The Shawn Ryan Show #294 Pete Blaber - Part 1: Delta Force Commander on Roberts Ridge: The Battle of Takur Ghar
104 snips
Apr 6, 2026 
Pete Blaber, retired Delta Force commander and leadership author, revisits the path that took him from Oak Park to elite special operations. He gets into Colombia and the Cali cartel, manhunting in Bosnia and Afghanistan, the chaos of Roberts Ridge, and why remote battlefield control can wreck fast-moving missions.
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Somalia Showed The Cost Of Helo Templates
- Pete Blaber says Somalia exposed how helicopter templates replaced mission-specific thinking.
- He and Larry Vickers argued Black Hawks lingered fatally too long, while little birds or disguised ground approaches preserved surprise and forced better planning.
Bosnia Became A Laboratory For Manhunting
- In Bosnia, the war-crimes hunt became a laboratory for disguise, surveillance, and improvised capture tools.
- Pete Blaber describes cars with hidden antennas, blending in with jeans and leather jackets, and a Kevlar net that stopped a fugitive's car on a curve.
Bosnia Revealed Bureaucracy As A Combat Hazard
- Bosnia also showed Pete Blaber how remote bureaucracies paralyze obvious battlefield decisions.
- He recalls generals debating soup cans on doors and later losing Pristina airfield because NATO planners delayed while Russians simply drove there first.
