A harsh blow to elite SEAL team

KABUL, Afghanistan - The crash early Saturday of the U.S. Chinook helicopter was a stinging blow to the lauded, tight-knit SEAL Team 6, months after its crowning achievement. It was also a heavy setback for the U.S.-led coalition as it begins to draw down thousands of combat troops fighting what has become an increasingly costly and unpopular war.

None of the 22 SEAL personnel killed had been part of the team that killed Osama bin Laden in May in Pakistan, but they belonged to the same unit, officials said. Their deployment in the raid in which the helicopter crashed would suggest that the target was a high-ranking insurgent figure.

A current U.S. official and a former U.S. official said the Americans included 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers, and a dog handler and his dog. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because military officials were still notifying the families of the dead.

Geneva Vaughn of Union City, Tenn., told the Associated Press that her grandson Aaron Carson Vaughn, a Tennessee native, was one of those killed. She said he had wanted to be a SEAL since he was a child and returned to combat two weeks after his 2-month-old daughter was born this summer.

The casualties are believed to be largest loss of life in the history of SEAL Team 6, officially called the Navy Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. The team is considered the best of the best among the elite SEALs, which number 3,000 personnel.

Special operations forces, including the SEALs and others, have been at the forefront in the stepped-up strategy of taking out key insurgent leaders in targeted raids, and they will be relied on even more as regular troops pull out.

Afghanistan has more U.S. special operations troops, about 10,000, than any other theater of war. The forces, often joined by Afghan troops, carry out as many as a dozen raids a night and have become one of the most effective weapons in the coalition's arsenal, also conducting surveillance and infiltration.

From April to July this year, special operations raids captured 2,941 insurgents and killed 834, twice as many as those killed or captured in the same three-month period of 2010, according to NATO.