4 articles
Extortion 17 wasn’t brought down by some grand conspiracy or hidden failure—it was a tragic, rare hit by enemy fighters who happened to be in the right place at the right time with a lucky shot.
During the writing of “The Final Mission of Extortion 17,” I learned of a very interesting type of operation Extortion Company Chinooks supported: MAF, or Mobile Assault Force. During an MAF raid, Chinooks of Extortion Company (the Army aviation unit to which Extortion 17 belonged) would insert members of DEVGRU SEALs using dirt bikes and […]
One of the hallmarks of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) – 160th SOAR(A) – AKA “The Night Stalkers,” is that they rarely fly during the day. One of the most secretive of all American special operations units, the 160th flies during daylight hours only in extreme circumstances. One of these times was during […]
One of the most gripping and interesting parts of writing “The Final Mission of Extortion 17” was the section about how American forces located, determined the identities, tracked, and then struck those responsible for the downing of Extortion 17. Reports stated only that the enemy fighters responsible fled toward Pakistan and were killed with a […]