Modern American Snipers (36 page)

In Afghanistan, SEAL Team Six's opportunities to put its prodigious combat marksmanship talents into practice often hinged on its ability to operate in the harsh environment unhindered. Armed not only with Hk416 and quad-tube NVGs, but also superior training, conditioning, and around a decade's worth of experience running ops in the nation's most unforgiving battlegrounds, DEVGRU routinely outmaneuvered the locals. They seized the initiative on enemy forces who previously considered their mountainside lairs all but unassailable by foreign forces.

To maximize this advantage, assaulting SEAL Team Six troops performed offset infils as standard operating procedure, disembarking from 160th SOAR helicopters out of hearing range and then hiking for hours across several miles of terrain in order to retain the element of surprise.

The responsibility for this game changer rested largely on the shoulders of Black Team, whose recce snipers mapped out potential LZs and paths to targets ahead of the missions. They then patrolled out ahead of the stealthy infiltration hikes and scouted the objective once in position. As the assault commenced, they would climb into position and pull overwatch duty (if not be included in the door kicking) and then assume the lead once again during exfiltration.

DEVGRU not only tore through Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura Taliban networks in the south, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the north, and the al-Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba and Haqqani Network in the east, it also successfully pulled off a series of dramatic hostage rescue operations.

It was one they did not that underlined just how important their mountaineering talents had become in enabling their success.

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Intercepted communications suggested that, in October 2010, kidnapped Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove, who had been captured and held by Taliban insurgents, was in imminent danger of either being executed in torturous fashion or transported to al-Qaeda-linked factions in Pakistan.

Held at eight thousand feet in northern Kunar Province, the urgent time frame prevented SEAL Team Six from utilizing what had become its preferred method; a silent ascent on foot from miles away was deemed impossible.

Coming in loud and fast in a predawn raid with an AC-130U gunship watching from above, the assault team fast-roped from Night Stalker MH-60 Black Hawks directly onto the compound grounds.

Recce snipers aboard the helicopters immediately dispatched multiple sentries, defending the assaulters' rapid descent to Earth.

With six insurgents taken out in the opening seconds by precise fire, Norgrove was nearly free. However, one of her captors had pulled her from the building, an act unrecognized by the rescue force. She broke free and curled into the fetal position as the gunfight raged just above her head.

An operator tossed a grenade at the sole remaining combatant from a nearby roof. The explosive killed the Taliban fighter but also severely wounded the hidden Norgrove.

She ultimately succumbed to her wounds.

It was initially reported by the assault team that Norgrove had been killed by a Taliban suicide vest. Only days later, following the careful review of drone and helmet cam footage, did the reality of the situation become apparent.

The culprit came forward and admitted the mistake. He was dismissed from Six while several others were disciplined for not speaking up immediately.

While the judgment of the SEAL at fault was a crucial factor, the rescue was made riskier and more complex than it might have been had the team not been forced to make a heliborne assault against awaiting captors.

Providing additional evidence of the hazards of the method was the more recent successful rescue of Dr. Dilip Joseph, whom SEAL Team Six freed from the Taliban in the mountains near the Pakistan border. However, Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas Checque was killed during the course of a gunfight that was spurred by the sound of incoming helicopters. While seven insurgents were killed and two others apprehended in the course of the successful rescue, the loss of Checque served as another scaring reminder of all that can go wrong during the course of such a high-risk mission.

But when tactically freed up by a recce-led offset infiltration, DEVGRU has shown it can execute even the most demanding of rescues with surgical exactness.

Four months following the attempted air assault on the Shok Valley by Special Forces ODA-3336, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's militant group, Hezb-e-Islami, had taken an American Army Corps of Engineers worker hostage. He was being held in the mountains of Wardak Province with his captors convinced the treacherous terrain would shield them from any potential attack.

However, DEVGRU, with Army Rangers in support, set down and stepped out of the 160th SOAR MH-47E Chinooks some miles from the camp.

The troop leveraged its ability to conquer the terrain. Over a period of several hours and under cover of darkness, the element traversed the mountain path and approached the hut unseen at three a.m.

A small assault force took the captors completely unaware with suppressed weapons, killing them before they even realized a rescue attempt was in process.

It was a similar story in June 2012, when four aid workers—Briton Helen Johnston, Kenyan Moragwa Oirere, and two Afghani women—were successfully rescued in Badakhshan Province, near the Tajikistan border, in a joint HR operation conducted by ST6 and the British SAS.

Here, too, the commandos set down miles from the camp and hiked through the forested mountains in order to execute simultaneous nighttime raids. Completely outmatched in terms of training and technology, the Taliban captors were wiped out in mere moments. DEVGRU snuffed out seven kidnappers while the SAS killed four and saved all four aid workers.

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This mounting track record (including a dozen or so clandestine raids across the border into Pakistan) made SEAL Team Six the natural force of choice once HVT-1 had been pinned down to a compound in Abbottabad—intelligence that spurred the single-most coveted SOF mission ever embarked upon.

And it probably didn't hurt that former SEAL Team Six officers controlled the top two chairs in the nation's spec ops community.

Former Black Teamer Craig Sawyer, who suffered through the unit's leaner years, said, “Most of the JSOC commanders have been Army. In fact, most of them came through Delta. So it didn't matter which unit was appropriate for the job, it just mattered whose daddy ran JSOC at the time. Well, that's changed a little bit. A Navy Admiral was running JSOC for a while and SEAL Team Six got to show what they could do.”

Operation Neptune Spear—the mission that killed bin Laden—was the most expansive, expensive, and ambitious manhunt in the history, requiring breakthrough technologies on multiple fronts plus a decade of concentrated effort from dozens of entities, thousands of experts, and millions of man hours.

It was the ultimate expression of the joint counterterrorism capability that had been founded in the wake of the Operation Eagle Claw humiliation and perfected following ten years of brutally relentless combat versus this new breed of fanatical adversary.

However, for the operators of Red Squadron, it was simply what they do.

Adm. McRaven said so explicitly: “It is what we do. We get on helicopters, we go to objectives, we secure the objectives, we get back on helicopters, and we come home.”

“They do it constantly,” added Sawyer. “They do it all the time, and a lot of times there is fierce resistance. And it's usually never heard about.”

The unit had certainly pulled off more technical and challenging operations while shredding through much better prepared enemy defensives. The crash of the previously unknown modified “Stealth Hawk” required a bit of improvisation, but again, that is what they do.

However, the adjustment required an alternate method of bagging bin Laden. The original mission plan evoked one utilized by Delta Force to rescue Kurt Muse from Carcel Modelo prison in Panama City during Operation Acid Gambit in 1989.

There an operator was tasked with climbing down the side of the building to the window outside Muse's cell in order to neutralize the guard who was assigned to kill the American in the event of a rescue attempt. However, the guard was not in position and was eventually taken out in the building interior by the assault force.

Operation Neptune Spear's slick mission plan—one that unraveled when the helo plummeted into the courtyard—planned for DEVGRU operators to enter the compound from both the ground and the roof simultaneously. The first opportunity to kill bin Laden was to belong to a Black Team sniper, who was slated to lean over from the roof and terminate bin Laden with an inverted shot.

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Technically, SEAL Team Six was “on loan” to the CIA during Operation Neptune Spear, a semantic solution made to justify JSOC's gray existence.

While the Joint Special Operations Command had limited its more industrial methods to the Iraq and Afghanistan AOs, it also engaged in more bespoke CT efforts in dozens of other nations.

These global terrorist hunts skirt the semi-philosophical border that separates Title 50, which governs covert intelligence actions traditionally associated with the CIA, from Title 10, which applies to the use of military force.

Title 50 is subjected to tighter, timelier congressional oversight but is significantly more expansive in its scope. Meanwhile, Title 10 is less restrictive in terms of supervision and approval, but it's traditionally only applied in narrowly defined war zones.

An argument has been made that GWOT has in fact transformed the entire planet into a battlefield to combat global terrorist networks. The AQN ExOrd and other similar directives have made that legally true in a number of nations to some degree. That fact grants JSOC liberty to send Delta Force and DEVGRU outside established war zones to execute a wide range of operations (including kill and capture missions) with relative impunity—and occasionally without even the CIA's consent or awareness.

However, should even the reimagined Title 10 not prove permissive enough, JSOC simply shifts its legal authority by placing its forces under the temporary control of the CIA—as was technically the case with Operation Neptune Spear despite JSOC retaining near-complete control over the tactical aspects of the mission.

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SEAL Team Six has been a central component of this black ops initiative, conducting confirmed kill-or-capture missions in not only Pakistan but also Somalia. Reports suggest that JSOC SMUs have operated with wide latitude inside a whole host of nations including Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, Madagascar, Bolivia, Ecuador, Georgia, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Ukraine, Algeria, Indonesia, Thailand, Mali, Colombia, and even European nations.

There have even been suggestions that DEVGRU has been directed to place Mexican cartel drug lords in their sights, as concerns build regarding possible ties linking global criminal and terrorist organizations, a fear inflamed with the rise of ISIS.

Not surprisingly, reports have credited the Pakistan hunter-killer operations to ST6's Black Team. Similar operations have been mounted in Yemen and Somalia, where it's been reported that CIA/JSOC “omega teams” took out approximately half of the top fifteen al-Qaeda figures in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 2010.

JSOC snipers' unique hybrid skill sets, which unite the ability to operate in a low-visibility fashion with their extreme and multifaceted lethality, makes DEVGRU and Delta's recce operators attractive options for any proposed kinetic operations of an especially sensitive nature.

For example, the manner in which Delta's B Squadron recce troop was able to blend in and take out HVTs via surgical vehicle-to-vehicle target interdictions is one that it's easy to imagine translating to a wide variety of scenarios in a wide range of locations.

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The idea of weaving CIA and special operations forces in order to leverage the specialized skill sets needed to effectively conduct covert action while maintaining a reasonable argument for blurring the Title 10/50 separation is not exactly a new one.

Neither is it a post-9/11 invention to send small recon teams across borders and outside recognized war zones on conduct extreme risk close target reconnaissance or snatch-and-grabs.

MACV-SOG—Military Assistance Command, Vietnam–Studies and Observations Group—remains a legendary name in the special operations community. A spiritual predecessor to both JSOC and the CIA's Special Activities Division/Special Operations Group, SOG was
the
black ops unit of the Vietnam War, and one that redefined special operations during its day.

Former DEVGRU sniper Craig Sawyer sees a clear comparison between today's Delta Force and DEVGRU recce assets and SOG's recon teams.

“I'd say they are the closest equivalent, and I'd say their outlook and mind-set is the same. Very much so. Although, I will always look back upon the MACV-SOG operators with a prestige and reverence just due to the heavy operational climate that they were in. For some reason, it just seems like the culture and the climate in Vietnam and what those guys went in and did—what they were up against—it just seems darker and more dangerous than anything since.

“Not taking anything away from the lethal operations that have gone on for the last ten years, but it's just different. Those MACV-SOG operators in Vietnam will always be my heroes.”

What Carlos Hathcock was for snipers, Jerry “Mad Dog” Shriver was for Special Forces. He didn't so much as live up to the stereotype of the daring-if-demented Green Beret as he did create it.

Idiosyncratic to say the least, he was also a fearless, driven operator. Shriver chased after the most challenging missions and pushed the operational limits. He may have “lived in his own orbit”—and slept on a bunk with weapons of every size and sort scattered about—but he also got results and was hugely respected by his peers.

Shriver earned two Silver Stars, seven Bronze Stars for valor, and a king-sized reputation. Legend has it that during one mission deep in enemy territory his recon team had enemy soldiers closing in on their position from all sides. When the FAC (Forward Air Controller) reported his concern from the sky, Shriver said, “No—I've got 'em right where I want 'em—surrounded from the inside.”