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Surprise parachutists likely from Special Operations Command
Only partly addresses the mystery from Sunday's post. U.S. Special Operations Command sez it wuz us and that's all they would say. Nobody got hurt so butt out. Those werent just unidentified, heavily armed parachutists who accidentally invaded a state prison in Cañon City last week. Those were unidentified, heavily armed parachutists from U.S. Special Operations Command, or maybe foreigners working with the command, the Defense Department said today. The command took responsibility for the training exercise gone awry that culminated with 25 men dropping from the sky into a cornfield on the grounds of the Fremont Correction Facility, a 1,200-inmate medium-security prison. But the command wouldnt reveal exactly who made the jump Thursday or why the parachutists wound up three miles from their intended landing zone at the Fremont County Airport. Heres the best answer the military will give: Those were Special Operations Command forces conducting routine training, said Army Col. Hans Bush, a spokesman for the command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Special Operations Command forces is a term broad enough to cover most of the U.S. military. It means any unit under orders from the command. But Bushs hesitance to name the unit likely points to covert units from the Navy Seals or the Armys Green Berets or Delta Force. Local units are off the hook. It wudn us The 10th Special Forces Group, which often conducts training out of the Fremont County Airport, is mostly deployed. Its Green Berets are working with Iraqi special forces in Baghdad to nab insurgents in lightning raids and have recently reported success in capturing or killing enemy leaders. Other Army units in Colorado Springs dont have parachutes. The 72-ton M-1 Abrams tanks theyre armed with just werent built for airborne assaults. The Air Force Academy does run cadets through parachute training, but they dont go near Fremont County and dont carry weapons when they jump. We try to stay out of prison, one academy spokesman quipped. Its also possible that some of the forces involved were not American. Parachute-dropping aircraft with British markings were at Peterson Air Force Base today, and Bush acknowledged that its common for his forces to drill with allied forces. Units at Peterson said they didnt know anything about a foreign plane today. More at link Posted by: GK 2007-07-17 |
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