What Kind of War? Part 3: The Special Operations Dimension

It is generally acknowledged that the United States, in its current war against Usama bin Ladin's network and the Taliban in Afghanistan, intends to rely on special operations forces heavily, if not exclusively. The use of Air Force AC-130 gunships in the Kandahar area this week marks the first confirmed use of special operations forces — the AC-130H Spectre and AC-130U Spooky are part of the Air Force's Special Operations Command — but it is almost certain that a variety of other special operations forces have been deployed both inside and near Afghanistan since the war began.

What that means, however, may not be clear to everyone, since the term is a rather broad one, sometimes used to mean almost any highly mobile elite force such as airborne units or even the entire US Marine Corps, and of course almost any trained military unit can carry out special operations, but most are not dedicated to that task. Special operations include but are not limited to counterterrorism and unconventional warfare of various types, and most major militaries have variety of different special operations forces for differing missions. The US Army's Special Forces, popularly called the Green Berets, are only one of many US dedicated special operations elements.

There is also a great deal of mythology surrounding the field of special operations, and especially the small-unit, direct action units such as the British Special Air Service (SAS) and the US Delta Force. The latter, in fact, has been the subject of a number of films, but its actual existence is not even acknowledged in the Army's table of organization, and its two best known operations were both failures: Desert One in Iran in 1980 and Mogadishu in 1993. Of course, it is also true that special operations, like covert operations, often are unable to publicize their successes. SAS and Delta, and a number of other small special operations forces, are not typical of what most military men mean by special operations, but they make for better movies.

This Dossier, the third in our series on "What Kind of War?", looks at some of the possible uses of special operations forces in Afghanistan, and some of the forces available to the coalition.

The movies notwithstanding, special operations forces are not just daring commandos operating behind enemy lines (though they include such tasks). US Special Forces (Green Berets), for example, are required to know a foreign language (and they do not mean high-school French), and one key form of special operations is psychological warfare (psychological operations or psyops), of which the leaflets being distributed in Pushtu and Dari in Afghanistan are one small example among many. The psyops operators may never set foot in the country where the operation is being conducted.

Most major military powers have a variety of special operations forces under a variety of names and in each of their military services. The United States has a Joint Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) which coordinates operations across the military services.

Although there are some large-unit forces dedicated to special operations, traditionally most combat special operations have been carried out by small units which can be inserted and extracted quickly. One of the most famous (and most imitated) special operations forces in the world, Britain's Special Air Service (SAS) uses a four-man team as its fundamental building block. These small units are intended to operate deep inside enemy lines, and develop special skills and techniques, as well as a special esprit de corps, rather distinct from that of the more conventional military. In small SAS units (and units such as the American Delta Force, which was modeled on the SAS), troopers (the British term) or operators (Delta's term) are generally NCOs or above and tend to address each other by name rather than rank; they may wear their hair and clothing in a way to blend into the society in which they are operating.

More formally organized special forces like the US Special Forces (the Green Berets) operate more conventionally, but also are trained in various types of unconventional warfare, as well as training of foreign forces, deep reconnaissance, and the like.Special forces are, by definition, produced by special training, so that they can accomplish missions for which conventional forces are not trained: though that may mean hand-to-hand combat or sabotage, it may also mean language training or teaching foreign forces. The more elite the force, the more focused the training: the small, elite units have generally already been through airborne and Ranger training before joining a specialized unit.

Although US special operations forces like to trace their lineage to Rogers' Rangers in the French and Indian War of the 18th century, most modern SpecOps forces have their roots in the Commando and Ranger units of World War II, the war which also gave birth to the SAS, the British Long Range Desert Group, and other units designed to operate behind enemy lines.

This Dossier looks at two major areas: what are special forces likely to be doing in Afghanistan, and what forces may be drawn upon?

What will Special Operations Forces Do in Afghanistan?
Note: The Estimate does not have any operational details about special operations force deployments in or near Afghanistan, other than those which have been publicly acknowledged. Nothing in the present report is based on information not readily available in open sources, and nothing is in any way intended to jeopardize operational security in any way.

In all probability, the first small-unit special operations forces from the US and Great Britain were probably operating inside Afghanistan well before the bombing campaign began, seeking to identify targets for the attack and to be prepared to mark the targets with laser designators or other devices. Other units may be seeking to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of Usama bin Ladin and his key operatives. In fact, since it is now known that a 1998 Presidential directive authorized covert operations against Usama bin Ladin's network, it is likely that both intelligence agency and military forces were operating in small numbers inside the country even before September 11. The small units most probably were either infiltrated overland from neighboring countries or inserted either by helicopter or by high-altitude low-opening (HALO) parachute drop, a technique devised to keep the drop aircraft high and out of range of anti-aircraft artillery but also to keep the parachutes invisible to ground observers until very near the ground.

At least two forms of special operations had already been acknowledged by the US as this was written: the use of AC-130 gunships in the Kandahar region and the dropping of leaflets as part of a psychological operations campaign. Those leaflets in turn give radio frequencies for US broadcasts in Pushtu and Dari. In a sense, the humanitarian food drops are also part of the psychological operations, though not handled by dedicated psyops troops.

The Absolutely Crucial Role of Intelligence
There is no more critical requirement for any special operation than good intelligence, and thus one key role for special operations forces is the gathering and assessment of intelligence necessary to the task at hand. This may be provided by agencies such as the US CIA or NSA, the latter particularly in the field of signals intelligence (SIGINT); by overhead imaging either from satellites or aircraft or, increasingly, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); or through the military intelligence arm. It is generally acknowledged that in recent decades US intelligence has suffered heavily from a lack of good human intelligence (HUMINT), that is, having people on the ground in the country. While no one can develop HUMINT assets rapidly in a developing crisis, something can be gained by putting special operators — either from the intelligence agencies or from the military — on the ground, preferably persons who can speak the language and blend into the population, but if that is impossible, people who can hide skillfully. This sort of intelligence is absolutely essential if one is going to track down an individual such as Usama bin Ladin.

The units dedicated to this sort of thing are usually the very small units of very elite troops: Britain's SAS, the American Delta Force and Intelligence Support Activity in the Army, and the Navy's Special Warfare Development Group, formerly known as Seal Team Six. None of the three groups just mentioned is publicly acknowledged, though Delta's operations have received considerable publicity and its founder, Col. Charlie Beckwith, even wrote his memoirs.

These small units do not work alone. A classic instance of a special operation which became highly public because it ended disastrously was the helicopter-borne operation to snatch senior leaders of Somali warlord Mohammad Farah Aideed's militia in Somalia in 1993, documented in detail in Mark Bowden's bestseller, Black Hawk Down. That operation involved both Delta Force operators and US Army Rangers, carried into action by the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR or the Nightstalkers), a helicopter unit trained to operate stealthily, and backed up by other Army forces and some Navy SEALs. That operation ended in the loss of two helicopters and of 18 American personnel, but otherwise may be a fairly typical of a joint service special operation. As with covert intelligence operations, it is usually the failures, not the successes, which become well-known.

Beyond these small-unit, direct action sorts of operations, however, there is a role for larger-scale special operations. If the key is to destroy terrorist infrastructure, not merely the physicial training camps but the organizing personnel as well, then larger scale, short-term operations are likely. These could involve seizing airfields to facilitate landing of ground forces; dropping airborne troops to secure a perimeter around an area; or landing sufficient numbers of combat troops to take on small units of an enemy on its own ground. The whole purpose of special operations is, of course, that they are special, designed to deal with a specific situation and to accomplish a specific task.

Special operations forces were not designed to take and hold ground in a conventional manner, though they may well play a part in a conventional campaign. Because they are likely to be called on to achieve some specific mission, it is essential that they be trained for a variety of missions and that they have real-time intelligence available to them. Arriving to capture a target who has already left, or in one famous case to free prisoners of war only to find the camp empty, is unfortunately a common enough occurrence for special operations.

What Forces are Available?
Since special operations forces can be broadly defined, the variety of forces available to be called upon for any given mission is considerable. Indeed, there are certainly classified units whose existence has not been revealed, alongside those units which are well-known or, like Delta Force, both classified and well-known at the same time. What follows does not intend to be a comprehensive list.

US Forces
The US has a United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) which coordinates and oversees special operations of the various armed services; it is based at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida and commanded by a four-star general. Each of the military services, as noted below, has its own special operations command, and in addition there are theater commands linked to the unified regional commands. For the Middle East and South Asia, Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) functions under the US Central Command (USCENTCOM) which, like CENTCOM, is based at MacDill AFB. There are also special joint commands and joint task forces under USSOCOM which coordinate special operations development and training across the military services.

In addition to the military special operations forces, of course, there are covert action elements of the intelligence services as well, which may work with military units like the Army's Intelligence Support Activity to carry out covert operations.

The US Army has the Army Special Warfare Command based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Army special operations units include the veteran Rangers, now organized under the 75th Ranger Regiment headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgia, with three battalions in different locations around the US. The Special Forces, known popularly as the "Green Berets", are based at Fort Bragg, and consist of a number of units and organizations with various tasks.

There are also a number of specialized special operations units, such as the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), known as the Nightstalkers, specially trained helicopter crews skilled at operating in the dark and off naval vessels for the insertion and extraction of personnel, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; and numerous other long-range reconnaissance units, "pathfinder" units for Airborne divisions, and so forth, who carry out various missions. Delta Force, based at Fort Bragg, is not formally acknowledged but is known to have been created in the late 1970s by Col. Charlie Beckwith, who had served with Britain's SAS, as a sort of US version of an SAS regiment. It has a counterterrorist function. The Army Intelligence Support Activity is even less well known and conducts highly classified missions in support of covert operations.

More broadly, some more conventional Army units also can be called upon for special operations missions, most notably the two Airborne Divisions, the 82nd Airborne (All-American) Division, based at Fort Bragg, and the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), the "Screaming Eagles", based at Fort Campbell. The 10th Mountain Division of the Army, 1000 troops of which have been deployed to Uzbekistan, is a light infantry fast-deployable division with experience in Arctic and mountain conditions, among others.

Navy special operations include the well known SEALs (Sea, Air, Land Soldiers), and various support units for their support, deployment, and insertion. The two main Naval Special Warfare bases are Coronado, California, and Little Creek, Virginia. The Navy's counterterrorist unit, formerly known as SEAL Team Six, is now believed to be incorporated in the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) at Little Creek.

The US Air Force has an Air Force Special Operations Command, based at Hurlburt Field, Florida, which consists of several units providing air elements for joint special operations on a wide variety of missions. These missions include insertion and extraction of special operations forces, close air support for special operations forces, the use of gunships like the AC-130s in use in Afghanistan, refueling for special operations helicopter forces and other units, and much more.

The US Marines are sometimes said to be the only service which is itself a special operations force, but Marine special operations as such center around the Force Recon units, which operate deep behind enemy lines to provide special operations and intelligence gathering. This brief overview of US special operations forces does not begin to include all the specilized units, even the unclassified ones.

Coalition Forces
But US units are not likely to be the only special operations forces operating in the region. Britain's SAS, already mentioned, are the senior such service and have been reported by the British press to have been inside Afghanistan for weeks. Other NATO allies, particularly France and Germany, have specialized counterterrorist units whose experience may be of use, and of course the war on terrorism is not confined to Afghanistan and many allied intelligence and internal security services are likely to be involved.

Russian Special Purpose (SpetsNaz) troops, the Russian and former Soviet special operations units, were actively involved in the 10-year war in Afghanistan and veterans may well be able to provide advice and intelligence. Little is known of special operations forces in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, but they are likely to be derived from and modeled on the Soviet SpetzNaz.

Pakistan has a respected special operations force, the Special Services Group (SSG), but their role may be severely limited by the political constraints on Pakistan.

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