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Lieutenant General Wooley: It's a great honor for me to be here on behalf of the 20,000-plus men and women of Air Force Special Operations Command. As you know, we've got the Special Operations Forces including our Battlefield Airmen and the Combat Search and Rescue folks, and I will tell you that I'm so very, very proud of each and every one of them and the work that they do for all of us in this great country every day around the world. No matter whether it's on the battlefield combating global terrorism—as you will get an up close and personal vignette here in just a few minutes—or whether it's life-saving as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation down there.

Let me just give you kind of a couple of factoids on what's going on down there. Our Combat Search and Rescue folks as well as our Special Operations Forces swung into action even as we were evacuated from Hurlburt Field. When that thing was rattling around in the Gulf we really didn't know where it was going. Hurricane Dennis had taken that last-minute turn direct north, so we were kind of watching this one with great interest. So we immediately called the Air Force Ops Center in NORTHCOM, told them where our folks were going to be and that our folks were available to employ even before we got back home if need be.

We actually took every flyable helicopter that the active duty, the Air National Guard and the Air Reserves had and sent them to Jackson, Mississippi. Our HC-130 helicopter refueler fleet and our MC-130P refueling fleet was able to deploy down there as well to refuel those helicopters.

We plucked about 5,500 folks off of rooftops and dragged them into Zodiac boats that the Special Tactics folks employed down there. They went down there, set up an LZ and temporary lights, and operated a control tower at New Orleans International to get that thing going for the Air Mobility forces. We've got an incredible force that is well resourced, very mature, highly educated, and capable of doing a myriad of things.

In the question and answer period we can talk about things that you want to talk about, CV-22s if that comes to mind; or possibly recapitalizing our fleet with C-130Js which we've got on our scope. Another thing that we're working really hot and heavy is replacements for the HH-60 helicopter. There are four airplanes in competition for that. The request for proposal is going to get out on the street very shortly and the competition will begin in earnest for that airplane which we're desperately in need of. So we can save all that stuff to the end, but let me now focus on the global war on terror.

We have got a true American hero, and when I said on behalf of the 20,000 men and women in Air Force Special Operations command, any one of those people could be standing up here telling a story that would keep you on the edge of your seat. We have picked out one that is incredible, as they all are. We have got a young Special Tactics Officer who is a tech sergeant in the 720th and at the time was in the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron. He’s going to tell you a tale of an engagement in Afghanistan a few short months ago. Tech Sergeant Brad Riley, why don't you come on up here…

Let me tell you just a little bit more about this guy as you look at him coming up on the stage. He is recovering from his wounds that he suffered in the operation that he's about to tell you about. As I characterize this story, the bad guys tried to kill them, kill him, and he killed them back. It's an incredible story. We snagged Brad from the Marine Corps. As he tells the story, he was in the Marines for 13 years and when they threatened to take him off the battlefield and throw him into an office moving paper from the left hand side of the desk to the right hand side of the desk he said, “I'm not done, I don't want to do that, I want to keep going out there on the battlefield,” and he came to us, and we are so fortunate to have him.

So if you would, please welcome Tech Sergeant Brad Riley. He is going to give you a vignette about our great Battlefield Airmen, the capability that they bring to the fight, and in his particular case, a story of something that is truly, truly incredible.

Brad, over to you… [Applause]

Tech Sergeant Riley: Good afternoon. My name is Tech Sergeant Brad Riley. I'm a Combat Controller with the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida.

Today I'm going to talk to you about a particular operation I was involved in in April of this year.

To give you an overview, I am a Joint Terminal Attack Controller, a JTAC. My job as a Combat Controller is I get assigned to an Army Special Forces Team that goes under the term ‘ODA.’ I was with ODA-163 and we were operating in the Khowst Bowl at Fire Base Chapman.

Every person on an ODA has his own particular job. There's the weapons guy, a medic, the team leader, radio operator, demolitions guy. My job is, as a Terminal Attack Controller, I'm the ground liaison between the air and the ground forces commander, and basically bring air power to bear on the targets in helping the ground force commander.

On the particular morning in question, April 11th of 2005, we were alerted early in the morning that there was an ambush in progress. The people being ambushed were friendly Afghans, in particular an Afghan general named General Kilbas. He and 40 fighters were traveling down a particular route known as the Khowst-Gardez Pass. This route's historically been used to ambush people due to the terrain.

We were alerted that we were going to be the quick react force. Immediately, two Army UH-60s were sent from Solerno, a nearby airfield. Those guys came to pick us up. In addition, I had two Army AH-64 Apaches and those provided the close air support. There were also two Air Force A-10 Warthogs that were already en route to that location and would be overhead and established in a wheel when I got on the scene about a 45-minute flight later.

The team configuration that day was there were ten special operators. Nine of them were Special Forces guys on my team, the team that I was on, 163, and then myself. In addition, we had two friendly Afghan interpreters and eight Afghan fighters. These forces were split in half, placed on the two birds, and designated Chalk 1 and Chalk 2. I was on Chalk 1.

From the Khowst Bowl we headed almost due west about 50 or 55 kilometers to the KG Pass. This is the only road that runs from Khowst to Gardez and historically the Mujahadeen used to hit the Russians in this pass and do a pretty good job of it.

Once we got overhead, again, I had the A-10s and AH-64s in support. The two Black Hawks we were in circled the site a couple of times, looked down, and identified the convoy. There was not any fighting going on at this time. The ambush had been triggered maybe 45 minutes to an hour ago, and there was just nothing going on.

My chalk, Chalk 1, sat down and we assessed the site. The vehicles were shot up pretty good. There were some RPGs embedded in the dirt. The 40 fighters had dismounted and moved to the lower parts of the western slopes. There was no one hurt.

General Kilbas was there. He was fine. He said the fighters were west, up in the high terrain, and the team leader made the decision that we were going to get back on the birds and start searching, maybe we could find these guys.

We headed to the west. We went about 2,000 meters, searching hilltops, down in valleys, wherever we could get. I'm not sure who saw them first, but on the top of the highest peak located about 8,200 feet was a single anti-coalition militant, which I'm going to refer to as ‘ACM’ or bad guy. This guy was hunkered down under a tree. He had pretty good cover. He had a hasty position dug in. He was in the fetal position with his back exposed. He wasn't moving at all, hoping we would just fly right by. About five feet, ten feet in front of him he had a backpack sitting on the ground and it had RPGs on it, so our assumption was that this was a bad guy and that we were going to make contact with him.

After we did a couple of race tracks over him, the ground commander made the decision to set in Chalk 1. Chalk 1 was going to put in north of the target location.

I was on Chalk 1. We came in. The helicopter didn't so much as land as kind of hover there, and we made a six to eight foot jump onto the ground. As soon as we got on the ground the helicopter took off, I got my radio checks, and shortly thereafter we were troops in contact. Maybe 30 seconds into it we were troops in contact and being engaged.

A-10s were overhead, like I said, they were there the whole time. They took about 45 minutes of video footage.

As my team maneuvered, Chalk 2 provided C2 from the air. We basically maneuvered to a ridge line to a position approximately 100 meters north of the target.

While we were doing this, I was using the AH-64s for my fires. I brought them over the target eight times. They were using rockets and guns. It wouldn't really matter, because the way this guy was set up and the way that he was dug in allowed him to be protected from those fires, so it would actually necessitate us sweeping his position.

As we got to a position 100 meters shy of the target, half the team under the command of the team sergeant, Master Sergeant Paul Cooper, became the flanking force and myself and one other SF guy and two friendly Afghan fighters that were with us became the fixing force. We continued to maneuver straight towards the enemy, fixing him in his location. The ODA guy that I was with was dropping 203s near him, keeping him suppressed, while the flanking element moved off and started flanking from the west.

Approximately 50 feet away from the ACM both myself and the team sergeant, call sign Zulu 1, threw frag grenades into this guy's position. The flanking element swept through and finished him off. Then the team decided to set up kind of a hasty 360 at that point.

Also, at this point, the Chalk 2 was making the decision that they were going to also in-fill and they would in-fill at our original landing site.

When were in the hasty 360, my position was in the east. I was looking down the eastern finger and I saw some clothing, some other articles that may indicate there's the presence of more enemy or maybe some intelligence information. I told Zulu 1 that I saw something and I was going to move down to it. He said, “yeah, roger that.” I started working my way down to them and immediately got engaged from a second ACM sitting in the trees really close by.

From this point on, the battlefield became pretty small. Everything that would be engaged in the next four hours of fighting would be at about 50 meters. They have a really good way of hiding in the bushes and in the rocks and the trees so that you can't see them until you're right there on them.

He began shooting at me. I shot at him and killed him and moved down to his position. I had two Afghan fighters in trail right behind me, 10 of 15 feet behind me. I passed him, the two Afghan fighters started looking at the body, pulled radios off. I told them, “no, don't fool with them.” They’ve been a common TTP that was starting to happen more and more—meaning they're boobytrapping their bodies right before they die. As soon as I said that, again I was engaged, this time from two different positions down the eastern finger.

Again, once I was engaged, I began shooting back. I have to be honest with you, once I found the target, I didn't stop shooting. I probably put five or six rounds in just to make sure I wasn't going to roll the dice on him. I engaged and killed those two guys and continued—actually I kind of took a pause. I was talking on the inter-team, letting my team leader know what was going on, my team sergeant, and he started pushing down that same hill with me. He was abreast of me, maybe ten meters abreast, we were working our way down the eastern hill. I was finding the vantage point where I could best control those attack helicopters and get them on the target so we didn't have to engage them. The problem was they were hidden very well and by the time that I actually could identify them and talk a helicopter onto them I'd already engaged and killed the target.

Once Zulu 1 was abreast of me we continued moving down the hill. He was on inter-team coordinating with the rest of his team to follow us down. They were following at maybe 20 or 30 meters as they were coming off the original TIC site, or the Troops In Contact site, at the top of the hill.

It was at that point we were engaged again. This time a little further down, maybe about 40 meters away. But Zulu 1 and I identified the target pretty fast, simultaneously hit him, and made pretty short work of that guy.

We were moving down the hill feeling pretty good that we were using the momentum of our attack to keep the heat on these guys. We were working, and around this time the two AH-64s ran out of fuel or were going bingo fuel and had to head back, to make the 45-minute flight back to Solerno.

So our lift birds, the UH-60s—they aren't special operations birds, they're just a slick UH-60 unit with two M-60s on each side with crew chiefs manning them—said that they were going to come in and fill the 25-minute gap between the AH-64s that we had that were leaving and the AH-64s they were sending back out.

I rolled my A-10s down to 2,000 feet so they would be closer, so they could watch the fight from the cockpit, and so they could start setting up to provide close air support.

The UH-60s came in. I started talking them onto our particular areas because they were loitering far to the north of us. I talked them onto our particular area and let them, now what was going on. As we continued down this eastern finger with the UH-60s we identified more ACMs and were engaged by more bad guys. We continued down the eastern finger to a point where the terrain became very steep. It was a narrow finger and there was a high cliff.

I got to the top of the cliff, couldn't go any further, and Zulu 1 began maneuvering around me. He decided he was going to go around the terrain and continue down the eastern finger. I started watching him out of the corner of my eye. As soon as he started moving, from a tree maybe five to seven meters right in front of him, there was a bad guy. We engaged and killed that guy also.

Zulu 1 kept moving. I looked down the finger and in this valley. There was another bad guy and he started high-tailing it. He starts running down the hill maybe to find a better position. I shot him a couple of times in the back and he went down.

As soon as Zulu 1 got right below me, I was on the upper part of the finger there, he was on the lower part, that whole hill erupted in fire. What we didn't know until that point is that there were five other ACMs down here waiting for us. They all fired simultaneously.

Immediately, I just fell backwards and found the nearest cover I could, which was rocks. I just found a spot in the rocks where I might not get shot, and Zulu 1 continued moving to the cover of a tree.

I looked down my body to see what was covered and what wasn't covered. I saw that my feet weren't covered and immediately a round went through my foot.

There are a few things that go through your mind when you get shot. The fact that it hurts, the fact that somebody's aiming their weapon and has you in their sights, and the fact that wherever you're at at that moment is probably not the safest place to be.

So acting on that, I just flipped over, grabbed the side of that rock right there, jumped off the cliff onto my foot that had just been shot, and hightailed it to this tree. It wasn't a very far run.

I laid down next to Paul. I'm the victim. Sorry, Zulu 1, Master Sergeant Cooper. I laid down next to him and said, “hey, I'm hit.” He said, “yeah, I'm hit, too.” I looked at him and he was laying on his back right here under this tree. I was laying right next to him. From kneecap to kneecap, his entire groin was covered in blood. It looked like he had taken some multiple rounds to his legs. He set his rifle down, took his helmet off, and that was it, he was out of the fight. He was lucid at that point. He was very lucid, and he was telling me, “hey, I need you to stop the bleeding, I'm losing a lot of blood.”

That was a priority to me. I've got to admit I was overwhelmed. Despite all the medical training that I may have had, I was overwhelmed by the wounds that I was looking at, seeing that this was not only my friend, but this was real life. I also had some other things going on. These five guys are still not dead, and this is my priority is to keep myself and Zulu 1 alive at least until we can get out of there.

There were two friendly Afghan fighters in trail behind us. The rest of the team following at 30 meters or so was suppressed by all this fire. As soon as the bad guys couldn't see us any more up where we were exposed, they started firing up at the top of the hill and engaging the rest of the team. We were still receiving an incredible amount of fire right here at the base of the tree.

The two Afghan fighters went around the north side of the finger. They were behind us and they went around this finger and they were in a position kind of right here. They couldn't get to us because of this open area, but one of them was in a position where if he popped up he could engage this nearest target which is no more than ten meters in front of me, down on the terrain a little bit.

I took up a position behind Zulu 1 on my knees, crouching down as low as I could. I grabbed my weapon, changed magazines. I had 11 magazines that day, I was down to five. I grabbed Zulu 1's weapon, changed magazines, had it ready to go. And then I started coaxing these friendly Afghan fighters to engage this target and try to kill him.

He started popping up to shoot the bad guy. The guy was in a good position. He wasn't getting engaged so he was in a good position to return fire. Every time he'd pop up, snap off a couple of rounds, the bad guy would pepper the hill that was right in front of where he was at, hit the rocks, and scare him back down.

He wasn't going to kill the bad guy. I understood that after about three or four times of his doing it, but what was happening is he was drawing this guy's attention away from me. So the next time he popped up, I came up as high as I could on my knees and found the target and shot him a couple of times and killed him.

Chalk 2 sets in and maneuvers to the original TIC hill, identifies that that's not the best position where they could observe the firefight that's happening down below them a couple of hundred meters there, so they moved to an adjacent hill that looks to be south of the target.

From that position I'm talking to them and they indicate to me that those five ACMs that we were just engaging are now on their feet and they're maneuvering up towards myself and Zulu 1. It's not a very far walk to make it to our position and there's no one really laying down fire on these guys so they were going to take advantage of it.

On the radio I was still talking to the UH-60s. I had tried to get them in over the top of us a couple of times and they took a lot of ground fire. I told them in no uncertain terms that they really needed to get in here and that there were five guys maneuvering on myself and Zulu 1 who were both wounded. He said, “put me between you and the bad guys,” and he did just that. He came across maybe 40 feet in the air, two crew chiefs engaging out of both door guns. The plane was right above me. I could see it getting peppered with rounds in the rotors, in the hole. A couple of rounds went through the cockpit. The end of the story for that is it took about 30 countable holes in the bird, but it kept flying.

He continued to make attacks over the top of us, engaging these guys and suppressing their attack, pushing them back down the hill and he killed a number of them himself.

Their immediate response was, “hey, we're inbound for the medivac.” The problem was there was no way they were going to get to us with the terrain that we were on, but they continued coming across looking for us. We were hidden as well, and they identified that there's no way they were going to get us. They passed that up to the A-10s, the A-10s passed that back up the echelon, and they started looking to scramble another two UH-60s, this time medivac birds that were equipped with a hoist.

This is what's going on, and it goes on for about another hour and a half, two hours. I've got the five ACMs that are still engaging me. Some are knocked out. The rate of fire that's coming at us has been reduced, but the fact is they're still out there and we're still shot up pretty good. Zulu 1 is reminding me over and over that he's losing a lot of blood, and he was losing a lot of blood.

After the threat was eliminated enough to the point where I could start working on him, I pulled out our field medical kits, put a tourniquet on his left leg, put pressure dressings on his right leg, and gave him his morphine. He was asking for morphine.

I was calling back to the team. The team's call sign was B-6-3. I was letting them know we needed not only guys to come down and protect us or help us get out of that area, but we also needed a medkit with more supplies because the tourniquet wasn't working. One tourniquet alone wasn't working. He still had a pretty substantial wound on his right leg.

Additionally, as I stated, the A-10s had rolled down to 2,000 feet. The plan was that in the worst case scenario, if these guys started maneuvering again, I was going to drag Zulu 1 down on the northern slopes of this finger, and the A-10s were going to come in and drop their ordnance. They had 500-pound air burst ordnance and they were going to put that ordnance in the southern side of this finger. So the only thing we had between us was the terrain itself and we hoped that was going to work.

The UH-60s were shot up pretty good. They continued to come in and assess to see if they could get inside and land and pull us out, but the fact was they weren't going to do it and every time they came in to try, they got shot up.

The good news was that two more AH-64s scrambled out of Solerno were en route. I had communications with those guys and was talking them onto what was going on even though they weren't out there yet, just giving them a situational update as to what was going on.

Additionally, two more A-10s, the strip alert out of Bagram, launched and they established themselves at 17,000 feet overhead. They passed me their fighter check-in, I gave them a situational update, and now I had plenty of players here.

We would be in this position by ourselves for about 45 minutes before the team medic came down by himself, made it to our position, and started assisting me with the first aid on Zulu 1. He put a second tourniquet on his right leg, he put additional pressure dressings on both legs, he gave him my morphine so that he had another morphine on board, and began prepping him for the medivac helicopters that were inbound with the hoist equipment so we could get him out of there fast. He was not lucid at this time. He was pretty much going in and out. He'd lost a lot of blood.

An hour and a half later when the medivac helicopters finally arrived, I talked them onto our position. The plan was that the remaining AH-64s with the remaining team members of B-6-3 that were not suppressed were going to dump everything they had down into that valley on those guys to kill or suppress what was left while the hoist aircraft came in, hovered above, sent down a medic with a SKEDCO litter, put Zulu 1 on the litter, hoisted him up, came back down with a jungle penetrator, put myself and the medic on the jungle penetrator, and hoisted us back up.

I explained this in 45 seconds. It was a lot longer than 45 seconds that those guys were sitting up there hovering, getting exposed to what the other UH-60s were having a hard time just flying across without getting shot up.

Once we were on board the helicopter, I continued monitoring the fight. Obviously I wasn't going to do anything. My situational awareness has slowly shrunk down to just those three guys in that position and there wasn't a whole lot of battle still remaining and we were en route back to Solerno. There was an 18 Delta special forces medic on board the helicopter that was working on Paul, getting fluids in his body and stuff because he was not in good shape.

The battle damage assessment … 13 fighters were killed that day on that particular ridge line. This was a cell operating in the area which had conducted attacks against police stations and police checkpoints in the days preceding the ambush on General Kilbas. They were well armed. We captured plenty of small arms to include this Fowl-11 sniper rifle. RPGs of course, they all have them, and some heavy machine guns, RPK and PKM machine guns. They also had black tip ammunition. That's armor-piercing ammunition. Every magazine had it. It didn't matter if we had plates on or not, it would have penetrated. And plenty of grenades; Chinese grenades, North Korean, wherever they're from, communist countries. Their problem is they never use them. I think they're afraid of them.

Your typical Afghan runs around the mountains wearing flip-flops or sandals. He grows up his whole life doing it so it doesn't matter. These guys are wearing mountain boots and were well equipped, had plenty of food and supplies to last a couple of days.

There were 13 guys and we found four radios. That means they were kind of operating in four-man fire teams. They were communicating well with each other just using your standard radio that may be 20 years old, but it was effective and it was working for them.

They understood defense in depth. They were spread out, they had good fields of fire, had fighting positions dug, and then fall-back positions dug as well, so they weren't rookies. They weren't afraid. They're out there fighting, they're out doing their jihad, and this day they didn't win.

The wounds that we received ... Zulu 1 took a single AK-47 round through the back of his right leg and it continued through, hit in a particular place in his groin and came across and kind of filleted open his left leg. That's the leg I put the tourniquet on.

His right leg that the second tourniquet was on had bled a lot. That round as it went through his body broke his right femur. Once we got to Solerno, the first stop, they took off the tourniquets. All his vitals plunged and he took on seven units of blood and a lot of water. So those tourniquets saved his life that day.

This is my right foot. I took a single AK-47 round through my right foot. It entered on the top, broke my second and my third metatarsal, continued through and hit a bone called a cuboid, a square-looking bone that provides the lateral arch in the foot. Basically, my doctor said it dusted the cuboid and pushed everything out the exit hole. In addition to that, it also severed the tendons that go to my four little toes.

I know you're all wondering what happened to Zulu 1. I'm in contact with those guys and I will be probably for a long, long time. He sent me a picture the other day. The ODA-163 is a mountain team. He sent me a picture of him summiting Mount Rainier with a titanium rod in his leg. He's back on the job as the team sergeant with his team.

I'm a little slower; a lot of weight-bearing on the right foot. I can't do any high impact stuff—jumping or fast roping, but I'm starting to run a little bit more and hopefully here in the fall I'll be back jobbing it myself. [Applause]

Lieutenant General Wooley: I told you this was going to be good, and we are blessed that he didn't want to move that paper from the left hand side of the desk to the right, because I'll tell you, he is a valued member of Air Force Special Operations Command. And as I said, there are 19,999 more just like him and they've each got stories. So what are your questions for either myself or Brad?

Q: Can you talk a bit about the Air Force Combat Search and Rescue aircraft modernization program? Where does that platform stand today? And are there some lessons learned from Operation Katrina in how to go forward with that?

Lieutenant General Wooley: You bet. We are fortunate because our helicopters on the Combat Search and Rescue are equipped properly. I think what you saw in New Orleans was the fact that you had any vertical lift platform that they could throw into service. Each of them brought a little bit to that evacuation and that recovery. There will be some lessons learned, to be sure. The Coast Guard added a lot. The Army added a lot. We added a lot. So I think in the after-action piece, that will be evaluated.

Nevertheless, all of our Special Operations helicopters to include the ones that we're recapitalizing, the CV-22, will have a hoist capability. They all have fast rope capability besides the vertical takeoff and landing capability on the rescue side. The four airplanes that we're looking at are all in service today. That's exactly the competition that we were hoping for because we want to get the most combat capability from a vertical lift platform that is flying today and pick the best of the lot, and then start spiral developing it from there.

We don't have time, nor should we waste time, to build the perfect vertical lift platform. The HH-60s are fast coming to the end of their useful life. It's the right thing for the taxpayers to do, to not spend any big wads of money on the HH-60 fleet and start all over again and move out.

So what we’re after is to get the most combat capability we can get out of that competition and then spiral it like crazy.

Q: Iraq and Afghanistan deservedly take much of our attention, but AFSOC is operating worldwide as part of the Global War on Terror, including exercises and training our Coalition partners. Would you tell us something about that?

Lieutenant General Wooley: You bet. This was a great example, not only this story to showcase our people, but also the support that we gave to Hurricane Katrina. The way we operate is with small forces that are highly motivated, highly educated, very well trained, and very, very mature. As you can see, this is not your average person standing up here. He brings a lot to the fight as do any of the Special Operations Forces from whatever service.

So that being said, it is very important that we maintain a rigorous exercise schedule, keep our eyes and ears, our intel network, our ISR, up to see what's going on so that we can react. Obviously, the Global War on Terror in the fronts that we are actively engaged in are taking a lot of our time. That's not to say that we're not focused on other parts of the world. We've got Special Ops pieces of the warfighting commands in every global combatant commander's area of responsibility and we maintain that exercise program. We're in South America right now, we've got JSATS going on in the Pacific. It's very, very important that we stay engaged and are aware globally of what's going on so that we can best utilize the talents of our great people and the weapon systems that we have.

That is our strength. Tech Sergeant Brad Riley and the other ones, that is our strength right there, and I thank God for all of the folks that we have in the military that are doing great things, but I'm so very, very proud of our folks in Air Force Special Operations Command.

Thanks for the opportunity to be in here with you today.

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