How New Jersey Guardsmen Thwarted One of the Largest Somali Terror Attacks in Decades

It was fall 2019, and there was a near certainty that the American-run Baledogle Military Airfield in the middle of Somalia was going to be attacked. The cavalry troops defending it knew the strike would be big — and they were right.

On Sept. 30, a foreboding plume of smoke rose toward the sky just northwest of the airfield. An al-Shabaab vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, or VBIED, detonated prematurely, tipping the unit off to the imminent attack. Within minutes, the New Jersey National Guard’s Charlie Troop manned the airfield’s towers and control points, with snipers perched and mortars zeroed and primed, scanning for militants belonging to al-Qaida’s faction in the Horn of Africa.

A convoy materialized on the horizon, kicking up red dust over the low bushes that surrounded the airfield, an old Soviet facility from the 1970s. An up-armored truck carrying one of the largest known vehicle-borne explosive devices on the continent broke off from the group. It was headed for the airfield.