We got an excellent tip from a Kit Up! reader this weekend on a pic he spotted in an Australian military magazine supposedly of an Air Force "special forces operator" weilding a Socom Combat Assault Rifle Mk-16 in Afghanistan.
The other remarkable thing our astute reader spotted was that said "operator" was
donning very high speed Crye-made combat fatigues in, of all things, AOR-1 camo pattern.
It's an awesome photo of a door kicker in the Gucci-est of gear. But something about the photo doesn't fit the caption, so I wanted to run a couple things by our readers.
Going from head to toe: Now I know Air Force regs are pretty lose; and when it comes to operators assigned to spec ops units in other services, those regs can get blurred even more. But I have never in my life seen an Airman take his hair and beard to the kind of limits in this pic.
Now, he does have on a pretty low-pro plate carrier in MultiCam, which special tactics teams assigned to SF or other units tend to wear as well. But, weirdly, I'm not seeing a lot of antennae and radios on this guy. Also, he's wearing an old-school headset rather than the Secret Service-style ear pieces TAC-Ps and such are wearing these days.
And as for the SCAR. I've scoured a lot of photos and just got back from hanging out with some TAC-Ps in Afghanistan and I haven't seen or heard of ST Airmen getting the SCAR yet. I've heard rumors that it's coming, but not yet in the field. There are 10" barrel M4s and HK-416s, but SCARs ain't with the Airmen, as far as I've heard.
Lastly, the AOR-1 pattern...I find it hard to believe that an Airman would wear the AOR-1 pattern instead of the MultiCam. And the other photos in this series that show SF dudes with illustrate that the Soldiers are wearing ACUs or MC combat uniforms.
Where am I going with this?
I don't know why, but I'm thinking this guy is a SEAL. Not sure why he's with this group doing a MedCAP, but all the photo evidence is pointing to a DEVGRU guy or straight stick SEAL.
It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
(Gouge: DFitz)
