Virtual Mutiny
WES BRYANT
Shortly after the liberation of Amerli, rumors had come down that questions were being posed at the senior military and State Department levels regarding legalities of running an airstrike campaign from the U.S. Embassy. To avoid any drama, General Pittard ordered immediate transition of the strike cell off the embassy compound.
He ordered a new strike cell set up across Baghdad, at my neck of the woods near the SOTF-I at the Baghdad International Airport. The operation to take back the Haditha Dam would constitute the last strikes controlled from the Embassy Strike Cell, and Vern and I would be taking over the new cell at BIAP and using our special operations JTACs to man it.
While the Haditha operation played out at the Embassy Strike Cell, Vern and I worked day and night to set up the new cell on BIAP. He and I got along quite well even if we’d incessantly, albeit affectionately, argue over which of us knew close air support doctrine the best. (Of course, I always won that argument.) That was a good thing, because we had a lot of work to do.
We coordinated with General Pittard’s lead air liaison officer (ALO) and senior TACP JTAC who’d been running the strike cell from the embassy. The two had spearheaded the Embassy Strike Cell and we leaned on them to get the new cell up and running. We made the trek across Baghdad to the joint operations center to observe the inner workings of their strike cell during the Haditha operation and begin planning for the first operations from our own.
General Pittard’s ALO, Major Joel Poche, was a keen and spirited Air Force TACP officer who proved to be of vital assistance. His lead JTAC was an experienced, veteran TACP who helped us immensely with the technicalities and details of the new strike cell operations.
Over the next couple of weeks we assisted the Embassy Strike Cell in the planning and execution of the Haditha Dam operation. After Haditha, Major Poche and his senior TACP followed us back to BIAP to help guide the first operations from our new cell. They soon handed us all the jewels of experience they’d gained in running the Embassy Strike Cell.
The BIAP Strike Cell was to be manned by an unprecedented team of conventional and special operations members from three different services. While “joint” operations between military services were common in the operating environment of the day, the particular mix of multiservice special operators and conventional forces all working together as one was unique to our team.
The cell was to be owned by the commander of Iraq himself—Major General Pittard. General Pittard directed Army Colonel Tim Kehoe to stand up the new strike cell and serve as the director. A swarthy artillery commander of the 17th Field Artillery Brigade with extensive joint fires background, Kehoe commanded a truly professional and capable brigade staff. After setting up all the communications, targeting equipment, and overall infrastructure for the cell in record speed, their skills and equipment became ours for the molding.
The JTACs in the cell would hail from three different services—my Air Force Special Tactics JTACS, Vern’s JTAC-qualified Navy SEALs, and a couple of JTAC-qualified Green Berets we’d borrow from the Special Forces teams within the task force. Later we’d incorporate a couple of conventional TACP JTACs who would infill to BIAP attached to the infantry company dispatched to assist with base security operations.
All the JTACs in the strike cell fell under my and Vern’s tactical and operational guidance as the fires officer and NCO for the task force. In turn, we fell under the tactical and operational guidance of Colonel Kehoe and General Pittard.
As special operators we had a unique command relationship with General Pittard. By that I mean technically we did not fall under his command even though he was the ground commander for the U.S. mission in Iraq. Instead, we fell under the operational control of Commander Black at the special operations task force in Baghdad, above that the commander of the JSOTF-GCC in Bahrain where I’d been tasked in the first weeks of the crisis, and ultimately under Major General Mike Nagata at SOCCENT back in Tampa. And actually, our special operations task force wasn’t even formally tasked by SOCCENT to support the new strike cell operation on BIAP, so there was no formal precedent for me, Vern, or any of the task force JTACs to man it.
Really, our support to General Pittard’s strike cell ended up being more of an “informal lateral support agreement” between Major General Nagata and Major General Pittard. That is to say, it would have been if Vern or I had ever really asked our chain of command for permission—which we did not.
We both felt that our special operations task force had been flailing along in the fight against ISIS up to that point. The task force was concentrating on standing up a targeting mission—to kill and capture high value targets in the Baghdad region—but that was gaining little traction and moving way too slowly. Our Special Forces teams and JTACs had done some amazing work assisting in the relief at Sinjar, the safeguarding of Erbil, the liberation of the Mosul Dam, and the protection of Amerli—but the main task force had little play in those operations and there was no real forward vision to get truly aggressive toward fighting ISIS on part of the task force itself.
Vern and I saw the SOTF-I as missing the boat in the opportunity to make a real difference in the campaign against ISIS, while other entities had been doing just that—specifically the special operations strike cell in Erbil and the Embassy Strike Cell in Baghdad. So, to us it was almost serendipitous that the Embassy Strike Cell was suddenly mandated to move to our location on BIAP.
Vern and I saw an opportunity to make a real difference in the fight against ISIS, so the decision to volunteer our services as JTACs to the ground commander of Iraq was entirely our own. In special operations, when you see a “gap” you fill it; and that’s exactly what we did.
Outside the immediate honor and privilege of hunting ISIS, we had another specific purpose in mind when taking the new strike cell: it was our special operations teams running the advise and assist mission with the Iraqis forces, and it was our Special Forces teams embedded with the Iraqis and assisting General Pittard’s staff by doing much of the tactical-level planning, coordinating, and advising for the Iraqi counteroffensives. We believed it should be our special operations JTACs controlling the airstrikes that supported those offensives.
Major Poche was completely on board. He was already struggling with running strike cell operations from the embassy. He admittedly had a small air staff that hadn’t come into Iraq under the assumption they’d be initiating the airstrike campaign against ISIS. They had other mission priorities and they were already overtasked from the operations they’d been conducting so far.
As far as our chain of command at the SOTF-I, Commander Black was definitely not keen on losing his fires officer and NCO to the new strike cell. Understandably, he wanted us to be on hand for him 24/7. But we were fortunate enough to have the support of a like-minded operations officer who reported directly to Commander Black and was our immediate “boss” at the task force. He insisted to Commander Black that we were in dire need at the new strike cell and that we’d be far better utilized in that capacity. Effectively, he covered our “moonlighting.”
In the end, fitting with the silent mantra of special operations “better to act first and beg forgiveness later,” Vern and I never really asked permission from our special operations chain of command to take duties at the new strike cell. We simply did it; and let the chips fall where they may. Besides, once the commander of Iraq said he was going to use us to run his new strike cell, we didn’t think many would argue. As it turned out, General Pittard was all too happy to have us—and the feeling was more than mutual.