Special forces capture Agassiz School in helicopter assault

This is a really interesting story. The spokesperson quoted is identified elsewhere as being attached to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (A). Those are the folks who, for example, flew the aircraft in the Bin Laden raid. And the unit is frequently deployed through JSOC - the only part of the US military to have a standing authorization to 'advise' local and federal law enforcement on domestic matters.

The story doesn't give much of a hint as to whom they were inserting on the ground, but that's what I'd really love to know. The Tier One units - DevGru and Delta - might theoretically deploy in response to a domestic terrorist incident. But most of the special operations community doesn't deploy domestically.

So there are two possibilities here. The less likely one is that this was just what the public releases claimed - a high-priority homeland security training exercise to boost interoperability of various components and hone skills. But it's tough to believe that, say, the Coast Guard or the Boston Police learned anything terribly useful from participating as classified, high-tech helicopters inserted special operators into an abandoned building. That's just not a situation with which they're going to be dealing.

It's far more likely that this was part of the training and pre-deployment re-certification schedule of one or more units within the special operations community. It looks like they've hosted similar exercises in the past year in, among other places, Miami and San Antonio. If you were targeting homeland security and working on cooperation with vital agencies, you'd be much better off running the first exercises in New York and Washington. (San Antonio? Really?) But it's much tougher to keep a low profile in those cities. So what we're probably dealing with is a training exercise, intended to prepare special operators for deployment abroad into urban areas, run under the cover story of 'homeland security.'

And we should all be a little miffed about that. I don't like being lied to; I can't see what particular purpose it serves in this case. If it's urban assault training, don't tell us it's homeland security, even if it might theoretically someday serve that purpose. And there are risks here - the 160th SOAR(A) has had two fatal training accidents in the past two years, in which its aircraft crashed during maneuvers. Conducting exercises over densely-populated neighborhoods amplifies those risks. I certainly hope that they never lose a helicopter over and American city. But if they eventually do - and realistic training is inherently dangerous - the failure to ask questions before may come to seem a missed opportunity.