Review New Book (Relentless Strike) From Naylor Raises Concern

[AWP]

I read about Trebon. And it surprised me that with Special Operations honed to such a fine edge in recent years that anyone involved in command would be or could be "out of touch with ground elements and their needs." I always felt Marine aviators, even back in the day, were tuned in to what we, the ground elements, needed.

What's troubling is Dailey is a 75th and Nightstalker alumni. Trebon spent a number of years in SOF, including 2 years as Chief of Air Ops for JSOC. It isn't like these guys never worked with ground forces before. Somehow Trebon even scored a slot to the MFF course. What cracks me up is Trebon's official bio has an almost 4 year "gap in employment" during which he made O-5.

BRIGADIER GENERAL GREGORY L. TREBON > U.S. Air Force > Biography Display

The whole thing defies logic.

 

[AWP]

I finished the book last night. Some takeaways:

- Dailey, and to a lesser extent, McRaven are not liked according to the book. One or two people with an axe to grind or more indicative of a larger problem, I can't say.
- I was kind of surprised at the discussions regarding JSOC's NOC capabilities, including JSOC members living abroad as part of their cover. The book flat out stated JSOC had muscled out the CIA and ISA in some regards. At a bare minimum the book claimed CAG and DevGru have capabilities that meet or exceed some of the three-letter agencies. Assuming the book's correct, it would make for a great piece of disinformation.
- The attitudes regarding Afghanistan were a bit surprising, but also seemed to be single source. A Ranger PL forcing his NCO's to go on raid? Delta refusing because the war "was lost?" Uh, okay...
- It went to great lengths explaining why DevGru got the UBL mission, the genesis of which was "JSOC gave them the lead in Afghanistan almost 10 years prior." It also claimed they were to do it all along because CAG was mired in Iraq. It actually made sense as presented in the book.
- The book was one giant Wiki entry. It had plenty of sources...most of them already published. It was like he took a bunch of existing books and articles (many written by him) and hammered them into a book. He also had footnotes every few paragraphs. No doubt people spoke to him and corroborated the stories, but even without them he had 80% of the book.
- Hands down, the majority of his sources were officers/ officers on staff. The second most were Nightstalkers and DevGru guys with CAG coming in last.
- The book was favorable towards the shooters and support guys, but had a hard on for leadership. You can tell some field grades have axes to grind.
- JSOC has a ton of support positions, like a 5 to 1 ratio of support to shooter. (Hint, hint support guys. Hint, hint).

Either "acquire"* a digital copy or wait for it to hit your local resale bin. Don't give this guy your money.

* - And DO NOT link here to sources. If you can't find them on your own you shouldn't own a computer.

 

[Gunz]

Dailey gave DevGru's Task Force Blue a prominent place in the Anaconda operation because he felt--according to Naylor--that all SOF units from all branches would have to learn to work together during what might be a decades-long conflict...even though, at the time, CAG was much more familiar with the situation and better acclimated for ground operations in that rough terrain.

...The book was favorable towards the shooters and support guys, but had a hard on for leadership. You can tell some field grades have axes to grind...

The higher up the chain you go, IMV, the bigger egos, the more drama.

 

[Devildoc]

I have read Naylor's Not a Good Day to Die (re: Operation Anaconda), saw Relentless Strike in the library, thought it would be a good read. That the man knows his subject, knows how to research, and knows how to write is a given.

This is a good book and for its' size a pretty fast read. I do have a few questions/concerns: JSOC and DOD as a whole, and most people associated with JSOC, have refused to comment on the book (good or bad), so I do wonder how much is valid versus how much is conjecture and fill-in-the-blank. I would presume that directly attributable quotes must be real or Naylor would be in court. That the DOD did not try to prevent it from being published in the first place and/or ended up in court also surprises me. Maybe (DOD) did; I don't know. Also a lot of the material is open source and from other books/authors (which he attributed and sourced), and I don't know how much he tried to infer from those other sources.

While a great "history" book on JSOC and many of the operations, it's the inside-the-fence looks and behind-the-scenes tours that gives this book legs. While I have often heard about the politics in the CoC, this book really shows some leadership failures and incompetence. Maybe it was really like that, but I would not like to believe that JSOC leadership really stood in the way so much as to appear like the Three Stooges. How a supposedly nimble and agile organization that JSOC was supposed to become turned into another massive, bureaucratic, cumbersome machine is sad.

Another lesson I learned was the chasm between the "boots on the ground" at the unit level on down and the leadership. It seems that the actual trigger pullers and enablers wanted to do the right thing and be engaged but were often held back for fear of PR or turf issues. Even so, this book does not portray the units within JSOC as one happy family as it went into pissing matches between units regarding C&C, turfism, and fighting for crumbs at the table.

Many of us who weren't with SoF at any level (I was shortly and peripherally) often look at the trigger pullers/operators/whatever with a bit of a "star-struck" tendency and a desire to prop them up on some sort of pedestal (even a good friend of mine who was Delta and ISA still seems 10 feet tall), but this book reminds us that these guys are mortals after all just trying to accomplish a very demanding job in a mostly inconspicuous way <cough> DEVGRU <cough>, in usually less than ideal circumstances.

I am not one to re-read most books, but I will likely read this again after I digest it and let it sit and germinate. It is worth the read and can be a stand-alone to JSOC history, or as a book to give background on so many other aspects of special operations or on leadership lessons (good and bad).

 

[AWP]

Merged threads, cleaned up the thread title.

 

[Devildoc]

Merged threads, cleaned up the thread title.

Thanks. I glanced, briefly, and had not seen it.

Edited to add: seems like many of the reviews have the same themes....

 

[DA SWO]

I think the turf wars and politics part needed to see the light of day as it doesn't give TTP's away.
Talking about the various TF and capabilities annoyed me as I don't think we needed to know that much.
I think Staff Guys/Gals did most of the talking, and should hang their heads in shame.

 

[Devildoc]

I think the turf wars and politics part needed to see the light of day as it doesn't give TTP's away.
Talking about the various TF and capabilities annoyed me as I don't think we needed to know that much.
I think Staff Guys/Gals did most of the talking, and should hang their heads in shame.

There is a line in Crimson Tide in which Gene Hackman's character says something like "I don't abide kiss-asses and I don't tolerate save-asses." It seems like that is a course in command and staff college as the book seemed to point out (with purposefully heavy emphasis?) all sorts of nastiness at flag rank; the politics, turfism, utter incompetence and all.

Although I like the "cool" insider's accounts of the TTPs/capabilities, I am fully aware that I really shouldn't know about it, and I agree that that stuff should have been avoided.

I guess one of the things gnawing at me is I have bit of interest in what happened in Anaconda (like a lot of people here, I know some of the men that were there), and I get the fog of war and shit happens, but little things like crappy comms (wrong frequencies, etc), turfism between Army/Navy units, bad tactics, made a bad situation worse. The thing that gets me is after every battle/war the CoC says "we have learned lessons" and "we won't repeat mistakes".....and then we always do. ALWAYS.

 

[DA SWO]

There is a line in Crimson Tide in which Gene Hackman's character says something like "I don't abide kiss-asses and I don't tolerate save-asses." It seems like that is a course in command and staff college as the book seemed to point out (with purposefully heavy emphasis?) all sorts of nastiness at flag rank; the politics, turfism, utter incompetence and all.

Although I like the "cool" insider's accounts of the TTPs/capabilities, I am fully aware that I really shouldn't know about it, and I agree that that stuff should have been avoided.

I guess one of the things gnawing at me is I have bit of interest in what happened in Anaconda (like a lot of people here, I know some of the men that were there), and I get the fog of war and shit happens, but little things like crappy comms (wrong frequencies, etc), turfism between Army/Navy units, bad tactics, made a bad situation worse. The thing that gets me is after every battle/war the CoC says "we have learned lessons" and "we won't repeat mistakes".....and then we always do. ALWAYS.

Politics has always been part of being a General/Admiral.

Look at the fued between Patton and Montgomery.

That said, I'm glad my copy of the book was free.

 

[Devildoc]

Politics has always been part of being a General/Admiral.

Look at the fued between Patton and Montgomery.

That said, I'm glad my copy of the book was free.

Yeah, I got mine from the library. Based on scanning it at Barnes & Noble I would not have bought it.

When I was a reservist I did a reserve stint plus some extra on an admiral's staff (Rear Admiral lower half). It was educational, enlightening, maddening...even fun. But I did gain an enormous respect for the games that have to be played at that level, and that was just with a staff admiral and not an admiral of the line.

 

[CDG]

I guess one of the things gnawing at me is I have bit of interest in what happened in Anaconda (like a lot of people here, I know some of the men that were there), and I get the fog of war and shit happens, but little things like crappy comms (wrong frequencies, etc), turfism between Army/Navy units, bad tactics, made a bad situation worse. The thing that gets me is after every battle/war the CoC says "we have learned lessons" and "we won't repeat mistakes".....and then we always do. ALWAYS.

Anaconda was in trouble from the planning phase on. The lack of coordination between SOF and conventional forces was one issue in a sea of them.

 

[DA SWO]

Anaconda was in trouble from the planning phase on. The lack of coordination between SOF and conventional forces was one issue in a sea of them.

Not telling the AF that a major mission was coming down should be listed as a major failure.

 

[Devildoc]

"Everyone gets a piece of the pie" planning, SOF not communicating with conventional units, SOF units not communicating with other SOF units, issues with CAS (specifically the AC-130), over-reliance on Afghans' participation, lack of intel on the valley...just to name a few....

 

[AWP]

In some respects we didn't learn a damn thing.

 

[Devildoc]

In some respects we didn't learn a damn thing.

...and this is one of the things I find so utterly maddening. We always say we do. We have hot washes, AARs, debriefs, the Marines even have "official historians" on many missions so as to capture the missions and from which to learn. But we don't. We make the same mistakes over and over, conflict after conflict.

 

[DA SWO]

...and this is one of the things I find so utterly maddening. We always say we do. We have hot washes, AARs, debriefs, the Marines even have "official historians" on many missions so as to capture the missions and from which to learn. But we don't. We make the same mistakes over and over, conflict after conflict.

Nobody reads AAR (no time) and we rotate people out so fast that the incumbent doesn't do the same type of mission a second time.
We still have a WW II based assignment system.

 

[Gunz]

I belong to an association of former advisors to SVN forces, called Counterparts; mostly MAT Team guys, Special Forces A-team vets, former Marine Covans and Combined Action Marines...around '04 or so, we were invited to a Counter Insurgency workshop at Central Command. Somebody had actually looked at a history book and read something about combined operations/FID/COIN in Vietnam and figured they'd pick our brains a little...since they were thinking about reviving some programs from our war and adapting them to OIF/OEF.

What was apparent to us was that discovering old lessons was something of a eureka moment, and it took some shit hitting the fan in a big way before somebody's lightbulb went off that there might be precedents in past conflicts.