‘Bubblehead’… have some more kool-aid and please pardon us jingo’s. No one is too concerned about you being offended. Next time just keep it pithy and save your fuzzy ideology and ill-conceived prophecy for the coffee shop.

From a tactical perspective it leaves so many questions I wish the author would have elaborated on or even mentioned. ‘Bubblehead’ does bring up some valid points of a tactical nature, which I too was asking myself as I read the book. Six vs. four man team, weapon selection, the E&R plan, SOP.

Someone tell me the E&R annex was thoroughly planned or at least templated? What of the ‘60% Solution?’ If a team can answer 60% of it’s PIR from the current site w/ a lower risk of getting busted then take it. There will be another day! It was primarily a Surv. mission w/ TGT Acquisition potential. But as soon as a team is compromised the dominos are set in motion…QRF, CSAR, the entire theater is affected and the team is reduced to nothing more than a liability and as a result even more men were lost.

What of the commo? Was there a ‘no commo plan’? Abort criteria? Site selection next to a relativley high speed ave of approach? Soft vs. Hard Compromise?

I have read blogs where guys said they have read the official aar, trained, and or worked with Op. Red Wing team members. Can anyone provide insight on some of these questions? There had to be a deviation from approved TTP’s, SOP, and the plan.

Maybe mistakes were made? I am sure there are few, if any, who have been on a mission where there weren’t mistakes. But we’re talking about pros here and some of this stuff is so basic I just can’t imagine any of it was over-looked. Respectfully.

As with the other reviews one will find on this book I do not wish to denigrate the lost souls of Seal Team 10 - these guys put up a helluva fight and I have the utmost respect for them – truly highlights the superior training, however, having said that the book boils down to maybe seventy pages - from the insertion to full contact compromised, and the loss of the Team, the rest of the book is wasted pulp – blather!!.

Those seventy pages left me filled with questions relating to the Team’s SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) such as why a four man team was used when the intel was telling them there were up to a couple hundred hostiles in the area. The six man team has repeatedly been shown to be more effective – two more guns may have made the difference, especially if a SAW and a grenade launcher had been included (google Squad Automatic Weapon & M 203 grenade launcher), a few white phosphorous rounds definitely would have bought some breathing room.

Marcus describes the reconnaissance point as a promontory which is the last place where someone hiding wants to be, they were on a ridge with at least one high speed trail, there was at least one hut in the area, the way it is written when they turned the goatherds loose they nonchalantly followed them up the mountain to another hide in full view of any observer. This whole section made me think fubar. SOP dictates the Team leader to do a fly over rather than just a photo and map study – this may have been out of the question for one reason or another, regardless there was no mention of an E&E plan (escape and evasion) and why did comms fail? Blah blah blah – one thing after another that may or may not have been done properly but the book definitely reads like it wasn’t. Why is there no mention of Mako-30 and Neil Roberts? the skeptic in me wonders if the media is scrambling for another Jessica Lynch story coming into an election year.

One thing that the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have in common is the difficulty in remaining undetected during reconnaissance missions (Bravo Two Zero for instance 1st gulf), patrol technique has got to be highly modified, one would think this may have been addressed in detail or at least hypothetically somewhere in the book, maybe this is possibly classified - one would do well to study the movements of the snow leopard, camouflage is critical - not a mention? The pattern exists for alpine rock –google roggenwolf.

I don’t know, the way the book reads is smelly to me –not killing the goatherds was the proper choice - it appears that SOP was not adhered to. We have many experiences to learn from – Soviet in particular but the British experience in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well – both were losers, we in turn shall be a loser - they and we do not understand and appreciate the tribal mentality - we are the bull in the china shop. Please read the Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Gertrude Bell -Queen of the Desert, also many accounts from climbing expeditions to this area have good insight into the Pashtun mentality.

Prosit absent Companions,

RH