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Message: <blockquote data-quote="enrious" data-source="post: 131406" data-attributes="member: 2126">You'll read much of this in the book.Couple of things (and mind you some of this is my supposition)Badly planned?  In retrospect, yes.  However, bear in mind that they had been pulling these sort of operations for almost a month without any problems.  They did not expect one of the helicopters to get shot down (which is where the problems started).  They didn't think the Somalis had anti-air missles (which they didn't) but didn't expect the Somalis to modify anti-tank rockets to fire in the air.  I think some of it was over confidence on the part of the American planners.There was also some overconfidence on the part of the grunts too.  They decided not to bring nightvision goggles or even canteens because they thought it would be another quick routine mission.  They did not plan on the worst outcome.  There was also some friction between the Rangers and Delta Force operatives that would play a role (such as having two captains without either of them knowing who was senior between them)APCs were part of the plan - they were set to arrive a few minutes after the Rangers and D-boys arrived.  For the most part it worked, but when the helicopter got shot down, the APCs had to return to base while the infantry headed to the crash site.Air cover is a mixed blessing, especially in a densely packed environment such as a city - remember also that at the beginning they really did want to limit non-combatant casualties.  They couldn't simply bomb every building around for fear of killing the friendly infantry or needless civillian deaths/injuries.  However later on, during the night, the air cover ruled the skies and basically killed almost everything moving.  In that sense, air support worked.The air support consisted mainly of small, fast gunships.  I don't know if any Apaches were used, but something springs to mind that was learned in the Gulf War of '91.  Apaches require a tremendous amount of maintence in desert/sand conditions - very expensive and inefficient repairs.  Plus they're slow and they already had 2 Blackhawks get shot down within an hour of each other.  My guess is that even if they were available, they would be leary of sending in slow moving expensive targets.Rooftops are a mixed blessing - you can see everything and everything can see you.  It's real easy to sillouhette yourself against the moonlight and present a good target for anyone on the ground.Besides with RPGs going off, I'd want to be behind some protection from the shrapnel.I'll leave this alone and let you decide after reading the book.</blockquote>

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