List of operations conducted by SEAL Team Six
On 14 March 1979 the People's Revolutionary Army, led by Maurice Bishop, overthrew the newly independent government of the small island of Grenada and established a new regime based on socialist principles.
A mixed-service force of commandos departed behind schedule from Barbados in 9 Army transport helicopters at 0500 on D-Day October 25.,[3] By the time the UH-60 Black Hawks arrived over Grenadian soil, U.S. Marines had already landed on the east coast of the island and overt combat was underway.
On October 7, 1985, the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro carrying 400 passengers including American citizens was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists led by Mohammed Abul al-Abbas also known as Muhammad Zaidan.
President Ronald Reagan approved the deployment of Navy's SEAL Team SIX and Delta Force operators to plan and prepare for a rescue attempt to free the vessel from its hijackers.
Eric T. Olson, John Gay, Howard Wasdin, Homer Nearpass and Richard Kaiser were the five SEALs that fought in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu during the last mission of Operation Gothic Serpent to capture the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
While under withering enemy fire during actions in support of UNOSOM II operations, Captain Olson demonstrated a complete disregard for his own personal safety in the accomplishment of his mission".
Assisted by members of the Intelligence Support Activity who spirited these individuals to the extraction site where they would be picked up and taken back to a U.S. Navy nuclear guided missile cruiser stationed off the coast.
Some of DEVGRU's PIFWC operations under team leader William Waddell included apprehending Goran Jelisić, Simo Zaric, Milan Simic, Miroslav Tadic, and Radislav Krstić.
All three teams were tasked with confirming enemy strengths and dispositions including anti-aircraft emplacements, ensuring the designated Rakkasan HLZs were clear of obstructions, and providing terminal guidance for air support both prior to and during the insertion of conventional forces.
[15] Near H-Hour on March 1, 2002, Mako 31 found a group of foreign fighters had an established position and were manning a DShK HMG on the peak where they planned to set up an observation post.
As the pilots and team discussed a mission abort, an RPG struck the side of the aircraft, wounding one crewman as machine-gun bullets ripped through the fuselage, cutting hydraulic and oil lines.
[17] Mako 30 was inserted in an attempt to recover Roberts, the ran into a bunker housing 3 al-Qaeda fighters and killed them, they were engaged in a 20-minute firefight and suffered several wounded, forcing them to break contact and call for a QRF.
Companies from the US Army Rangers and 82nd Airborne Division secured an improvised desert strip in a dry river bed near the Pakistani border, an MC-130H Combat Talon II plane landed and lowered its ramp.
The Ranger commander and a 2nd Commando Regiment operator who was attached to DEVGRU at the time organised an all-round defence while the other MH-47E held back the advancing insurgents until its miniguns ran out of ammunition, an AC-130 Spectre joined the battle and kept the down crew and passengers safe until a British Immediate Response Team helicopter successfully recovered them, the AC-130 then destroyed the MH-47E wreck – denying it to the Taliban.
One such operation carried out south of Kabul in July 2009 resulted in SEAL Senior Chief Petty Officer James Hatch being seriously wounded, and a combat assault dog (Remco) killed.
The U.S. Rangers and Afghan commandos slowly crept through the waist-deep grass and settled into an overwatch or support-by-fir position to provide suppressive fire in case of the SEALs ran into any trouble.
[44] Fifteen members of DEVGRU's Gold Squadron "Golden Knights" were among the 38 killed on Saturday, 6 August 2011 in Maidan Wardak province, Afghanistan, when a Boeing CH-47D Chinook helicopter flown by B Company, 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment, was shot down by a Taliban-fired rocket-propelled grenade; the crash wiped out an entire troop.
The personnel killed in the helicopter crash are said to have belonged to an "immediate reaction force" that were en route to intercept a group of Taliban who were escaping the area following an operation by United States Army Rangers.
The operators parachuted (HALO jump) into Afghanistan, but failed to find them at the location they searched, however, the BBC reported that no US service personnel or civilians were harmed and a number of "hostile forces" were killed.
Small arms fire increased as the final two MH-60s inserted their blocking teams, the two pairs of AH-6M Little Birds and MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator Blackhawks, supporting the mission continued to suppress targets as the four MH-47E Chinooks carrying the DEVGRU main assault force inserted under heavy enemy small arms fire whilst DEVGRU sniper teams aboard a pair of MH-6M Little Birds engaged numerous gunmen and vehicles.
The SSE took longer than expected owing to the size and maze-like structure of the building, the mission completed after 45 minutes, later tests of the material recovered by DEVGRU showed no evidence of chemical or biological weapons at the Objective Beaver, one Nightstalker crew from an MH-47E and one Ranger was wounded.
Back at the American/Coalition base at Baghdad Airport, the American/Coalition commanders considered the decision of sending an assault team to raid the safehouse that the five terrorist insurgents fled to and possibly capture a prisoner.
[71] MV Maersk Alabama, a 508 foot long cargo ship carrying 17,000 tons of humanitarian aid supplies, was seized by pirates 240 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, in waters notorious for piracy.
After JSOC and American intelligence determined when and where Warsame would be by tracking his cell phone and analyzing information provided by local spies, a snatch and grab operation was considered.
[76] In a mission codenamed Octave Fusion, on 24 January 2012, operators from DEVGRU Blue squadron,[77] successfully rescued American Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Dane Poul Hagen Thisted, 60, who had been detained by Somali bandits in north-central Somalia.
They had practiced the mission "on both American coasts" and in a segregated section of Camp Alpha at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan in early April 2011, using a 1 acre (0.40 ha) replica of bin Laden's compound.
Members of these agencies were paired with JSOC units in forward-deployed fusion cells to "exploit and analyze" battlefield data instantly using biometrics, facial recognition systems, voice print databases, and predictive models of insurgent behavior based on surveillance and computer-based pattern analysis.
"[105] A senior American official said a USMC MV-22B Osprey that was sent from USS Makin Island (LHD-8)[106] to evacuate the wounded troops in the raid crash-landed nearby, leaving two more service members injured.
Colonel John Thomas, a CENTCOM spokesman, said that the raid was "intended to seize potentially important information from the compound - typically electronic devices such as computers, hard drives and cellphones - and was not an attempt to kill or capture a particular individual."
[117][118] Approximately three days later SEAL Team Six conducted a "precision" operation based on intelligence gathered by the CIA, supported by elements of MARSOC, that rescued Walton and killed 6 out of the 7 captors.
