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Away the boarding party (VBSS and SWOs with guns); Marines, too!

mike172

mike172

GO NAVY
I've been watching some videos of VBSS in the Persian Gulf, I'm just wondering if officers lead these detachments, and if so what community do they draw these officers from? Its pretty bad ass after all..
 
Sometimes officers lead the team, but sometimes it can be a Chief (maybe even a hard-charging First Class). The CG will have more junior guys (Chief or below) lead them more times than the Navy, just because the smaller number of officers to draw from.

For the Navy, it's pretty regularly the SWOs that do it, w/ the occasional exception. For the CG, it's often times the LEDET, but sometimes the ships company if they don't have a LEDET onboard.
 
Question pretty much answered. I don't really have anything to add. I was a boarding officer and it's a shit load of work. Fun, but still work none the less.
 
And every now and then, they get to do some good work. I came from the Gonzalez, whose boarding team got in a close quarter gunfight with some pirates. Our ORDO at the time (an ENS) was sporting a Meritorious Service Medal right in front of his National Defense. :D
 
Left Eye Lewie said:
Question pretty much answered. I don't really have anything to add. I was a boarding officer and it's a shit load of work. Fun, but still work none the less.
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Were they just like, "hey lead this boarding party real quick" or did you ask to be assigned to that job?
 
mike172 said:
Were they just like, "hey lead this boarding party real quick" or did you ask to be assigned to that job?
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They have boarding teams. How many depends on the crew and duty cycle. They do training before deployment (approach, scaling/boarding, search/questioning, etc). In the day and age of embargoes in the Gulf, there's lots of training and pre-planning before actually taking down the first vessel.
 
Are they conducting a lot of boardings in the Gulf? How's it compare to CDOPS in the Carribean?
 
midn09 said:
Are they conducting a lot of boardings in the Gulf? How's it compare to CDOPS in the Carribean?
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I have no idea what they're doing now in the Gulf after "all major combat operations have ceased," but pre-OIF, as seen in the multitude of TV shows on Discovery and NBC, there was constant boardings to ensure illegal stuff wasn't coming in or out (dates, oil, etc).

Boardings are very regular in CD Ops (not just the Caribbean). Pretty much if the vessel looks suspicious, it gets boarded.
 
gatordev said:
They have boarding teams. How many depends on the crew and duty cycle. They do training before deployment (approach, scaling/boarding, search/questioning, etc). In the day and age of embargoes in the Gulf, there's lots of training and pre-planning before actually taking down the first vessel.
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I know specifically for the officers who lead the VBSS parties, they take a course and get qual'ed up for it. I have a buddy in the process of getting his VBSS qualification right now.
 
midn09 said:
For anyone who's interested, here's the a of the incident.
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Why it's nice to have a M-60 or GAU (or SEAL w/a SR-25) on top of the boarding parties to help out. Looks from the video that the helo got to sit that one out.
 
That's because we're not a Flight II; we have no helo.
We had the bridge wing MK60s and what the team had (M4s/9mms/shotguns). Our CIWS wasn't Block 1B, so we couldn't even point that down.
 
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