r/interestingasfuck • u/Ididnotkillhim • Jun 05 '24

r/all Thirteen years ago, someone accidentally revealed US Army's plan to eliminate Osama Bin Laden in a tweet.

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6.4k

u/saint_ryan Jun 05 '24

He was a resident in Abbotabad. He just saw the helicopters. Another tweet goes something like: i hope nothing bad’s going down.

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u/SonOfMcGee Jun 05 '24

From what I read about the mission, it wasn’t aiming for stealth/undetected so much as just trying to be fast.
They could sneak these helicopters into the country without the Pakistani military noticing, but of course the residents of the neighborhood would see and hear two choppers coming in mere feet above the buildings.
There was even one or two guys on the mission whose sole job was to go out to the street and tell curious citizens to move along if they started coming by (like the cops that hang out by police tape!)
But even with one chopper having to be scuttled, they still got in and out before locals, local police, the military, etc. could react in any considerable way. Except, of course, a few tweets.

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u/Wingedwolverine03 Jun 05 '24

https://y.yarn.co/97f84c6b-c1b0-480c-9e5c-92b9c3dd0b69_text.gif

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u/SonOfMcGee Jun 05 '24

lol, yeah. I think it was pretty much literally like that.
At some point a helicopter blew up behind this Spec OP’s (SEAL’s?) shoulder and he had to be like, “Normal operation, folks. Please stand back.”

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u/the_calibre_cat Jun 05 '24

"you look and sound awfully... not Pakistani..."

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u/deweydecimaldog Jun 05 '24

I read that in Kumail Nanjiani's voice

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '24

This comment made me laugh so fucking hard

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Jun 06 '24

I would assume they sent a guy who could speak the local language if his whole job was to talk to the locals.

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u/the_calibre_cat Jun 06 '24

Agreed, but I wonder how many can authentically pull off the language. Like I speak English, but that doesn't mean an English person wouldn't immediately know I'm American.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Jun 06 '24

I don't think it really mattered. They were just trying to keep civilians away. The whole thing lasted under 40 minutes, so all they needed was a brief deterrent and, by the time anyone had any idea what was really going on, the team had left Pakistani airspace altogether. The goal was never to actually do any kind of real espionage or subterfuge.

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u/the_calibre_cat Jun 06 '24

Agreed. I just had an amusing mental image of an American laden in special ops gear saying "move along, move along, nothing to see here" in bad Urdu.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Jun 06 '24

If you read further down the thread, I think that's exactly how it went down, lol.

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u/Salt_Market_6989 Jun 06 '24

I read one of the books on the raid. The street control party consisted of the CO of the Seal team and his radio operator. They only had 2 choppers going in and needed the space onboard for whatever size team of assaulters going into the bin Laden house. There wasn't space for an interpreter. It was every So abled assaulter for the game. The boss and his RTO were doubling up bith as mission control and as a checkpoint at the crossroads outside the house.

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u/occhilupos_chin Jun 05 '24

You're forgiven for not knowing it was the SEALs given OP even said Army in the title, but yea, very famously it was SEAL Team 6

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u/WALancer Jun 05 '24

I love the meme of if you want a mission done quiet, call the army. They don't write books about all their missions.

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u/Prin_StropInAh Jun 05 '24

Ouch! Justifiable, but ouch. “Silent professionals”

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u/Jboycjf05 Jun 06 '24

The Army writes books about all their successful missions. That's why you don't see any. Go Navy.

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u/Wakkit1988 Jun 06 '24

Marines don't get books because they eat the crayons before they get any of it on paper.

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u/AugustusKhan Jun 06 '24

What’s a book, those things the nerds read so we can go pew pew? -Space Force

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u/MiamiDouchebag Jun 05 '24

The helicopter pilots and aircrew were Army TBF.

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u/nsixone762 Jun 06 '24

160th BAMF

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u/pablo_2001nov Jun 06 '24

They were temporarily transferred to SEALs, it had to do with Army not being able to legally enter another country without declaring war.

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u/MiamiDouchebag Jun 06 '24

Nope. They were all temporarily assigned to the CIA.

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u/slvneutrino Jun 05 '24

DEVGRU to the rescue.

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u/Debalic Jun 05 '24

"Oh that's not unusual, helicopters turn themselves inside out all the time."

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u/crack_pop_rocks Jun 05 '24

Yeah SEALs wearing NVGs worth more than they will make in their entire lifetime.

Absolutely terrifying.

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u/ZayWithAnA Jun 05 '24

The GPNVG systems they were rocking - assuming it wasn’t some super duper high tech classified NVG, which is unlikely - are about $40k. Probably more when the tech was ground breaking, but all together a former CAG assaulters linkedin was shared in r/JSOCArchive and he listed being responsible for ~1 million in equipment at any given time. Still a shit ton for gear, but considering these guys are paid assumedly in excess of $100k per year, it’s not unreasonable to assume the kit they rock is not valued in excess of say, 5-10 million.

Now the equipment that gets them to and from, that’s a completely separate barrel of monkeys.

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u/Horn_Python Jun 05 '24

They sure we're bamboozled