Looks like they are paid well, with high gas prices they have the money to drive around while on strike. Plus they seem to have nice cars for the most part?

It is a stark reminder of the price of freedom and the bravery of the men and women who choose to defend this country.

While I understand the media is trying to do their job, all of the wild speculation and multiple false reports is really off-putting and seems insensitive to the fact that a tragedy occurred.

My prayers are with all the families and survivors. It makes me even sadder that we have no clear objective for victory anymore in Afghanistan. These men perform their duties so efficiently and with such precision to detail. They deserve a CIC who is focused on victory and does not use them to make himself look good. While I pray for their families, I will also pray that on January 20, 2013 that we have a real adult step as their new CIC.

The tragic loss of so many underscores the high cost of liberty.

Every time I see our flag, I think of the brave ones who daily place their very lives in harm’s way, purchasing for me the privilege of standing on free soil. They are owed an incalculable debt of gratitude. To serve and die in a faroff land, for the freedom of others whom they do not know, is a measure of devotion far beyond inadequate words.

My family and I extend our heartfelt prayers for the families of those who gave their lives. May God grant them comfort and hope in the midst of heartache.

It just seems like such a big, not very agile piece of equipment to my untrained eye.

My prayers,too, are with the families and survivors. It seems to me that it would have been appropriate for the President to have sent some condolences as well, or at least have mentioned the loss……….

to our brave men (and sometimes women) and their families. We have relatives on some of those crews.

The “Jolly Green Giant” (Chinook) is great transport when many troops have to be moved, but it is also a big target.

Media will say what they want. Unfortunately, an RPG can take out a Scout or a Transport or just some soldier walking in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Please blame the **[insert word here]** that fired on our troops … may he soon welcome a Hellfire (AGM-114x) missile with his open arms.

Be they Regular Army, Reserves, or Ops forces, no helicopter crew are going to do less than their best. They died, too.

somewhere that “helicopter crash in eastern afghanistan” was a euphemism/cover story for deaths during SPECFOR missions. This appears to be both. Not trying to be insensitive at all, just curious, but there was an actual crash right? This wasn’t just a mission gone really bad?

Thoughts and prayers to all those families touched by this. Respect and honor to those that gave their lives.

are usually wrong to some degree. Remember the initial leaked stories of the Bin Ladin raid described a fierce battle. We later learned that only 2 or 3 middle aged couriers resisted, no match for an assault troop of SEALs. So perhaps it’s a bit of a futile exercise to spend too much effort analyzing the early reports.

Having said that, two parts of the Naylor story caught my attention. The first was the use of a CH-47 rather than an MH-47. It is not unusual for non-SOF aviation units to provide support to SOF. However, typically those platforms are used for admin and logistics lifts, with the SOF birds used for actual tactical assault roles. There are several plausible explanations. Most likely they are relying more on Chinooks because of their increased lift capacity at high altitude, and they need more platforms than TF160 can provide on a sustainable rotation basis.

The second is the use of DevGru guys as a QRF/IRF for a ranger operation. That is the reverse of the typical roles for these organizations. Again, there are several plausible explanations, and it’s pointless to speculate without knowing the particulars of the tactical and organizational situation that led to that decision. But it does reinforce the notion of a potential shortfall of deployed operational resources to meet the current operational tempo.

This is a political site, so it’s unavoidable to draw some political or policy lessons from this tragedy. This incident dramatically illustrates the folly in Biden’s proposed alternative to the surge two years ago. Democrats love “surgical” SOF operations because they offer the prospect of military success without all the dirty, dangerous downsides of full scale war. They see SOF as a silver bullet: the problem magically goes away, without hurting anyone but the bad guys. But as this operation illustrates, SOF inherently operate at the margins of operational viability, with little tolerance for mistakes, and when things go wrong they can go very wrong. Further, for long term sustainable ops, SOF rely on the infrastructure and backup provided by conventional forces in the same battlespace. A strategy consisting of ceding the country to the enemy and trying to hold the leaders at bay with targeted SOF raids would likely result in multiple incidents like this crash and the “Blackhawk Down” incident in Mogadishu, causing enormous damage to our SOF capability.

It’s tricky to claim that the death of one soldier is more significant than another, but these guys really were the most exceptional of men. Our troops are all heroes, but even among them the SEALs are extraordinary men, and these guys were the hand-picked best of the SEALs, men who have excelled in the most demanding profession on earth. It is as if we had lost our entire Olympic team and all our Nobel prize winners in one plane crash. I hope that OPSEC considerations do not stop the country from getting to know the personal stories behind each of these men, so that we can fully appreciate their incredible pursuit of excellence in life.

Aaron Vaughn was from Union City, Tennessee. He left behind a wife and two young children. His widow asks that we remember all who died, and she and his parents speak from the heart about Aaron’s love of God, family and this country. It’s about 7 minutes long, but is almost all the family talking (very little of Matt Lauer), and is definitely a tribute to the entire SEAL team.

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revolution turns into a fiasco, will Obama take credit for that also?