue warrior had constructed an inherently rogue organization. Subsequent leaders fought to exploit the inspired underlying concepts that drove his initial vision, while removing the less capable and less wholesome elements of what they had inherited.

But despite the dedicated and well-directed attempts of Gormly and those who succeeded him, in the eyes of some SEAL Team Six's reputation had largely been cemented. Even as DEVGRU enhanced its operational capabilities to a world-class standard, others in the military still viewed the unit as an enabled pack of outlaws—tremendously skilled outlaws, no doubt, but outlaws all the same. More worrisome, so too did some of its operators, who embraced the image and cultivated the belief that they were above the law.

*   *   *

With two decades to change its culture, DEVGRU entered the post-9/11 world boasting professionalism and talent comparable to its Army counterpart, without having completely shed its inner rebel.

Leaders like Olson and McRaven elevated DEVGRU to a new level, directly through their leadership, and indirectly by pulling the unit up with them as they advanced through the ranks.

Ironically, McRaven was one of the junior officers Marcinko had run off back in the day, back when McRaven headed an ST6 squadron but refused to get on board with the commander's orders to conduct undisclosed “questionable activities.”

Marcinko later criticized McRaven, claiming he “took the
special
out of
special
warfare.” However, the argument could be made that the studious and measured Texan actually “brought the
special
out of
special
warfare” when he at last had the power to do so, rewarding DEVGRU with its golden age once it had come to more closely reflect his image than that of its founding father.

Even Delta alumni recognized the impressive transformation, citing “extraordinary efforts on the part of the SEAL community to enhance the professionalism and capabilities of the SEALs” and noting that “they're not the SEAL Team Six that Dick Marcinko put together.”

*   *   *

The Naval unit faced some serious growing pains as it first acclimatized to the harsh, mountainous backdrop presented by Afghanistan. While Delta Force had the luxury of extensive mountaineering training, Six had the heavy burden of maintaining its maritime capabilities, a time-consuming endeavor and one that suddenly paid few dividends.

As a result, initially, the Navy special mission unit was alleged to lack the training, gear, and mindset necessary to operate effectively and were roundly (and unsurprisingly) criticized by their Army counterparts, who might prefer ST6 stay in the water.

However, thrown in the deep end, over time DEVGRU learned how to “swim” in this very different setting. With a generation of operators who had grown up developing tactics in the barren land, by the time the Afghanistan War reclaimed the nation's focus, SEAL Team Six were masters of the mountainous terrain and more than ready to take the lead.

Afghanistan wasn't an ideal match for the tools JSOC had pioneered under McChrystal's watch and expanded under McRaven's in Iraq; it lacked the infrastructure, population density, and flat geography that had allowed Delta et al. to elevate their tempo to a prestissimo pace. However, the targeting and execution had become so efficient that the capability for exploiting these methods remained very much intact.

In an overwhelming display of kinetic intensity, the renewed campaign doubled its pace each successive year: coalition SOF killed more than thirteen hundred insurgents and captured seventeen hundred more during a four-month span in 2011, during which JSOC ran five hundred of the four thousand total missions and “had done most of the killing.”

Afghanistan became SEAL Team Six's opportunity to showcase their ability to dominate compressed and chaotic kill zones.

“Nobody does CQB or direct action the way SEAL Team Six does—that's a fact,” said former DEVGRU operator Howard Wasdin.

A former Six officer echoed those sentiments, claiming DEVGRU is not “just
good
at multiple-room CQB; there is no one else in the world that comes close.”

“I'd be lying if I said that most of the people inside SEAL Team Six didn't think they were at that next elite level,” Wasdin added. “If you go to SEAL Team Six compound, you have the billion-dollar trainer sitting right there off to the right and you can go in and shoot 360 degrees in any direction, throw a real grenade, take out an elevator, and have it all video recorded. You don't have that kind of training anywhere else.”

Even in the early days following 9/11, the NSWDG CQB range featured eighteen HD monitors, quad video inputs, theatrical special effects, microwave motion sensors and pressure pads, and day and night camera tracking to capture it all on film (well, hard drive, actually). It's difficult to fathom what toys it may feature fifteen years and a budget explosion later.