Nolan Peterson
Back in the day when I was an Air Force Special Operations pilot flying missions over Afghanistan, I belonged to what we called a “stack” of aerial assets that orbited over a target location both prior to and during an operation.
To support a raid on a terrorist hideout in the Hindu Kush, we might have fighters or strike aircraft orbiting overhead, as well as unmanned and manned ISR platforms. We’d also have tankers flying tracks somewhere nearby, offering aerial refueling options to those who needed it, as well as airborne battle management platforms monitoring the whole shebang.
With all this iron in the air, we could monitor a target location (typically a walled-in Taliban compound) for many hours prior to a special operations raid. Different aircraft would tag in and out of the stack, maintaining constant overwatch. We’d observe patterns of life and update the inbound American special operators about the enemy force they’d face.
Once combat began, we were the eyes in the sky for our teams on the ground. Using our advanced sensors, we called out play-by-play updates on what the enemy militants were doing, and where they might be hiding. If one fled the target compound, we’d label them a “squirter” and keep tabs. Sometimes, a clever “squirter” would bring along a wet blanket to use as a form of thermal concealment from our sensors — some ran to a nearby wadi where, if it had recently rained, they’d try to conceal their body heat with water or mud, like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in the movie Predator.
Years later, we now see Ukrainian and Russian soldiers attempting similar tactics to evade detection by small drones equipped with thermal sensors.
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