Out with Irene

Barry gave us the movie Blackhawk Down on CD a few months back and since then Netanel has played it dozens of times, sometimes even as background noise while he's on the computer or studying for a test. .
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As war movies go, Blackhawk Down is just about as realistic as it gets without getting shot at. It's all there – a senseless mission, the snafus, the command detached from reality or humanity - soldiers getting screwed more by their thickheaded officers than the enemy, commanders in the field (generally NCOs) that save their men from above mentioned officers and enemy alike.


In the autumn of 1993 US Rangers and Delta Force had been dropped into the middle of a civil war between Somali warlords with the naïve idealistic objective of restoring order. On October 3, Operations issued orders for a questionable daring mission codenamed "Irene" to apprehend hostiles in the heart of Mogadishu, but a series of mishaps on the ground and breakdowns in communications end up with the Rangers under siege with critically wounded casualties and isolated units scattered in a city stirred and swarming.

At this point, I want to clarify that my qualifications as a military analyst are from the ground up. In my 26 years in Israeli army uniform, I have never been more than a crewman of an M-109 self propelled howitzer. My crew has never fired a live round at a live person, not even during the 2006 war in Lebanon (Because our battalion's new crop of crew commanders fresh from regular enlisted service were unable to make heads or tails of the outdated equipment we have in reserve battalions and the 670th was declared "unfit for combat" that summer.)

The Israeli Army is ever short of infantry for duty on the borders and on the West Bank, so a good 80 to 90 percent of my service over the years has been as a foot soldier far from my beloved howitzer. I've been out with "Irene" a few times.

"Irene" was your garden variety abduction operation in enemy territory (called "an arrest" by the military). I've participated in a few "arrests" over the years, if on a much smaller scale. In an operation like this you have 3 units:

1. The attack team. This unit makes the arrest and is as small as possible with the best soldiers available. Few so they don't get in each others way, best so that they don't shoot each other or the arrestee by mistake.

2. The isolating unit; to prevent anyone from coming to the aid of the arrestee.

3. The extraction force, by far the largest of the three, remains out of the picture but ready to come to the aid of the first two units should something go south during the operation.

Delta was the obvious choice to enter and apprehend, and Rangers lowered from Blackhawks were assigned to isolating the site. The extraction force was a convoy of (Rangers?) on Hummers.

What went wrong?

Surprise is essential. Going in at high noon, "Irene" depended on the speed of its helicopters to compensate; but since evacuation was on wheels, dealing with an armed response was inevitable.


Using the Blackhawks to achieve fire superiority over the city made them more or less static elements of the isolation force. Since their main advantage is fire in motion, they became sitting ducks.

Ideally, the attack and isolating units leave the scene independently. Assigning the extraction force with evacuating detainees with their captors meant that there was nothing left in reserve in case something went wrong. When the convoy got lost in the city, evacuation was delayed, compounding the fiasco.

Another thing about the movie is how you see the Rangers more or less ignoring the Somalis shooting at them. This is pretty accurate. You have "suppressive fire", which isn't really meant to kill anyone but just to get the other guy to take cover; and "effective fire" when you shoot through sights in hopes of actually hitting someone. The Somalis were using a third kind of fire which is called "making a lot of noise, but not hitting much of anything except innocent Somalis". The difference between "effective fire" and shooting off your gun is the big difference between Hizbullah fighters and gun toting Palestinians.

Netanel and I watch the same movie, but we're not looking at the same thing. Our points of view are from different places in life. "Irene" for me is just one more screw up, only on a much grander scale than any I have participated in. Here in Israel, more often than not the guy you're after isn't home and nobody is eager to risk dear life to get him.

For Netanel it's different. It's starting to sink in; before you know it he will be in uniform and on his way to "Irene". He's started asking questions, technical questions; picking the brain of that old soldier, Abba.

But for me, if anything is harder that going out with "Irene", it will be those three long years when Netanel will be out there with an "Irene" of his own.