Alan C. Mack

It would be great if we got some special forces guys up on the hill overlooking the village because what happens all the time when you come in with helicopter assaults is people hear you, you know, most of the time, and they tend to run, right?

So if you've got, you know, five different buildings where the bad guy could be and they run, now you've got to find these what we call squirters.

So the idea was these four guys turned to be SEALs.

Marcus Luttrell was one of them.

are gonna establish what we call pattern of life.

They're gonna watch the village from a distance and see if they can identify our HVT, our high value target, and decide which building he's actually in.

So that when we come in, if somebody squirts from there, you kind of narrow down where to look.

So they're gonna do that.

And we had two different types of Chinooks at the time.

I was flying MH-47 Echo, which had the terrain falling radar and all the stuff I talked about.

And the 3rd Battalion out of Savannah, who was doing the mission, had MH-47D AWC, or Adverse Weather Cockpit.

So it's a fairly capable aircraft, but it's on the way out.

It's one of our original high-speed aircraft.

But the difference is they don't have all the same equipment that I have for survivability, but that means the aircraft is lighter and has more lift capability.

So they're going to take all these Marines in while I sit on what they call QRF, quick reaction force.

And so the team is compromised.

And

Marcus's team.

Marcus's team is compromised during the daylight.

And I walk into the tactile operations center and there's a lot of attention going to the big TV screens, you know, we call ISR, intelligence surveillance.