Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [135]
The mission after-action review at the A. P. Hill barracks facility is quick, as snow is beginning to stick and the forecast calls for more. The tired, wet captains quickly pack out their personal gear and the exercise support equipment, and climb into the bus for the ride back to Fort Bragg.
“It was good to do a mission like that start to finish,” Matt Anderson says of the experience. “Major James made us move through the planning process in excruciating detail. Just when you think you have it right, he comes along and wants it done better. Once we were in the field, we got a real feel for a true reconnaissance mission. It’s been a while since I set up housekeeping in a hide site. Once in position, we were able to move about at night to get eyes-on the targets from various angles. The actual hit on the target was pretty anticlimactic, which is as it should be. The preparation is everything.”
With the exception of the fieldwork that was part of the adaptive thinking and leadership training and the A. P. Hill exercise, most of the 18 Alpha training is focused on operational analysis and mission planning. In addition to the pure planning drills or command post exercises, there are scheduled classes on the political and interservice aspects of Special Forces operations. These blocks of training are sandwiched around the planning exercises. On occasion, training and instructional opportunities present themselves that may trump scheduled training, or are conducted after hours or on a free weekend.
Among the scheduled training is a half day of tracking. More specifically, it’s a class on countertracking, or what a team in the field might do if they suspect they have a tracker after them. The men learn how a tracker works, what he looks for, and what they as a tactical unit or an individual on the run behind the lines can do to delay a tracker. The cadre instructor is a crusty master sergeant who has built his own spore pit out behind Aaron Bank Hall. Most Americans, he tells the captains, can be tracked by the trash they leave behind and their tobacco products. There is also a half day at the close-air-support simulator, a facility not unlike the call-for-fire simulator on which the weapons sergeants trained. Calling in close air support and calling in artillery are similar. Among the unscheduled briefings is that of an AC-130 gunship pilot. The AC-130 Spectre is a modified version of the venerable C-130 turbo-prop medium transport. The AC-130 Spectre has been armed with 40mm and 105mm guns. It is a very stable platform that can deliver an accurate and sustained rate of fire. An AC-130 can take out a building and leave the one next to it undamaged. It is particularly lethal against lightly armored vehicles and troops caught in the open. The AC-130U model also has an impressive suite of IR, thermal, and low-light-level sensors, as well as a substantial communications capability. The pilot, an Air Force captain, is the wife of one of the 18 Alpha candidate captains.
One of the more interesting unscheduled training opportunities comes with a visit by CBS News correspondent Lara Logan. She is no stranger to speaking to the military, and her presentation draws equal numbers of 18 Alpha candidates and Special Forces cadre. She outlines the duties of the press in general and her job as an investigative reporter in some detail. “I saw her more than I saw some of the guys on my ODA during my last trip to Kandahar,