Task Force Ranger decided not to bring their night visions devices on the raid since it was supposed to be an in-and-out mission during daylight hours. This left them stranded in the city during the night without the device that would have given them a significant tactical advantage. Some of the men chose not to wear their bullet proof armor plates, opting for speed over safety. At one point, the Ranger Commander regrets choosing to leave bayonets back at their base, as they were growing dangerously close to running out of ammunition. I don’t remember the last time I saw a bayonet.
Unity of command is another important issue found here. At times during the battle, Rangers found themselves intermixed with operators, and it was not clear who — if anyone — was in charge.
Something captured well by Bowden is the hierarchical structuring the military does to itself in terms of eliteness and professionalism. The Delta operators thought the Rangers were unprofessional who though that the 10th Mountain Division was a joke. It wasn’t just an acknowledgement of different mission sets and training, but a real animosity that often manifested itself in tactical decisions made out of spite or anger.
Yeah, I would just discard all the Bowden insertions into the story, e.g. he makes a big deal about the body armor but can’t actually point to anybody who would have been saved by the body armor or any actual impact on the battle. IIRC the ranger body armor back plate weighed 8 or 12 pounds and some troops decided not to wear it so they could carry more ammo (and they ran low on ammo anyway). Similarly the problem with the night vision equipment was that it was fragile and getting broken on insertions so troops were holding them back so they could have functioning equipment on actual night missions.
I knew some of the guys who were involved. One of the Rangers involved married one of my medics, and he occasionally would discuss elements of the story. The Sergeant from 10th Engineers was a guy I’d served with, as well, and I got some insight from other people I’d known who’d been with him when things went south for them.
That said, every one of the people I know who were there say Bowden got it more-or-less right, with his book — which is not to say it isn’t flawed due to his outsider status. Bowden didn’t know what he didn’t know, and he didn’t have the background to really understand what he was writing about, or filter it appropriately. He gave equal weight to things he heard the privates say vs. what he got from the leadership, and also took what he got from the seriously experienced “D-boys” from Delta with the same seriousness as he took the information he got from guys whose first shots heard in anger came there in Mogadishu.
Which is not to say that Blackhawk Down isn’t a fine work of journalism, because it is. It just isn’t quite the ultimate source on this incident that a lot of folks make it out to be. There are a bunch of detailed papers out there that really need to be put together into a book and published, but probably never will be.
Returning to the lessons learned theme, Bowden himself highlights how odd it was that the success of Blackhawk Down turned him into the first guy DoD and friends called when they had a question about the Battle of Mogadishu.
An interlocutor of talent, trained to speak non-specialist, might draw a more interesting story from the specialist than the specialist knew was there, even if the story ends up more truthful than factual. The trial of enunciating tribal speak, jargon, and even tacit knowledge for the domain-obtuse non-specialist may draw out new views that the specialist hadn’t formulated before. An interlocutor may make the domain less opaque to the right members of the uninitiated. An interlocutor indifferent to a chain of command, its politics, or its ramification may leave the squeak of the mice of the hierarchy as loud as the presumed lions at its head.
Bowden reached this in Blackhawk Down. Bowden made the battle of Mogadishu and the battle of Mogadishu made Bowden. Without the two together, both would be footnotes in the historical shadows.
“Spite and anger” sounds like a three-word summary of the motivation behind every decision in the modern world.
The whole world is choking on hatred. Everyone hates everyone.