This is a debate I want to steer clear of, except to say that I think any civilian should be able to purchase any guns or tactical equipment available to the U.S. military.  I also think that pretending isn’t doing, and while pretension over YouTube is innocent enough (and I really don’t care about that sort of thing even though it seems to bother Dakota), the real problem with this sort of thing is with militarized police.  I notice Dakota Meyer says nothing about that.  Militarized police are the standing army that so worried the American founders.  Let’s see Dakota take that one on.  How about it, Dakota?  I think it would be awesome if a MoH winner would point out to SWAT teams around the nation that they should fly across the pond if they really want to do that sort of thing, and that Americans have rights.  So are you all in on this?

On another front (and changing the subject, for which I don’t apologize), following the comments on this video, and then on to other comments on other forums, and so on down the road like a spider web, I notice that there is an awful lot of apprehension in the reports given by Marcus Luttrell in his after action report and book.  I have said a good bit about Operation Red Wings, and I may have more to say about this operation in the future.

But for now it’s enough to point out that the operation was a total flop, and the main instigator of the trouble, Ahmad Shah, and his band of bad boys, had to be killed by Marines in Operation Whalers.  The Navy SEALs learned of Marine Corps plans and decided to take the action away from Marines.  This was a huge mistake.

Finally, I’ll point out two more things about Operation Red Wings.  First from Mohammad Gulab, who saved Marcus, and next, from a Marine Corps infantry officer.

On the night of June 27, 2005, with a sense of dread creeping over him, Luttrell and his fellow SEALs—Michael Murphy, Matthew Axelson and Danny Dietz—headed out for a recon mission in a dangerous part of Kunar province near the Pakistani border. A sniper and a medic, Luttrell packed a scoped military assault rifle and 11 magazines—three more than usual, he wrote in Lone Survivor.

While Luttrell wrote that he fired round after round during the battle, Gulab says the former SEAL still had 11 magazines of ammunition when the villagers rescued him—all that he had brought on the mission.

Gulab wasn’t the first to question the accuracy of Lone Survivor. In his 2009 book, Victory Point, the journalist Ed Darack wrote about the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment in Afghanistan, the unit that planned the mission. He uncovered a bevy of discrepancies in Luttrell’s account. Some are small: He got the name of the operation wrong—it was Red Wings, like the hockey team, not Redwing. Others are more significant: The target, Ahmad Shah, wasn’t an international terrorist or a close bin Laden associate. He was the head of a small Taliban-linked militia. Citing reports gleaned from phone and radio intercepts, Darack estimates only eight to 10 militants attacked the SEALs, not 80 to 200. In fact, two graphic videos the gunmen shot during the firefight show only seven men in Shah’s militia.

“[Luttrell’s claims] are exaggerated nonsense,” says Patrick Kinser, a former Marine infantry officer who participated in Operation Red Wings and read the former SEAL’s after action report. “I’ve been at the location where he was ambushed multiple times. I’ve had Marines wounded there. I’ve been in enough firefights to know that when shit hits the fan, it’s hard to know how many people are shooting at you. [But] there weren’t 35 enemy fighters in all of the Korengal Valley [that day].”

Take careful note.  I’m not saying that Luttrell’s account is wrong or exaggerated.  Others are saying that.  I make no claim to knowing these things for certain.  But I think it’s interesting, and I also think there is a lot more study to be done about this fateful operation, why it should never have been conducted, and the specific failures in personnel, weapons, tactics, techniques and procedures.

I’ve often wondered why the SEALs would have taken radio equipment only to be frustrated by mountains when trying to communicate their predicament (and ultimately killing Murphy), when they could have carried a sat phone with a MilStar uplink?

But one thing is for sure by all accounts, including post-mortem and forensic reviews.  Matthew Axelson was a stud.  He continued to lay down fires even after being shot in the head, up to and including emptying both his rifle and pistol and all backup magazines.

This is a story that in my opinion is yet to be fully told.

Prior: A Marine Corps View Of Tactics In Operation Red Wings

My son previously offered his assessment of Lone Survivor, and in the interest of showing that I don’t ignore contrary opinions, I’ll offer up a few.  I don’t always do this, and feel no requirement to do this, but in this case I’ll link three differing opinions.

The first comes from Max V.  I think Max gets a bit wrapped around the axle thinking that the point of Daniel’s critique was who could do the job better, Marines or SEALs.  Who has the better men – who would have used stealth better – who would have planned better?  I think Max might miss the point.

The main point of the post was that the SEALs were used out of their area of specialty of infantry.  Daniel has seen good infantry and bad infantry, and knows the difference.  The Marine Corps has some very good infantry – and some bad infantry.  No generalization on this point was intended in the original post, and Daniel conveyed none of that to me.

I’ll mention one final point on Max’s post.  It’s a bit condescending in that Max assumes that there is a “tactical misunderstanding” concerning what Daniel wrote (or what I wrote for Daniel).  We had a longer discussion than the post could convey, but there is no tactical misunderstanding.  Daniel understands exactly what the mission was and why they sent the team they did.  He just disagrees with it.  So that characterizes at least one part of Max’s objections, i.e., that they did what they did because that’s what they do when they do that!

But if we leave a bit condescending and reasoning in a circle with Max, we enter complete condescension and know-it-all jackassery with WeaponsMan.  Here is a taste: “Daniel’s bitches …” (I don’t allow Daniel to bitch at me, and I was the one discussing it with him very calmly), “This is the line soldier’s profound ignorance of two things speaking …,” “Daniel, in his personal experience, does not understand the difference between recon and long-range recon …,”Young Smith may be unaware of why Marine Scout Snipers are escorted to their hides …” (Marine Scout snipers are not always escorted to their hides as he alleges, and are not trained that way or necessarily to expect that this will occur – I know Scout Snipers), “A SAW weighs over 20 pounds and burns copious quantities of ammunition. Would it have saved this recon team? No …” (He doesn’t know any such thing), “This partly flows from Hollywood bullshit, but most of it is Marine bullshit, frankly …” (he only thinks that because he was never in the Marines and doesn’t know what the Marines do or why they do it the way they do).

On and on it goes, but it’s the same sort of thing that Max posted, it just took him thousands of words to say what Max did in just a few.  They didn’t do it like Daniel wanted because that’s not what they do when they do that … and oh by the way, Daniel is stupid because we say so.  I can be frank too, and frankly after reading WeaponsMan I wanted that fifteen minutes of my life back.  Also, I just chuckle and roll my eyes when they object to carrying a SAW because it weighs a lot.  Good grief.  Go back and read Dirty Micks list of things he carried as a Pathfinder.

That’s not what they do when they do that is called assuming the consequent (and it goes by other names in college logic courses).  It’s a fallacy, and my son’s objections went much deeper than why did they do that?  His objections went to the issue of they shouldn’t have done that!  Or if you will, doctrine as it touches on or informs tactics rather than tactics proper.  And the issue has mostly to do with the way they would have done things versus how the SEALs did it.  As for the notion that my commenters are Marines, Dirty Mick and Jean (both of whom commented on the original article) are active and retired Army, respectively.  Lastly, WeaponsMan states unequivocally that “We didn’t see the underestimation. Everybody knows that the lightly loaded Afghans can often outrun their American allies, or enemies, and believe me, everyone understands the physiology at work here.”  I do not believe that everyone understands, and I do not believe him.  And that’s not what the report portrays.

There isn’t any reason at all that a larger team, inserted at night, right at the outskirts of the town, couldn’t have performed room clearing and hunting for their intended target (with another team inserted for the sole purpose of preventing egress from the town) at dawn (with fire teams carrying SAWs) could not have worked.  Not a single reason.  All things considered, I’m quite unimpressed at the article.  I think his ego got in the way of making what could have been a contribution to the conversation beyond “I know everything and they did what they did because that’s what they do when they do that.”

Then leaving condescension we enter slightly odd from Sean Linnane.  He says “let me state this is at best a historical analysis and at worst Monday Morning Quarterbacking by a guy who was not there.”  It doesn’t matter whether he is talking about himself or Daniel.  This is odd.  Taking this position means that there can’t be any such thing as an AR 15-6, a post-Mortem, followup assessment, training, or any other review of actions taken in any given situation unless you were there.  Again, just odd.  I think Daniel’s assessment means something, and I wish Sean had weighed in a little more fully.

In conclusion, I’m disappointed in all of the responses to Daniel’s assessment thus far.

This will be a little different than some articles, a throwback to my military blogging, and very frank.  It will likely offend some people, and since it comes straight from a former enlisted Marine, there is slight language warning.

I should say up front that I like for the comments to be free flowing where readers can disagree with my views (respectfully, of course).  But in this instance I would offer up the following guidelines.  First, stick to the point of the article.  The article isn’t about the justification or lack thereof for OEF, OIF, or any other campaign or operation.  The article isn’t about politics.  Second, there will be no disparaging comments about Navy SEALs, the U.S. Marine Corps, or my son Daniel (whose assessment this is).  I will spam all such comments.  Finally, if you make comments about the “military-industrial complex,” I will laugh at you as I spam your comment.

This article is about tactics, plain and simple.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It will be frank, open, and honest.  Nothing herein is construed to malign the bravery and exploits of anyone in any operation, anywhere, at any time.  It comes from a former enlisted Marine, so take it for what it’s worth – a former enlisted Marine’s view of Operation Red Wings.  With that said, I’ll now offer up my son Daniel’s comments regarding the movie Lone Survivor, knowing the story beforehand, but commenting to me after having seen the movie.

“This operation should never have come off the way it did.  The Marines don’t take chances.  I saw a room full of Navy SEALs sitting on their assess back at the FOB doing nothing but monitoring comms.  If you set four SEALs down by helicopter, you could have set an entire platoon down.  There was no reason to limit the recon team to four.”

“I was on a recon mission in Fallujah, and we had an entire platoon.  We were monitoring a mosque for anti-American messaging, and we were beside a building (abandoned school) that AQ was using to execute leaders of Fallujah.  We were watching the mosque and someone came over comms and said, “Um guys, there are dudes with masks on that just got out of cars with some other dude who had a hood on.”  We started watching them, and sure enough, they were AQ getting reading to execute another elder.  We laid waste to them because we had a platoon, not a four man fire team.  Even when doing recon, we have enough men.  We escorted snipers to their two- or three-day post, and then escorted them back.  We didn’t want our Scout Snipers getting killed on the way to or from their post.”

“Alternatively, since you knew comms was going to be bad on the other side of that mountain, you could have set down another team of four SEALs on top of the mountain or near it, who could have then relayed comms to the FOB from the recon team.  We did stuff like that all the time.  There was no excuse to have sent a team of four.  And there was no excuse to have poor comms when you knew you were going to have poor comms.”

“Another example showing that they didn’t think ahead and plan for the worst is …” (and at that point I interjected, “Why wasn’t anyone carrying …”) a SAW (Daniel said)?  ‘Yes’, I responded.  “The fact that they had suppressed, scoped weapons shows that they were not prepared to lay down suppressive fire.  They hadn’t planned for the worst.  Marines plan for the worst.”

“Furthermore, they were laying around when the goat herders stumbled up.  If it had been my fire team, I would have said “never stop moving, but if you do, then we’re going to dig in and act like we’re going to defend this terrain to the death.”  We would have dug in in such a manner that we had interlocking fields of fire, all built around a SAW where we could have done fire and maneuver.”

“Next, about that conversation they had concerning the goat herders.  I would have ended it in a hurry.  I would have popped both goat herders and then popped all of the goats.  They could charge me later, but in the mean time the operation was compromised and it was time to leave.”  (Editorial note: Comments at this article dream up scenarios where they could have taken the “prisoners” with them and avoided all of the problems.  It’s all a day dream.  Attempting to take the goat herders to the top of the mountain would have slowed them and left them in the same situation, as well as told the goat herders that they were unwilling to shoot them, at which point the goat herders would have done the same thing, run down the mountain and tell the Taliban commanders).

He said that they badly underestimated the capabilities of the Afghan fighters.  Those folks were born there, and their lungs are acclimated to the thin air.  Given the weight of the kit they were hauling, it was foolish to think that they could have beaten indigenous men up to the top of the mountain when those men were wearing thin man-dresses and carrying nothing but an AK-47 and a couple of magazines.

I asked Daniel what the worst case was if an entire platoon of SEALs would have deployed instead of the four man recon team and the Taliban commander wasn’t in the village, and he said “So what?  Take some MREs with you, go into the village, drink chai with the elders, win a little hearts and minds, and get some intel.  Do counterinsurgency, something the SEALs think they’re too good to do.”

As for the loss of the QRF, Daniel was just livid.  The notion that the QRF lost its CAS to other missions or emergent problems is simply ridiculous.  Losing the Apache helicopters meant exactly one thing.  They lost the QRF.  Period.  If they weren’t dedicated resources, then they never really had a QRF to begin with.  And there was no reason that the C-130s shouldn’t have been refueled and circling above-head the entire time.  They dropped the four man team out there without the right support, without the right weapons (no area suppression weapon), without good comms, and finally, without applying classical infantry tactics.

“I’ve seen it before.  The CO didn’t want to hear about problems because they’re all playing the ‘my dick is bigger than your dick’ game.  They sent a SEAL team to do what they should have sent classical infantry to do.  They should have sent in a Marine Corps infantry platoon, or if you want to go all spec ops, send in Marine Force Recon.

“Or if you don’t want it to be a Marine Corps operation, send in the Rangers.  I understand that SEALs are pretty bad ass.  If you have complex HALO jumps and frogman operations, or hostage rescue, they are the guys to call.  But they don’t do classic infantry fire and maneuver, and that’s what was needed that day.  The Rangers are pretty bad ass too.  Send them in.  They know how to do fire and maneuver, set up interlocking fields of fire, develop enfilade fire, and so on.”

“I patrolled with SEALs once in Fallujah when they were looking for a HVT.  They have this attitude that ‘We’re SEALs.  We don’t need anyone or anything else.’  But that day they did.  They needed infantry, and command should have sent in enough men to prepare for the worst.  They took chances, and good men died as a result.”