So, what went wrong?

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Nigger they aren't human. They are demons trapped in little gook bodies. If ever there was a racial manifestation of the Zig Forumsube, it'd be gurkhas.

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Don't forget your shit air support that was supposed to aid them, frog. And dont bullshit us with the "Muh weather conditions", I've seen the way you surrender niggers fly jets in the Mali Desert.

How exactly does that work? Is there some kind of training that insures the enemy can't guess your target and cover all exits?

You're asking me to summarize special forces training for you? They might have used different types of vehicles, taken different routes, and hid among general traffic… instead they displayed their weapons and traveled in a column. Could have had outriders and scouts to make sure any ambush was triggered ahead of time, didn't. Could have mapped out exit strategies for every few miles of road ahead of time, just making such a map takes maybe thirty minutes and mentally tells you exactly where the best spots for ambushes are, so you're not surprised. Could have trained their people not to panic and scatter.
Even with all of that, even with getting 9/10ths fucked with your guys running way, the best way for the two cars to survive would be to reverse it back to the village while providing cover fire. It was only 500ft away and had plenty of cover, possibly even friendlies unless these seals were genociding the village in which case fuck them. Orderly retreats work because you can fight the enemy while retreating, which prevents him from advancing…. and you more or less know the enemy is less likely to be from wherever you just came, if you did ANY sort of situational awareness while traveling, than right in front of you where you still know nothing.

I know there is plenty they could have done better after taking contact but my point is that shit happens, sometimes no matter what precautions you take you are going to get unlucky and in war that can get you killed.
Consider the following situation:
There is no way you are making it out without getting ambushed all you can do is handle the situation better when it happens.
They had 3 cars while the Nigerian army had 5, they had no way of making the Nigerians do anything, if they are going to flee then they are going to flee leaving 3. We are told the other fleed or were hit so lets assume the 3rd US car was hit, now you have 2 cars with 7 guys left behind.
The fact that both remaining cars were driven during the ambush is where they really fucked up, if the car can move then you can get out of the kill zone even if the only option is a soft dismount using the car as cover to push out at walking pace.
I know cars are more concealment that cover but that's still better than nothing

Probably the biggest error was waiting too long before requesting air support.

If the USAF showed up it wouldn't have been an ambush, it would have been blue on blue.

>unless these seals were genociding the village in which case fuck them
Why?

How? By magic?
They weren't even aware of them, probably because they were doing something so stupid they would have been told not to do it if they had warned the french command beforehand.

That's a classic of US Special Needs BTW, trust the Nigerian army soldiers (that literally sell their sisters for a pack of smokes) don't trust the friendly NATO army operating nearby that is the only one capable of supporting you and will have to bail you out if things go sideways.

Hell for all we know your "heroes" were there to negotiate more kidnappings, beheading and bombings by guys close enough of Boko Haram to look legit for getting a bigger budget, which is the only reason I can think off on why they didn't want the french to know they were there.
After all it's the same guys that train the "poor Syrians moderate that are totally not ISIS, we pinky swear".

As for the shitty french air support, initial notice was at 1132Z, planes started show of force on site at 1220Z.
That's 47minutes for Barkane CP (Mali) to notify the BA 172 CP (Chad) brief the pilots, prep the planes, launch and fly the 909 miles there is between Tongo Tongo (Nigeria) and N'djamena (at maximum speed on a Mirage 2000 it's a 39 minutes flight…).
It took a good 1 minute to notify BA172 and a whole 7 minute to have armed planes on their way…
Remind me what the US QRA respond time is?It's 15 minutes.
Only when they showed up they realized the US special farces had "gone dark" because being OPERATORS the first thing they do after having called for help is to shut down all their radios.
And keep them off when the air support they called shows up apparently.

Unrecognizable soldiers driving unrecognizable civilian cars in the midst of unrecognizable civilian cars and no one telling which was which…
The Mirages simply couldn't fire on anyone, they just buzzed at low altitude for a while (which sort of worked by the surviving US soldiers own admittance) before having to leave because they were out of fuel (BTW unlike what the USAF would have done, they decided to stay as long as they could until the helicopters showed up, so they had to land at civilian airports much closer than their base to obvious personal risks).
The Mirages roughly managed to stay until 2 Tigers came from Timbuktu AO (300+ miles away).
But still no transmission from the ground (or even anything relayed from the US CP in Niger).
Shortly after that the 2 Super Cougar of the same AO QRF showed up with a platoon of mountain commandos that finally found the remaining US soldiers (all of them WIA/KIA included) and routed the niggers.