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US Spectre gunship attacks targets in Somolia

Cylinder

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Cylinder
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U.S. targets al Qaeda suspects in Somalia, Pentagon official says

A U.S. gunship has attacked suspected al Qaeda targets in southern Somalia, a senior Pentagon official said Monday.

The AC-130 flew its mission within the last 24 hours, the official told CNN. The operation was launched based on intelligence that al Qaeda operatives were in the location, but there was no immediate indication of how successful the strike had been.

Additionally, the official said, the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has moved within striking distance of Somalia, but its jets have not been put to use.

Three al Qaeda operatives accused in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania have been hiding in Somalia for years. The US believes they were closely tied to the Somali Islamic group - the ICU.

"We had seen intelligence evidence these three Al Qaeda operative were very much influencing the leadership of the council of the ICU -- for example providing logistics, fuel and arms to the militias," said Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs

U.S. officials in East Africa said earlier this week that al Qaeda operatives were developing the ability to attack U.S. targets just as they did when the embassy bombings killed hundreds.
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Hrmm... That must have been a fairly high-value and diffuse target to send in the Spectre. Very interesting development...
 
An obvious suspicion has to focus on the suspects in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania during the 90s. The US asked Ethiopia and the new government of Somalia for them last week. Maybe the government decided to extradite them to Allah instead.
 
Cylinder said:
Maybe the government decided to extradite them to Allah instead.
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Yes, Allah is just and all-knowing. He will decide. I'm all for letting him decide the fate of many other terrorists as well.
 
A little more detail from the Washington Post.

The strike took place near the Kenyan border, according to a senior officer at the Pentagon. Other sources said it was launched at night from the U.S. military facility in neighboring Djibouti. It was based on joint military-CIA intelligence and on information provided by Ethiopian and Kenyan military forces operating in the border area.
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From the same article:


One target of the strike, sources said, was Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese who is married to a Somali woman and has lived in Somalia since 1993 -- the year of the attack against U.S. troops that was chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down." In a 2001 U.S. court case against Osama bin Laden, Sudani was described by a leading witness as an explosives expert who was close to the al-Qaeda leader.

More recently, Sudani was identified by U.S. intelligence as a close associate of Gouled Hassan Dourad, head of a Mogadishu-based network that operated in support of al-Qaeda in Somalia. Dourad is one of 14 "high-value" prisoners transferred last September from CIA "black sites" to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Abu Talha al-Sudani dossier from GlobalSecurity.org. Note that they seem to confirm the strike was against Sudani.

Some basic information on al Sudani's network from ThreatsWatch.org.

The East African al-Qaeda network in Somalia established by Tariq Abdullah (Abu Talha al-Sudani) that includes a number of senior al-Qaeda terrorist including operations chief Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who is believed to be the current head of al-Qaeda in East Africa, as well as Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, all of whom are believed have been involved in both the August 1998 bombing of the US embassies in East Africa and the November 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa that coincided with a failed plot to shoot down an El Al airliner. Other senior al-Qaeda members believed by Kenyan authorities to be based in Somalia include Issa Osman Issa, Fumo Mohamed Fumo, Salim Samir Baamir, and Mohamed Mwakuuza Kuza. In keeping with the al-Qaeda model, these individuals do not so much maintain their own organization in Somalia so much as coopt existing Somali groups for their purposes and act as the primary link between them and the broader al-Qaeda network.
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The Counterterrorism Blog is speculating that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, aka Harun Fazul, was also a target of the strike. Fazul was the mastermind in the African Embassy Bombings and is under indictment in the US for that attack. Both were key players in the US v Osama bin Laden indictment handed down in Feb. 2001.
 
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This is looking more like an al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa version of Appalachin. From The Guardian:

The U.S. military launched a strike Monday against several suspected members of al-Qaida in Somalia, CBS News reported Monday.

The targets, CBS reported, included the senior al-Qaida leader in East Africa and an al-Qaida operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The same operatives are also believed responsible for a 2002 attack on Israeli tourists in Kenya and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli aircraft the same day, NBC News reported.

Citing Pentagon sources, CBS reported that an Air Force AC-130 gunship led the attack against the site at the southern tip of Somalia. There was no confirmation that the Air Force had killed either of the al-Qaida targets.
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I guess we now know why the US Navy has been blocking the sea routes out of Somalia. The use of the AC-130 gunship is critical here because of its ability to loiter above a target. Fingers crossed.
 
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Apparently the AP is reporting that airstrikes are continuing this morning (US time).

Last nights raids reportedly targeted Badmadow Island - off the southernmost tip of Somalia's border with Tanzania and the site of the Ras Kamboni terrorism complex where "many" Islamic fighters have been killed and on the outskirts of Afmadow, 150 miles to the north. Ras Kamboni is considered to be the Islamist redoubt after the fall of Mogadishu.
 
Cylinder said:
I guess we now know why the US Navy has been blocking the sea routes out of Somalia. The use of the AC-130 gunship is critical here because of its ability to loiter above a target. Fingers crossed.
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I analogized the difference between say a strike fighter or A-10 or even an Arc Light with a Spectre loitering like the difference between a tornado and a hurricane.

Uh-rah.
 
[pessimist] Lets hope the intelligence received and acted upon was better sourced than the Afghan wedding we bombed a year or so ago [/pessimist]

That out of the way, I have no major compunctions regarding hitting terrorists, especially when they are on the run and out in the open. I just hope the HUMINT or SIGINT (Human Intelligence or Signal Intelligence) we acted on was accurate.

My guess is the Kenyans (who certainly don't want any of this mess to spill over their borders more than it has) probably had a big hand in this--after all, most of the Embassy deaths were Kenyan natives.

We shall see.
 
UnrepentantSinner said:
I analogized the difference between say a strike fighter or A-10 or even an Arc Light with a Spectre loitering like the difference between a tornado and a hurricane.

Uh-rah.
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AC-130, which technically comes in two flavors , the H and U, is either called Spectre or Spooky. I generally think of them as "cool" and "super cool." They both have a variety of advantages when they can operate in a permissive AD environment: low odds of SAM activity. Their on-station time and low speed allow for rapid target revisit. The accuracy of their targeting with some exotic sensors, and weapons, allow for a selective application of fires, and extremely low odds of collateral damage. Those features make them an extremely popular selection in the MOUT tool kit.

DR
 
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Today's roundup:

The Washington Post is reporting the possibility of some success:

In an interview early Tuesday, Abdirizak Hassan, chief of staff for Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, confirmed the strike. Hassan said he heard from American officials that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed had been killed, although U.S. officials said he had not been in their immediate sights. "Among the targets was Fazul," he said, "and we understand that Fazul is no more."

Hassan also said Somali officials authorized the strike. "We gave permission for actions that are more than airstrikes," Hassan said. "Whatever it means to rout these people out, we have given them permission."
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US SOCOM Boots on the Ground in Somalia?

The al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic Courts Union’s surprisingly rapid retreat in the face of Ethiopia’s military campaign in Somalia has puzzled many observers. How could the Ethiopians roll up the jihadists so quickly? Pajamas Media has learned that one significant factor is that U.S. air and ground forces covertly aided the Ethiopian military since its intervention began on Christmas day.

U.S. ground forces have been active in Somalia from the start, a senior military intelligence officer confirmed. “In fact,” he said, “they were part of the first group in.”

These ground forces include CIA paramilitary officers who are based out of Galkayo, in Somalia’s semiautonomous region of Puntland; Special Operations forces; and Marine units operating out of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti...

Pajamas Media previously reported that Ethiopia’s use of helicopter gunships capable of targeting the Islamic Courts Union’s ground forces was a decisive factor in the army-to-army fighting against the ICU. A senior military intelligence source says that some of the gunships earlier described as Ethiopian were in fact U.S. aircraft. This has been confirmed by Dahir Jibreel, the transitional government’s permanent secretary in charge of international cooperation, who said that U.S. planes and helicopters with their markings obscured have been striking targets since December 25.
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Somali President Green Lights US Strikes; US Navy Joins the Fray

he US "has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania," the Somali president, Abdullahi Yusuf, told journalists in Mogadishu.

Though the US has been mounting covert operations in Somalia in recent years, the attacks amount to its first direct involvement since disastrous "Black Hawk Down" operation during the early 90s.

After the strikes, the US navy confirmed that it had moved the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower to join three other warships patrolling the Somali coast to prevent Islamist fighters from escaping by sea. US planes were conducting "intelligence-gathering missions" over Somalia, a navy spokesman said.
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It's basically the C130 cargo ship loaded up with armaments, and designed to circle around a target or area, keeping it under a continuous broadside attack.
 
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/01/09/somalia.strike.ap/index.html

"In Brussels Tuesday, European Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said the U.S. airstrikes would not contribute to bringing about long-term peace."

Amadeu can bite me. Not only are Spookies and Spectres kick-a** machines, this is exactly the sort of thing we SHOULD be doing. If killing terrorists doesn't contribute to his vision of peace, I want no part of it. And the UN peacekeeping forces that Javier Solana proposes sending in would be both incapable of doing and unwilling to do what we just did.
 
If you want to see some combat camera of Spooky at work, try here.

It's not for the faint-of-heart and possibly NSFW. Broadband recommended.
 
Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/01/09/somalia.strike.ap/index.html
"In Brussels Tuesday, European Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said the U.S. airstrikes would not contribute to bringing about long-term peace."
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That wasn't their purpose, as I understand it. Indeed, the chimera of "long term peace" in the Horn of Africa has been unattainable by a lot of means, to include feeding the foreign aid junkies, and doing nothing, as well as non involvement. See also the current UN and AU operations in Darfur, which are politically hamstrung and thus unlikely to achieve any long term peace beyond the peace of the grave for the targets of jinjaweed irregulars.

The purpose of those air operations was to kill terrorists. That may or may not "bring peace," but it does reduce the capability of that terrorist organization to operate. I don't call blowing up embassies peaceful, but perhaps I am missing some subtle point.

In war, killing the enemy is a method of getting to a peace settlement. Given OBL's pronouncement of a war, I'd say he and his organization would expect to be treated as targets. This gentleman's opinion, from Brussels, hardly addresses the matter at hand.

DR
 
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Cylinder said:
If you want to see some combat camera of Spooky at work, try here.

It's not for the faint-of-heart and possibly NSFW. Broadband recommended.
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Wow. I have to admit that that was fascinating, and thanks for providing the link. It was striking to hear the soldiers talking about the "two other guys that [they] saw fly apart," but I suppose that's the reality of war. Does it surprise anyone else that such footage is available for the public to see or is it pretty common and I've just been living a sheltered life?
 
Katana said:
Wow. I have to admit that that was fascinating, and thanks for providing the link. It was striking to hear the soldiers talking about the "two other guys that [they] saw fly apart," but I suppose that's the reality of war. Does it surprise anyone else that such footage is available for the public to see or is it pretty common and I've just been living a sheltered life?
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If this is the four year old, or more, footage in B&W of a mission in Afghanistan, I have heard the following:

The release of that bit of foim on to the internet got some people into serious trouble. The likelihood that more recent footage will make it to the internet is rather small. My browser was unable to open it, but I had ample time to see the old Afghanistan mission footage a little while after it came out.

DR
 
Darth Rotor said:
If this is the four year old, or more, footage in B&W of a mission in Afghanistan, I have heard the following:

The release of that bit of foim on to the internet got some people into serious trouble. The likelihood that more recent footage will make it to the internet is rather small. My browser was unable to open it, but I had ample time to see the old Afghanistan mission footage a little while after it came out.

DR
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Ah. Interesting. It was in Afghanistan and in black & white, but there was no information about the date. Maybe Cylinder can speak to that. My guess is that it's the footage that you're talking about.
 
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