• “Master Guns Padilla and Master Sgt Keeler are Recon Senior NCO’s trained in controlling the air and all forms of Fire Support not just calling in strikes.”

“We got there just in the right time.”

Within hours and under cover of night, a 16-member team from Marine Corps Special Operations Command Detachment 1 ? including reconnaissance scouts, snipers, fire-support coordinators, communicators and radio recon operators ? flew from its base near Baghdad to a nearby strip and worked its way into the city. The Marines arrived around 1 a.m. and linked up with Special Forces.

For one week, Det 1 and the Special Forces “A” team operated together, pulling security for local officials, taking the high ground around the city and river to provide cover and directing aircraft to strike buildings housing insurgent fighters.

When an Army Stryker brigade combat team arrived days later, Det 1 stayed to help quell the insurgents and plan the eventual retaking of the city before heading to Najaf, which was teeming with insurgents.

The men said it was a seamless blend of skills and high-tech capabilities that the Army units, including one battalion commanded by a Ranger-trained officer, welcomed with open arms.

“They just used us as if we were another one of their teams,” Padilla said, adding that without the Det’s capability to control and synchronize fires, and do command and control, “the Stryker battalions would have went in blind.”

The Det team’s accomplishment, repeated in similar fashion during the intense battle for Najaf later that month, is among the highlights of a combat deployment by an experimental unit that has stayed off the public’s radar.

Det 1 broke ground June 20, 2003, as a “proof of concept” designed to see whether Marines should become part of U.S. Special Operations Command. The Marines, who numbered 102 when they deployed, jumped into intense training before leaving on schedule in April 2004 for Iraq to a six-month deployment that, by most accounts, was successful in proving the Corps should have a seat at SOCom’s table of Army, Navy and Air Force commandos.

But a year after they returned home, after capturing or killing nine insurgent cell leaders and conducting 23 successful direct-action raids, Det 1’s men still hadn’t received new deployment orders. They got only slight attention from Corps leaders and had no idea what was next for them.

• “87 captured or killed including 9 HVT’s.  20% of all of the successful direct-action raids conducted by Coalition Special Operation Forces, even though they only made 10% of the total Coalition SOF in Iraq at that time.  The Assault Element was only 3% of SOF DA forces in Iraq”

The official word arrived before Christmas like an unwelcome relative: The Det would be axed.

“They broke trail for the rest of the Marine Corps to show that we could stand up and play with those guys in any type of warfare to a degree and to a magnitude that we hadn’t considered before,” Huly said in a telephone interview.

“We didn’t know exactly what the final format of MarSOC was going to take until the very end when it was finally approved,” Huly said, adding that he expects some Det 1 members will move into the new command.

So far, a half-dozen Det 1 members are joining MarSOC. It’s unclear how many more will be able to follow them. Some remain baffled why their group was left out. They knew they did well and accomplished the missions given to them.

What studies said

“After multiple repetitions of successful [direct-action] missions, it was apparent that the MCSOCOM Det epitomized SOF planning and missions,” stated a report by Joint Special Operations University, an evaluation ordered by SOCom.

The report recommended Det 1 expand and additional units be organized to have a detachment continuously available “at the soonest time practical” to conduct or support direct-action, special reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, special activities and other missions.

A February 2005 Center for Naval Analyses study said Det 1 “proved itself as a highly trained and flexible force that made significant contributions in Iraq.”

“It’s clear that the Det can perform specific SOF missions. SOF personnel who worked alongside the Det acknowledge its capability and the fact that it operated at a level on par with and, in some cases, above comparable-sized SOF units. Its success was based on its combination of a highly experienced assault element, a robust intelligence element, fire-support personnel and logistics capabilities enabling independent operations,” the study states.

For most of its 33 months of existence, the group remained largely out of view, out of the news pages and off the radar of Corps leadership. Some veterans wonder if the “out of sight, out of mind” status kept Det 1’s members at home when the rest of I Marine Expeditionary Force re-deployed to Iraq this year and took them off the table when it came to developing MarSOC.

“We could have been deployed already,” a frustrated gunnery sergeant said in January, just as I MEF was heading overseas. Det 1, with its collection of high-speed, state-of-the-art equipment and its lightweight body armor “is just sitting, collecting dust. In a time of war, it’s wrong.”

Few Marines knew anything about Det 1, and fewer people outside the Corps know its story.

“Some of the more interesting and some of the more appealing stories have to do with the intelligence element,” much of it still classified, said Maj. John Piedmont, a reservist and historian in Quantico, Va., who’s penning an official publication about the group. “Interesting doesn’t even come close.”

• “The Intel section, comprised of 26 Marines, was partially cannibalized by the NSWTG CO who they were under during the deployment.  In spite of that these Marines provided 29% of the actionable intel used by all SOF, even though they represented less the 3% of SOF in Iraq”

“The whole unit’s story is going to be a catalyst” for the new MarSOC, Piedmont said.

Organizing the unit

Det 1’s strength, said its commander, came from the unique way the group organized itself around battlefield functions: maneuver, communications and control, fires, force protection, intelligence and logistics.

Along with the headquarters element, the Det comprised a reconnaissance element, which included four five-man recon teams; a fires liaison element, which included two fire liaison teams and air controllers; and a 30-member intelligence element, which included radio reconnaissance, human exploitation teams and fusion cells.

“All functions can be executed in one grid square. We can do everything ? all the intel process, high-end communications and everything,” said Col. Robert Coates, the Det’s commander. “We were fielded with emerging technologies that allowed us to do that. And you combine that with hard feet and strong backs, which made us very versatile and a force of choice on the battlefield.”

For its rapid standup and combat readiness, the Det earned a Meritorious Unit Commendation, signed by commandant Gen. Mike Hagee for the period from standup until the Det arrived in Iraq in April 2004.

“Everybody was excited because we knew we were doing something that hadn’t been done before,” said Maj. Wade Priddy, the Det’s operations officer. “All the way, from the beginning, we knew we were under the microscope.”

Pushing the limits

Despite the lack of written guidance and standards, the Det developed training plans focused on the basics ? every man is a rifleman ? so everyone was cross-trained in each of the core skills.

• “This whole section deals with Intel and Support Elements”

“It was very fast-paced,” said Gunnery Sgt. William Johnston, a counterintelligence specialist. “Coming in here exceeded every expectation I had even coming through the door.” The workup cycle, he said, “just blew me away.”

Training wasn’t for the faint of heart. Strap an 80-pound pack on your back for a 25-mile hump in the mountains at elevations of 12,000 feet, just past the point where oxygen in the air begins to thin out.

Some of the Det’s men had a name for that exercise and other training like it: The Man Test.

“Everything was a man test. Everything we did,” said Padilla, who’d done an exchange tour with British Royal Marine commandos. “I’d never seen anything like it. It brought us together, fast.”

But he wasn’t complaining. He referred to the Det’s training workups as “our selection,” like cutting the fat from the meat.

Such training wasn’t something the intel guys were used to. But in the Det, surrounded by strong, Type A personalities, “it becomes a challenge to be better within our own group,” said Gunnery Sgt. Ken Pinckard, the Det’s all-source fusion chief.

That hike was a wake-up call, and a challenge for some.

“There was no acclimation period for us,” Johnston said.

Still, they knew there was reason to it. They trusted their commanding officer.

By the time they got to Iraq, the Det’s men were ready to take on whatever missions they got. Still, many other commands initially didn’t know what to expect of them.

“They couldn’t figure us out,” Priddy said. “A lot of them thought we were regular Marines … who somehow ended up in the wrong spot. Other people looked at us kind of suspiciously.”

Once they saw them operate, the doubts dissipated. The mission in Najaf proved that.

Najaf battles

In August 2004, the Det got a tasking order to support conventional forces fighting in Najaf. It would use its enabling capabilities to support the Army battalions, Marines and Navy SEALs poised to fight in the holy city.

“What they got was a full spectrum of battle-space capabilities,” Coates said.

Army and Marine forces battled militia forces loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, fighting amid the tight urban confines of the Old City and through expansive cemeteries.

U.S. forces fought their way in to encircle the gold-domed Imam Ali Mosque, a sacred Shiite shrine. It was the first major battle for the then-fledgling Iraqi government, which had assumed control two months earlier.
Padilla and the Det’s sniper team coordinated fire support, which included AC-130 and helicopter gunships, working closely with 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, of the Army’s 1st Calvary Division. Organized teams with snipers went several blocks forward of the friendly lines for observation, and the team integrated fires, air support and strikes and communications while heavily engaged, supporting the conventional forces.

“The snipers kept them down in the day, and fires kept them down at night,” Coates said. Some logged “kills” as far as 1,300 to 1,400 meters away.

With a communications architecture that provided “unheard of” amounts of bandwidth, the Det was able to reach back to its intelligence cell, which provided advanced imagery, data, signals intelligence and other products that the Marines were able to hand to the conventional forces to fight the fight.

“They got intelligence products ... that they had never, ever seen before,” Coates said.

“When we showed up, the maps they had were like the maps you buy at a gas station,” said Master Sgt. Ryan Keeler, the communications chief. “We sent back requests, and a day later ... we were able to print them off and take them to the field and also take them to the conventional units we were supporting.

• “Deals with the Topographical Analysis section of the DET.  With their clearance they can pull up satellite intel on almost any where.  They can tell if there footprint fresh dirt, whatever.  These guys are wizards with maps.”

“They couldn’t believe the photo imagery that we were able to get, one block over.”

For more than a week, “Kilo,” Keeler’s radio call sign, became a known voice among the air controllers and pilots hanging over the besieged city.

Keeler recalled that one day, as he caught a few precious hours of sleep after an intense night directing fires, an Army colonel he didn’t know went up to him and kicked him awake.

“So you’re Kilo,” the colonel said to him.

It seemed the colonel just wanted to pass along his thanks. “We put a lot of rounds downrange and put a lot of people out,” he recalled.

The Det left the city several days after a cease-fire was called. It was surreal, seeing insurgents they had been fighting now walking the streets. “It was like the rats coming out,” Padilla said.

A final farewell

Det 1’s men came home to the West Coast, watched and waited, only to see the advent of a new special operations command rising on the East Coast.

The irony isn’t lost on them, although one would be strained to get an on-the-record comment.

They were in the dark. They thought they’d be absorbed as MarSOC’s first unit, since they already had the men, the gear and the equipment. They crafted recommendations about where the Corps should go with a Det but felt largely ignored. Few decision-makers, if any, officially asked for their ideas.

They continued to train, some until the deactivation. A few have gone east with new orders in hand, some have retired or left service, and others have shifted to other units.

The Det’s men amassed at least 11 Bronze Stars for combat valor during the unit’s sole deployment. Keeler and Padilla were among the recipients.
At least seven Det members received the Bronze Star without a combat distinguishing device for meritorious achievement.

And at least a dozen members netted Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with “V” for valor.

Composition: Who's in a MSOC and what do they do?

There are currently plans to make 9 MSOCs: 5 east in 2^nd MSOB, 4 west in 1^st MSOB.

Each MSOC will be commanded by an 0-4 Major.  Each will consist of  97 to 118 Marines.  The MSOC that has just deployed with the 26^th MEU(SOC) has 115.  From what I’ve gathered so far here’s the breakdown:

• 42 Reconnaissance Marines.
• Broken into 2x 21 man plts.
• Each plt consists of a 3 man HQ cell.  1x Plt CO: 0-3 Cpt.  1x Plt Sgt E-7 Gunnery Sgt.  1x E-4 & above Petty Officer or Chief PO SARC (Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman)
• 3x Recon teams per plt. Each team consisting of 6 Recon Marines lead by an E-6 SSgt.  All Recon Marines are E-4 Cpl and above.
• That’s a total of 6 recon teams per MSOC.  Marine RT’s operate independent of their Comm. Offs and Plt Sgt .

 The rest of the MSOC setup gets a little tricky b/c its modular.  I’ll start with the MSOC HQ section.  Here’s what I have so far:

• MSOC CO 0-4 Major, XO Cpt.
• 2 man Operation section both either E-8 Master Sgt or E-7 GySgt.
• 2 man Communications Section. MSgt & Gunny.
• 2 man Rigger/Armory NCO SSgt/GySgt.
• X-man maybe 1-3 man SARC section, same as recon section.
• 4-6 man Logistics, Motor T, and Admin section.
• 2 man Fire Support Liaisons from ANGLICO.

 Another section that can see Fluctuation is the Intel sect:

• 6 man HET or Human/Int Exploitation Team.  Composed of 1x Counter Intelligence Chief Warr. Off.  2x Count. Intel Marines Sgt & up.  And 3x Human Interrogators.
• 6 or 9 man Radio Reconnaissance Team.  Lead by a SSgt.  I don’t have the exact MOS’s in front of me but its 3 redundant jobs.  I believe one intercepts Data and Codes, one intercepts Voice Comm, and one transmits and supports allied Comm.  All RRT Marines are trained in various foreign languages B4 coming to MarSOC.
• 6-10 man All Source Fusion Team.  Composed of Intel Analysis & Topographical Analysis Marines.

 Last is the Security section made up of Infantry Marines.  From what I’ve gathered its 1 to 2 plts in the same set-up as the Recon Plts:

• 21 man plt.
• 1 x 3 man HQ Cell.  But Plt Co is a 0-2 1^st Lt & Plt Sgt is a E-6 Sgt.
• 1 x 3 Infantry Teams.  6 Marines each. But team leader will be an E-5 Sgt.

Training: What is the Training Pipeline and who receives what?

The Entire Training pipeline has not yet been made public yet.  However what has been said so far is that all Marines in the MSOC are to be trained to FR standards & beyond.  All Marines in the MSOC are HALO & HAHO qual’d to 29,999ft (that was the exact number printed), all are Combat Scuba qual’d, along with all the specialized insertion and extraction techniques used by FR and all SOF.  All are trained in Long Range Reconnaissance and Surveillance, Direct Action, basically all the same skills as FR.  However the Recon element is the lead section for all assaults b/c of their years of experience the qualifications won’t drop for the Supp & Intel Marines.

What I don’t know at this time is whether or not all MSOC Marines would attend BRC or not?  My guess would be yes b/c B4 MARSOC, FR and RRT Marines constantly trained together and BRC was Mandatory for all RRT Marines. 

I don’t know it for sure therefore it can’t speculate.  However I know that prior to MARSOC, FR’s In-House training program had a program called CRP the Combat Replacement Program.  And they trained the logistics and admin personnel in the FR Co HQ plt in all those skills w/out attending the formal schools.  But the MSOC’s personnel are not replacements and will be conducting their own missions, but more on that in the missions section.

Missions: This question most people already have a general answer for but what I'll be addressing is what most people outside the Marine Corps don't understand about how the MC operates, and what has been absent in SOCOM to date.  That’s a Full Spectrum Battle-Spacing Capability; the MSOC will provide this along w/ a previously unseen level of unit flexibility.

Tasking: This was a big question. When they deploy w/ a MEU(SOC) they are under the tactical control(tacon) of the MEU CO(*1), an 0-6 COL, and the OPCON of the TSOC, Theater Special Operations CO usually a 3star, they say "separable but not separate" from the MEU.  But when a mission comes down the pipe, who do they belong to? If the TSOC needs them do they leave the MEU(SOC) w/out any Special Mission capability. Keep in mind the MEU(SOC) sacrificed the MSPF so the MSOCs could be formed.

• (*1) When at sea the entire MEU(SOC), including the MSOC, is under the command of the Navy PHIBRON CO, an 0-6 CAPT.

These I put together b/c it is the Meat and potatoes of how they operate.  MSOC will deploy on the MEUs as 97-118 man Dets. But when they get tasked missions they will operate similar to DET-1 in task unit varying in size from 2-18 man teams of various MOS’s depending on the task assigned.

From what I know right now they simply refer to these teams simply as stacks.  What I’m being told is that there are 6x 16-18 man stacks, named Alpha thru Fox stack.  The general set-up of these stacks are 1x 6man recon team, 1x 6man Infantry team,  1 HET Marine, with x-positions to fill out the stack depending on mission requirement; Snipers, EOD, Radio Recon, whatever the mission calls for.  Each stack will be lead by a Senior NCO w/ a Recon background either a Gunny (E7), (Top) Master Sgt (E8), or a Master Guns (E-9) from the HQ cell.  will control all air support and fire support.

You have already read about the teams Master Guns Padilla and Top Keeler lead in the prev. art. For further task description there is about one of the Bronze Stars that was handed to one of the Counter Intel (CI) Marines.

A brief summary of the story is that CJSOTF-AP COL Repass a US Army COL had made a complaint to the Commander CJSOTF that the NSWTG-AP CO CDR Wilson that he was not using the DET as per their charter and that the Marines were not getting fair opportunities to show their capabilities.

The fact was he was pissed that CDR Wilson was using an 8 man team from the DET for a PSD mission when he wanted them transferred to a small Army base south of Baghdad.  An SF team and a SEAL plt  were operating from it and were getting shelled daily from mortars for months, and for a period of weeks it had been very precise.  He wanted the 8 man team transferred b/c of its composition; it was a 6 man Recon Team w/ 2 CI Marines.

They transferred an 8 man SEAL team to the PSD for the DET team.  Within 3 days the CI Marines believed they had isolated the cause.  They believed small group of merchants on base pumping the soldiers for info and using birds to help the mortarmen adjust fire. 

Instead of arresting the group they thought they could take down the whole cell.  So they spread a lie among the soldiers of the base that it was a secret that a White House Official was coming to speak in 3 days.  The only one’s who knew it was a lie was the Base CO/XO and the SOF.

The Night B4 Recon had infiltrated the nearby town in OP hide sites to identify the areas of fire. On D-Day CI had arranged for there to be a mock convoy of Suburbans to come thru.  B4 the convoy arrived all the SOF and the CI Marines left the base and waited on the outskirts of the city.

The MSOC brings a much smaller footprint and more capability to Special Operations.  With a 16 man stack they can cover all areas of the battlefield.  More than most JSOTFs of 200 or more men.  And can send out up to 6 stacks at a time.

For example prior to MARSOC, RRTs could then and can now access National and Theater Signals Intel that was inaccessible to Tier II SOF, Intel that was only accessible to SMUs.  Intel that if they wanted they had to send a request up the chain that was sometimes denied.