AFA Policy Forum
Colonel Lyle Koenig, Jr., and TSgt Jim Hotaling
Air Force Special Operations Command
Air Force Association National Convention
Washington, D.C.
September 16, 2002
Policy Forum: Special Operations Forces Brief
Colonel Lyle Koenig: I appreciate the chance to
be here. As General Peterson said, I work directly for
Lieutenant General Paul Hester, who is the Commander of
Air Force Special Operations Command and—as everybody in
this audience knows— he is a member of the AFA, a strong
supporter of the AFA, and I know he was very
disappointed he couldn’t be here to address the group
today, but he is doing an Air Force board and was unable
to attend. So, it is my honor to be here. I just
appreciate the opportunity.
What I am going to do today is spend a small amount
of time talking, laying the foundation for a war story,
a short portion of what Air Force Special Ops is about,
and then we are going to get the real warrior up here
who has laid on the ridge line and shot back at
terrorists. He will give you his story about ground
operations in Afghanistan.
This is what everybody recognizes—Air Force Special
Operations Command by – six versions of the C-130; the
MH-53 Pave Low helicopter. As you all know, we are a
small command – 13,000 people total for worldwide Air
Force Special Operations. One hundred and twenty one
aircraft, only 88 of which are combat coded. In addition
to being an Air Force major command, remember we
operationally report to the Commander in Chief of the
United States Special Operations Command in Tampa to
provide specialized support for this nation’s special
operations forces as well as a ground force to provide a
very special air-to-surface interface that we are going
to briefly talk about.
This is the portion that many people aren’t familiar
with when we discuss Air Force Special Operations
Command – special tactics. Three career fields: combat
control, para-rescue and combat weather, all of which
are jump-qualified and all of which are integrated with
ground Army and Navy special operations teams.
In October of 2001, many of you saw, all across this
nation, on the front page of all the major papers,
pictures such as these, with captions that said,
“soldiers inserted on the ground in Afghanistan.” I
don’t need to tell this audience these guys aren’t
soldiers; these are airmen. And airmen are on the
ground, combat controllers, integrated in every single
special operations team that was inserted on the ground
in Afghanistan. This is no surprise to us, but a big
surprise to those outside of our community.
What I want to do real quick is just explain what it
takes to become a combat controller. Start with your
Combat Control Orientation at Hurlburt, mainly PT, just
to get you in shape for your 18 months to 20 months
worth of training that you have to do. Off to Air
Traffic Control School, where they learn radar control,
air field control, graduating from that course as a
certified FAA air traffic controller. No surprise – they
go off to jump school at Fort Benning, same school we
all know about. No surprise with combat survival
training at Fairchild Air Force Base.
Combat Control School at Pope. This is the meat of
what the combat controllers learn, communicating, land
navigation, LZ survey, DZ survey, LZ control. All of
those things, those basic fundamental tenets that the
combat controllers need in combat. Back to Hurlburt for
12 months to do advanced skills training, which is where
all of the disciplines that the combat controllers have
learned are put together in preparation to go out on
their first operational assignment. Part of that is
military free fall. A minimum of 30 free falls, of which
two day and two night jumps on oxygen, full combat gear,
ruck sack, combat equipment, LZ and DZ survey
equipment—everything necessary—and when these guys jump
into combat, they are familiar with [it]. Diver School.
No surprise there, by the United States Army to get
scuba qualified out to a unit.
The real heroes are not the guys on the staff, as you
all know. What a pleasure it is to introduce guys who
lay on ridge lines, shoot back, kill terrorists and call
in precision fire power. Today, Tech. Sgt. “Hots”
Hotaling is one of those guys who we have the
opportunity to hear from. As General Peterson said, he
has 10 years of active duty service. He is in the
reserves. A Washington State trooper as he said. But
what stands out to me as I have gotten to know him and
as I have read his story and heard his briefing is on
the 12th of September, this guy called up and
said, “I want in the fight. I want on active duty. I’ve
got to get there now.” On the 14th of
September, he was activated, starting spinning up the
small little refresher things that he needed to do to
get over in the theater. He was there for about a month
and from the opening day of Operation Anaconda he was
there. What really appeals to me is that I really think
Sgt Hotaling is the citizen airman. Not citizen soldier.
He is a citizen airman and it is an honor to be around
this guy. Thank you very much for listening to me. I’ll
bring up the real hero. Sgt. Hotaling, over to you.
TSgt. Jim Hotaling: Thank you very much for
inviting me. Three things before I start the briefing.
First thing is what the colonel didn’t mention is that
the motto for AFSOC is that we are the quiet
professionals. So it is a little bit of a thing for us
to get up here and actually be able to tell our story
finally. It is an honor for us to do that.
Secondly, it is also an honor that there are some
fellow AFSOC warriors in this room and it is a little
humbling that I get to tell my story and it just
represents one story of many that we are out there
fighting the war and to this day we are still out there
doing it. This just represents what special tactics is
doing. With that, we are going to go ahead and do it.
It has already been mentioned a hundred times, but I
love bringing this thing up that nobody likes to see
that in the rear view mirror, including myself. It is
true I am a Washington State trooper and the story has
already been told. About six months prior to 9/11, they
started a reserve program, IMA, for combat controllers
and I got the call and said, “sure, why not?” I get to
go back, shoot, dive, jump and be with the fellas again.
What a great job! I remember telling my wife, there is
no way I would ever be activated. It would take
something like Desert Storm or something like that for
me to get activated. Six months later, she is kicking me
out of the house.
Anyways, I was activated and I was assigned to our
west coast team which is the 22nd Special
Tactics Squadron out at McChord Air Force Base, which
was conveniently in my state, which allowed me to stay
at home. I was assigned the theater call sign of Jaguar
One-Two. I spent a few months training up with them. In
late November, we inserted into country.
After insertion into country, we were assigned to our
different teams. I was assigned as a Terminal Attack
Controller to provider command and control and close air
support to a coalition special forces team.
Third point that I wanted to make is this is the
unclassified version of this briefing. So you are just
going to have to fill in the holes a little bit because
there is going to be some things that don’t connect.
I was assigned to a coalition special forces team.
And within a week of being in Afghanistan, we were
assigned a strategic reconnaissance mission. Strategic
reconnaissance, if you are not familiar with it, is
basically just sneaking behind enemy lines and taking a
look at what they are doing and reporting back
intelligence. But it is not actually doing any action on
to them.
So, we get in there and we insert on some CH-53s from
the Marine Corps and we drive four-wheel, ATV quads
about 20 kilometers across country and then we walk the
rest of the way. We are there for about two days and we
are just watching the bad guys and seeing what they are
going, reporting things back and lo and behold a Bedouin
walks right up onto our encampment. There is about six
of us there and we take care of him and shoo him away,
but what does he do? He runs to the local village and he
notifies the militia.
Within two days of actually being in the field, and
within a week of being in Afghanistan, I am on my first
Escape and Evade. I know this war is for real.
This picture is an actual picture of the E&E. If you
can see the coalition guys expression of “why are you
taking a picture at this time?”—I promised my wife I’d
get a lot of good pictures on this war. I actually
carried one of those disposable cameras that you buy in
grocery stores around my neck at all times. So I just
took the opportunity to take a quick little snap shot as
we were running back for our four wheelers. But what
this picture does demonstrate, it shows you the type of
terrain that we were in and also gives you the sense of
the type of backpacks that we were wearing. If you can
see what he is carrying on his back there, that equals
to about 120 pounds worth of gear. That is not fun to
carry. Especially when you have to run through that type
of terrain.
We were able to get back to our ATVs and we were
being chased by four Toyota four-runners that had .50
caliber machine guns mounted on the back of them. The
chase was on for a little over 90 minutes. Within that
90 minutes, I was able to get a Navy P-3 Sub Hunter that
just happened to be in the area to help me out. He has
some eyeballs up there and he was literally able to tell
me to turn left, turn right, go down this creek bed,
stop here, and it allowed us to break contact with the
enemy as we started to gain some distance. It also
allowed me to get the close air support role going and
we were able to bring two of my friends from the USS
Stennis aboard, two F-18s to take care of the problem
for us. That was a good first mission.
We ended up surviving that mission, as you can see.
And we later did a direct-action mission on that
facility with the Marine Corps.
Coming back off of that, I stayed with that same
coalition team and the next mission we had was on a
terrorist training facility. This is the second largest
terrorist training facility in the country, a very
hardcore Al Qaeda training camp, and we knew we could
not afford at this point to be compromised like we were
with the local militia. So what we had to do was some
how find a way that there was no way somebody could
stumble on us. My coalition mates decided to nickname
this one the “walk of death.”
The reason why is the terrain that we had to take. We
had to climb a 2,300 foot ridge that was almost straight
up. It took us two and a half days to make the climb. We
averaged about a hundred yards an hour as we did this,
but we knew there was no Bedouin that was going to
stumble across us on this one.
To give you another idea, if you can see the size of
the packs, if you look on the right corner there, you
can see the one guy sitting down and the pack is
literally a good foot and a half over his head. Again,
this was a nine-day mission. We had to carry in nine
days food and water plus all your gear and plus it is
freezing cold. There is a lot of stuff you have to carry
and again these weights were extreme. It is not like it
is the X Games or anything like that where you’ve got
safeties and ropes and little helmets and things like
this. It is do or die. It is a tough thing to do, but it
is things you have to do in war.
Coming back off of that mission, which was a
successful strategic reconnaissance and then turned into
a direct action, we came back and had a few days off and
went back out again on another strategic reconnaissance
direct action. Direct action, if you are not familiar,
is what you would visualize if you saw a SWAT team here
in the states. It is basically kicking down the doors
and engaging the enemy one-on-one. This one was on an Al
Qaeda command and control facility, and I have up there
chasing enemy SOF. The reason that I have that is as we
were chasing them across country we were chasing them on
six-wheeled range rovers and there were also some
additional non-Al Qaeda, non-Taliban members that were
security forces for this Al Qaeda C-2 facility so it
made it an interesting fight. This gives you an idea of
what the terrain looks like towards the Iranian border
and it is more of a flat, typical desert-type terrain
and that is just us stopping on a break and listening
and looking and seeing where the bad guys are.
Another funny story about these six-wheeled range
rovers is that they are designed for three people. Of
course, I am the fourth guy and I am the American so I
am on the tail gate the whole time riding in the back.
So, it was pretty uncomfortable.
We ended up catching those guys and they are in Cuba
now I believe.
Coming back off of that one—don’t worry, there’s more
to come—I actually came off the coalition teams and was
asked by my commander there in the field if I could head
up a classic special tactics combat control mission,
which is to go survey air fields. As the colonel
mentioned before, we are certified air traffic
controllers. What we also are certified to do is go out
and actually survey air fields. We are not talking about
the ones that you see at LaGuardia or here at National,
but the ones that are made out of just dry lake beds and
middle of the road and things like that. We can actually
go there and talk to the director of mobility forces and
tell him, “you know what, you can land a C-17 here
because we’ve kicked the dirt, we’ve touched and we’ve
tasted it and we can do it.” That is what we had to do
on this one.
This is just an example of what we bring to the
fight, where actually you bring engineering total
stations out there and you can see the tactical neon
yellow that we utilize over there. This is not a good
feeling when you unpack this in the middle of indian
country and you realize you didn’t paint the total
station before you went to war. Lessons learned. That
was definitely in the lessons learned.
This is another one. I was actually escorted on this
survey mission by the Navy SEALS and they brought their
desert patrol vehicles which they made famous over in
Desert Storm. The reason that it is all white there—that
is actually an ice storm that we got hit with and pretty
much shut down the whole operation. But we were able to
tactically survey that airfield and today it is being
used for operations.
Coming back off of that mission, I was assigned to
another coalition team. These guys were from a northern
European country and they were pretty interesting. It is
funny. When I first got assigned to them, I came up to
them and I introduced myself and of course I am the only
American and they are like, “Ja, Sgt. Hotaling, we’ve
been training for months and months to climb big
mountains and we are strong and we hope you are, too.” I
am just looking at them like, “I am a donut-eating state
trooper.” That is what I’m thinking in the back of my
mind. But of course I had to save face since I was the
only American with them and I lied and said, “Let’s go
get ‘em.” We went on this mission, it was another direct
action mission and this was on the Al Qaeda safe house
near the Paki border. The reason I had “B-52
Intimidation” on here, I don’t have any slides on this,
but after we were done with the direct action mission,
we were ready to go home and so as we were up in the
mountains, we came down to a valley floor to go to the
helicopter landing zone and as we were waiting for the
two helicopters to arrive, the local villagers started
seeing, “well, there is only 12 guys there, there is
like 300 of us in the village, I think we can take ‘em.”
So the villagers started to go up on the ridges and they
were building bonfires and started to shoot their guns
off in the air and the coalition team leader looks at me
and says, “Sgt. Hotaling, it is time to go.” I call up
for the helicopters and one helicopters calls me and
says, “We’re broke and we’re going back to Bagram.” So,
just the great news that I wanted to pass along. I tell
the team leader that we are on our own and we are going
to have to go hide until they can come get us. So at
this point the villagers are getting a little crazy and
I think they are getting rambunctious, they are ready to
go take us on and one thing that I had in my back
pocket, though, prior to the mission, I had coordinated
for a B-52 to be overhead in case we had any caves in
the area because there was reports of caves there and we
might do some cave-busting. So I call on the frequency
and sure enough he’s still around and the first thing he
asks me, he goes, “Hey Jaguar, where do you want me to
drop these bombs?” He had flown a long way, probably
from the states and he was ready to go. I told him,
“well, let’s just slow down and let’s figure this out.”
So we talk it through and what is the best way to
disperse 300 screaming, crazy Afghanis? How about a low
pass with a B-52? That is exactly what we did. No need
to drop bombs on the villagers, they were just getting
crazy, but it was enough to scare the hide off of them
and the problem was solved. Another good thing about
that was he actually stayed on site for over three and a
half hours and that was a big deal for me because he
could hear the tension in my voice. He knew that I was
the only American down there with these coalition guys
and it was a big deal for him to stay there and cover
our six while we made our way up into the woods and
found some place to hide. It was a big deal. So it was
nice for him to be there and it was much appreciated.
After he left, we got a P-3 overhead and basically he
watched us all night long until the helos could come and
get us. So it was a good effort.
Coming back off of that mission, I am bouncing all
over the place. Now I am going with the U.S. Navy SEALS
and another coalition force that has their version of
the SEALS and this time, another direct action mission
with Sensitive Sight Exploitation. Sensitive Sight
Exploitation is basically gathering evidence. Once you
do direct action, you’ve got all this evidence that you
can take back home to use in prosecuting the enemy. That
is what the purpose was of this Al Qaeda safe house.
The interesting thing about this direct action
mission was it was a nine house complex that wasn’t just
little mud huts. You can see the one in the background
there. Actually, it was three stories high, had a
basement in it, multiple families living in it, kids
running around and all the houses were like that,
intermixed with bad guys. It was a pretty neat dance
that we had to create with the SEALS taking down half
the village and the coalition guys taking down the other
half and coordinating all that as it went down. It was a
very complex mission, but very successful.
The story out of this one, though, is if you look
near my elbow, there is an antenna sticking out of my
back pack there that looks like a helicopter blade. We
had had problems prior to this with my communications. I
always had to switch from line of sight communications
talking to aircraft to satellite communications to talk
to the commanders in the rear and I am always switching
antennas and lines and all that stuff and it is always a
pain, especially when you are doing direct action
missions because things are happening fast and furious.
So, we got to talking about how we could solve this and
I was talking with my Navy buddies and they said, “you
know on ships, they’ve got an antenna there that you can
talk to everybody with just this one antenna, line of
sight and SATCOM.” So, lo and behold, miraculously, we
acquired one of these off of a ship and did some
modification to it and it actually worked out very well.
This thing was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I
called back to the 720th Group there in Florida and I
say, we’ve got to buy a hundred of these things,
everybody needs them. So they are like, “alright, let’s
get them.” So they start doing some testing on them and
all that and they didn’t tell me this until I after I
got back stateside, but they said “you are not supposed
to get within 50 feet of that thing.” But I got word
that we are still buying them so, hey, that is good
news.
This is just a picture from the roof of one of those
complexes looking down at some of the ammunition and
weapons that we took. All the guys with the white skull
caps there are also visitors to our Cuba facility.
As I came off of that mission, I went again on
another, got assigned to a different coalition team,
again from northern Europe and what we got word on here,
we are just hanging out in camp one day and we get word
that there is someone on our Top 10 list. Everybody has
heard of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban Top 10 list and
now someone’s up there in that list trying to make their
way to the Paki border and they are on a cell phone
saying, “they’ll never catch me.” Of course, we are
intercepting all this stuff so after we do the mad dash
for a couple helos, we end up flying in and landing
literally right on top of the bad guy and taking him
back to where we were from. And again, another Cuban
visitor. You clapped too soon when I said about the
Cuban visitors. We had plenty of those.
Another honor that I failed to mention about the
other European team was for this team here on this
mission and the other mission where the helicopters
didn’t come and pick us up, it was both their countries’
first combat mission since World War II and it was a
very big source of pride for them to actually go into
combat and to prove who they were and their manhood and
all that stuff and for me to be the only American with
them was a great honor and of course it was a great
honor to drink with them to celebrate that fact also.
But it was a big honor and it was a very powerful thing
to be with other special operations forces that were
finally proving their worth after so many years.
Back off of that mission, still staying pretty busy,
I went back to the SEALS and to the coalition SEAL
equivalent and this time a direct action mission and a
sensitive sight exploitation of a cave complex right on
the Paki border. We knew this one was going to be very
sensitive and that it was very, very close to the
border. We didn’t necessarily want to just take these
caves and bomb them, we wanted to go up there and if we
had to set demolition charges or just see what was up
there. We knew the altitude was going to be a little
extreme—somewhere between ten thousand and eleven
thousand feet. What we weren’t expecting was five feet
of snow. But that is what we got. We actually had to do
some cross country skiing and snow-shoeing to get to the
caves. Again, that is justification for our winter
warfare trips to Stove, Vermont or something like that,
because we need it. It was a very interesting trek up
the mountain. Did about a thousand foot vertical ascent
with the snow shoes. And also utilized a one-man AKIEL
sled to carry our demolition. The demolition was about
80 to 100 pounds worth of demolition. The Navy hates
that I bring this point up in public, but I like doing
it anyways. All the gear that you see there is Air Force
gear. We were able to deploy – my squadron has the
extreme cold weather package for its special tactics and
we deployed over there with it and we were the only guys
in town that basically had all the gear. So, all that
gear that you see there is actually Air Force stuff.
Just another picture of the conditions. The ridge
line in the background there is the Paki border. That is
how close we were. We ended up not dropping bombs and we
just blew the caves in place with the demo, that way we
didn’t have to tote all that demo down with us as we
left.
That was about middle February. After I got off of
that mission, we were notified that there was going to
be a big operation coming up shortly, codenamed
Operation Anaconda, which everybody has heard in the
media. I was reassigned back with my original coalition
team that I went out on that big “walk of death” with
and they wanted me just for the fact that they knew they
could climb that terrain and they at least had one
trusted American that could climb that terrain and so I
was the sucker that got assigned to them.
This picture here is actually a picture from my
observation position. If I say, “OP” that is what I
mean, my observation position. This position here just
gives you an idea of how extreme the terrain was. This
picture was taken late in the Anaconda. What I’ll do now
is give you a little situational awareness of how
Anaconda was going to go down and then I’ll explain to
you my 14-day version of how Anaconda went down through
my eyes.
This is the Soeycowt Valley. The valley floor was
basically 8,500 feet. The top of the mountains reached
to about 10,800 feet. The snow line was about 9,000
feet. Temperatures ranged somewhere dropping below zero
at night to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime.
This was the basic battle plan. We had friendly
Afghani forces that were going to push from the west
down. We had a conventional Army task force, Task Force
Rockason and Task Force Mountain, which were 101st
Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division,
conventional forces pushing also down from the north.
They were going to put in where you see HLZ 12 there,
that was going to be a blocking force and basically this
was the old hammer and anvil effect and we were going to
squeeze the enemy into the blocking force and take them
out. My OP was situated just south of them and what I
was to do was what we referred to as catch the squirters,
which were the onesey twosey guys that made it past our
conventional forces and take them out. That was the
plan.
This is a top-down view. That red box indicates that
HLZ 12. The blue dot in the lower left hand corner is my
OP position where I was going to be inserted. All those
yellow dots that you see there are enemy positions. That
is not the picture that we had prior to going in there.
We didn’t actually know that was the enemy
concentration. That enemy, all those positions there are
just plotted off of my battle damage assessment at the
end of Anaconda. But that just gives you a sense of how
much of the enemy was actually in the valley.
On the first of March, I inserted with my coalition
team. We inserted onto the ridge line, these ridge lines
were so steep that the helicopter couldn’t even actually
land. What he had to do was lower his ramp and back his
ramp into the ridge line and we literally jumped off the
ramp onto the ridge. If you were up in the cockpit of
the helicopter, he would still be flying it and you
could look down and see about a 2 to 3 thousand foot
drop. It was pretty crazy on how he actually had to get
us in there. It was one of those things that you would
never want to do again, that is for sure.
We insert one day prior to the actual assault that
was going to take place.
On dawn of 2 March, the 10th Mountain
Division, about a company minus actually, inserts into
that HLZ12 and they are pinned down all day. They are
getting their butts handed to them because basically as
they get onto the LZ, as they land, they are instantly
pinned down with mortar fire, heavy machine guns and
RPGs. They are in for a pretty tough fight that day. As
they fight, I am about six to seven kilometers away from
them to the south. All I can do at this point is
actually just observe it. I am too far away to call in
any close air support and I really can’t do much. So we
were just trying to figure out what we can do to help at
this time.
Well, this was the motivation that we needed. The
coalition task force commander basically called us on
SATCOM and said, “guys, it is time to go help the
Americans. You are the only other guys in town. See if
you can get up there and do anything to bring CAS onto
the situation.”
So, we develop a plan that will have that same
helicopter driver come back, pick us up—because we
figured he was the only guy who could come and pick us
up, because we didn’t know how he was going to drop us
off and he did it. He would come pick us up and we would
fly straight up the valley, land on a high ridge and
then I would call in close air and save the world.
That didn’t happen. What actually happened was about
midday of that same day an SA-7 was shot up at an F-15
and the helicopter pilot obviously was not going to fly
down the valley with a surface-to-air missile threat. So
we had to devise a secondary plan.
Our secondary plan was basically just do a quick
buttonhook about a kilometer and a half to two
kilometers down to a creek bed and we’d have to walk it
the rest of the way, which was about five and a half
kilometers. It was absolutely the worst thing that we
wanted to do because tactically it was everything that
you would not want to do.
One, it meant that we would have to walk during the
day. Two, we would have to walk very heavy. And three,
it was right smack dab in the middle of enemy territory.
With all that stacked against us, we said, “let’s go.”
That night of 2 March, he picks us up and we insert on
the creek bed. It is actually just prior to dawn on 3
March at this point.
My favorite slide: our favorite saying in special
tactics: “ounces make pounds.” This was the actual list
that I turned into our operations center prior to
deployment. Big thing that I like to highlight here is
the thing in the blue of total weight – 143 pounds and
then moving down, almost 75 percent of that is
equipment. When I go and talk to people that deal with
technology and things like that and they always ask,
“what can we do to help you out?” That is the only slide
I need to show them right there. That is completely
unacceptable that we have to walk with that much weight
with the technology that we have out there today. But,
again, the donut-eating state trooper is forced to go
this. It is tough, but it is one of those things, it is
the strangest thing. I don’t think I can take that same
ruck sack today and walk around this hotel with it. It
is just one of those things that happens when you are at
war and a little switch goes on.
So, we were all heavy, all the coalition mates, all
six of them and me, all were within two pounds of each
other. It was because I couldn’t carry a tent because I
had the radio so the guy next to me carried the tent and
the food and things like that. So we were all within two
pounds of each other. We were all very heavy.
This kind of gives you an idea of how we walked. We
walked along the creek bed. Then at the very last ridge
we started our thousand foot vertical ascent up to the
highest ridge point of the inner valley. We did that in
the daytime. We had to get there to save those Americans
that were pinned down. How did we do that? The Army
refers to it as a forced march. Why would you do a
forced march in enemy territory? We had one thing on our
side: we had the Predator and what he was able to do for
us that day was incredible. What I did was, I was hooked
up to the Predator in my ear and I was walking right
next to the team leader and as we tactically moved
through that creek bed, the Predator was actually my
point man. As we walked, he would say, “ok, the next
turn is good. Ok, that bolder is clear. You can keep
moving. Those trees, there is nobody underneath them.”
We were able to basically walk as fast as humanly
possible and still remain tactical because we had
someone up above keeping an eye out for us. So it was a
great force enabler that day.
This gives you an idea of my commanding view of the
valley and my attempt on PowerPoint graphics to show
that. Basically I had a great 360-degree view of the
valley and I was ready to do anything at this point. It
took us about five and a half hours to make that climb
through the creek bed and then up that ridge. By that
time, the company that was pinned down was actually
starting to do their exfil. They were exfiltrating that
LZ. At this point, all I was doing was reporting back
intelligence and helping out anything I could. I also
received word that since the friendly forces were not
successful in pushing down as far as they wanted,
including the friendly Afghani forces, that we were
going to insert additional observation positions that
night. Other SOF forces going in all around the valley.
That is great. It is the 3rd day without
sleep. I am going to bed at this point. I lay down at
bed. This is late on the 3rd, lay down in my
little sleep sack and I put the microphones to my ear
and try to get some shut eye. And I listen to the
inserts going on all around the valley.
As one of the inserts goes on, another SOF team
inserts basically across from me at about 3 kilometers
as the crow flies. As they are inserting, their
helicopter takes a hit and one of their soldiers falls
out. It is a Navy SEAL by the name of Neal Roberts. He
falls out of the helicopter and the helicopters limp
away into another helicopter landing zone farther north.
Neal Roberts survives the fall and begins to fight for
his life. As that happens, the helicopters that limped
away reconstitute their forces and go to self-SAR, or
self rescue, the fallen SEAL. One of those members on
that rescue force was a fellow combat controller and
good friend, Master Sgt. John Chapman. As they come back
in, they land and they begin to fight their way to their
fallen comrade. Some time during that night, John
Chapman was killed in action.
As that was going on, the remaining forces that were
alive there trying to rescue decided that they were
outgunned and they decided to start their own escape and
invasion. They decided to leave the firefight. As they
leave, we launch a quick reaction force out of Bagram to
go get everybody.
That quick reaction force consisted of 10 Rangers and
an embedded combat search and rescue force which was an
Air Force C-SAR package. That was two pararescuemen, and
one combat controller. As that force landed on what is
now called Roberts Ridge, they were shot and the
helicopter was shot down. It is actually referred to, if
you talk to the guys, as a “hard landing.” They were
flaring to land when they took several RPG shots and the
helicopter fell from the sky at about 15 to 20 feet.
As the 47 crashes, this is basically what I am
looking at now, these range lines are off. This is
actually about 3 kilometers from Jaguar One-Two's
position to the crash site. The SOF force is basically
beginning their E&E. As this happens, the quick reaction
force takes some casualties basically within the first
two minutes. Four members of the quick reaction force
are already killed, eight are wounded and they are
taking quite a hit.
What can I do? At this point, there is a combat
controller on board the crashed aircraft, Staff Sgt.
Gabe Brown. He is on the radio and he is starting to
make his calls, calling in close air support. He is
trying to get air overhead immediately. I am letting him
do that through the airwaves and coordinating through
him through a line of sight radio. I let him know where
I am at because he wasn’t aware of where I was and I am
talking to him and we are trying to arrange the close
air support. As that is happening, what I can see is the
enemy forces in the valley and on the back side of the
south side of the mountain moving their ways up toward
the crash site to reinforce the bunkers that they have
on the high ground. I get with Sgt Brown and we start to
coordinate the appropriate air.
What we came up with was a simultaneous CAS
operation. Sgt Brown would take everything from his
location at the crashed aircraft to 800 meters out and
he did that through strafing runs and through 500-pound
bombs. He actually was calling in 500-pound bombs at 200
feet from his position. The reason they were able to
survive that was terrain and also the snow. It was
absorbing a lot of it and their frag patterns and he
called in several bombs that day at 200 feet. He also
took everything out to about 800 meters because I wasn’t
comfortable getting closer than that to the crash site
but what I was able to do was to take all the JDAMs, the
2,000-pound JDAMs, and everything else that he wasn’t
able to use, and start to prosecute targets on the enemy
outside of that 800-meter range. Basically what I
started to do was destroy all the reinforcements that
were coming up on that mountain side.
Me and Gabe fought that day with close air and
actually started to take a pretty good toll on the
enemy, to the point where they were not reinforcing at
all coming up the mountain, and the surviving Rangers on
top actually took the bunker and were successful at the
top. As that was going on, throughout the day, we
started to start working up the rescue package. What we
wanted to bring in to bring these guys off that hill
looks something like this – a gun ship out of the north,
an AC-130 gunship out of the south. 47s to go in and
pick the guys up and then the A-10s finally get in the
fight coming in to help us out. This was the package we
began to arrange. During the day, one of the
pararescuemen out of the two that were treating a
wounded Ranger was shot and later that day, Jason
Cunningham, a pararescueman, was killed also.
As night falls, we begin to work the rescue. As the
package comes in, I take a gunship and begin to work
fire missions on to the town of Marzak. I am engaging
the enemy there. The other gunship, a U-model, begins
suppressive fire just south of the helicopter landing
zone. We bring in the helos, they successfully exfil all
the wounded and all the KIAs. Everybody comes off that
mountain and the A-10s finally get into play with close
air.
This is the memorial that was put up for our fallen
comrades in Bagram the next day. That day we lost four
U.S. Army, two Air Force and one Navy, with eight
wounded in action.
But Al Qaeda, they didn’t count on one thing. Now I
am ticked off. And they’ve exposed themselves to me. At
this point, I know that I’ve lost some special tactics
friends, close friends and it is now a personal fight.
So what I began to do is coordinate with conventional
forces and I found out where all the forward line of
troops were, I found out where all the friendlies were
and I knew basically everything south and west of that
location was now a free-fire area. And that is exactly
what I began to do, was to kill everything south and
west of that FLOT.
I got into what I called the kill cycle. At night, I
would bring gun ships on board and I would work 10 hours
at gun ship at night and then as dawn came, the gun
ships would go away and I would start with just
conventional CAS, any bombers or fighters that were in
the area, I just did conventional CAS.
This is my CAS sortie and BDA for Anaconda. Worked
over 250 sorties. Was accredited with over 200 enemy
killed and untold amounts of their infrastructure.
This is a picture of my mates and me after we came
off the hill and were about five minutes away from being
picked up out of Anaconda. The commander of the
coalition forces said this to us as we got off the helo
and it kind of stuck with me that Air Force Special
Tactics disproportionately affected the outcome of
Operation Anaconda.
The last thing I want to leave everybody with before
we do some questions and answers, if we have time, is I
carried three things in my pocket at all times over
there when I went in the field. One was a picture of my
family. One was my escape and evasion blood chit. And
the third thing was the whole speech that President Bush
gave to the Joint Session of Congress and to the nation
10 days after the events of 9/11. In it, he said,
whether we bring our enemies to justice or justice to
our enemies, rest assured that justice will be done. And
I just hope that special tactics has done its part so
far in this war.
Thank you very much. [Applause]
Q: How do you tell the difference between the good guys
and the bad guys?
TSgt Hotaling: You know, it is amazing. One of my very
first questions to an intel guy when I got in country
was the same thing. How do we tell the bad guys? And you
could just see it in their eyes. And that is the God’s
truth. When we would go through on some of these mobile
ones, you saw me in these range rovers going through,
we’d go through villages and things like that and you
could just tell. I don’t know, call it a sixth sense. It
is the same thing like being a [state] trooper when they
say you kind of know, their hairs stand out on the back
of their head, it is the same thing. You know who are
truly evil or not.
Q: Did you use the binoculars with the laser range
finders?
TSgt Hotaling: Yes and no. For a few missions I did very
effectively. We have several different versions and some
of our high-end versions are great and some of the low
end versions are ok. But I’ll tell you what, I fought
Anaconda with a Russian 1:50 map and a grease pencil.
Mainly because the laser range finding equipment that I
had on my person that day was ineffective. It wouldn’t
reach far enough and with the haze and the fog and
everything that was going in, I couldn’t get it with the
laser range finders. I also use GPS technology though
for those JDAMs.
Q: You had three GPSs and two different kinds, can
you describe how they were used?
TSgt Hotaling: We have a standard military-issue GPS and
that interfaces with a lot of our gear so that is why I
have to take that because it is an added piece to
binoculars and things like that. But, truth be told,
there are some civilian version GPSs that are better and
that are quicker on the fly. You’ve got to remember that
when you are dealing with all different kinds of
aircraft, I was dealing with from all different services
and several different countries, each of them take a
different type of coordinate, a different type of
lat/long or a military grid reference system and these
little handhelds that I had personally bought can switch
on the fly a lot quicker and they can just go around
your neck a little bit better, too. We used quite a bit
of different GPSs.
Q: Talk about the training and readiness of coalition
forces.
TSgt Hotaling: If I could send one message to everybody
it is just that—I wish this was the classified
version—because I’ll tell you this, that one, they are
very well trained and in some cases I would rather go
with them than with the U.S. forces and two, these guys
have saved my life on more than one occasion and they
are willing to give their lives for us. That is an
important thing to know.
Q: What improved equipment would you recommend after
this experience?
TSgt Hotaling: Lighter, lighter, lighter. We’re working
on that. It is amazing. We haven’t just come home from
this and said, “oh woe is us.” We are working day and
night, Special Tactics and AFSOC are on the ball on
this. We are really aggressively going after the newest
stuff out there. We are trying to get ahead of the game
on that. It is out there and we just have to capture it
all and actually bring it in. We are working on it.
Q: When it became personal, were you calling in close
air support by yourself?
TSgt Hotaling: That is a little tactics, techniques and
procedures. I did standard coordination. The question
was, “how did I coordinate all the air flow?” and to
actually show you the little spider chart on how I did
it isn’t necessary, but I did it the conventional way of
doing it like that and I spent 14 days out there and
when you work ten hours a night with my AFSOC brothers,
the gun ships, they get to love you when you are working
them every night. They would sometimes not even go
through the system, and just check in right with me and
we would go right to town.
Q: We didn’t hear too much about the A-10s until real
late in the battle. Is there a reason for that?
TSgt Hotaling: Unknown to me. It is my world through a
soda straw, but when the A-10s showed up, it was great
and very effective.
Q: Are we getting close on interoperability with
coalition partners?
TSgt Hotaling: I tell you, it was like the Olympics of
special forces over there. You would walk into the
compound and all the different national flags were there
and it was seamless integration. I was literally able to
bounce from one team to another seamless. Now that adds
to our training and to y’all’s training. They were top
notch. There wasn’t one team over there that I thought
shouldn’t be here. Those nations that sent their best
truly did. I think we are very close. I think we helped
each other. There were certain things that I brought to
the fight. There were certain things that they brought
to the fight, but together it was definitely the best.
Again, I cannot thank the coalition partners enough. It
was awesome.
Q: Talk about how your criminal justice background
played into your role here?
TSgt Hotaling: It has nothing to do with it. (Laughter).
That is what I am right there [points to American flag
behind him]. I am just an American. That is all it is.
Q: How effective were the precision-guided munitions?
TSgt Hotaling: It was amazing. What I tell most of the
guys are I was amazed at the weapons effects. You would
see a 2,000 pound bomb drop in the middle of a pack of
these guys and a bunch of them run away. The effects of
the munitions were surprising. A lot of time we go out
and we train in the deserts on these bombing ranges and
2,000 pound bomb wipes everything out and they are the
greatest thing. But when you put it into a mountainous
region with a lot of terrain and trees and things like
that, it actually affects the way that the blast
patterns are and things like that. It was an education
for me, when I really got into the fight, on the weapons
effects. But I was overall pleased and I felt the
technology was dead-on. I am a big believer in JDAM. I
am a big believer in conventional CAS. And the
technology that we actually had out there worked fairly
well. It actually did.
Q: Can you talk about the effectiveness of bunker
buster bombs?
TSgt Hotaling: I tell you what, special tactics guys are
re-writing the books on how to actually effectively take
out caves, at least, using bunker buster bombs and
things like that. Yes, we have learned a lot over there
and we ‘ve got guys in this room that have destroyed
hundreds and hundreds of caves and we’ve taken all those
lessons learned and now we can effectively take them on
a little bit better now.
Q: How long have you been called up to active duty
for and when are you going to go back to eating donuts?
TSgt Hotaling: I was called up for a year and I actually
turn into a pumpkin on the 24th of this
month. I am going back home to Mama on the 24th.
Q: How prepared are you for an all-expense paid
vacation into Iraq?
TSgt Hotaling: The bottom line is this: we are prepared
for anything. I was a able to—you know, who knew we were
going into Afghanistan? Nobody knew but we were ready to
go. So, you tell us tomorrow we are going to the moon,
we’re going to the moon and we are going to do the
mission, so it doesn’t matter.
Q: All the SOF people here in the room who were
involved in these operations should stand up and be
recognized.
TSgt Hotaling: Absolutely [SOF personnel stand up to
applause].
Q: You mentioned blowing up caves. During this period
of time, exactly how effective was it to go into a
complex of underground caves and destroy them so that
the al Qaeda or the future al Qaeda members wouldn’t be
able to come back in and regroup? Can you give us a
little explanation on that?
TSgt Hotaling: We are not occupying the country. So we
can’t put a guard at every cave entrance. So all we did
was the best that we could. We would close the entrances
down. We would exploit the sites first. We would destroy
anything that was their war-making capabilities within
it and then we would close the caves as best we could,
whether that was through demolitions or whether it was
through the bombs and that is kind of how we left it.
Q: I was just curious about closing the entrances.
That seemed like it would be a temporary fix.
TSgt Hotaling: Above my head, sir.
Q: How was your relationship American SOF?
TSgt Hotaling: Very good. Because this was just my
personal vacation slide show, I was only with the SEALS
for U.S. guys on a couple missions, but we had guys
permanently assigned to Army SF teams. We had guys
permanently assigned to the SEALS and other things. We
were spread out through the whole spectrum. I myself was
just not employed by the SF teams.
Q: How much time did you get between operations?
TSgt Hotaling: We had a shortage of qualified guys to
meet the demand of so many teams going out there and we
had a couple of young guys and it was just one of those
– I was one of the older guys that kind of could provide
some initial leadership into some of these teams. Plus,
I volunteered. I wasn’t going to be fool and that is why
my wife is not here because I can say this. You know, I
volunteered for the missions so it was a stroke of luck
that I was able to get on all these missions. All but
that one high-value target body snatch that we did were
well mission-prepped. We had up to a week of preparation
time to where we knew exactly what we were facing and
how we were going to get in there and things like that.
So we had plenty of time. We were never really rushed on
any of the missions.
Q: Was this your first combat experience?
TSgt Hotaling: No. Ever since I joined in 1987, I have
been going to war ever since. It is a great job. It is a
great job.
Q: If you could ask the Congress to do one thing, do
you know what it would be? The budget, perhaps?
TSgt Hotaling: The budget. Absolutely. I think we are
finally being recognized as a fighting force – Special
Tactics – what we bring, force enablers on this and the
budget for sure. It definitely lacks. It is the trickle
down effect. I am not a politician. But you ask any
combat controller and he’d say he wished had a little
bit better gear. But who doesn’t? Personally, I’d want
them to know what the coalition guys did. That is for
me. I want them to know what our brothers are out there
dying for also. That is the most important thing to me.
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