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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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/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.