Tim Lynch On The Art Of Tactical Listening

BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 10 months ago

Occasionally one makes dear friends for life, even among men whom he has never met.  That’s the case with Mike Vanderboegh, and it’s also the case with a man named Tim Lynch.  I have more respect and fondness for those two men than they can possibly know.  For my readers who were not with me when I covered the debacle that was/is OEF, and conveyed my utter contempt for the likes of Stanley McChrystal and David Rodriguez, my friendship with and support of Michael Yon when jerk-bloggers attacked him, my problems with the rules of engagement, and so on, Tim Lynch was a contractor who was in theater for nearly a decade.  He has spent more time in Afghanistan than any white man alive.  He knows everything – and I mean everything, about Afghanistan.

Tim had a difficult time decompressing stateside, and he paid a huge price financially and personally for being in theater, but I’ll let him tell you his story.  It’s at the same time enlightening, exciting, troublesome, breathtaking, joyful and sad.  He previously blogged, and is blogging again, at Free Range International.  He recently pointed to a post I made on Operation Red Wings concerning tactics, planning, logistics and execution, here and as a guest blogger on another blog.

In my son Daniel’s assessment he takes a classic Marine view of the operation, but if you can wade through the Marine Corps way of doing things versus other branches of the military, his views are still salient and on-point.  Many of the comments are agreeable, many of them violently disagreeable.  The disagreements come mainly from the notion that we (Daniel and I) just don’t understand the nature of recon missions or the kit carried for said insertions, etc., etc., blah blah blah.  And the whole point of the post was that it should never have been a recon mission of that sort or like that to begin with.  Read it if you wish, but you don’t have to to get the point Tim Lynch makes now.  Tim observes the following in his post on this operation.

On June 28, 2005 a Marine battalion working out of Jalalabad launched Operation Red Wing. They lacked their own helicopters so they went to JSOC to ask for helicopter support.  JSOC was game but only if they could play too so they sent a 4 man SEAL detachment to do the recon piece instead of the 6 man STA platoon unit the Marines had planned to use. With that change came a change in the recon insertion plan; instead of sneaking in on foot like the STA platoon had planned the SEALs opted for a helicopter insert using several dummy landings to fool the AOG as to their true location. The SEALs also ignored the Marine snipers warnings that sat phones and light weight PRC148’s would not work and that they needed to lug a PRC 119 in with them.

In one sentence Tim explains what we all needed to know about the attitudes of the SEALs.  This tidbit could have been in a book, or not, or it could have been said before by someone official, or not, or it could have been tribal knowledge, or not.  It doesn’t really matter to me.  The fact that Tim has said it gives it authority.  Tim will know, and that’s the end of it.

This article isn’t really about communications gear.  It’s about who you are and whether you can “sit at the feet” of someone else and learn.  As for my line of work, I was an average engineer until I learned to listen to others, from technicians to PhDs.  Then I became a really great engineer with the help of others.  The SEALS had the attitude that they were SEALS, and so no one could tell them anything.

If you have the attitude that you have nothing to learn from those around you, then regardless of how much money has been spent on you, regardless of how highly regarded you are, regardless of how good you are, regardless of how much you know and what you can do, you have no business leading other men and you will never excel at your station in life.


Comments

  1. On May 9, 2016 at 7:16 am, MattBracken said:

    This discussion is very on point. Another example: the Marine and other SEAL sniper assets were already on scene for the “Captain Phillips” escapade, but they all were put on hold while snipers from ST-6 were flown around the world.

  2. On May 9, 2016 at 1:24 pm, anonymous said:

    “all were put on hold while snipers from ST-6 were flown around the world”

    I believe this is very common.

    1) There was that incident back in 1986 when a fishing boat drifted into [insert name of Communist country here] waters. Instead of using the air assets that were already on the scene, the Navy waited 24 hours for Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer to arrive from their Top Gun graduation ceremony.

    2) Then there was that other incident back in 1990 when a Navy helicopter crew was taken hostage in Lebanon. Instead of using Marines or SEALs already stationed in the Mediterranean, they paged Michael Biehn and Charlee Sheen — who had to make a dramatic exit from Dennis Haysbert’s wedding in Virginia — to go rescue the helo crew.

    Some things never change.

  3. On May 10, 2016 at 10:36 pm, Josh said:

    I don’t disagree with your overall point, but I think there could be other events to better leverage it.

    Those snipers took and made shots that are historic. That scenario I’m sure will be taught for decades to come. Could the snipers already in theater have made those shots? I don’t know, but the ones from ST-6 did, full stop. In my opinion, that justifies the decision.

  4. On May 9, 2016 at 7:31 am, Frank Clarke said:

    The syndrome is epidemic. Examples from military, engineering, and now software:
    http://rexxpertise.blogspot.com/2014/03/proverbs-2717.html

    “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” –Will Rogers

    Of course, now that my eyes have been opened, I’m able to ask “Why are we risking our kids’ lives in the 3rd-world garbage dump at all?” So far, no one has provided a rational answer.

  5. On May 9, 2016 at 8:39 am, Paul X said:

    It’s the logic of empire. It doesn’t have to make sense to the peons. The real question is why the peons put up with it; why the peons send their sons and daughters to fight in these garbage dumps? Where do these people get the idea, against all evidence to the contrary, that they are fighting for freedom?

  6. On May 9, 2016 at 8:48 am, Fred said:

    Where? you ask. Why, the state run media of course.

  7. On May 9, 2016 at 10:27 pm, Wrench said:

    Smedley Butler nailed it many decades ago…

  8. On May 10, 2016 at 9:02 am, joe said:

    I’m beginning to think we have too many elite units who all need/want a piece of every operation … less is sometimes more … which leads me to suggest that perhaps we could do without SEALs entirely … make them UDT like they started out and leave land operations to Army and Marine units…

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