Day of the Rangers: The Battle of Mogadishu 25 Years On

by Leigh Neville

  The concept of operations was for the QRF’s “Team Secure” to land and establish blocking positions around the target location once Aideed’s presence had been confirmed. “Team Snatch” would assault the location from the air and detain the targets whilst “Team Attack” would provide security overwatch from the air with its snipers and attack helicopters. “Team Attack” would also be responsible for stopping vehicle convoys containing Aideed. As we shall soon see, these mission templates would be used again in little-modified form by Task Force Ranger, the eventual special operations force (SOF) dispatched to capture Aideed. Unfortunately, intelligence gathering in Mogadishu would prove problematic in the extreme and the QRF could never confirm Aideed’s location. The capture force was never launched.

  On July 7 a half-dozen local United Nations workers who distributed a UN-funded newspaper were murdered, and as a result the US launched what many saw as a United Nations-sanctioned “decapitation strike” on July 12, attempting to kill the key leaders of the Habr Gidr in one targeted operation. Moderates who supported working with the international community and Aideed hardliners were meeting at the so-called Abdi House, owned by Abdi Hassan Awale, Aideed’s Interior Minister and located in the center of Habr Gidr territory. As they sat down to debate the clan’s response to United Nations-brokered peace initiatives, the first TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank guided missile struck the building.

  Although the Americans denied the operation was an overt assassination attempt against Aideed, both the warlord’s supporters and clan elders alike were killed by a fusillade of missiles and 20mm cannon fire launched from American Cobra attack helicopters that had encircled the Abdi House. “It was an armed helicopter attack with consequences we would pay for later,” noted US Army Major General Carl Ernst who went on to command US forces in Somalia from October 15, 1993.12

  The raid on the Abdi House on July 12 again played into Aideed’s hands, increasing his stature amongst friend and foe alike. After a broadcast warning to those inside, the mixed aviation element of Cobras and OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters began to bombard the building with missiles and cannon fire. In another mirror of future operations, the QRF landed ground forces by Black Hawk helicopter that stormed the compound, taking two prisoners, whilst a ground convoy in trucks and Humvees deployed in blocking positions around the building. Somali casualty numbers ranged (wildly dependent on source) from 20 to 73, some of whom, however, were undoubtedly noncombatants. These included the spiritual leader of the Habr Gidr, Sheikh Aden Mohamed.

  The US operation received widespread criticism in the international press with statements from Aideed and his clan decrying the “wanton slaughter” of their fellows by the Americans. Now their ire was directed at US forces and any who were deemed to be in their employ. Four journalists covering the story of the July 12 attack were attacked and murdered by Aideed supporters near the Abdi House. The warlord and the SNA began to up the ante, specifically targeting US forces. On August 10, a command-detonated mine, an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) by today’s definition, detonated under a US Army Military Police Humvee, killing four American servicemen. This would prove to be a turning point for American resolve.

  A September 9 ambush of a combined Pakistani and US route-clearance mission resulted in further press condemnation after Cobras were forced to engage crowds with cannon and rocket fire to protect the encircled forces on the ground, inflicting numerous casualties including against civilians who flocked to watch the spectacle. Admiral Howe could see the method behind the attacks:

  We found what Aidid [sic] was doing, which was pretty clever, is that he was starting to increase the number of roadblocks and the number of ambushes that were occurring. We had a big incident that occurred in September where our people – the Pakistanis – were simply clearing a road, one of the primary access roads, and people fired [at them] from all sides. A favorite Aidid tactic was to bring women into the mix, so you have women and children in front; he even joked about this, it perplexes the soldier in terms of, “Well I can’t shoot a woman, and I can’t shoot children” and the gunmen are firing [from] behind [them] …13

  Only days later, the American QRF itself was ambushed after attempting to seize a stock of SNA crew-served heavy weapons. Only the timely arrival of ground reinforcements and Cobras overhead forestalled a tragedy and allowed the QRF to withdraw safely. Meanwhile, the White House was beginning to pressure the United Nations and Boutros-Ghali to instead pursue a negotiated settlement with Aideed and the Habr Gidr. At the same time, Admiral Howe was conversely using his every contact within the Pentagon and White House to request the deployment of elite US special operations forces to hunt down Aideed. This two-track strategy would end in disaster.

  Major General Thomas Montgomery agreed with Howe: “I supported getting Special Forces for this operation; it didn’t have to be our special operations forces, it could have been the British SAS.”14 In fact, according to one account, the Americans requested a team from 22 Special Air Service, Britain’s own fabled Special Forces, to be deployed to snatch Aideed. The British went as far as deploying an SAS officer on a fact-finding mission to Somalia to gauge the chances of success for such a hazardous mission. The officer returned, stating that the mission was likely to fail as Aideed was already only too aware of the manhunt, and SAS units were consequently not deployed to Somalia.

  By mid-August, however, the CIA’s Chief of Station in Mogadishu was arguing that his agency could pinpoint Aideed and was adding to the call for the deployment of US special operations forces.15 Howe, a longtime proponent of just such a measure, was adamant:

  One, it would help us if we had a chance of arresting Aidid [sic] [to do so] without a lot of [civilian] casualties. These [SOF] were the people that could do it for us.

  Secondly, it would add leverage that would make peaceful negotiations perhaps possible [with Aideed]. They [the QRF] just didn’t have the troops that were trained to do that; unless he fell into our hands by some miracle, [they] weren’t really capable of accomplishing that mission. That’s why so very early on we asked for that kind of a force to have that capability, and also to deal with kidnapping which was a standard Somali way to dealing with things, to kidnap a relief worker or kidnap a UN person, and take them off and then hold them hostage. We wanted to have a response for that, so we asked very on early on, as early as the 8th of June, for that kind of capability to come to us.16

  The then head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Joseph Hoar, with overall responsibility for US forces in the region disagreed fundamentally with Howe. Hoar was naturally wary of “mission creep” and further entangling US forces in the Somali quagmire. After noting the lack of actionable intelligence available on Aideed, he strongly doubted the prospects of such a force actually being able to capture Aideed. He predicted only a 25 percent chance of success, even with the deployment of US special operators.

  Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, along with the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, shared in Hoar’s skepticism. Hoar was also skeptical of the CIA’s claims that they could locate Aideed based on Somali human intelligence (HUMINT) sources: “My view was that these agents, who were being paid for information, would not finger Aideed because once they did and we snatched him, they would be out of a job.”17

  Powell was particularly concerned about “personalizing the conflict and getting deeper and deeper into ancient Somali clan rivalries.”18 A later 1995 report by the United States’ Senate Committee on Armed Services agreed with his misgivings, adding that the decision “clearly put the US on one side in a civil war.” Such an action would also further reinforce Aideed’s stature amongst the Habr Gidr, the SNA, and the wider Mogadishu community in what Hoar reportedly called “unintended consequences.” Aideed enjoyed widespread support. Even a rival clan elder commented at the time: “What we cannot agree to is to lose the rights for which we fought the previous regime.
We don’t want anyone to come and put his feet on top of our heads … As long as they say they want to arrest Aideed, we will fight.”19

  The requested deployment of special operations forces came at a time when the White House and Pentagon were attempting to actively reduce the US footprint in Somalia whilst trying to convince its reluctant United Nations allies to take on a greater share of the task. Senator John McCain articulated what many in the Senate and Congress believed: “the winds have blown us from a narrow well-defined humanitarian mission to taking sides in a prolonged hunt for a Somali warlord … we now seem to be on the edge of moving towards nation building.”20 This was in Hoar’s view the very definition of “mission creep.”

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was up against Boutros-Ghali and Howe, the Special Envoy for Somalia Robert Oakley, the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and its component command, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), who were all loudly lobbying for the mission. In the end Powell acquiesced to the request: “In late August, I reluctantly yielded to the repeated requests from the field and recommended to Aspin that we dispatch the Rangers and the Delta Force. It was a decision I would later regret,” noted Powell in his memoir.21 On August 22, Powell notified Hoar at CENTCOM and General Wayne Downing of SOCOM that “Secretary of Defense Les Aspin had authorized the mobilization and deployment of [JSOC] to support US efforts in Somalia.”22

  JSOC had not been resting on its laurels. The mission had been brewing for several months, time that the command used wisely by running joint training exercises with the component units likely to be called upon for any future task force. The mission had also grown in size over the preceding months. At first the Aideed capture mission was envisioned as capable of being conducted by a small element of two teams of operators totaling no more than a dozen from the Army’s secretive Delta Force, who would carry out a low-profile capture and use the in-country QRF for transportation and security.

  Delta Force or more correctly the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (SFOD) is the US Army’s special mission unit (SMU), known within the special operations community as simply “the Unit.” Delta had been formed in 1977 as a purely counterterrorist unit as a direct result of the 1972 Munich Massacre and following the wave of bombings and hijackings that had plagued Europe and the Middle East during the 1970s.

  They were specialists in hostage and prisoner recovery, conducting such missions in Grenada and Panama, but had expanded to conduct covert reconnaissance and strike operations, often in what were termed non-permissive environments. They had deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, hunting Iraqi Scud launchers in the Iraqi desert and, at the time of the Somalia mission, were also heavily deployed to Colombia, assisting the authorities in their manhunt for the notorious drug baron Pablo Escobar.

  Delta was structured along the British SAS model, an organization its founder Colonel Charlie Beckwith had served with on secondment and much admired. In 1993, the unit had three squadrons of operators, a term invented by Beckwith to differentiate his men from the operatives of the CIA. These squadrons were supported by a number of other specialist units within the command. The Operational Support Troop, often known as F or Funny Troop, for instance conducted clandestine advance force operations, often undercover, and uniquely at the time included women operators.

  Another element, the Combat Support squadron, housed the Unit’s heavy breachers (tasked with breaking into heavily fortified locations such as nuclear bunkers or silos), Delta’s military dog handlers and their Weapons of Mass Destruction specialists. Delta also had their own covert helicopter unit known as Echo Squadron and a Special Missions Cell based at SOCOM’s Combat Developments Division to research and develop specialist weapons, equipment, and techniques for the operators.

  At the lowest level, Delta teams were composed of between four and six operators depending on manpower levels, although a six-man team was the standard. Sergeant First Class Paul Leonard, who joined the unit in 1991, commented: “There were times we had four guys, other times we had six.” The minimum for an assault team was four because that was the standard package carried on an MH-6 Little Bird, the nimble light helicopters that often ferried Delta operators to their targets, perched on external plank benches. There were three such teams to a troop, led by a troop sergeant major. Three of these troops – two of assaulters and one designated as snipers – along with a small headquarters element formed a squadron commanded by a colonel who had typically served as team and troop leader previously in his career.

  Delta’s A-Squadron initially received the call for the Somalia deployment. As more intelligence was received and the difficulty inherent in snatching Aideed became clear, the scope of the deployment grew. Sergeant First Class Norman “Norm” Hooten of C-Squadron remembered:

  That mission grew from one or two teams. A-Squadron had the mission and they gave the mission up because they couldn’t take their whole squadron. They were on Aztec I think at the time [Aztec was the on-call Delta squadron originally tasked with aircraft hijackings but later encompassing all types of short-notice counterterrorism missions] and there was some other stuff going on at the time, missions that were developing over in northern Africa so they didn’t want to split their squadron as it would make them ineffective for any other operation. So it went to Charlie 1 Troop of C-Squadron and it grew and grew until it was a whole squadron plus.

  Kelly Venden, then a Sergeant First Class with Delta’s A-Squadron, agreed: “Colonel [Gary] Harrell [then commander of C-Squadron] said, ‘Hey we’ll take it,’ but he wanted to make sure it was the whole squadron and not a squadron minus.” What was originally a deployment of a dozen operators or less had expanded into a troop and finally to a squadron. Some 50 Delta operators and support personnel were eventually earmarked for the mission.

  As the Delta component expanded, elements from the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment were added to provide security around the target site and to crew the light vehicles that might be needed to extract the Delta contingent once they had completed their mission. When Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight, 3rd Battalion commander, was first notified of the upcoming deployment he hoped to take his entire battalion with him, a force of some 850 Rangers. Instead he was instructed to select just one company as his primary unit with an additional platoon drawn from another company as his theater reserve and to act as the Task Force’s own QRF.

  The Ranger Regiment, an elite parachute-capable light infantry unit with a storied history dating back to the French–Indian War, specialized in short-duration raids behind enemy lines and the opposed seizure of airfields, classic special operations tasks. At the time, the Regiment comprised three infantry battalions. Within each battalion were four companies: three rifle companies and a battalion headquarters company. Within these rifle companies, there were four rifle platoons. Each of these platoons was further divided into four squads: three rifle squads and one heavy weapons squad. These squads were finally broken down into the smallest tactical element: the fire team. There were two of these fire teams in each Ranger rifle squad, two teams of four soldiers and one squad leader.

  After considering the abilities and length of service of key leadership personnel within the battalion, Colonel McKnight selected Bravo or B-Company under Captain Mike Steele as his primary maneuver element and a platoon from Alpha or A-Company as his reserve along with his own headquarters element. The Ranger contingent would initially number some 240 personnel.23 They arrived at Fort Bragg, the home of Delta Force, on August 11 for build-up training with the other components of the task force: the operators of Delta, attached Air Force Special Tactics, and elements from the 1st Battalion of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), widely known by their nickname “the Nightstalkers.”

  Ranger Lieutenant Tom DiTomasso recounted:

  Around the 10th of August, Captain Steele called all the Platoon Leaders and Platoon Sergeants into the company planning tent. We were told that we
were deploying to Fort Bragg to rehearse with special mission units in preparation for a real-world mission. The mission was classified, and the cover story would be an Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercise (EDRE). We were not to discuss anything about the exercise until we reached Fort Bragg.24

  According to a book McKnight later wrote, the Task Force trained solely to effect the capture of Aideed. Killing the warlord would undoubtedly have been the simpler course of action; however, as noted previously, United Nation Security Council Resolution 837 was clear that capture, rather than assassination, was the objective. The training at Fort Bragg saw the development of a template approach to targeting Aideed that unconsciously resembled those being planned by the QRF in Somalia. The Task Force worked on the two most likely scenarios; assaulting a building where Aideed was present, perhaps for a meeting, or halting a vehicle convoy carrying the warlord. Both were bread-and-butter missions to Delta.

  Staff Sergeant Kurt Smith with F-Team, 2 Troop of Delta’s C-Squadron confirmed:

  The training was realistic, challenging, and almost exclusively live-fire (at least for the main effort). When it wasn’t live-fire, there was ample support from outside units providing noncombatants to test our ability to manage hostile crowds with non-lethal munitions. Our operation was based on a template plan that would apply to any scenario encountered. The two scenarios we focused on were the convoy takedown and the stronghold takedown.

  We conducted these types of rehearsals for approximately ten days before the National Command Authority seemingly lost interest in deploying the TF [task force]. This was not unusual. We frequently “spun up” and began mission rehearsals for a lot of missions that would never take place. If a mission had the slightest chance of happening, we would conduct rehearsals for it. Most of these missions never took place, but it all chalked up to good training.25