Operation Neptune Spear

[Wing_Z]

Arrival

Stinger, it'd be interesting, given your background, to hear your views on some of the guesswork which follows.

And thanks for pointing out the link.
The notion of using an RQ-170 came from there, and in the sim I am pretty much conforming to those ideas of deployment.
One thing mentioned in the commentary there:
It was a CIA-led, JSOC conducted operation.
There's no question Panetta was calling the shots, and indeed the CIA had been assembling the mission for months.
The exercise is remarkable for the amount of inter-service co-ordination it would have required.

You get a sense of it in the sim; the UH-60 model used has a very accurate GPS co-ordinate readout, but on final approach, you feel an urgent need to have someone paint the target.
This would've been provided by the CIA assets on the ground: witnesses describe Pashtu-speaking people with laser-sighted rifles warning them off the site.
So: the Blackhawks go in, dropping the SEALS onto the roofs of buildings in the compound.
There's no intention of them landing.
The Chinooks with their Rangers complement are backup and recovery, and will land in the fields outside.

Edit: On the way in, I clipped a powerline, and hoped the cable cutters did their job.
Power actually was out on the night in question, but I think that would have been "arranged" on the ground, to give the NVG of the assault force full advantage.
It's all in the details...

 

[Ian Warren]

Charl , I recall a very similar failed operation in 1981 'Eagle Claw' to grab the US Embassy hostages in Iran , putting a FRB mid point but due to sand storms and mech probs started to fail further with the crash into one off the tankers .. little different but maybe it worked this time :salute:

 

[Wing_Z]

Hello Ian, thought you might look in here!
Yup...there are two very relevant earlier operations which I am coming to, in the next post...

 

[Wing_Z]

Blackhawk Down

Before it could drop SEALS onto the roof of a secondary dwelling, one Blackhawk crashed inside the western end of the compound.

This news would have sent a shudder through the command structure of the mission, several of whom were veterans of the failed Iran hostage mission in 1980, and the “Blackhawk Down” disaster that was Mogadishu 1993.

It is inconceivable that the aircraft simply “lost lift due to an air vortex caused by unexpectedly warm air and the effect of a high wall surrounding the compound” as was put out in subsequent (and conflicting) press statements. The team had practiced this operation on a full-scale mock-up, many times. The effect of walls and upwash had been experienced. The helo probably went down through an Own Goal of some sort, which in the light of the above, is never going to be acknowledged.
It does not matter.

It created a complication, however: personnel on board were now inside the compound, but on the wrong side of gates and walls which separated the house from the rest of the site.

In the sim, I flew the backup Blackhawk into position, and hovered for a minute at 45 feet, to simulate deploying the SEALS. It felt like a long time.

 

[Wing_Z]

Egress

I parked the primary recovery Chinook in a field at the back.
There were reports of a hole being blown in a wall, and it’s reasonable to assume you wouldn’t want to park your helo at the front door. Apart from anything else, the gated access would be fairly secure, and possibly booby-trapped.

But the team on the downed Blackhawk now had to blow 2 or 3 gates to get out. Or perhaps they waited for the secondary team to clear the buildings, and simply went up over the wall. At times like that, discipline, training, and communication prove their worth – despite the complication of having to destroy the broken helo, the operation went just 8 minutes beyond the allotted 30.

In my sim, I wondered if the Spooky couldn’t have created the hole earlier with a well-placed 40mm round - the easiest way to do this. Perhaps wishful thinking, the proximity to friendly forces may not have allowed it.

Plenty of room on the Chinooks for the team needing a ride, and at 01:40 Monday 2 May we loaded up and headed out.
A more direct route than incoming, but still tracking through the hills rather than over.
Despite being a moonless night, why expose yourself to the skyline and a lucky shot from below…

In hindsight, not a bad idea to take care. Later in the week, 80 were killed in a Taleban suicide bombing in Charsadda, near midpoint of the flight path...

It is reported that Pakistani F-16's were scrambled after the raid, but no contact was made with the helo fleet.
There would no doubt have been an AWACS presence in Afghan airspace picking them up, and a quiet word on the right frequency to warn them off.
Right through the mission there was a potential for conflict, from local resistance to fullblown war.
You'd need to assume there were airborne assets in place for every eventuality, on the Afghan side of the fence.

 

[airattackimages]

For the flight back to CVN-70, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a C-2 flying the body out to the ship. There's been so much misinformation about the raid that any of the details could be incorrect or read into (many already had right out the gate).

 

[gaucho_59]

Minor detail

"Please keep the discussion to the operation itself, I don't want to get closed down because of political bickering."

And that is a very wise observation.
Good thinking Wing_Z.

It so happens I have someone in Kabul (very close relation) who told me the operation started and finished in Bagram... after the operation... they refueled in Bagram and went to the Carl Vinson...

 

[Wing_Z]

Yes I staged the sim mission out of Bagram, refuelled at Jalalabad.
Coming back, depends on the fuel used, maybe hop straight to Bagram.
If you need to refuel, why not meet at Jalalabad with...the Ospreys.
The Black Hawk and Chinooks would as a matter of course return to Bagram.

All along , i wondered why the V22 was not used.
The answer may be in its servicability, which at present is around 60%.
Not good enough for a time-critical mission, but perhaps for the trip to CVN70.
Ideal, in fact, because it has the range to do it.
And the speed.
The burial at sea was at 09:30 Monday 2 May.
The strike force could not get away (even from Jalalabad), much before 04:00:00.
Not enough time for helos to do the 682nm and refuel en route, but at a cruise of 240kts, easy for an Osprey.

They'd need escorting, Team KBT F/A-18 an obvious choice

It seems pretty obvious to use a Greyhound for the delivery run, but...I felt like a little Osprey!
Also, someone tweeted a comment about "helicopters on deck".
At a stretch then, Vlad Zhyhulskiy's excellent V22, with FD mods by Brian Sharpe, and Rob Barendregt's VTOL gauge:

Mission accomplished.
Flying it in the sim gives some small insight into the kind of problems that can so easily derail an operation like this.
And the resources! This was no small feat - of planning, integration, and balls.
And lots, and lots, of money.

Thanks to all, for not piling in and destroying this (possibly contentious) thread, I had wondered if I'd make it as far as the carrier landing!