#294 Pete Blaber - Part 1: Delta Force Commander on Roberts Ridge: The Battle of Takur Ghar

“So again, my advice would be go low-viz, make it a clandestine. We should never say we have, we're even, you know, that mission is ongoing, but the infiltration should be starting right now. Obviously, Spanish speakers are a lot of seventh group guys, a lot of guys who, you know, can blend in down there would be needed. And I think, you know, it would not be that hard to do some serious damage to them.”

“When you go into a contentious, very sensitive area like that, like counter-narcotics, where it's sensitive because, as you know, the narco-traffickers are embedded in the local society. And not all of them are the rich cartel kingpins. Some of them are the fruit stands. So you start, you know, if some of them are included, collateral damage or whatever, you've just lost the hearts and minds for further ops.”

“The mothership is the big drone. It's got the legs, it's got the antennas, and it's got the power to power that antenna. So, you know, it can go farther, send signals back from farther away, but it gets to vicinity, the target opens up its payload and out come the mini drones. And the mini drones swarm the target, or targets, and that they can go in a complete silent mode, because the only thing they're communicating with is directly back up to the mothership.”

“It's still just a Glock 19. Just a simple gun. I've dropped it in the mud many a times. I slept with it. I had it in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was my side arm. It always functions. I got a Trigicon sight on mine, red dot sight. I can hit anything with that, up to 100 meters. And again, I've got tons of other guns.”

“Again, I don't want to sound like a contrarian, but I wouldn't put a timeline on it. One of the things I think Putin did for Russia was he never told his generals there's any time limit on, you know, take this sector. If you go back, read about the Eastern Front, you're amazed at what they did, how they crushed the Germans, the cores of Germans at a time. And all through their strategic acumen, they think deeply about strategy, and then they implement it over time.”