A boat ride with the special forces

Popular Mechanics:

The first gun to shoot doesn’t sound like a gun at all. The noise is high and buzzing, like a chain saw or a leaf blower. It stops, then starts up again. From my perch on the engine cover of a special operations gunboat, I can see the source of this weird racket—someone on one of the other boats gliding down Kentucky’s Salt River is firing a minigun into the woods. Every second, hundreds of 7.62 mm bullets pour out of the spinning machine-gun barrels. I’m pushing up my helmet, trying to spot the gunners’ targets, when someone close by yells “Contact,” and the boat I’m sitting in erupts in gunfire. Now the shell casings are landing in my lap as twin M240B machine guns rattle a couple of feet away. When the aft-mounted .50 caliber starts thumping, the pressure from each shot feels like a punch in the gut.

The volume of fire builds as two other Special Operations Craft-Riverine (SOC-R) boats join in, but no one is shooting back. This is a live-fire exercise at Fort Knox—and the thousands of rounds tearing through the air on this day are all outbound. The torrent of gunfire does not seem to rattle the members of Special Boat Team 22.

Many of these Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, or SWCCs, have survived firefights along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq. Fast, heavily armed SOC-R boats are used mainly to insert or extract Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and other special forces personnel. If the enemy interferes, the SWCC response is, in military speak, “violence of action.” The SOC-R’s five weapon mounts provide a 360-degree field of fire. “Anyone who decides to shoot at us will immediately regret that decision once we start shooting back,” says Mike, my designated SWCC spokesman, his face patterned with green and black grease paint. “We have an overwhelming amount of firepower at our disposal. It’s pretty insane.”

A fog of gun smoke builds over the river as the boat crew fires, and when I inhale, the smoke burns the back of my throat. It’s no longer possible to make out the demolished targets or even the foliage on the riverbank.

This one-sided engagement has already covered the floor of the 33-ft-long boat with hundreds of spent casings. But the simulated fight isn’t over yet, even as the diesel engines throttle up and the boat speeds off. The aft gunner continues to rattle away on the .50-caliber, and clouds of dirt are still blooming on the offending bank.

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There is much more including photos of the boats in action.

Click on the above image for a larger view. These gun boats appear to be very different from the swift boats of the Vietnam era. Speed and firepower appear to be their major objective. Fortunately the enemy was not that good with floating IEDs.