by Dick Couch
Nine-one-five manages to come from behind and win the competition, but I thought both teams did well. The cadre viewed the exercise with a more critical eye. Both teams sit in together during the after-action review.
“Command and control,” Captain Childers begins, “that’s a biggie for me. When that team leader’s busy, someone has to jump up from the perimeter and take charge. Your team leaders and team sergeants seem to know their stuff, but they can’t do it all. When the team leader is head down, ass up on a job, someone has to pick up the slack and watch the big picture—be ready to take charge and react. Another thing, whatever you do, do it properly. Too many of you out on security just found a twig or a small tree for cover. That’s unacceptable. Set up your ruck for protection. Find the best and biggest tree to give you cover and support for your firing position. Do the little things to the best of your ability—never slack just because you are not in the center of the action or doing a visible task. This is a time for passion about all tasks, large and small.”
“In some of the evolutions, you did well,” Sergeant Viafore tells 915 and 912, “and in others, you disappointed me. That 240’s very important. Everyone has to know how to quickly clear a jam on the big gun and get it back in the fight. If that jammed round won’t come free, get mean and clear it. Men can die if you don’t. When one of your teammates went down, you were way too slow. There were too many guys standing around, waiting for someone else to take charge; it took you too long to get to the guy who was hit.” There is an edge to Sergeant Viafore’s voice, and he speaks with feeling. “Hear me on this, guys. You have a sacred duty to go to the aid of a man who is down. If a medic isn’t there, and he wasn’t in this drill, you’re the medic—do something. Nothing’s more important than saving a brother’s life. Too many times in this training, you waited for someone else to take charge. Like the captain said, if the team leader’s busy or the team sergeant isn’t there, jump in and make it happen. You’re all leaders, every one of you. Now, this criticism may be negative, and maybe I’m not giving you credit for all the things you did right out there, but this is a harsh business. This is Special Forces, not some liberal-arts, feel-good program; we don’t have time for your self-esteem. If it’s not right, we have to get it right and fast—we’re at war. The same’ll be true when you get to an operational team. If a guy’s doing something wrong, you jump in his shit until he gets it right. When I get done here at the training command, I’ll be back on a team, and maybe some of you will be my teammates—my brothers. Maybe a year or two from now, I’ll be doing something wrong and you’ll have to jump in my shit and get me straight—hear what I’m saying. In Special Forces we train each other—that’s true here, and it will be true when you get to your team at group.”
The final evolution of the mission readiness exercise is a gunfight. Late that afternoon, 915 and 912 rechamber and rebarrel their M4s to adapt to Simunitions, or Sims. Sims are 9mm paintball rounds that are adapted to the standard M4 rifle. They have the same cyclic rate of fire and short-range trajectory as the real thing. The rounds make a splotch and a sting when they hit, but nothing more. A few of the older soldiers have trained with Simunitions, but for most, this is their first time—their first firefight. The contestants in a Sims fight wear protective goggles and face masks. A good Sims fight is the dream of every little boy who played war games when he was a kid. I was one of those little boys.
There’s a deserted training compound nearby that 915 elects to defend. A squadron of National Guard H-60 helos are training at the airfield, and they agree to insert the attack element—912. It’s the honor system; if you’re hit, you go down. Soon it’s game on, and the two teams are running and gunning. When it’s over, 915 has more men standing, but then the advantage always goes to the defender. Sergeant Blackman calls the two student ODAs in for the after-action review.
“OK, this training was a bonus for you and a game—a paintball fight—but what did we learn? The basics work, right? You guys in 912 had a hard job, assaulting a fixed position with the enemy alert and ready for you. But you executed a fire-and-maneuver attack pretty well. Remember, a steady volume of covering fire is key to the success of the maneuvering element. Also keep in mind, plywood and twigs may stop a Sims round, but not a real one. Real bullets are for keeps, and concealment is not necessarily good cover. And basic infantry tactics work, even for us high-speed, Special Forces guys.”
Nine-One-Five and 912 patrol back to the Rowe Training Facility. They overhaul their gear that evening and get a good night’s sleep, perhaps for the last time in Phase IV. Ahead of them are four days of intensive planning and preparation before they infiltrate into Pineland for Robin Sage. The student ODAs are now under strict isolation protocol. They can interact with their higher command and those role players assigned to their forward operating base, but no one else. This is the final countdown to Robin Sage.
In the 915 team room, Captain Santos staffs out the planning assignments for his team. There’s a lot to do, but they have been thinking about and working toward this since they arrived at Camp Mackall. There are six computers in the team room. All are on a local area network that supports Robin Sage. Weather data, mission-planning software, and the full Pineland scenario—history, economic data, politics, geography, demographics, and maps—are in the database. Seldom did I go into 915’s team room, day or night, and not find a soldier at each of the computers.
The drill is not unlike what took place in the planning rooms during the mission-planning exercises of the 18 Alpha’s Phase III. Only these are a group of soldiers, not officers with mission-planning experience, and five of Captain Santos’s ten enlisted soldiers have been in the Army less than eight months. His assistant detachment leader is an excellent officer, but he’s new to the mission-planning doctrine as practiced in the American military. The heavy burden for supervising and planning and the mission briefback will fall on Miguel Santos.
Everyone has a hand in the planning and in preparing equipment for the mission. A great deal of the initial planning effort falls on Sergeant Brian Short, the team’s intel sergeant. He begins to work up the intelligence picture and format it for the briefback. The weapons sergeants have to plan ammunition requirements, both what they and the team will carry in and what has to be staged for the resupply bundles. They also have to identify weapons spare parts and build repair kits; there are no armories in Pineland. The engineering sergeants have their demolition requirements in the way of explosives, det cord, time fuse, and their demo kits. They’re also tasked with building the resupply bundles—bundles that are to be staged for scheduled airdrops and for on-call air resupply. The lone combat medic has his medical bag to prepare, along with the medical equipment and meds he will be taking in for training and administering to the guerrillas. There are also real-world issues like poison ivy, cuts, and infections. He, too, has equipment for the resupply bundles. All of them have equipment to stage for team operations, training of the guerrillas, and aerial resupply. And all of them have input for the briefback.
Perhaps the busiest soldiers in 915 are the commo sergeants. They have to program and test the radios that they’ll be jumping with into Pineland. Nine-one-five will take in a single PSC-5, which will be their primary SATCOM radio, and one PRC-137, which will serve as their FM-ALE link for their periodic situation reports. They’ll have one PRC-119 to serve as a mission-support radio and handle intersquad traffic. The 119 is to function as a base station for the six PRC-148 MBITR tactical or squad radios. The team will also have a KL-43 and two toughbook computers. They’ll train the guerrillas on the 119 and 148 radios. The commo sergeants also prepare backup radios for on-call resupply in case the radios they take in fail or are damaged during the insertion. All of them have to be loaded with crypto and tested.
Amid the planning and gear preparation, there are briefings by the forward operating base personnel on rules of engagement, current intelligence, logistics, public affairs, and tactical deployment issues.
These briefings are exercise related and real world—especially regarding public affairs. Robin Sage is a big event, and there are reporters out in the field wanting to talk to soldiers, and the Phase IV students are instructed on how to deal with them. There are also scenario-related briefings. One is with a Pinelander who recently came out of the area of Pineland that they will be going into. Another is with a Special Forces sergeant who was in Pineland on a JCET deployment two years ago. These scenario briefings are conducted by the officers and the 915 team sergeant, Tom Olin. Nine-one-five works well into the nights, with the team members averaging about four hours of sleep.
“There’s so much to do,” Sergeant Olin says, “and so very little time to get it all done. There are so many details to attend to. We’ll be out there fourteen days, and everything has to be front-loaded—what we take in and what we’ll get through aerial resupply. Sometimes it overwhelms you. Then you have to get out your planning lists and start working the issues one at a time. The guys are starting to zone out, but they’re still getting things done.”
The briefback is scheduled for the third day of the four-day planning and preparation window. By late afternoon of the second day, Captain Santos and his team have their planning largely complete and are starting to rehearse for this final mission briefing. Santos and First Lieutenant Kwele will handle large portions of the briefing, and Sergeant Short will deliver the intelligence summaries. For the MOS-specific portions of the briefback, Tim Baker will address weapons-related topics, Daniel Barstow will speak to engineering, Andrew Kohl, of course, will discuss the medical portion, and David Altman will brief the communications. Tom Olin is on for weather and logistics. By early evening, the 915 briefing team is in full-on rehearsals, while the other members of the team continue to prepare equipment.
Just before midnight, I get a call at our cabin from a friend of Miguel Santos. It seems that his wife is in labor and Captain Santos is about to become a father. Santos and his wife had planned for him to be absent for the birth and had flown his wife’s mother over from Germany several weeks ago to be with her daughter. Nine-one-five is in isolation and the briefback is scheduled for 0900—a little over nine hours from the time I got the call. And yet Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg is only forty-five minutes away and it is their first child. It takes me five minutes to dress and another five minutes to get to the team hut. Nine-one-five is still working, but the brief-back and their equipment are in good order. After a few phone calls—duty NCO to cadre team officer to company commander and so on—915’s team leader receives permission to leave Camp Mackall. Moments later, Miguel Santos and I are in my pickup truck and headed for Fort Bragg. Anna Santos is born while we’re en route, but the new dad is soon with his family. I grab a few hours sleep in my truck before we head back to Camp Mackall; the new father has had none. By 0600, we are back at the team room. Captain Santos gets a hearty round of congratulations from his teammates, and 915 begins a final rehearsal for the briefback.
The briefbacks, or mission briefings, are taken seriously in Special Forces—certainly so in Phase IV training and Robin Sage. The officer acting as 915’s battalion commander to take the briefback is Lieutenant Colonel Matt Stark, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group. The team rises as he enters the team room, and Captain Santos introduces himself and the members of his team. Lieutenant Colonel Stark takes his seat, and Santos begins with a concise statement of his mission, then plunges into the Pineland situation and threat evaluation. As in the rehearsals, other members of 915 follow him with their portions of the briefback. The briefing is very detailed and very technical, with a great deal of acronyms and military jargon. Fortunately, I had been through Phase III, so I could follow most of it. Ninety minutes and 115 PowerPoint slides later, Captain Santos concludes his briefback.
“The men have worked hard,” he tells Lieutenant Colonel Stark, “and they’re prepared to carry out this mission. We’re good to go, sir.”
The team is sitting in two rows to the side of the table where the colonel took the briefing. “That was a good job,” Stark begins, “especially given the time you’ve had to devote to it. I’d like to say that you’ll have more time for planning down range, but that may not be the case. I like your approach to training your G force, but don’t try to jump right into it with the guerrillas. Settle in with your Gs and build some rapport first. And you, Captain, are going to have to sell this plan to the G chief before he allows you to train his men. Again, try to get a read on him before you begin training. He may be strong politically, but is he strong tactically? Is he strong organizationally? You have to make a quick assessment of him—help him where he is weak, yet stay in the background and not make him look bad to his men.” He pauses to consult his notes. “Your infil plan is a good one, but more detail is needed. You have to plan for every imaginable contingency, from a man getting injured on the drop zone to being compromised on the drop zone. Until you make a safe linkup and are in the security of the guerrilla base, you’re in Indian country, and you have to take all security precautions. And when you are in the G base, you’ll still have to tend to your own security. In Robin Sage, and later on when you deploy for real, always be thinking about security. In Special Forces, you’ll never really be free of that responsibility.”
Lieutenant Colonel Stark again consults his legal pad, checking off notes as he makes each point to 915.
“Past training your guerrillas and taking them on operations, make a careful risk assessment on each and every mission—take the time to game it out from a risk perspective.
“Do what you can to stay away from air resupply, it puts you and the aircraft at risk. Work with your Gs and the auxiliary to get what you need, if you can.
“A word about the equipment you are going to jump in. The tendency is to go in heavy. Assume some risk on food and water. You can find water on the ground, and you can do without food for a while. Try to cut down on your weight so you can move better. This is a good time of year temperature-wise, so you can cut down on your snivel gear.
“Medical. Be ready for real-world issues—sprains, cuts, infections, that kind of thing. For the future, know your teammates and know their injuries. Guys get hurt. Don’t put a man or a team at risk because a guy’s hurt and wants to suck it up and go in on the mission.
“Communications. I want a situation report as soon as you’re safely on the ground. It’ll make me feel good. Until I hear from you, I’ll have a quick-reaction evacuation force in full readiness until I know you are on the ground and moving safely. Situation reports. I want a situation report daily; I want to know what you need and the current intelligence. Intel reports and situation reports will drive decisions at the highest level—even to national command authority level, your lips to president’s ears. You are the ground truth—all before this is dated information.
“Be aware of what Civil Affairs and Psyops can do for you, especially during demobilization and the political climate that will follow the cessation of hostilities.”
He looks at the two rows of soldiers that make up 915. “One of the hardest things you may have to do in this exercise is to keep your focus. This is as real as it gets without real bullets. Flip the switch—get your head in the game and keep it there. This is a real operation. Life and death. Talk to each other; if one of you gets down, then another of you is going to have to kick him in the ass. Play it for real, to the max of your ability, and you’ll leave here with skills that you’ll need and be thankful for down range. Do well in Robin Sage, and you’ll be ready for duty with a Special Forces operational detachment.”
Lieutenant Colonel Stark rises, and 915 is on their feet a nanosecond behind him. He shakes each of their hands and takes his leave. I sat in on other briefbacks, and each commander handled it differently. Some interrupted to ask questions of the briefer. Others aggressively challenged the team leader, and still others would quiz the team—asking the ODA junior weapons sergeant about guerrilla weapons trainin
g or the senior communicator about far recognition signals. The afternoon following the briefback is the time for the Phase IV written examination, a comprehensive exam that tests military knowledge in all aspects of unconventional warfare. To prepare for it, each member of 915 pairs up with someone who has a different MOS—a Bravo with an Echo, the Delta with a Charlie—and they grill each other on their specialties and what they’ve learned to date in Phase IV.
While 915 and the other student ODAs plan, prepare, brief, and test, there’s a curious gathering of soldiers in the parking lot just outside the Rowe Training Facility compound. A steady stream of trucks and buses brings soldiers from Fort Bragg to Camp Mackall. This contingent is a mix of 82nd Airborne veterans, a National Guard unit from Wisconsin, and a service support company from Fort Benning. These are the Gs—the guerrillas who will serve as Pineland irregulars for the Robin Sage exercise. They’re organized into their guerrilla bands and then, along with their G chiefs, head out to their G bases. There the G chiefs, who are mostly veteran role players of Robin Sage, will read them into their roles as irregular soldiers and get them in character, as well as the uniform of a Pineland guerrilla. For some of the combat veterans from the 82nd, they’ll have to dumb-down their military skills. For the service support soldiers, they will learn some new skills. All of this is part of a realistic unconventional-warfare training scenario and the capstone of Green Beret training.
I asked Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jackson why, in the light of the global war on terrorism, Robin Sage did not morph into a foreign internal defense or counterinsurgency scenario with a Middle East/ Southwest Asia flavor. “It’s been talked about,” Jackson told me, “but Robin Sage has met the test of time. If these Special Forces students can handle what we throw at them here in Pineland, they can handle unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, and counterinsurgency warfare anywhere in the world.”
