Hail the Conquering Night Stalkers!
For their participation in four different operations between 2019 and 2022, members of the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers, were recognized during a ceremony at Kentucky’s Fort Campbell.
The storied unit provides aviation support to special operators throughout the U.S. military, and has participated in high-stakes missions such as the 2011 Abbottabad, Pakistan raid in which Osama Bin Laden was relieved of life’s burden with swift and terrible finality.
Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga, who heads Army Special Operations Command, officiated the ceremony at which 54 soldiers received 75 awards, including: 11 Distinguished Flying Crosses with valor devices, seven Bronze Stars, seven Air Medals with valor devices, 43 Air Medals with combat devices, and four Army Commendation Medals with combat devices. Recipients ranged in rank from specialist to colonel.
Colonel Roger Waleski, commander of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, stated a “significant number of awards” were presented to regiment personnel who participated in the U.S. military’s inexplicable, highly-controversial withdrawal from Afghanistan and the evacuation of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport (KBL). Though many of the Night Stalkers’s missions are classified, it has been reported that the unit’s specially-modified helicopters were present during the evacuation.
The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is all but over for conventional troops, the roles of which in remaining hotspots have shrunk to such a degree that the Pentagon has discontinued awarding both the National Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. Nevertheless, the Army’s special operations aviators remain perpetually at the ready.
“[We’re] an organization that is still very relevant in today’s affairs,” Colonel Waleski asserted. “Even though we think that the War on Terror may be over, violent extremism is still alive and well in the world.”
In recent years, members of the 160th reportedly participated in Syrian operations that resulted in the deaths of key Islamic State terrorist leaders—to include the 2019 raid in which ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed.
Colonel Waleski disclosed: “The majority of the awards were from countering violent extremist organization-type operations within the [U.S. Central Command’s] area of responsibility. These are missions that are in highly-complex environments. They are operations against determined enemies of the United States and our allies and our interests.”
In addition to military personnel, the Fort Campbell award ceremony—which set out to honor servicemen whose battlefield accomplishments might otherwise go unacknowledged—was attended by soldiers’ family-members and community leaders. Speaking to the gravitas of such ceremonies, Colonel Waleski set forth that most families fail to realize “the sort of things that [soldiers are] doing when ... overseas.”
“It shows you what Night Stalkers and the [special operations] community are still doing overseas,” Waleski concluded. “It’s still dangerous, and they’re still serving the nation with honor.”
Bolen Gives Congress a Rare Thumbs-Up
See All