War Story: Combat controller's actions epitomize the ethos of special tactics

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Dennis Brewer
  • 352nd Special Operations Group
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Staff Sergeant Robert Gutierrez, Jr., an Air Force Special Tactics Combat Controller assigned to the 352nd Special Operations Group at RAF Mildenhall, deployed to Afghanistan in early January 2008.

During one of many missions, Sergeant Gutierrez was on patrol searching for a high-value target when his Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha team was ambushed.

Traveling along a mountain road, his team's convoy took insurgent fire from the right of their position as they neared a bridge -- across from the compound they were to search.

Countering the small arms and machine-gun fire with the organic weapons in their convoy, Sergeant Gutierrez added lethal gun and bomb passes from F-15E and A-10 aircraft overhead. Once the initial contact seemed finished, all became quiet according to the Sergeant. "We then dismounted the convoy to conduct an assessment of the situation after the air strike," he said.

His ODA team crossed the bridge by foot to check houses in the compound, and once again came under intense enemy fire - this time from three sides of their position.

Cut off from the heavy weapons in their convoy and pinned down by insurgent fire, the situation grew worse with each passing moment. The team leader was incapacitated within minutes and another team member was wounded and stranded in the enemy "kill zone." With the enemy pressing for advantage, Sergeant Gutierrez went to work.

He directly engaged and killed four insurgents with his M-4 Carbine and orchestrated eight strafing runs from A-10 aircraft onto multiple targets threatening to overrun their location.

The A-10 passes gave him and a team member the opportunity to run in and out of the "kill box" to retrieve their critically wounded teammate.

Consolidating the team's position, Sergeant Gutierrez then directed more than 70 close air support strikes over the next five plus hours while repelling numerous attempts by insurgents to overrun their position. His focus and technical battlefield expertise were deciding factors to the team's survival - a fact born out by the operation's final numbers.

"I determined the enemy's positions as fast as I could," he said. As he continuously directed A-10 Thunderbolts, F-15 Strike Eagles and AH-64 Apache helicopters onto multiple targets surrounding their position, often with the enemy just meters away.

Afterward, he used both A-10s and UAVs, to keep the enemy at bay and gain information on enemy positions, maintaining a protective fire suppression blanket for his team from the air.

After the battle subsided and the area was secure, he called in two medical evacuation flights for his wounded and fallen teammates.

During the engagement, Sergeant Gutierrez synchronized airstrikes, utilized UAVs, and his team's organic firepower to effectively incapacitate more than 240 insurgent enemy fighters, including the "high-value target," the objective of the entire mission.

A senior leader from his unit said, "Sergeant Gutierrez's actions that day epitomized the ethos of special tactics. He willingly risked his life to save a teammate. He maintained his composure in the darkest of circumstances and aggressively pursued the enemy using every asset at his disposal. Sergeant Gutierrez is a warrior in every sense of the word."

Incidentally, Staff Sergeant Robert Gutierrez Jr. reenlisted in the United States Air Force during his deployment to Operation Enduring Freedom.

Editor's note: Names of those cited in the above article were not released for security purposes.