Photo By Staff Sgt. Eric Rutherford | Soldiers with Bandit Troop, 1st Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, search a...... read more read more
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By Spc. Eric A. Rutherford
115th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
AL HICHEL, Iraq – In the dark motor pool, Soldiers passed the time waiting for the order to move out by checking their gear, rehearsing tactics, joking around with each other or reading a book. Hours ticked by as they waited for the word to move out or to stand down.
Late in the evening the word came in, and Soldiers from scout platoon, Bandit Troop, 1st Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, mounted into their vehicles and sped out the gate to their target – a suspected terrorist financier passing through their area of operations.
"This guy was just passing through," said Capt. Jeffrey Johnson, Bandit Troop commander. "For our area of operations, this is something we get a lot of. We try to discourage them from resting in the safe havens here."
The suspected financier was a high value target of another unit, who passed the intelligence off to Bandit. Once Bandit could confirm the target's location, they decided to move on him, said Johnson, of Iowa City, Iowa.
With FA-18 Hornet jets, AH-64 Apaches and OH-58 Kiowa helicopters orbiting overhead, Bandit cordoned the house and moved in on foot.
"Once we got two trucks in place, we dismounted and hit the wall," said Sgt. Adam Lofton, the entry team leader and scout with Bandit. "We noticed movement in the house so we had to move fast. We moved straight into the house and detained the four guys in the first room."
After detaining the suspects, another team of dismounts from Bandit moved into the house to assist with searching the house and vehicles outside. Among the items found were seven AK-47 assault rifle magazines, ammunition and two pistols. One pistol was within arm's reach of one of the suspects in the house. The other pistol, a .357 Magnum revolver was in the glove box of the target suspect's pickup, which is illegal in Iraq.
"They were so fast and so forceful in their movement, that even though the bad guys had weapons, they had no choice but to immediately get on the floor," said Johnson about the execution of the raid by his scouts.
"We are getting higher value targets when we roll out these days," said Lofton, of Lubbock, Texas. "It is a lot better to be able to hit them from the top, right where the money is."
The ability to capture the higher value targets comes from a lot of work by Bandit in their area.
"We are fighting a network of terrorists in this area," said Johnson. "We have a network of intelligence, developing relationships with local people. We spend months working with these people, so one night we can get that phone call telling us that there is a bad guy moving through the area."
During the raid, no shots were fired, and Bandit took no casualties while detaining the suspects.
"It was an absolutely phenomenal performance from blue platoon," said Johnson. "This is the life of a platoon in Iraq these days. They had been on missions all day. They came back, had a couple hours and were getting ready to relax when I called up the platoons to spin them up to go get this guy. It was a validation of all the systems we have in place for this kind of thing. It was an unusually good mission."
| Date Taken: | 04.08.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 04.08.2008 15:48 |
| Story ID: | 18202 |
| Location: | IQ |
| Web Views: | 314 |
| Downloads: | 301 |
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