Operation Red Wings: The Untold Story Behind Lone Survivor (Kindle Single) (SOFREP) Read Free

SOF officer on-site, and got the full briefing on what they knew had gone down. There were already Rangers, Special Forces, and some PJs heading for Turbine 33’s crash site, so the primary effort became about finding the four-man SEAL team that had come under fire, then dropped off comms (slang for communications). They had to figure out what they would do next, where they would go, so that they could get rescue assets there to pick them up.
    What the CRO found as soon as he started working was that there was very little coordination going on. Between the army, the air force, Naval Special Warfare, and the marines, there were lots of units and groups trying to get in to help, but very few were talking to each other. The communications channels between the different chains of command simply weren’t there. Units in the field were setting up comms with their own headquarters, but all of the radio frequencies being utilized for the rescue effort were separate. So anything the Rangers found wasn’t necessarily being passed to the Special Forces, and thus wasn’t being passed to the air force personnel who were in charge of the overall effort. In fact, throughout the entire recovery operation, the Combat Rescue personnel were never entirely sure who was where on the ground, and when, due to the spotty nature of the communications channels.
    He also found that, while the initial actions to launch the QRF on Turbine 32 and Turbine 33, and the follow-on attempt to get SEALs, PJs, and U.S. Air Force Combat Controllers to the crash site were the correct ones, there really wasn’t any further contingency planning in place. There was no plan beyond the initial attempt. While the CRO will today stress that everything they did was the right thing to do, the JSOTF in Kunar was winging it. That was what the CRO was there to fix.
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    While all this was happening, in spite of the numbers of forces on the ground already, including elements of 2nd Ranger Battalion, Special Forces, and marines from 2/3 who were pushing into the Korengal and Merit valleys from Camp Blessing, more forces were deemed to be needed on the ground. To this end, elements of 3rd Ranger Battalion, still stateside in Georgia, were called in and told to get ready to deploy to Afghanistan. All the 3rd Battalion Rangers was told initially was that an MH-47 had gone down with sixteen men aboard, SEALs and Night Stalkers. They would not find out about the four-man SR team on the mountain until they arrived at Bagram.
    The Rangers, most of whom were off duty, were simply paged to report to Battalion Headquarters. When they got to their company areas, they were told to pack their gear and get ready to go. Eighteen hours after receiving the first page, they were on the plane and heading for Afghanistan.
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    With forces already preparing to move to the Turbine 33 crash site, and the site being known already, the CRO’s primary focus became finding the four-man SR team. While Turbine 33 was well localized, no one knew exactly where the team was, or whether they were alive or dead. The assumption, for the sake of the operation, was that they were alive; if they were alive, it made it all the more urgent to find them and get them out. They were alone, off comms, and in enemy territory, and quite likely one or more of them were wounded. The longer they stayed lost, the greater the likelihood that they would wind up dead. In fact, three of them already were dead, but the JOC didn’t know that for certain.
    The first priority, in addition to getting air assets up to search and attempt to make contact over the SAR (search and rescue) frequency, was to get inside the SEALs’ heads and try to ascertain where they would go, assuming they were still alive. To that end, the CRO had to go through all of their operational plans and materials, as well as their personnel recovery materials, which would provide information that only they would know, in the event