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A former partner
in a top-10 global management consulting firm,
Joe Buff is a seasoned risk analyst and professional
writer on national security and defense preparedness.
He is also a novelist of tales of near-future
warfare featuring nuclear submariners and
Navy SEALs in action at their bravest and
best. Two of Joe's non-fiction articles on
future submarine technology and tactics, which
appeared in The Submarine Review, received
literary awards from the Naval Submarine League.
His recent novel Crush
Depth made the Military Book Club's
Top 20 Bestseller List after being selected
as a Featured Alternate of the Club in late
2002. Tidal
Rip was released from Wm. Morrow in
hardcover in November, 2003, and quickly made
the Amazon.com Top 100 General Thrillers Bestseller
List (paperback edition due in October, 2004).
Joe's next book, Straits
of Power, is scheduled for hardcover
publication in November, '04.
Joe is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis,
a non-partisan international scholarly body
headquartered in McLean, VA. He is a Life
Member of the following organizations: U.S.
Naval Institute, the Navy League of the
United States, the Fellows of the Naval War
College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation,
and the Naval Submarine League. Joe's father
was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in
the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951,
and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the
North Atlantic convoys late in World War II,
before being drafted into the U.S. Army to
serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany. In
August, 2004, Joe was made an Honorary Life
Associate Member of the Navy Seabee Veterans
of America, partly in recognition of his pro
bono work for Operation
Seabees Knowledge.
Joe
Buff Article & Column Archive
Joe Buff Contact Info:
readermail@joebuff.com
http://www.JoeBuff.com
Joe Buff Books:
Straits
of Power
Tidal
Rip
Crush
Depth
Thunder
in the Deep
Deep
Sound Channel
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The liaison section, normally led by the officer first in command, will convey real-time reports to higher headquarters, and coordinate intentions and movements with any neighboring Marine, Army, or coalition units. The recon section will perform the actual engineering intelligence-gathering, using digital cameras, laser range finders, portable computers, and other tools and instruments, so the liaison section can provide extensive data toward the rear -- sometimes via satellite -- at a high baud rate. The security section's critical task is force protection: Teams sometimes deploy to remote areas, and they need to be self-reliant in disputed or hostile territory. Picture three Humvees jam-packed with equipment and provisions, bristling with .30 or .50 caliber roof-mounted machine guns, bearing ten men who probably haven't showered in weeks, rolling along on their own to identify passable turf and to locate obstructions, and you'll catch the flavor of SERTs in Iraq in action pretty well. This might sound like a modern version of the "Rat Patrols," but SERT members are knowledge-workers too.
Some of the SERT team will be thoroughly trained in the use of explosives, for destruction of obstacles or as an expedient way to dispose of IEDs that block their path. All members of the team cross-train in communications -- modern radio equipment and procedures -- because they might take casualties while doing their duty; the team's hard-earned intell is useless if not properly and promptly sent to the senior commanders who are eagerly depending on it. Each team includes a corpsman, who needs to be equally ready to treat a wounded comrade, or aid ill or injured civilians whom teams encounter -- just like the corpsman from Battalion 74's SERT gave emergency medical treatment to two badly burned Iraqi children. In addition, a SERT team might have attached to it for some missions a Seabee Underwater Construction Team (UCT). A UCT usually consists of three men, qualified in scuba work and underwater demolitions, who carry out submerged structure inspections, riverbed or swampland or coastal bottom mapping and soil analysis, and underwater blasting, as the occasion might arise. SERT teams are also trained and equipped to operate in a theater where WMDs might be a threat. They have the sensors to test for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons -- or hazardous materials in the environment -- and the suits to protect themselves from contamination. Members of a SERT might also come from the Seabees' Tactical Movement Teams (TMTs). These skills include convoy operations, land navigation, and Arabic language and cultural knowledge.
There's no room for doubt that SERT teams can, and do, operate in the shadows at the forward edge of the battle area. Official Navy news releases commonly use the words "stealth" and "low profile" in connection with the SERTs. An Iraq combat veteran SERT team member who helped me with some background for this essay said he learned camouflage and stealth movement and covert observation techniques from a Marine advisor assigned to his team's parent Seabee battalion. He also acquired, in deadly earnest, hand-to-hand combat training with the Marines at 29 Palms, California. Similar to many special operations forces groups throughout the U.S. military, his team's job was to get in and out of an area as quickly as possible, avoiding detection when they could, grabbing information to greatly multiply the effectiveness of main-line formations. On more than one occasion, at a camp or in a bivouac, this Seabee's SERT team -- with their Humvee gun trucks and their famous knack for combat improvisation -- was asked by an Army or Marine unit, on the spot, to act as the unit's rapid reaction force in case of a sudden enemy assault. If that's not a sign of the greatest respect from one bunch of warriors to another, I don't know what is. And SERTs definitely did come under attack during Operation Iraqi Freedom's major-combat phase: The SERT men from NMCB 4 received the Combat Action Ribbon, well earned during two successful convoy anti-ambush firefights in a single day. They were pushing "up the middle" toward Baghdad during the three-pronged drive to topple Saddam -- heading to relieve NMCB 5's SERT, the first Bees to take hostile fire since Vietnam.
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Perhaps a more recent example, also involving a SERT team from NMCB 4, will further illustrate the traits possessed, and the risks taken, that I think make SERTs a deserving part of special operations forces. In August, 2004, insurgents damaged a key bridge on an important logistics route, by setting off explosives under support structures of the bridge. Within twelve hours of this attack, the SERT team's damage evaluation was in the hands of structural engineers at Naval Facilities Engineering Command Atlantic. A detailed repair recommendation was relayed back to the scene, and forty-eight hours after the original sabotage the bridge was restored to full service. As engineering recon and communications alone, that's an outstanding performance. But there was also the problem of bad guys feeling rather unhappy to see the bridge being fixed so soon. Using the cover of darkness, infiltrators planted an IED under the bridge, and enemy snipers repeatedly took shots at the Seabees as they worked. The SERT team's security component had to be augmented by tanks from 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. Think about that.
Once their job was done, the SERT team withdrew. They were as close to the front lines and the no-man's-land beyond, in a major counterinsurgency campaign, as a person can get. A small group of Seabees performed an unconventional mission applying a unique combination of construction and combat skills, showing initiative and creativity, using high-tech specialized equipment. They leveraged advanced commo gear to deliver crucial recon intell and then tap optimal human expertise provided electronically from thousands of miles away. "Can do!" says it all.
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© 2004 Joe Buff. All opinions expressed
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