Oh yeah? It make ME go :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:
The Pakistan government has an image problem of corruption and incompetence. On the other hand, the military is seen as very competent. The fact that the operation was pulled off without the knowledge of the Pakistan military does make them look weak and incompetent. It undermines the national pride the people have in the military. There was a quote along the lines of "We sacrifice food for our children to pay for the military and this is what we get?
Seems unlikely. There is little benefit to the US to tell Pakistan and it adds a tremendous amount of risk. Sure the copters could have been shot down, but the US military should be confident that they could sneak in and possibly out without detection.
It is possible that over the last 10 years, the US let Pakistan know that if they found OBL in Pakistan that they might launch an operation without asking. I could buy that.
It’s not as :dubious:-inspiring if you factor in that these weren’t standard Blackhawks. But I’m far from an expert, so I’ll just quote one:
There was also this bit: (along with other interesting stuff in the article)
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/05/army-mission-helocopter-was-secret-stealth-black-hawk-050411/
I don’t know if that’s actually the case. It seems closer to being their equivalent of West Point than an active military base. Is there a base nearby in addition to the academy?
Nah, Voltaire. Just not buying that these helicopters are that delicate. If they were, they’d be pretty useless.
Choppers dropped when Carter tried to save the hostages a long time ago. The screwed the mission up big time.
This is my understanding as well. I don’t think its particularly likely that Pakistan has guys with anti-helicopter weapons at hand hanging out around their military academy ready to blaze away at any mysterious helicopter that they see.
Plus, military helicopter failures in general don’t seem that rare. While I’m sure that statistically they’re fairly safe, wikipedia has a table of recent aircraft losses. They seem to loose some 15 or so helicopters a year in Iraq alone, and several times more of those are due to mechanical failure then to enemy fire. And that table only includes crashes with loss of life, presumably if you added ones where everyone walks away like the one in Pakistan, the number of failures would be greater.
Add to that the fact that the helicopter in question was apparently relatively tricked out with stealth technologies that aren’t on most blackhawks, and presumably have seen less in field action, and I don’t really see any reason to doubt the official story.
In my opinion Pakistan ought to be blown to pieces!
The military academy in question is about 15 miles from the disputed boundary of Kashmir and about 30 miles from the capital, Islamabad. IIRC, India and Pakistan have a cease-fire in effect, but are technically still at war. Further, the town of Abbottabad is chock-full of homes for senior members of the Pakistani military. To think of it in similar terms for the United States, imagine if West Point were transplanted to Chevy Chase, Maryland or McLean Virginia, and OBL’s house was a short walk from the front gate. It’s supposedly a very nice area of Pakistan, albeit one that’s 15 miles from a hostile country.
IMHO, it’s inconceivable that someone in the ISI or Pakistani Air Force wasn’t alerted ahead of time. Not so much to deconflict the assault team from any Pakistani AAA or SAMs—satellites and ECM/ESM could have told the pilots where the more dangerous of those installations were, and optically guided AAA hopefully wouldn’t be that much of a threat. What goes up, must come down, and I can’t see Pakistani AAA blasting gobs of lead into the air in an area with a bunch of generals’ houses. Not right off the bat, anyway. Rather, the Pakistani’s would have been notified to let them know that it wasn’t India pulling something, in retaliation for the Mumbai killings, for instance. That could easily have been misconstrued into something that could have led to open warfare between India and Pakistan. If someone was really paranoid, they’d have interpreted the raid as a attempted decapitating strike on nuclear command and control. That would be bad.
Besides, if you felt that OBL’d be tipped off, just watch the house with a stealthy drone/B-2 combo. If anyone tries to leave after the tip, obliterate the house. Further, if Pakistan wasn’t in on the raid, you’d need a larger force to ensure security from police/army. A blocking force for the road in, heavy weapons, that sort of thing. Consider the size of the force used to go after Aidid’s men during Operation Gothic Serpent (the Black Hawk Down raid), and then consider that they didn’t have to worry about anything larger than the odd technical and they had the advantage of total air superiority.
As OBL was somewhat popular to many in Pakistan, naturally any official cooperation is going to be denied. And as far as the raid goes, most of the shooting, I imagine, was done within the first 3-5 minutes; the remainder of the time was spent harvesting the villa for evidence and waiting for the backup helicopter(s) to show up. 30-40 minutes strikes me as a giant amount of time for this sort of thing, FWIW. My money for what caused the helicopter issue—assuming the tail piece seen in photos isn’t some elaborate hoax to further sell the story that Pakistan wasn’t collaborating—is a wire strike. That or the pilot just made a mistake and pranged off the wall, while trying to dodge or not, I don’t know. Google Earth has plenty of photos of the greater Abbottabad area, and the place looks lousy with wires. Abbottabad isn’t that high, and it’s not like these guys haven’t picked up 10 years of experience of how to fly helicopters around these mountains.
No doubt bits of the story will dribble out over the next 20 years or so.
I was thinking that as well. I’ll bet that there wasn’t a speck of rust on any nut or bolt, and that every single part was lubricated exactly to spec.
I can’t imagine how they break down at all.
Thanks. That’s an early article - haven’t seen anything confirming it since. Let’s just say I don’t trust Pakistani officials. The guy who tweeted the news of the raid heard one explosion, which seems to be the SEALs blowing up the chopper.
There was almost immediate fire from the courier in the guest house. You’d think the SEALs would have taken out anyone with an RPG - not that one would expect them to be sitting on the roof just in case.
Sounds like wishful thinking from the Pakistanis, but thanks for the link.
Heh. I’ve been involved with people who do the testing for electronic parts for these things, and it is rather scary. For instance, the contractor is supposed to prove they can diagnose to the failing replaceable unit 100% of the time. They prove this by the contractor selecting 10 failures to diagnose. One guy mentioned that they had a big success in getting the mean time between failures for a radar system up from about 9 hours to 20 hours. It is a miracle any of this stuff works at all. The military spends massive amounts of money on repair depots and not just in battle zones.
But if there was ever a time to pursue a diplomatically-endorsed course for cross-border activities into Pakistan, would it not be now?
Pursuant to UN Article 51 and the goals of War in Afghanistan, it would seem that the long-term presence of the al Qaeda #1 leader within its borders would prove Pakistan ineffective at defending itself against inadvertently providing safe harbor to organizations committing armed attacks against the US and other sovereign nations. That is hard pill for Joe Pakistan to swallow, but there is a lot of political gain to be captured if Pakistan’s leaders play their cards right.
The US has already conducted aerial attacks against targets within Pakistan, so a Pakistani-endorsed “assistance program” that would unbind US ground troops in eastern Afghanistan and allow those troops, with Pakistan’s explicit approval and active involvement, to more effectively pursue specific al Qaeda targets and reduce civilian casualties might be a win-win for Pakistani leadership.
It seems that if there was ever a time to press that option, the present may afford the greatest domestic and international political capital to do so for both Pakistan and the US.
India is not at war with Pakistan. In fact during the recent Cricket World Cup the Pakistani Vice President (IIRC) was a guest of the Indian Prime Minister at one Indo-Pakistan match and they sat together.
There is a situation in Kashmir, but Pakistan supported militants and not regular Pakistan forces are involved. The border you are talking about is with the part of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan, and not hostile to it. (nitpicking)
So the nastiness around the Siachen Glacier has finally come to an end? Good to hear. And was it ever determined who was behind the Mumbai attacks? Was it AQ, trying to blame it on elements of the ISI? I had thought part of the ISI was at least implicated in training/support of the suicide attackers. In any event, I am impressed with India’s forbearance and restraint. Thinking if the equivalent act were to occur in the United States, I’m sure the U.S. would have invaded whichever country we deemed responsible. See, e.g. efforts to capture Pancho Villa.
If indeed India and Pakistan have proceeded through detente to cordiality, I’d be delighted. Nuclear armed states shouldn’t get mad at each other.
For the Kashmir border, I see on Google Earth a line 15 miles from Abbottabad, presumably denoting the beginning of the region. I then see another line, roughly 18-20 miles beyond that, denoting the Indian border. In any event, whether Abbottabad is 15 miles or 35 miles from Indian territory, I don’t believe it disproves my point that it’s sufficiently close to India to give local military commanders cause to have watchful troops stationed in the area. Of course, with an absence of hostilities, those troops won’t be as paranoid as those say, on the Korean DMZ. Still, they’ll have access to SAMs and AAA and probably would be alarmed by v. low flying helicopters through their areas of responsibility.
Once the raid is over, the helicopters still have to fly out of the country. Which is going to mean a minimum of 115 miles of flying—assuming they didn’t exfiltrate via the Indian border, and about 40 minutes of flight time. Most countries take a dim view of other countries invading their airspace at night with helicopters filled with armed men. I would think that 40 minutes of flight through a now hostile environment would be a worse alternative than alerting part of the Pakistani military to the raid ahead of time, so that the airspace won’t be as hostile. It’s not impossible to do it all covert, of course, and the 160th SOAR employ just the fliers and equipment to do it, but why add risk by doing it w/o permission if you don’t have to?
One thing I don’t understand about the machines in the raid. If it was so necessary to avoid radar that special stealthy MH-60s were used, why then also use decidedly unstealthy MH-47s too? Or does JSOC have stealthy versions of those now also?
Telling Pakistan beforehand comes with its own set of risks. OBL could have been tipped off and moved out of there. You suggested that the US monitor with aircraft and bomb anyone leaving. That is basically an entire second operation and adds a ton of additional risks. If bombing was acceptable as a back-up plan, then it would have been acceptable as the plan.
Sure, sneaking in and out has its own risks, but there are two important differences:
First, the risk from sneaking in is one the military (mostly) controls. The risk comes from how well the military feels it can enter undetected. Contrast that with telling Pakistan the plans. This risk is completely out of the hands of the military. There is no way to confidently estimate what this risk is. The US has no control and little idea who on Pakistan’s side would be privy to the information and if they would tip off OBL.
Second, the risk from telling Pakistan is an up-front risk. It jeopardizes the entire mission. The mission could have failed as soon as the phone call was made to Pakistan. Contrast that with the risk from sneaking in and out. The mission is completed as soon as OBL is found and killed. If the copters get shot down on the way out it would have been tragic, but the mission objective would still have been fulfilled. The only unique, additional risk is the ability to get to the enter undetected and get to the compound.
Your opinion, as expressed, has nothing to do with the thread.
Please make at least some attempt to actually make relevant comments rather than simply venting your spleen. Spleen venting is more appropriate to The BBQ Pit.
[ /Modding ]
CaveMike brought up some good points, so I won’t duplicate them. But one thing he doesn’t address and you seem to take for granted is that permission would have been given. As the old saying goes, “it’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.” If we had asked permission, and they declined it, (which would surely take some intervening time for their response to come) and we ignored them and went in anyway, (assuming OBL wasn’t somehow tipped off first) then the diplomatic fallout would be even worse than going in without asking any permission at all.
Also, I think your estimation of Pakistan’s air defenses is likely to be much higher than that of those who planned the mission. From the regular drone flights, other over-flights, and various other forms of intelligence, I’m sure they had a pretty good idea of the *relatively *low threat-level.
- The supposed route to Abbottabad from the Bagram airbase is filled with radars, there is a major airbase at Peshawar and I believe an AWACS is up at all times. It has long been considered a problematic area, the nightmare senario has been a single flight of aircraft with a nuke flying in low using the mountains for cover and knocking out Islamabad and Peshawar. Both countries (India and Pakistan) have understandings, India has a similar problem in Indian Punjab and both countries do not usually fly aircraft near these areas.
Now I do not doubt the US SEALs could have gotten through, but there would always be a risk of detection. And if detected, there are pre existing procedures that would take place, I can assure you that no one would think “SEALs to kill Bin Laden”, the first thought would be, “My God, Indians are going to attack Islamabad”, and the US is unlikely to want to risk that, and indeed in 1998 when cruise strikes were launched against Bin laden, the US did tell Pakistan ahead of time.
Secondly the raid lasted 45 minutes, that would be a lot of time for police and perhaps Army to get involved and cause major complications, as it is they all seem to have stayed away. If you are a Station House Officer at a police station nearby and you hear about a major fire fight in you area of responsibility, your first insticnt is not going to be to “warn Bin Laden”, you don’t even know he is there, it is going to be to send an ARU (Armed Response Unit)in ASAP (and see them get killed).