Since Ghazi Pakistan Air Base, the modified MH-60 helicopter headed for the garrison of Abbottabad district, about 30 kilometers from Islamabad. On board Navy SEALs, flown across the border with Afghanistan, along with signs of tactics, intelligence, and highly ranked sailors using hyperspectral imaging.
After bursts of more than 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, made by a double hit - boom, boom - the left side of his face. His body was on board the helicopter that made the return trip. One had suffered a mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.
If not for this high-value target, which could have been a routine mission for special training and very mythical SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development, but it is known even to local home Base Dam Neck Virginia DevGru only.
The HVT was special, and incursions requires practice, so that replicates the one-acre compound. test runs were carried out in early April.
DevGru belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command, an extraordinary and unusual collection of classified permanent work forces and special units of the missions. Point to the president and operate throughout the world based on the legal (or outlaw) the premises of classified presidential directives. Although public awareness of the special SEALs and Delta Force brothers, most leaks JSOC missions ever. JSOC only hear when something goes wrong (a British aid worker accidentally killed) or when something really big (a merchant marine captain is rescued at sea), and even then, the army remains particularly sensitive about their existence. JSOC operatives several dozen have died in Pakistan in recent years. Their names are released by the Defense Department as usual, but with a cover story - usually killed in training accident in eastern Afghanistan. That's the code.
How to avoid the helos in the air defense network in Pakistan? Is it parody transponder codes? Were painted and decorated with teams from the Pakistan Air Force? If so - and may never know - two other JSOC units, the application technique and Aviation Program Office of Technology Assessment Group, was responsible. These are really the squirrels in silence - not getting public credit and no matter one iota. Since 9 / 11, JSOC units and its working groups have become the most effective and lethal weapon of the U.S. government against terrorists and their networks, building on a lot of undesirables, and sometimes unfavorable attention to themselves in the process.
JSOC costs the nation more than $ 1 billion a year. The command has its critics, but has escaped the scrutiny of Congress has significant and largely operated with impunity since the 9 / 11. Some of his interrogators and the operators involved in the torture and rendition, and the line between its intelligence and the CIA has been blurred.
But Sunday's operation provides strong evidence that the CIA and JSOC work well together. Sometimes, intelligence must be developed quickly to get inside the enemy's operational loop. And sometimes needs to be cultivated, grown as if they were sensitive bacteria in a petri dish.
In an interview at CIA headquarters two weeks ago, a senior intelligence official said the two groups of proud American warriors secret was "basically integrated deconflicted" - finally - 10 years after the 9 / 11. In fact, according to accounts by five senior journalists, government officials Sunday night, the CIA gathered intelligence that led to bin Laden's location. A memo from CIA director, Leon Panetta, sent late Sunday offers some clues about how the information was collected and analyzed. It thanked the National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for your help. NSA discovered somehow that there was no telephone or Internet service on campus. How did it without the knowledge of Pakistan is a secret. The NGIA makes maps of the military but also develops their pattern recognition software - no doubt to help establish, in February this year that the CIA would say "high probability" that Bin Laden and his family were living there.
Recently built a new JSOC Analysis and Guidance Center in Rosslyn, Virginia where the National Counterterrorism Center tends to focus on threats to the homeland, CAAT, whose existence was first revealed by The Associated Press, focuses on outdoors, in active "kinetic" - - or death - counterterrorism missions abroad. Its creation was surprised by the director of NCTC, Michael Leiter, who was suspicious about his intention until he visited.
That the center could be standing under the nose of some of the nation's intelligence officials of higher rank without their full knowledge testifies to the power and scope of JSOC, whose size has tripled since the 9 / 11. The mandate now includes more than 4,000 soldiers and civilians. It has its own intelligence division, which may or may not have been involved in the effort last night, and it has engulfed a number of free float of the Department of Defense entities allowed to quickly acquire, test, and technologies new field.
Under a variety of standing orders, JSOC is involved in more than 50 ongoing operations covering a dozen countries, and its units, with the support of so-called "white" or recognized institutions of special operations, such as Rangers, special forces battalions, SEAL teams, and units of the Air Force Special Operations largest Special Operations Command are responsible for most of the "kinetic" action in Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials are aware of the enormous stress that 10 years of war have been in the command. JSOC resources are taxed by the operational tempo in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said. The current commander, Vice Admiral William McRaven, and generally mayorJoseph Votel, the replacement nominee McRaven, have been pushing to add people and intelligence, surveillance and recognition technology to areas outside the theater of war where al-Qaida and its members continue to thrive.
Earlier this year, it seemed that the elite units faced the same budget pressures that the entire army was experiencing. Not anymore. The military found a way, largely by reducing staffing and other loans Special Operations Command, to add 50 positions JSOC. And Votel want to add several squadrons of "Level One" units - Delta and the SEALs.
When Gen. Stanley McChrystal became JSOC commanding general in 2004, he and his intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, set about transforming the way in which subordinate units analyze and act on intelligence. The insurgents in Iraq were exploiting the slow decision loop that coalition commanders used and the interrogation techniques were frowned upon after the Abu Ghraib scandal. But the hunger for business intelligence tactics of the insurgents was palpable.
JSOC how to solve this problem remains a closely guarded secret, but people familiar with the unit indicate that McChrystal and hardened command Flynn introduced the basic techniques of criminal forensics, and then uses advanced technology to transform yet rated bits data into useful intelligence. One way to do this was to create into the fusion cells deployed where JSOC units were paired with intelligence analysts of the NSA and the NGA. This analysis helped the CIA to establish a high degree of probability, that Osama bin Laden and his family were hiding in that particular compound.
These technicians could "exploit and analyze" data from the battlefield instantly, using their access to various government biometrics, facial recognition, and databases of voice print. These cells also uses advanced surveillance technology and computer analysis of patterns based on predictive models of behavior of the layer of insurgents in real-time observations.
The military has begun to incorporate these techniques across the services. Flynn and will soon be promoted to a post within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which will be the task of transforming the way intelligence is gathered, analyzed and used.