Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1467328
When it turned out that not only the former Hussein's regime troops are involved, and the Americans are also facing large, well-organized groups of Sunni fundamentalists associated with Al-Qaeda, the SOF was the primary countermeasure. The Counter-Terrorist machine established by the US JSOC, of massive size, had sev- eral sources of intel at its disposal, including a myriad of reconnaissance platforms introduced into use at the time, at a mass scale. Unmanned and manned aircraft were capable of spending hours over the given area, tracking the suspicious persons. The ae- rial reconnaissance platforms were working hand-in-hand with other assets, HUMINT, and COMINT (tools analyzing mobile phone activities and the Internet) means included. Based on that, F3EAD – Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze and Disseminate - methodol- ogy was employed. Once the terrorist was found, direct action was launched with one objective: capture or kill. The intel gathered afterward - extracted from the captured person, documents, data in an electronic form - made it possible to broaden and deep- en the situational awareness and identify more targets. More importantly, the "econo- my of motion" concept was adopted - a departure from large-scale operations against high-value assets could have been noted. Instead, numerous and frequent actions were conducted, involving, however, smaller units. The experience gathered could have been used later - especially during the 2011 "Neptune Spear" operation, as well as activities targeting ISIS later on. Not only did air superiority and dominance translate into freedom to conduct recon- naissance. Even though the guerrillas could have been using IEDs against the west effectively, they did not have any meaningful air defense assets (RPG-7 and firearms cannot be considered as such). Helicopters going down were rare, despite numerous casualties that occurred in such scenarios. The capabilities provided by the Air Force were not limited to safer transport. Numer- ous land bases, as well as warships capable of hosting aircraft onboard, aerial refueling operations involving both fixed- as well as rotary-wing assets, austere field operations, or introduction of new types of aircraft, such as the V-22, translated into a rare, oper- ational, and strategic freedom of maneuver. Tactical mobility in the land domain was www.fragoutmag.com