Special Reconnaissance and Advanced Small Unit Patrolling

Tactics, Techniques and Procedures for Special Operations Forces

Edward Wolcoff

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526779106
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book will serve as a tactical “bible” tailored to the military Special Operations, intelligence and paramilitary/law-enforcement communities and other interested parties - - with the intention of breaking the invent-and-forget/reinventing-the-wheel cycle with an aim to (1) increase the effectiveness and lethality of SpecOps personnel and units, while (2) saving the lives of SpecOps personnel engaged in high-risk operations. Wolcoff describes numerous historical examples of special reconnaissance (SR) operations, with some emphasis on lessons-learned/Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures gained from the legendary Military Assistance Command Vietnam – Special Operations Group (MACV-SOG) SR operations conducted during the Vietnam-era, including operational accounts and analyses of specific missions. Few of these TTPs and lessons-learned have been archived or collated into a usable form for SpecOps personnel or units; this book is intended to preserve and embed this valuable and volatile compilation of tradecraft, that has been obtained at such cost in lives. Wolcoff covers the gamut of specialized SR topics ranging from operational planning and preparation, through execution, logistics and command and control - - all in substantial trade-craft detail.

Chapter 1

Overview

Relevant MAC-V SOG Context and Terms

MAC-V SOG conducted covert cross-border operations during the Vietnam conflict from 1964 to 1972. Prior to that period, US cross-border operations during the Vietnam conflict were conducted largely by the Central Intelligence Agency and its South Vietnamese counterpart; however, President John F. Kennedy, frustrated and dissatisfied with the Agency’s lackluster performance, ordered the mission to be reallocated and executed by the Pentagon – and specifically US Army Special Forces. SOG was formed as a US Joint-Service (and US-South Vietnamese coalition) covert operation; SOG operations were conducted or supported by US servicemen of all four military Services and local national counterparts; but the largest contingent of US military personnel, by far, were drawn from Special Operations Forces (SOF), especially Army Special Forces (SF), and the indigenous commandos that were trained and mostly led by SOG SF personnel.

During its existence, SOG ‘was the largest and most complex covert operation initiated by the United States since the days of the OSS.’1 At its organizational peak, ‘SOG’s unconventional warfare forces were the size of an Army division and combined joint and multinational forces’,2 including Operational Control/Tactical Control of direct support attachments/forces and elements allocated by South Vietnam; many of these personnel operated from three Forward Operating Bases (FOBs): Command-And-Control North, Command-And-Control Central and Command-And-Control South in the late 1960s through the early 1970s. SOG launched its operations from South Vietnam (and other friendly countries in the region) into North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (the occasional SOG SR operations conducted within South Vietnam were often considered ‘training missions’, until cross-border operations ceased in 1971). SOG’s four major mission areas included: inserting and running Covert Agent Teams; conducting Psychological Warfare; conducting Covert Maritime Operations, and executing SR and associated ground combat Exploitation Force operations against the North Vietnamese Army operating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And from 1966 until its deactivation, SOG also ran the Joint Personnel and Recovery Center, responsible for recovering downed airmen and allied prisoners from enemy territory. ‘The 12,000 miles of trails, footpaths, and roads that made up the Ho Chi Minh Trail played a critical role in supplying communist forces operating in South Vietnam.’3,4 It is from SOG’s SR mission area experience that much of this book is grounded.

Strategic Reconnaissance or Special Reconnaissance (terms used interchangeably in this book) is associated with the primary/core competencies allocated to current-day US Army Special Forces. These competencies include: the ‘kinetic’ mission sets of Unconventional Warfare (UW); Foreign Internal Defense (FID), including Counter Insurgency (COIN); Direct Action (DA); Counter-Terrorism (CT) and Combating Weapons of Mass Distraction (CWMD) which are all supported by SR and are often dependent on SR as a prerequisite to their conduct. It is essential to understand that SR units may also be expected to execute or integrate with Unconventional Warfare (UW), Direct Action (DA) and other Special Forces tasks in conjunction with SR mission assignments. A SR Team may often be the only capability in-place that is available to take out fleeting, opportunistic or high-priority targets, especially if friendly forces cannot provide immediate air support or lack air superiority over operational real estate. Non-kinetic mission sets include Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), Information Operations (IO), and Civil Affairs (CA); SR Teams may perform some PSYOPS and IO tasks coincident with its core missions. It is important to realize that SpecOps commitments and OPTEMPO in a theater of operations, or in operations conducted on an even broader scale, will substantially overtax limited SpecOps resources; so parsing mission competencies to specialized or specific Teams (as prescribed by FM 31-20-5) in such conditions is simply unrealistic and operationally ill-advised.

The term ‘Strategic Reconnaissance’ has been replaced in the US military lexicon by the term ‘Special Reconnaissance’. Strategic/Special Reconnaissance may be defined as reconnaissance that is conducted to obtain information on the enemy, terrain, weather and other key elements of information for strategic-level planning and operational-level purposes. SR missions may be undertaken to gather new intelligence, and to confirm, verify or repudiate intelligence that was previously collected.

As of the writing of this book, the accepted definition of SR is: ‘Reconnaissance and surveillance actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments to collect or verify information of strategic or operational significance, employing military capabilities not normally found in conventional forces.’ (DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms.)

As contrasted to SR units, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) units, now known as Long Range Surveillance (LRS) units, operate beyond the main line of troops at Division and Brigade levels in their assigned areas of interest, and forward of battalion-level reconnaissance elements and cavalry scouts.

SR, however, is conducted by small units of highly trained Special Operations personnel, who generally operate far behind enemy lines at strategic depth – tens to hundreds of kilometers deeper than LRS missions. Beyond the depth of penetration, and the integrated relationships to other assigned Special Operations missions, and the exceptional skills and expertise required, the SR mission is further differentiated from the LRS mission by: political considerations attendant to the penetration and conduct of operations within foreign-friendly and hostile/ belligerent sovereign states, and the inherent capability of Special Operations to operate in the presence of sophisticated threat environments. These SR missions are frequently conducted under conditions of deniability, especially where the area of operations includes neutral or third-party states or prior to declared hostilities. Doctrinally, Special Forces SR Teams are conducted by 12-man ‘A’ detachment formations or in 6-man split ‘A’ detachments. However, this doctrinal organization for the conduct of SR missions is rarely optimal or even prudent, as explained later in this book.

As compared to the current-day SR portfolio, specific mission tasks within SOG’s Strategic Reconnaissance/Exploitation Force mission portfolio included: Point and Area Reconnaissance; Road and Trail Watch (surveillance); use of Wiretaps, Mines, Sabotage Materials and Devices and Electronic Sensors; Target Acquisition; Rescue of Downed Aircrews and Brightlight Operations (rescue/recovery of Teams, Team Members and personnel of integrated supporting units); Ambush, Raid, Road Block Operations; Bomb Damage Assessments (BDAs); Prisoner of War (POW) Snatch Operations, insertion of Psychological Warfare materials and several other high-risk tasks. Furthermore, SOG Teams integrated American Special Forces and indigenous commando personnel. The benefits and challenges to an integrated Team are explored in subsequent text.

The ‘nature and the size of the terrain, combined with adversary countermeasures, made it extremely difficult for the ground teams to achieve their tactical and operational objectives…, enemy forces operated in vast areas of difficult and unforgiving terrain. Lacking a thorough awareness of where the targets were likely to be, U.S…. ground reconnaissance teams were forced to patrol huge amounts of territory searching for well-hidden targets.’5 Because enemy targets were so difficult to approach and often so fleeting in nature, SOG SR Teams normally cycled back and forth from reconnaissance to DA/combat patrol mode on any given mission, and attacked enemy targets opportunistically in meeting engagements, in ambushes, and with Close Air Support whenever enemy targets presented, at the Team Leader’s discretion. Most SR Teams were heavily armed, acknowledging the realities and nature of the SOG operating environment, the fleeting nature of targets and the overwhelming likelihood of detection and subsequent necessity of close combat without fire support. Subsequently, some SOG SR Teams, depending on the operating environment and the temperament and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) of the Team Leader (henceforth referred to as the T/L) were geared for hunter-killer operations, while performing other mission priorities. Additionally, once intelligence analyses produced proximate locations of enemy base areas, SOG Teams were assigned repeated SR missions against those base areas, which were occupied by very large troop concentrations. Operations against base areas infested with high concentrations of enemy troops, who were typically expecting the SOG Teams, resulted in high SR casualty rates. All SR Teams were almost always assigned complementary, concurrent missions (beyond reconnaissance or surveillance) including insertion/distribution of PSYOPS materials and Sabotage Devices and conduct of opportunistic POW snatch operations; in fact, capture of enemy personnel generally superseded all other mission taskings except rescue/recovery missions. Other missions simultaneously assigned to SR Teams, on a routine basis, included: insertion of Wiretaps and Electronic Sensors/Beacons and conducting of Bomb Damage Assessments (BDAs). FM 31-20-5 indicates that SR Teams should be assigned BDA missions ‘only by exception’, relying instead on satellite/aerial photography, etc.; however, the Author proposes that immediate post-strike exploitation may yield opportunities to capture disoriented/wounded enemy personnel and quantities of intelligence materials seldom obtainable by other means.

‘The US military and many of its allies consider DA one of the basic special operations missions. Some units specialize in it, such as the 75th Ranger Regiment, and other units, such as US Army Special Forces, have DA capabilities but focus more on other operations. Unconventional warfare, special reconnaissance and direct action roles have merged throughout the decades and are typically performed primarily by the same units. For instance, while US special operations forces were originally created for unconventional warfare (UW) missions and gradually added other capabilities, the US Navy SEALs, and the UK Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) continue to perform a primary DA role with special reconnaissance (SR) as original missions. The SEALs, SAS, and SBS added additional capabilities over time, responding to the needs of modern conflict. Russia’s Spetsnaz combines DA and SR units….

There is a line between Special Reconnaissance units that never directly attack a target with their own weapons, instead directing air and missile strikes onto a target, and Direct Action, where the soldiers will physically attack the target with their own resources, and possibly with other support. Some special operations forces have doctrine that allowed them to attack targets of opportunity; Soviet Spetsnaz, while on SR during a war, were expected to attack any tactical nuclear delivery systems, such as surface-to-surface missiles, that they encountered.’6

Given SpecOps resource constraints, OPTEMPO and the spectrum of missions assigned to SpecOps units within an Area of Operations (AO), Teams conducting SR missions must also be trained and prepared to multi-task and execute other missions simultaneously or on an alternating basis, similar to the manner in which SOG SR Teams operated – as opposed to the mandate of mission specialization prescribed in FM 31-20-5. This is particularly relevant to deep penetration, long duration operations; given limited SpecOps and especially SR-trained assets, and the limitations and risks associated with long-range air insertions and extractions, it makes no sense to deploy single-purpose teams versus flexible, multi-mission teams.

‘Around 75 men had been recruited for Blue Light, which was now organized into three assault teams which were still structured as 12-man ODAs...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Overview
• Chapter 2: Pre-Mission Activities
• Chapter 3: Employment/Execution
• Chapter 4: Sustainment
• Chapter 5: Command and Signal
• Chapter 6: Post Mission Activities TTPs
• Appendices