One of the many benefits Great Satan"s Air dominance sweetly shares is the magical ability to xlate said air dominance into fun event on the ground - especially in combat!
A tactical air control party member from the Washington National Guard is set to receive the Silver Star for his actions in a 13-hour battle in Afghanistan that left about 270 Taliban fighters dead, without a single U.S. or Afghan casualty.
Tech. Sgt. Tavis Delaney, a TACP with the 116th Air Support Observation Squadron, was with another TACP alongside an Army unit May 25 near Do Ab in the mountainous Nuristan province, when his group was ambushed. Pinned down and outnumbered by the large Taliban forces above, Delaney called in airstrikes from 14 airframes from all four services.
“They owned the high ground,” Delaney told Air Force Times last year. “They had fire superiority. They had hundreds of people. And we killed almost all of them and didn’t lose a single American in seven hours of battle. It was seven hours of full-blown, slugfest, back-and-forth, rounds-smacking-right-over-your-head battle.”
Delaney and fellow 116th Squadron TACP Senior Airman Mike McCaffrey were with the 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment, on a mission to visit an area that the Americans hadn’t touched in about two years.
“I kind of thought we’d land, walk up to the district center, shake hands with the subgovernor and call it good,” Delaney said.
The Taliban had been waiting to attack, but the constant onslaught of air power called in by Delaney and McCaffrey pushed them back and protected the Americans and Afghans. Air assets used were F-16s, F-15Es, AC-130s, two Navy F/A-18s, AH-64 Apaches and OH-58 Kiowas, with the help of an MC-12 Liberty surveillance plane to coordinate the battle.
“It was one of the most awesome, awe-inspiring and intimidating sights I’ve ever seen,” Delaney said of watching the special operations AC-130s track down the rest of the Taliban.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m going to kill every last one of these bastards who dare raise their hand against us.’”
Pic - "Air Dominance"
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