F/51st Long Range Patrol (Airborne) Infantry, the immediate precursor to F/51st LRS, was inactivated in Vietnam in December 1968. In 1986, F/51st Infantry was reactivated in Germany as a long range surveillance detachment unit in the XVIII Airborne Corps, and conducted combat operations during the Gulf War. The unit was inactivated in November 1991 and then reactivated in 1995 as Company F, 51st Long Range Surveillance (LRS) and assigned to the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion (Tactical Exploitation) (Airborne), a sub-unit of the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to provide the XVIII Airborne Corps with long range surveillance capability. Permanent Orders 41-1, dated 10 Feb 1995, were issued pertaining to that activation. In that same month, F/51st LRS was awarded the Expert Infantry Streamer. After September 11, 2001, F/51 LRS was deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq. The unit suffered casualties. Company F, 51st Infantry (Long Range Surveillance) (Airborne) unit trained in many different methods of insertion and extraction, by land, air, and sea. They did not rely primarily on the helicopter as F/51st LRP did in Vietnam. The LRS units had new insertion methods available to them such as HALO (High Altitude/Low Opening) and HAHO (High Altitude/High Opening) parachute jumps. They could insert light teams by small boats cast off from warships at sea. They could insert by helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft, and even on foot, if necessary. Trained in scuba diving, free falling, and motorcycles, these men did surveillance on the enemy from every different angle, night or day. Where the unit differed from their Vietnam-era counterpart, F51st LRP, is that they didn’t engage the enemy as a result of surveillance. They operated in small teams whose mission was to observe and gather intelligence, but not to deliberately enter into combat with the enemy. They were not well enough armed, or supported by rear guard, to be effective in a combat situation against a numerically superior enemy. Their mission was to go deep into enemy territory and report what the enemy was doing, then disappear with the enemy being none the wiser