War Is Boring

Afghan security forces will take over as U.S.-led international troops gradually withdraw from Afghanistan through 2014. At least that’s the plan. Poor leadership could undermine Afghan efforts to secure their own country. “There’s a gross lack of leadership in Afghanistan,” says “Tom,” a U.S. Army Special Forces officer assigned to train Afghan police in Laghman province, east of Kabul.

LAGHMAN, Afghanistan — Coalition forces here have been hit hard in the past year. Bombings and gun battles have killed more than a dozen U.S. troops and wounded around 100 from Task Force Thunderbird, built around the Oklahoma National Guard’s 45th Infantry Brigade.

LAGHMAN, Afghanistan — The American Special Forces officer was having what one colleague says was the worst day of his war tour. And that was before the Soviet-made anti-personnel mine packed with 700 ball bearings exploded at his feet.

U.S. and Romanian Special Forces train Afghan special police in Laghman, Afghanistan, in February 2012.

U.S. Special Forces and commandos from other nations are slated to remain in Afghanistan even after the coalition’s more than 100,000 conventional troops withdraw by the end of 2014. One of the Special Forces’ major responsibilities is training and leading Afghan police forces, widely seen as the first line of defense against Taliban infiltration.

by ROBERT BECKHUSEN Coming off last year’s Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the special operations community has rarely ridden higher. But the resonance of the Somalia raid is, perhaps, singular. Somalia has a totemic significance for many in the special-operations community, thanks to the 1993 debacle — even as they’ve slowly grown more comfortable quietly operating in the country. The [...]

A nearly disastrous daylight raid by U.S. Special Forces in Somalia four years ago ended with a surprising intervention by a U.S. Navy warship — and illustrates the largely unheralded role the Navy’s vessels are playing in the ongoing American intervention in Somalia.

For the small team of U.S. Navy and Air Force commandos in northern Somalia on June 1, 2007, it must have seemed like history repeating itself. While hunting Islamic terrorists in the town of Bargal, the commandos had been pinned down by gunfire. Fourteen years earlier, a similar situation had resulted in the deaths of 18 U.S. servicemembers in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital — a tragedy that’s the subject of the book and movie Black Hawk Down.

There are lots of surprising claims in Chuck Pfarrer’s new book SEAL Target Geronimo, a supposedly inside account of the May 2 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound — and none more surprising than this. The former commando-turned-author Pfarrer insists the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment possesses not one, but two stealth transport helicopter designs. The stealthier of the two was held back from the mission for fear of one crashing and giving up its secrets, Pfarrer claims.

With rebel forces in Tripoli and Moammar Gadhafi on the run, the end could be near for the Libyan civil war. Sporadic fighting continues in the capital city of the oil-rich North African nation, NATO warplanes are still patrolling overhead, and there’s always the danger of Gadhafi true-believers launching a fresh insurgency. But already, Western analysts are weighing the lessons of the six-month-long conflict. “Modern air power is the key force that is directly leading to the overthrow of the Gadhafi regime,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula concluded. True, but a host of other cutting-edge technologies, and a few decidedly low-end ones, also played critical roles.

A Dutch journalist embeds with U.S. Special Forces, gets into a firefight, runs down the battery on his camera then picks up a rifle and starts shooting. Now he’s finishing a documentary about his experiences.

The May 2 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound was a combination of virtuoso intelligence-gathering and analysis, impressive technological prowess and incredible bravery by the strike team… and their dog.