Another awe­some photo (HI REZ) sent to Defense Tech from an alert reader today. Looks like these are train­ers for Afghan com­mando teams com­ing back from an op in the bush.

Where do I start…

All are wear­ing BDUs. What does that say about the UCP, or even MultiCam for that matter?

I think at least two of the Americans are weild­ing H&K 416s and one has P-​​mags. #2 is wear­ing cool moto patches. And the Afghan is clearly part of the com­mando unit based on his unit patch, but he also might be a medic.

There are more pics from Sgt. Teddy Wade at this link, includ­ing this one…I mean, again, you could have an IMINT field day with this one (HI REZ)…

(Gouge: RG)

– Christian

I want to intro­duce to our read­ers a friend I’ve picked up along the way on my wind­ing trip through the blogosphere.

Dave Reader edits the awe­some site BreachBangClear with a humor and whit unmatched in sub­ject mat­ter pop­u­lated with more hooah knuckle-​​draggers than lit­er­ary enthu­si­asts. I flirted for a while with a cross-​​post rela­tion­ship with him, but I found that his style and sense of humor cre­ates an atmos­phere all his own and would be diluted by my stodgy format.

So, we’re going to do what we can here to bring Dave’s stuff to your atten­tion — par­tic­u­larly those of you on the pointy end. Periodically we’ll fea­ture a sort of “teaser” high­light­ing Dave — and his Liliputian plas­tic coun­ter­parts’ — posts and reviews.

Hope you all enjoy, and we’ll weigh in when the mood strikes us…

Tactical pun­dits Richard Kilgore and Jake Call are con­tin­u­ing their work to improve the lot of folks on the sharp end. Their most recent blog post is inter­est­ing, if not as long and caus­tic as some of their other dia­tribes, par­tic­u­larly if you’re in a job that takes you into the field. Whether work­ing a crash in the pour­ing rain, doing the war­rant recce on a dope house with a sod­den lawn or wad­ing irri­ga­tion ditches in Afghanistan, there’s always the risk of hav­ing to stomp around in wet boots on your next patrol or mis­sion. Richard and Jake are aware of how bad this sucks, so they’ve posted another help­ful tip on their blog at Breach-​​Bang-​​Clear — go check it out. 

– Christian

Ok dear read­ers, here’s one for you.

The fol­low­ing photo ran with the fol­low­ing generic cap­tion: U.S. troops keep a watch­ful eye out as peo­ple go to the polls for the country’s 2nd Presidential elec­tions, August 20, 2009 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Security is on high alert as the Afghan peo­ple go the the polls. The Taliban have vowed to dis­rupt the demo­c­ra­tic elec­tion. — Kate Brooks, Getty Images

My ques­tion: Who are these guys? Camo? Not US issue. Helmets, call­sign patches, bal­lis­tic eye­wear, M4 with all the whis­tles and bells? US-​​issue look­ing. But defi­nately high-​​speed US unit issue if so. The one tell-​​tale I see is the guy on the right’s pis­tol hol­ster — looks a lit­tle too chinsy for a US oper­a­tor.

What say you IMINT analysts?

— Christian

First there were 19 who were whit­tled down to 12. Then only five were left standing.

Now, after one of the world’s most crush­ing selec­tion pro­grams, only two remain — well, three, if you count the one who was rolled back into the ini­tial phase of the school.

For the first time in its sto­ried his­tory, the Coast Guard is on track to have two of its own earn the cov­eted tri­dent badge of a Navy SEAL. The two offi­cers have reached the third phase of ini­tial SEAL selec­tion after join­ing Basic Underwater Demolition School class 276 in March, endur­ing the gru­el­ing men­tal and phys­i­cal tra­vails that weed out all but the hardi­est warriors.

“I’m very proud of these guys,” said Master Chief Petty Officer Darrick DeWitt, the senior enlisted advi­sor for the Coast Guard’s Deployable Operations Group, which ran the selec­tion process for the service.

“We wanted to make sure we sent peo­ple with good char­ac­ter and good val­ues. I think we did that,” he added in a tele­phone inter­view with Military​.com. “These guys not only rep­re­sented the Coast Guard well, but rep­re­sented their coun­try well.”

After a two-​​year effort to lever­age the exper­tise of Naval Special Warfare and the Coast Guard’s new role in home­land secu­rity and mar­itime spe­cial oper­a­tions, the ser­vice selected its first group of Coastguardsmen to become com­man­dos late last summer.

Coast Guard offi­cials say they hope the SEAL-​​trained Coasties will seed the rest of the force with valu­able skills learned in spe­cial oper­a­tions train­ing and oper­a­tions and bring back to their sea ser­vice a bit of the esprit de corps found in the com­mando ranks.

For Naval Special Warfare, the pres­sure to grow its force makes an injec­tion of well-​​vetted can­di­dates to their ranks a boon, cut­ting out the has­sle of deal­ing with recruits who don’t have what it takes to become a SEAL.

“We’re just glad to get good can­di­dates,” said Lt. Commander Shane Reilly, the exec­u­tive offi­cer at the Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command in Coronado, Calif. “With the war going on, we’re under a lot of pres­sure to increase [spe­cial oper­a­tions forces] and we walk a fine line with­out bend­ing standards.”

After review­ing 19 appli­ca­tions back in August 2008, eval­u­a­tors tapped 12 Coastguardsmen to run through a week-​​long selec­tion process in Panama City, Fla., that included phys­i­cal tests, men­tal eval­u­a­tions and exer­cises that gave the wannabe frog­men a taste of what the leg­endary Basic Underwater Demolition School, or BUDS, is all about.

The Coast Guard declined to pro­vide any fur­ther details on the SEAL can­di­dates’ iden­ti­ties for secu­rity reasons.

In the end, five made the cut, includ­ing four offi­cers — a civil engi­neer, two cut­ter offi­cers and one assigned to the dis­trict staff — and an enlisted man who serves as a board­ing offi­cer at a sta­tion in California.

The enlisted Coastie washed out dur­ing the early part of the Navy’s selec­tion process when he came up just short on a phys­i­cal qualification.

“It sur­prised me,” DeWitt said of the Coastie, and Reilly added that the man missed the stan­dard by a “very small margin.”

“But, you know, they have tough stan­dards,” DeWitt said. “We’ll see if he wants to come back for a sec­ond round.”

That left four offi­cers who made it into what many believe is the most phys­i­cally and men­tally dif­fi­cult assess­ment pro­gram in the world. Early morn­ing beach runs, cold water sit ups, sand in every crevice for days, no food, no sleep you get the pic­ture. And all the while SEAL instruc­tors are goad­ing you to quit.

And one did.

During the tough­est phase of BUDS, one of the four remain­ing Coasties rang the infa­mous bell that sig­naled his vol­un­tary exit from the pro­gram, leav­ing three to com­plete the course.

Later, another of the offi­cers was injured dur­ing the assess­ment — a fre­quent cause of SEAL can­di­date drop outs — and was rolled back into a new class to start from the begin­ning of BUDS.

Read the rest of this story and the pre­vi­ous one, at Military​.com.

– Christian

A source passed along these brief­ing slides after I ran the Imminent Fury piece yes­ter­day, and I thought I’d share them with DT read­ers to slice and dice.

The pre­sen­ta­tion is basi­cally an in-​​depth look at what the Navy’s Irregular Warfare Office has been doing since it was estab­lished in 2008 to act as a sort of Navy ver­sion of the Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group.

Aside from the Imminent Fury brief, which is slightly dif­fer­ent from what my sources told me about the ori­gins and goal of the pro­gram, there are some semi-​​interesting UAV and UUV ini­tia­tives they’re work­ing on, pri­mar­ily for air-​​to-​​sub intel gathering.

But on one of the last slides we find some­thing pretty inter­est­ing — and I may be behind the curve on this, but it’s some­thing that I think that MarSoc has been wrestling with as well. It’s a call for 32 more MH-​​60S Knighthawk spe­cial oper­a­tion heli­copters. Now the brief shows sev­eral options for how to orga­nize those addi­tional air­craft, includ­ing the estab­lish­ment of a two new ded­i­cated Navy spe­cial oper­a­tions avi­a­tion squadrons (which makes sense to me since they have SWICCs). The last alter­na­tive is to not buy any more helos and just fly 6,400 more flight hours on the ones they have — which doesn’t sound like much of an option.

So take a look at the brief and let me know what you think.
NX-​​Irregular Warfare Office

– Christian

Another SCAR sight­ing folks!

This time — and a nice con­fir­ma­tion of my sourc­ing on the first equip­ping units — its a pic of some Rangers who’d dropped by a NASCAR event this past weekend.

The Joes from 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment were hon­ored at the Coca Cola 600 at Lowes Motor Speedway in Charlotte, NC, among other ser­vices over the Memorial Day weekend.

Take a close look at this photo and check out what’s strapped over their shoulders…

…and I dig the guy who col­lapsed his SCAR’s stock…

For the full-​​sized image click HERE…

(Gouge: MP)

– Christian

As the Army shifts its oper­a­tional focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, the equip­ment needs of its sol­diers have changed dra­mat­i­cally. Where Iraqs bat­tle­fields were almost exclu­sively urban, Afghanistan is a rural coun­try with few real cities. Iraq is astound­ingly flat and sti­flingly hot dur­ing much of the year; Afghanistan, is almost entirely moun­tain­ous, with a harsh win­ter climate.

Troops patrol Iraqs cities in heav­ily armored vehi­cles on an exten­sive road net­work that used to be thickly seeded with IEDs. Afghanistan has few real roads, and troops patrol by foot up and down prim­i­tive moun­tain trails and along nar­row ridge­lines chas­ing elu­sive Taliban fighters.

For Afghanistan, its all about light­en­ing the sol­diers load, Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, com­man­der of PEO Soldier, told a group of reporters at Ft. Belvoir, Va. Fuller had on dis­play a wide range of new cloth­ing, equip­ment and weapons, all lighter ver­sions of the kit sol­diers took to Iraq. Iraq was how do you stay cool. Afghanistan is how do you stay dry and warm and every kid out there should have lighter body armor, Fuller said.

As the Iraq war pro­gressed, the Army added layer upon layer of armor until sol­diers soon resem­bled a bomb dis­posal tech­ni­cian. The up-​​armoring made sense as the num­ber one killer in Iraq was IEDs, prob­lem was, all that armor meant troops were not very mobile, which was okay, because they didnt really move around on foot all that much. In the moun­tains of Afghanistan, where IEDs are com­par­a­tively rare and brief, sharp, small-​​unit fire­fights against an elu­sive oppo­nent are more com­mon, all that body armor becomes a dan­ger­ously immo­bi­liz­ing bur­den. For Iraq, body armor was ori­ented to a sol­diers frontal arc, to pro­vide pro­tec­tion as they barged into build­ings and cleared rooms of sus­pected insur­gents. In Afghanistan, troops are safer if they are lighter and more mobile and able to use the ground and nat­ural fea­tures for cover.

With the tac­ti­cal demands of the new bat­tle­field fore­most in mind, the Army is mov­ing to shave almost 20 pounds off a sol­diers load by shed­ding the neck, groin, shoul­der and side pro­tec­tion of the cur­rent body armor with a light­weight armor plate car­rier. Lt. Col. Robert Myles, prod­uct man­ager for Soldier Survivability, made it clear that the plate car­rier is exactly what it sounds like, it car­ries the Armys ESAPI bal­lis­tic plates front and rear, its not an armored suit. The Army is field­ing 500 of the 15 pound Modular Body Armor Vest plate car­ri­ers, cur­rently used by Special Operations Command, to sol­diers deploy­ing to Afghanistan in the next few weeks.

The Army thinks its sol­diers need a bit more pro­tec­tion than the spe­cial oper­a­tions MBAV pro­vides, Myles said. So, the ser­vice is putting a col­lec­tion of new indus­try pro­vided plate car­ri­ers to the test, includ­ing the MBAV and a plate car­rier cur­rently used by the Marines. Later this month, sol­diers from the 82nd Airborne Division and 173 Airborne Division will spend two weeks in Yuma, Az., because the ter­rain there closely resem­bles Afghanistan, test­ing seven dif­fer­ent vests, doing road marches, run­ning and sim­u­lat­ing small unit fire­fights. Based on sol­diers feed­back, the Army will then select their own plate car­rier, and ini­ti­ate field­ing up to 100,000 plate car­ri­ers begin­ning later this sum­mer. All of the vests being con­sid­ered carry the same bal­lis­tic plates.

Its not only in body armor that the Army is look­ing to shave pounds. The ser­vice is devel­op­ing a new, light­weight ver­sion of the ven­er­a­ble M240B 7.62mm machine gun, a sol­diers favorite, called the M240L, acheiv­ing a nearly 7 pound weight sav­ings by using light­weight tita­nium instead of steel (light­weight tita­nium is so scarce that it takes nearly 12 months from order­ing to get the new machine gun). The Army is also mov­ing from brass bul­let cas­ings to stain­less steel which is 20 per­cent lighter bul­let to bul­let, con­sid­er­ing that a 30 round M4 mag weighs one pound, lighter ammo can make a big dif­fer­ence. Brass is also get­ting scarce and more costly while stain­less steel is cheap and plen­ti­ful. Soldiers also get new light­weight tripods for the machine guns.

The ven­er­a­ble M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun (if youve ever seen an M2 fired its prob­a­ble more accu­rate to call it a light­weight can­non) is also get­ting the weight loss treat­ment. The new XM806 Lightweight .50 Caliber Machine Gun that is cur­rently in devel­op­ment weighs 64 pounds less than the M2 and is more accu­rate to boot.

– Greg Grant

Another inter­est­ing pack­age from my favorite show on tele­vi­sion. I know how much you like the in-​​depth, tech­ni­cal nature of Tactical Impact based on your glow­ing reviews of pre­vi­ous posts, so here’s another one I thought you’d like to chew on.

Have a great week­end and stay tuned for com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space expo­si­tion next week in Washington, DC. We’ll be all over it like white on rice.

– Christian

A col­league of mine sent me this photo today and I thought I’d share it with DT readers…

Note the butt­stocks over these dudes’ shoul­ders. I think this is the first offi­cial SCAR sight­ing with troops other than testers…

(NAVY PHOTO) SEAL BEACH NAVAL WEAPONS STATION, Calif. (April 15, 2009) Special war­fare combatant-​​craft crew­men (SWCC) assigned to Special Boat Team (SBT) 12 con­duct an equip­ment check before get­ting under­way for a train­ing exer­cise at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joshua T. Rodriguez.

– Christian

We’ve got some details trick­ling in about the specifics of the SEAL sniper shots on the pirates hold­ing the Maersk-Alabama’s cap­tain, Richard Phillips.

The Combat Operator’s Jake Allen — not a for­mer SEAL, but a Marine infantry offi­cer and pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tor and secu­rity con­sul­tant with sourc­ing in the Teams — had no detailed infor­ma­tion on the actual shot, but described the over­all tech­niques used by the SEAL team.

First of all, mul­ti­ple sources indi­cate this was con­ducted by SEAL Team VI, aka Naval Special Warfare Development Group, aka “DevGru.” This is the naval equiv­a­lent of Delta Force.

Allen says the team likely were on the intel of the inci­dent very soon after news hit the wires about the cap­ture and were already well in advance of devel­op­ing a plan to res­cue Phillips before they deployed to the USS Bainbridge.

It’s unclear why the team decided to para­chute onto the scene under cover of dark­ness from a C-​​17 with rafts. One pos­si­bil­ity is that this was a far more covert entry than sim­ply land­ing on the destroyer via heli­copter, or Allen says it could have been due to range restrictions…did the DevGru guys travel straight from Little Creek, Va.? Probably.

There was no rest and relax­ation or get­ting rid of the jet­lag for the team, Allen esti­mates, they were plan­ning and rehers­ing shortly after arriv­ing aboard the Bainbridge. Delay is, how­ever, in their favor, Allen said, since food was run­ning out, sleep was short and the weather was wors­en­ing for the ill-​​trained pirates who prob­a­bly were begin­ning to real­ize they bit off more than they could chew.

Whether it was luck or plan­ning, clearly the idea to tow the life boat behind the Bainbridge and reel it into closer range made a sniper take­down much more of a rea­son­able pos­si­bil­ity than any other tac­tic, sources say. A shot of 80–90 feet — even at night and in rolling seas — is a cake­walk for DevGru SEALs.

“These guys can put three rounds onto the head of a quar­ter at that range,” Allen told me.

And let’s not get car­ried away with the sea state, says DT con­trib­u­tor Joe Buff. A multi-​​thousand ton destroyer is a pretty sta­ble plat­form in any but the most tumul­tuous sea states and makes dial­ing in a shot on an admit­tedly toss­ing life raft more doable — a smart plat­form for the Team to oper­ate from.

We also have some infor­ma­tion — uncon­firmed, though we’re work­ing on it — about how the shots were taken and what was used. Our firearms expert Eric Poole who writes for Tactical-​​Life posits that the snipers were using the MK-​​11 .308 sniper sys­tem man­u­fac­tured by Knights Armament Co. This weapons is awe­some, by the way (I’ve shot it a few times myself) and, if this is indeed what the shoot­ers used, would mark a major, high-​​profile depar­ture from legacy think­ing about snip­ing which holds bolt-​​action rifles as the Gold Standard or marksmanship.

Poole fig­ures the DevGru frog­men removed the “over­pow­ered” standard-​​issue Leupold scopes and opted for the Aimpoint CCO aug­mented by the PVS-​​14 night vision monoc­u­lar. Though the SEAL ver­sion of the MK-​​11 Mod 0 is issued with supres­sors, it’s unclear whether the oper­a­tors used them, but I’d bet a mil­lion bucks they did.

One other ques­tion (among many) remains open…were there three shots or four? Poole rea­sons, and Allen and I agree, that some­one had to shoot through the lifeboat win­dow first, then fire the kill shots. My lim­ited knowl­edge of bal­lis­tics leads me to believe the snipers could not rely on the effec­tive­ness of the one win­dow shot to actu­ally strike the tar­get where it was aimed based in the poten­tial deflec­tion of hit­ting that prob­a­bly plas­tic (glass) window.

Poole, Allen and Buff agree that this oper­a­tion was metic­u­lously planned and flaw­lessly exe­cuted. The DevGru SEALs devel­oped the sit­u­a­tion (with their inter­a­gency part­ners in the FBI and other OGAs), planned an attack and exe­cuted when the oppor­tu­nity pre­sented itself (and I don’t buy this “the cap­tain was in dan­ger” line the Pentagon and White House is try­ing to sell here…you mean to tell me Phillips hadn’t had a gun pointed at his back any­time before this?)…It was a kick butt oper­a­tion car­ried out by one of the best coun­tert­er­ror­ist units in the world and they deserve a huge HooYah from all of us…

– Christian