On the morning of October 25th, 1983 America awoke to reports that our troops had invaded a small Caribbean nation named Grenada in order to liberate American medical students from danger posed by political instability. Joined by Regional Security System troops from a variety of Caribbean partner nations they swiftly overwhelmed the Grenadian and Cuban troops. While Operation Urgent Fury was in name, a joint force operation and included the use of Special Operations Forces, it highlighted many interoperability issues such as use of operational overlays and radio issues.
I was in high school when this went down and it made me want to be in the Army even more than I already did. Thankfully, over time, many of the stove pipe issues suffered by the pre-Goldwater-Nichols military were beginning to be identified when I joined a few years later. Interestingly, the operation was conducted with many systems still in use from the Viet Nam war. Our next time at bat, in Panama, saw several new weapons developed during the Reagan buildup such as the F117 stealth fighter and the Marine Corps LAV. Additionally, SOF took a much more prominent role in operation Blue Spoon.
Let us not forget the 19 Americans killed in action and the 116 who were wounded. Unfortunately, there were 24 Grenadian civilians killed in the conflict and our communist Grenadian and Cuban foes also suffered heavy casualties.
Tags: Grenada
I think what might shock people the most these days, is that we (those of us in the 82D) were able to alert, and assemble in under 2 hours, all without cell phones
I’m glad to see someone writing about the history of our SOF units. Many people have no idea what kind of trials and tribulations our community went through. Thanks for mentioning that here.
I’d like to add that Panama was SOCOM’s first major mission after the Nunn-Cohen bill was passed. Panama went much better than Grenada, but it too was not without its issues. Desert Storm was the next “big game” for SOCOM, but only used a small amount of our actual SOF troops. Desert Storm was mostly successful. It really wasn’t until 9-11 when SOCOM was brought to the forefront of modern warfare. Operation Urgent Fury marked a key moment in Special Operations history and it is important to remember that. If you think about it, OEF is the first war that we have seen the true capability of our Special Operations Forces.
@ FDD aaah yes–back when being the on-bubble DRB meant something a WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT…
First big american operation since Vietnam. Succesfull and interesting operation. Test game.
By the way in our (russian war literature) point of view, cubans who fight there, were mostly military builders unit.
Dont take me wrong, it was cuban not american problem. They were armed and trying to resist.
p/s/
I know good “cold war style” movie about this operation (“heartbreak ridge” – funny but we have some same style/same time/same quality war movie about our airbornes).
Eastwood most soviet style film director in US 😉