Military
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Special forces have limitations
10/25/01BY JERRY O'BRIEN
Providence Journal Staff Writer
Last weekend's attacks on Taliban compounds by United States special operations forces aptly demonstrate the strength – and the limitations – of clandestine commando campaigns, military analysts and former special operations troops said this week.
The world now knows that two Army Rangers died in a helicopter crash in Pakistan while in support of the attacks and that a pair of helicopters came under fire shortly after the commando raids. The Taliban this week claimed to have recovered damaged helicopter wheels in Afghanistan, which the Pentagon denied.
What the attacks achieved, beyond the generalized claims of success by the United States, remains shrouded in secrecy. Such is the nature of what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has called "a different kind of war."
Unlike conventional war, advances in the war against terrorism will not be detailed in news conferences or measured by territory gained.
The public record, in fact, will more readily reflect the losses than the gains in a long and shadowy campaign, experts said.
The result will be less than gratifying for the public marking the action. The secret successes will be savored only by those who plan and execute the raids. The well-publicized failures will be measured only in body bags.
As a former Green Beret with experience in Afghanistan put it, a soldier's death gets reported as a public event. But a soldier's accomplishment can't be shared for fear that his fellows on the field of action could be jeopardized by the information.
Retired Army Sgt. Maj. Pat Traeger served in Afghanistan in Operation Safe Passage from 1989 to 1991, in the wake of the Russian military pullout. He helped teach the Afghan mujahadeen how to recognize, defuse and gather deadly mines.
Traeger has seen the potential and the peril of special operations. In his experience, special operations troops are especially vulnerable because "the risks come at a time when coordination is critical and difficult.".
The image of an American helicopter plummeting fatally to the ground near Dalbandin air base last weekend provides a haunting emblem of past special operations engagements, especially the botched hostage-rescue attempt at a place called Desert One, in Iran in 1980.
Military experts interviewed this week all agree that past special operations campaigns were plagued by poor intelligence, which put the men on the ground at risk. The actions were also hampered by needless competition among military branches, which nettled communications and led to conflicting orders on the ground.
However, they also say that while past military efforts in Iran, Grenada, Panama and Somalia can be considered political failures, most of the special operations missions led to military successes.
While they maintain that command restructuring has restored clarity and cooperation among the branches, a key element of special operations success and safety is intelligence.
Some believe that remains our weakest link.
"Our human intelligence expertise has been down the tubes for the better part of 30 years," said a former team leader of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, whose mission was to identify and assassinate Viet Cong agents and sympathizers. At least 20,000 were killed.
Phoenix was dismantled after Congressional hearings in the 1970s. For this Army veteran, the United States has had "no human intelligence on the ground" since then.
"We haven't been able to build agent networks and build bonds of trust and responsibility," the former Phoenix leader said. "Now we're walking in cold trying to build that."
This veteran said he believed that although the Russian military pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, it's likely that agents were left in place. They'll be useful now to their American counterparts, he said.
According to retired Army Brig. Gen. John. C. Reppert, a specialist in international arms control, there are three reasons why special operations forces face unique perils:
– Their specific purpose is to operate behind enemy lines, where the consequences of detection and engagement are higher.
– Almost all missions are at night. While night work provides the advantage of stealth, it introduces complexity and reliance on night-vision technology, which is especially tricky for helicopter pilots.
– Campaigns are entirely dependent upon intelligence. This makes them especially vulnerable when intelligence is faulty or incomplete.
"Transportation, night vision, special weapons, intelligence systems – the failure of any one of those is generally fatal," said Reppert, now the executive director of research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
"For conventional forces, failure can be covered by a backup plan or by an adjacent unit. There's a greater risk factor for special operations forces."
The risks become all too clear when the result is failure.
In April 1980, poor planning and equipment breakdowns led to the scuttling of Operation Eagle Claw, whose mission was to rescue 53 American hostages in Teheran, Iran. Hampered by darkness and swirling sand, a damaged helicopter struck a C-130 transport aircraft. The explosion and fire left five Air Force men and three Marines dead.
In October 1983, during Operation Urgent Fury, 12 members of a Navy SEAL team and 4 Air Force Combat Control Team members jumped at night from helicopters about 25 miles off the coast of Grenada. This rescue and evacuation mission ended when four SEALs drowned during the drop and the other members drifted out to sea after their inflatable boats were swamped.
In December 1989, during Operation Just Cause, four Navy SEALs were killed, including one who had been a SEAL for a week, and eight seriously injured during a poorly planned assault at a Panamanian airfield.
While the troops succeeded in disabling Gen. Manuel Noriega's boat and Learjet, blocking two means of his escape, the plan failed to include the better qualified Army Rangers, failed to provide adequate cover and failed to implement timely rescue.
In October 1993, while on a mission to capture two top aides to Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and 120 Army Rangers and Delta troops were pinned down in Mogadishu.
After a 15-hour battle, the two aides were caught but 18 Americans were dead and 73 wounded. Between 300 and 500 Somalians, including women and children, were killed.
"The problem is that everybody wants a piece of the action," the former Phoenix leader said of special operations planning. "They send the wrong guys for the mission."
Military observers believe that subsequent reforms in command and control have dramatically increased the effectiveness of joint operations of the type now going on in Afghanistan.
But whether the American public gets to revel in details of the publicized success stories remains unlikely.
Digital Extra:
Learn more about the different branches of the U.S. Special Forces and their particular roles at:
http://projo.com/extra/specialforces/