Scott O'Grady

Hanford, from the 510th responded and, after confirming his identity, the rescue was set in motion.

At 0440 local time, USAF General Michael Ryan and Navy Admiral Leighton Smith, commander of NATO Southern Forces, called US Marine Corps Colonel Martin Berndt aboard USS Kearsarge with orders to "execute".

Two CH-53 Sea Stallions with 51 marines from the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines within the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit lifted off USS Kearsarge to rescue the pilot.

The two helicopters were accompanied by two Marine Corps AH-1W Supercobra helicopter gunships and a pair of Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier jump jets, one piloted by Captain Ronald C. Walkerwicz.

These six aircraft had support from identical sets of replacement helicopters and jump jets as well as two Navy EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare planes, two Air Force EF-111A Raven electronic warfare planes, two Marine F/A-18D Hornets, a pair of anti-tank Air Force A-10 Thunderbolts, an SH-60B from USS Ticonderoga (CG-47), and an RAF AWACS E-3D.

At 0635, the helicopters approached the area where O'Grady's signal beacon had been traced.

Scott Francis O'Grady (born October 12, 1965) is a former United States Air Force fighter pilot.

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) decided to intervene in the Bosnian War after allegations of war crimes against civilians were made by various media organizations.

NATO military involvement primarily involved enforcement of a No-fly zone codenamed Operation Deny Flight to discourage Bosnian Serb military aircraft from attacking Bosnian government and Bosnian Croat forces.

On June 2, 1995, he was shot down over Bosnia and Herzegovina by a 2K12 Kub (NATO designation SA-6 "Gainful") mobile SAM launcher and forced to eject from his F-16C into hostile territory.

US Marines from heavy-helicopter squadron HMH-464 and the 24 MEU(SOC) on AC number 21 eventually rescued O'Grady after nearly a week of his evading the Bosnian Serbs.

He was previously involved in the Banja Luka incident where he fired upon six enemy aircraft.

As part of that operation, two F-16s from the 555th Fighter Squadron based at Aviano Air Base, Italy, were patrolling the skies above Bosnia on June 2, 1995.

On the ground, a Bosnian Serb army 2K12 Kub surface-to-air missile battery near Mrkonjić Grad was readying to fire its missiles on NATO aircraft.

The Serbs had moved the mobile-tracked missile battery and laid a trap.

They switched on their missile radars intermittently, giving F-16 fighters little warning.

Waiting until a plane was directly overhead, where the aircraft's warning and countermeasures would be at their weakest, they fired two missiles.

In the cockpit, O'Grady's instruments alerted him that a missile was coming, but, because he was flying through an overcast sky, he could not see it.

The first missile exploded between the two aircraft.

The second struck the F-16 piloted by O'Grady.

His flight lead, Captain Robert Gordon "Wilbur" Wright, saw O'Grady's plane burst into flames and break in two.

Wright did not see a parachute, but O'Grady survived by ejecting from the aircraft.

O'Grady landed among a Bosnian Serb population that he was briefed would be unfriendly.

He quickly secured a 29 lb survival bag, ran, and hid.

Rubbing dirt on his face, he hid face-down as Bosnian Serb forces came upon his parachute, half a dozen times shooting their rifles only feet from where he was hidden in an effort to flush him out or kill him.

During the next six days, he put to use the lessons learned during a 17-day Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training session he had undertaken near his hometown of Spokane, Washington.

He ate leaves, grass, and bugs, and stored the little rainwater he could collect with a sponge in plastic bags.

O'Grady radioed for help immediately but had to remain quiet with paramilitaries coming within feet of him; he used the radio following standard operating procedures as the U.S. Air Force had taught him so as not to give away his position to unfriendly forces.

On his 6th night on the ground he made radio contact, signalling his location using his radio's limited battery power.

NATO planes conducting sorties in the Balkans had been picking up beeper snippets that they thought could be coming from O'Grady.

This extremely sensitive information was inadvertently revealed by General Ronald Fogleman, the Air Force Chief of Staff, when the general told reporters attending a promotion ceremony that monitors had detected "intermittent" transmissions.

A NATO official was quoted as saying "I was dumbfounded he said that... I mean, why not just announce to the bad guys, 'We think he's alive and kicking, and we hope we find him before you do'?"

Just after midnight on June 8, O'Grady spoke into the radio.

An F-16 pilot, Captain Thomas "T.O."

The 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines is loosely based upon his experiences.

In September 2011, O'Grady announced a run for the 2012 Republican nomination for Texas State Senate District 8, held at the time by the retiring Republican Florence Shapiro, but he later suspended his campaign because of uncertainties over the Texas redistricting fight.

In November 2020, President Donald Trump stated an official intention to nominate O'Grady as the next Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.

The nomination was submitted to the Senate for confirmation on November 30, 2020.

Before and during the nomination, O'Grady had spread numerous debunked conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 United States presidential election, and calls by Michael Flynn for Trump to institute martial law.