My sister, Sierra (the first BK Reads subscriber!) recommended this book. Sierra flies C-17s in the Special Operations Low Level (SOLL) program in Charleston, and this book tells the story of her unit and areas she supports. 

Relentless Strike is pretty dense, but the stories of active firefights and rescues are awesome. The book details the danger that the special units encounter and the challenges of almost exclusively flying missions at night.

Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was founded after the failed evacuations from Iran in the 1980s. The unit was designed for dangerous and covert missions, and the U.S. military saw the need for a unit with designated mobility units to pair with special operations units. The need for JSOC increased substantially following September 11, and counter terrorism became a main focus of the units. 

I did not realize the bureaucracy required to authorize some of the missions. A common theme throughout the book is the constant power struggle between different armed service leadership teams, the executive branch, intelligence teams, and the units on the ground. Naylor draws out the importance of the intelligence community as it related to special ops missions. The advances in intelligence information related to the internet in Iraq and Afghanistan was a major advantage for U.S. forces.

I appreciated the tidbits I learned in the book, but it was a tough read.

Quotes

“The attitude of those in the very few rungs in the chain of command above JSOC seemed to be, “if it’s really hard and it’s really important let’s ask JSOC to do it,

“But the night sky is an unforgiving environment for pilots flying ground-hugging “nap of the earth” flight profiles at more than 100 miles per hour. TF 160 (which officially became the 160th Aviation Battalion in October 1981, but which most JSOC personnel continued to call TF 160) was proud of its night-flying and night-fighting prowess. The unit’s nickname was “The Night Stalkers.” An early unit motto proclaimed “Death waits in the dark.”

“JSOC considered a range of methods for killing Hussein, from shooting the dictator with small arms to having operators call in an air or missile strike. In the end, the officer said, the planning foundered on an all too common failing: “The intel just could not provide the proper foundations for being able to launch a mission like that.” 

“Caught tragically off guard by the September 11 attacks, Bush and his advisers were searching for an answer to the problem of how to wage a global conflict against non–nation-state actors.”

 “For Delta, the primary focus was Saddam Hussein. By December, A Squadron, now led by Mark Erwin, sensed they were closing in on their quarry. “We were getting a lot of intel,” said an operator. “We had rolled up on our rotation anybody who was even remotely close to Saddam: chicks he liked to bang, their husbands, his butler, his tailor, his inner circle, his cooks.”