Free Modern American Snipers by Chris Martin

wisdom downrange: he became an instructor for the U.S. Navy SEAL Sniper Course.
    Neil Roberts was awarded the Silver Star posthumously, while John Chapman received the Air Force Cross posthumously.
    Vic Hyder received a Silver Star for the critical role he played in Mako 30’s rescue and recovery.
    Kyle Defoor was awarded the Bronze Star for valor. He left DEVGRU in ’03 and took on training positions with Blackwater and Tigerswan before later establishing Defoor Proformance Shooting.
    Slabinski was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions, the second highest military award available to a member of the United States Navy, ranked only behind the Medal of Honor.

 
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    Three Seven Five
    Barely a year after the Battle of Takur Ghar and the conclusion of Operation Anaconda, Britt Slabinski and his squadron were again the linchpin of a high-profile operation.
    Far removed from the granite peaks of Afghanistan, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters ferried a rescue force through the blackness of the early-morning hours above Nasiriyah, a city of a more than a half million people in southeastern Iraq.
    While a Marine platoon provided a diversionary attack and an AC-130 circled overhead, the DEVGRU operators hit the ground and stormed Saddam Hospital, which had served as an improvised command post for the Iraqi military in these opening days of the Iraq War.
    Backed by 2/75 Rangers of B Company and 24STS Air Force Pararescue Jumpers, the ST6 SEALs located and retrieved Pfc. Jessica Lynch without incident.
    Lynch had been captured just days after the Global War on Terror expanded its boundaries. Her 506th Maintenance Company convoy wandered off course early in the invasion and drove directly into an ambush. Eleven American members of the company were killed and six others captured.
    The rescue captured the nation’s attention—and later suspicion—as detractors viewed the April 1 operation as a bit too neat and tidy. Combined with exaggerated reports of heroism on Lynch’s part that served as a rallying cry for the escalating war effort, rumors flew that the operation was little more than a staged April Fool’s joke.
    In reality, the cynicism was largely unwarranted. While perhaps overplayed to the media, the operation itself had been genuine and its success very real, the first American POW rescue since Vietnam.
    *   *   *
    Delta Force too had been busy in the early days of the Iraq War. Well, before its earliest days actually, as B Squadron kicked off its invasion a day ahead of the larger coalition force.
    Like ST6’s Red Squadron, Delta’s B Squadron had also shifted its area of operations (AO) following the standout performance of its recce operators in Operation Anaconda a year before.
    However, it was still plagued by the operational friction that had prevented the vast capabilities of the special mission units from being fully leveraged in Afghanistan. Gen. Dell Dailey was still in command of JSOC and continued to prefer that Delta Force and DEVGRU prestage and wait for the call in the event that a high-value target was located. Meanwhile, the unit’s squadron commanders sought to put their men in the mix more actively, rooting out those HVTs rather than taking on the more passive stance.
    CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks had proven something of an obstacle for the SMUs in Afghanistan as well. Franks, Dailey, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were later assigned much of the blame for allowing bin Laden to escape Tora Bora, primarily for not allowing the CIA/Delta-led force the operational autonomy and support it had requested.
    One year and a new war later, Franks had been transformed into an ally and enabler, having witnessed the improbably large role a small handful of JSOC snipers played in ensuring Anaconda’s ultimate success.
    Rather than be confined to the Arar base in Saudi Arabia, B Squadron marauded across