Another_Black_Day_For_Blackwater

By ROBERT Y. PELTON
www.iraqslogger.com
01/23/07

Blackwater USA contractors are reeling from the loss of five
colleagues and a Little Bird helicopter in Baghdad today. IraqSlogger
has the exclusive details.

At 10:30am Baghdad time today a Blackwater PSD was escorting a State
Dept official to anministry meeting in Baghdad. The convoy began to
take small arms fire. They called for backup and the Blackwater quick
reaction force team responded from the Green Zone. They were also
ambushed by machine gun fire from the left and right. They limped back
to the Green Zone with two blown out tires. There were violent attacks
on two more Blackwater QRF teams and insurgents took a number of
casualties.

Blackwater dispatched their Little Bird helicopters to provide aerial
cover and suppressing fire. Blackwater has three Boeing Little Birds
(similar to Hughes 500) base out of the Green Zone that carry two
pilots and two door gunners each. The two door gunners hang out of the
rear doors of the helo with SAWs (Squad Automatic Weapons) designed to
provide suppressing fire.

Once the Little Birds engaged the insurgents, one door gunner was
killed and the rotor blades were damaged, and it returned to base.
Another Little Bird was shot down instantly killing all four aboard.
The shoot down was instaneous and no radio call was sent before
impact. The former 160th pilots are famous for their low-level, high
speed flights above Baghdad's rooftops. A tactic designed to avoid
small arms fire.

Then four Blackwater mobile teams were sent to recover the downed
helicopter. In addition a U.S. QRF was dispatched. An Army Apache
helicopter and a Stryker company came upon the downed helicopter. The
weapons had been stripped but the bodies were intact. Some of the
Blackwater pilots were the same pilots who served in Somalia during
the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident.

The five dead mentioned include the one door gunner and the entire
crew of the relief Little Bird.

Blackwater has had a string of unfortunate incidents including most
recently the murder of an Iraqi security guard by one of its employees
while drunk on December 24th, an air crash of one its Casa 212
aircraft in Bamyian Valley in Afghanistan and the infamous murder of
four of its employees in Fallujah in 2004 by insurgents.

Ansar al Sunna has claimed responsibility for the downing of the
Little Bird but there is no confirmation of this claim.
This came in on the intelligence share forum on AKO this morning. We have discussed PMCs before on this site. I sympathize with the employees who were lost in this incident and their families. However, I still strongly question the wisdom of building private direct action military capacity outside normal channels of government command and control.

Best

Tom