The Defense Department has identified the Army Special Forces soldier killed Jan. 5 in Afghanistan as SSgt. Matthew McClintock of Albuquerque, N.M. McClintock was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne) of the Washington National Guard. Two more soldiers were wounded in the “clearing operation” in Marjah, where the American Special Forces team was accompanying an Afghan National Army team in Helmand Province. The soldiers are there in a “train, advise, and assist” role, but the troops found themselves in intense combat. “This was clearly a combat situation in which US forces, who were accompanying Afghan forces who were in the lead, found themselves in a very difficult, dangerous situation,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a Jan. 7 briefing. An Air Force HH-60 responded to evacuate the wounded, came under fire,? and was damaged. The helicopter has since been airlifted back to Kandahar, Cook said.
Amid a high-profile recruiting crisis, Air Force leaders and experts have increasingly noted the challenging long-term trends the service will face in enticing young Americans to sign up—decreasing eligibility to serve, less propensity to do so, and less familiarity with the military. But while those same leaders say there’s no “silver…