Tag Archives: seals

Just frogmen doing frogmen stuff

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140121-N-KB563-148 CORONADO, Calif. (Jan. 21, 2014) Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUDs) students participate in Surf Passage at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. Surf Passage is one of many physically demanding evolutions that are a part of the first phase of SEAL training. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Michael Russell/Released)

In two separate incidents within the same week, quiet groups of maritime commandos were out getting it done.

From the U.S. Department of Defense:

Statement by Jonathan Hoffman, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs:

“U.S. forces conducted a hostage rescue operation during the early hours of 31 October in Northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen held hostage by a group of armed men. This American citizen is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State. No U.S military personnel were injured during the operation.

We appreciate the support of our international partners in conducting this operation.

The United States will continue to protect our people and our interests anywhere in the world.”

Word is the SEAL unit parachuted in from CV-22s, supported by a circling P-8A for comms and surveillance and an AC-130 gunship on standby if things went pear-shaped, then scratched six of seven kidnappers in short order.

One counterterrorism source told ABC News, “They were all dead before they knew what happened.”

Meanwhile, in the UK…

The SBS, the seagoing and much more low-profile nautical companion to the SAS, stormed the Greek-owned Liberian-flagged crude oil tanker Nave Andromeda off the Isle of Wight after seven Nigerian stowaways popped up and started threatening the merchant vessel’s 22-man crew, who retreated to a fortified compartment.

Ending a 10-hour standoff, 16 SBS operators boarded the ship, with some fast-roping from two Royal Navy Merlin helicopters and the others rappelling up the side from a rigid inflatable boat under the watchful eye of snipers in a Wildcat helicopter and the Royal Navy Type 23 frigate HMS Richmond. Clearance divers were also on hand if there were EOD needs. 

The entire ship was secured in just seven minutes and all stowaways were accounted for. 

It was not the first time in recent memory that SBS had to get to work in home waters, having boarded an Italian cargo ship, Grande Tema, in the Thames Estuary in 2018 after it had been hijacked by four Nigerian nationals.

From Hush Puppy to Starsky & Hutch

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In the late 1960s, Smith & Wesson started a project to provide Vietnam-deployed SEAL Teams with a modified S&W Model 39 9mm pistol that included a slide lock and threaded barrel for a suppressor as well as a 14+1 magazine capacity, a big jump from the Model 39’s standard 8+1 load.

The gun, intended for NSW use to silence sentries or their dogs, became dubbed the “Hush Puppy.”

Note the chest holster…Hush Puppy inside

Well, by 1971, Smith thought the basic model, sans suppressor-ready features, would make a good gun for LE and the consumer markets and introduced it as the more polished S&W Model 59, which soon saw some serious success in the hands of Disco-era police, including a regular appearance on cop shows of the era.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Zap Ya with the Eye of God

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This 17 May 1988 image shows peak Cold War frogmen foreshadowing the role they would increasingly carry out in the Sandbox for the next 30 years.

Dig that chocolate chip camo! U.S. Navy Photo DN-ST-8902888 by PH2 Jeffrey Loshaw

Official caption: Two Sea-Air-Land (SEAL) team members, one equipped with an AN/PAQ-1 laser target designator, right, the other armed with an M14 rifle, assume a defensive position after assaulting the beach during an amphibious demonstration for the 14th Annual Inter-American Naval Conference.

The AN/PAQ-1 Laser Target Designator (LTD) was developed by Hughes Aircraft in the 1960s and 1970s, reaching IOC around 1979.

The chunky 16-pound infrared laser rangefinder/designator could either obtain target range or paint a target for early “smart” munitions like the Copperhead 155mm shell, Hellfire and Maverick missiles, and Paveway guided bombs.

Either shoulder or tripod-mounted, the LTD was shipped in a 64-pound transit case with accessories to include the designator, four battery-shoulder stocks, and a cleaning kit.

One of the devices is in the Smithsonian.

The 175-page 1980 U.S. Army TM is here.

Of note, the current AN/PED-1 Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder (LLDR) incorporates a thermal imager, day camera, laser designator spot imaging, electronic display, eye-safe laser rangefinder, digital magnetic compass, Selective Availability/Anti-Spoofing Module Global Positioning System (SAASM GPS) and digital export capability. With batteries for a 24-hour mission, it weighs 29.5-pounds. The Army is currently working on a better, and lighter, model. 

The special Navy Seal gun you never hear about

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For the past half-decade the U.S. Naval Special Warfare community has quietly used a device unique to its service– the Battelle Plummet Gun– and its half-Batman, half-Star Wars, and all-cool.

The problem

While after the recent activities in the Global War on Terror in which we see Navy Seals roping out of choppers and moving around on land a lot, they are actually first and foremost combat swimmers. These fighting frogmen, who evolved from the old Underwater Demolition Teams of World War II and Korea, are tasked with taking over suspect ships at sea, sinking the bad guy’s ships in port, and seizing offshore islands and structures such as oil platforms.

Commonly termed Visit Board Search and Seizure (VBSS) operations, its these actions from small boats against platforms and vessels at sea that sometimes put these special operators behind the proverbial 8-ball as the bad guys often don’t leave a ladder down to allow the frogmen easy access.

U.S. Navy SEALs board a ship from a Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boat as they conduct a joint Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) exercise alongside U.S. Marines assigned to Force Reconnaissance Platoon, Maritime Raid Force, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), during composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) in the Atlantic Ocean, July 20, 2015. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Andre Dakis/26th MEU Combat Camera/Released)

U.S. Navy SEALs board a ship from a Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boat as they conduct a joint Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) exercise alongside U.S. Marines assigned to Force Reconnaissance Platoon, Maritime Raid Force, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), during composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) in the Atlantic Ocean, July 20, 2015. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Andre Dakis/26th MEU Combat Camera/Released)

This means special devices such as a backpack-sized magnetic ship-climbing device that would “drive” up the side of a ship’s steel hull to the top, where an operator would anchor it and drop a rope ladder to the other team members below.

NSW ship climbing device at the U.S. Navy Seal/UDT Museum, Image by Chris Eger

NSW ship climbing device at the U.S. Navy Seal/UDT Museum, Image by Chris Eger

However, these are big and bulky– not to mention noisy and complicated to employ.

What would be ideal would be a grappling hook gun like the one Luke Skywalker used to escape the Stormtroopers on the Death Star with Leia in tow, or that Batman used repeatedly. Hey, about that…

Meet the 25 pound Battelle Plummet Gun, and yes, it is as big as the M60 shown next to it for scale. Image via Chris Eger

Meet the 25 pound Battelle Plummet Gun, and yes, it is as big as the M60 shown next to it for scale. Image via Chris Eger

So suffice it to say, this is one piece of kit you aren’t going to add to your turn out bag just yet.

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

Obamas Secret Army (and Navy)

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An article from the Daily Beast looks at the Obama Administration’s use of the Special Operations Command whose budget had doubled and mission has quadrupled in the past few years.

From the article :
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/271557391
 

SEAL snipers on the fantail of the USS Bainbridge were in position to shoot the pirates. But with the covered lifeboat bobbing on the water, it was still difficult to get clean shots. They attached night-vision scopes to their rifles and waited. At one point, two of the pirates came into plain sight. The sharpshooters could see a third pirate through a window pointing his gun at Captain Phillips. Each sniper fired a single round, and it was over. Three shots, three dead pirates. A SEAL assault team boarded the lifeboat and took Phillips to safety…..