THUS THE CHAIN OF COMMAND:

Special operations such as this have always been risky for presidents to approve. Trump and some of his advisers have promised to give the military greater rein in authorizing such missions as part of their desire to wipe out extremist threats. But the president has also said he is leery of getting entangled too deeply in costly operations overseas.

In Saturday's operation, the SEALs faced difficulties from the start. After the U.S. forces descended on the village of Yaklaa, a heavily guarded al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) stronghold surrounded by land mines, militants launched an intense counterattack.

As the pitched gunbattle continued, officials called in Marine Cobra helicopter gunships, backed by Harrier jets, to strike the AQAP fighters, according to U.S. officials familiar with the incident.

An elite Special Operations air regiment was then sent in to pull the team and its casualties out of the fray, banking into the night under heavy fire to link up with a Marine quick-reaction force that had taken off in MV-22 Ospreys from the USS Makin Island floating offshore.

The two units planned to meet in the desert to transfer the wounded SEALs so they could be taken back to the amphibious assault ship for treatment, but one of the Ospreys lost power, hitting the ground hard enough to wound two service members and disable the aircraft.

With the twin-engine transport out of action, a Marine jet dropped a GPS-guided bomb on the disabled $70 million Osprey to ensure that it did not fall into militant hands. [...]

"We really struggled with getting the White House comfortable with getting boots on the ground in Yemen," the former official said. "Since the new administration has come in, the approvals [at the Pentagon] appear to have gone up."

Already, the Trump administration, in a flurry of executive actions, has shown a penchant for tightly held decision-making that has left out key agency officials.

Luke Hartig, who was a senior official for counterterrorism under President Barack Obama, cautioned that even swift or delegated decision-making on national security matters requires consultation with a range of agencies that could address legal, diplomatic and other questions.

"It's not about slowing things down -- it's about making sure the complexities are well addressed prior to approval," said Hartig, who is now a fellow at New America and runs a research group at National Journal.

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