Technology vs. Boots on The Ground: Son Tay to Abbottabad, and Beyond

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Technology vs. Boots on The Ground: Son Tay to Abbottabad, and Beyond

 

By: Charles W. SasserDate:April30 , 2012

 

On the morning of 2 May 2011, a team of 23 heavily-armed Navy SEALs in stealth helicopters assaulted into a walled courtyard in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Forty minutes later, they withdrew as quickly as they arrived after fatally double-tapping Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 attack against the United States.

 

The raid was similar in scope and execution to another daring raid by Special Operations forces that occurred four decades earlier on 21 November 1970, when Army Green Berets in helicopters swept into the Son Tay Prison of North Vietnam to rescue American POWs. The raid was successful even though no prisoners were rescued; they had been secretly moved to another compound.

 

“Both raids were Special Operations classics,” says U.S. Air Force Colonel (Ret) John Gargus, a key air operations planner for the Son Tay raid, and the author of The Son Tay Raid: American POWs in Vietnam Were Not Forgotten . “There is no doubt but what the guys who pulled Son Tay could have done bin Laden—or the other way around. The biggest difference is not in the operation, nor in the caliber of men. The biggest difference forty years made is in new warfighting technology and its incorporation into military training.” (2)

 

The men of Son Tay who trained for their mission at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, used a “mock-up” of the prison constructed of wooden stakes and canvas cloth. They depended on

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