Prior Planning Prevents ...
Not turning into a bestselling paperback franchise any time soon, I think. And one can't help worrying that some brand damage is gradually accruing; the Iranian embassy siege is now thirty years in the past, and since the whole point of special operations is that they don't get much publicity, the only other major public appearance of the SAS was Bravo Two Zero. Two data points make a trend, and one really doesn't want to get a reputation for being "the guys who show up without any clear idea of what they're doing, then wander round a bit and get captured".
As far as I can tell, the problem appeared to be that they were caught on the back foot, because they were pretending to be an unarmed diplomatic mission (the transition from "we come in peace" to "shoot to kill" is apparently a lot more awkward than Captain Kirk made it look). Presumably if they had gone in as a combat squad with guns out from the get-go, they would not have been rolled by a small detachment of recently-mobilised rebels anything like as easily. Which brings one onto an all too frequently observed problem:
Here's a lesson from economics - you can't maximise a non-existent objective function. If you don't really know what you want, you're likely to get what you deserve. Special forces are surprisingly frequently involved in some of the greatest military fuckups and fiascoes, and the reason for this is that special forces units are the first port of call for people who are either trying to do something that they shouldn't, or not really sure what they are doing at all. If you look at the purpose of that SAS unit in Libya, they weren't trying to rescue UK citizens or disable airfields or anything - other people were doing that. What appeared to have happened is that an MI6 spook wanted to "make contact with the rebels", to no very specific purpose other than "linking up", and somebody thought that a seven-man special forces detail was the sort of thing that might have come in handy. Nice one fella, not.
Everyone in full-time employment has spent at least some time in a meeting, or even a standing committee, that has no specific purpose and just sits around kicking ideas back and forth, or talking about abstract goals without ever having any indication of the authority or budget to do anything about them. They're annoying but unavoidable; they even have some low level purpose in promoting communication and informal contacts. On the other hand, when you're not talking about tea, biscuits and Powerpoint slides, but rather about sending vulnerable human bodies into places where this sort of thing happens, you have a real obligation to be very clear about what you want to do, and how you are going to tell when you've done it.
The fallacy of the non-existent objective function happens at all levels - special forces are, AFAICT, more vulnerable to it because they have more connections to the daydreamers and schemers in the world of secret service covert ops, and because they are commonly perceived to be something approaching supermen, they are often brought into the service of plans that ought to be couched in the Superman Conditional tense. But large deployments of other people's time and health are also regularly made without a plan - one of my biggest objections to the ongoing Afghanistan campaign is not that failure is likely, but rather than nobody can explain to me what success would consist of.
Best I can tell, success in Afghanistan is seen as not pulling out in failure. You get serious military analysts now talking about Afghanistan as if the US will always be there. Which is probably a good thing. All that military hardware is going to be used somewhere, better Afghanistan than Grenada.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that it's a secret, a top, top secret, but it would be interesting to know how much the SAS and the SBS cost, compared to the same number of common or garden infantrymen.
ReplyDeleteI mean,[1] an RN ship docks at Benghazi, offloads two trucks and a landrover loaded with jerrycans of diesel, drinking water, a dozen grenadiers and two or three arabists from the FO. They set off into the flyblown sand and dust ... Sounds like a plan to me,[2] or at least the setting for a reasonable low-budget action film. Clive Owen as the Captain, Rafe Spall as the sensitive Other Rank; if the money was there, Hugh Grant as top man from the North African desk, who turns out to have too close an acquaintance with Royal Dutch Shell ... Why am I wasting this on the three men and a dog who read this blog anyway?
[1] Paul Flynn in the Commons this afternoon: Tory ministers have "overdosed on James Bond"
[2] Douglas Alexander in the Commons this afternoon: "The British public are entitled to wonder whether, if some new neighbours moved into the Foreign Secretary's street, he would introduce himself by ringing the doorbell or instead choose to climb over the fence in the middle of the night,"
Hang on. The SAS do something other than train torturers? No wonder this is front page news.
ReplyDeleteit would be interesting to know how much the SAS and the SBS cost, compared to the same number of common or garden infantrymen.
ReplyDeleteYou're looking at roughly £1m in training costs alone to get one trooper fully trained up and into the sabre squadrons. (And, of course, you've already paid to have him fully trained as a non-SF soldier; SF don't recruit directly off the street.) Following that, the running costs are several times that of a normal infantryman, not because he's paid very much more (though there is an SF pay bonus) but because the skills he needs to keep current on are much more expensive than the skills an infantryman needs to keep current on, and there are a lot more of them.
Incidentally, it wouldn't so much be setting off into the sand and dust as driving a couple of miles down the road from the Benghazi dock to the building where the rebel council meets. No sand channels, stripped-down Land Rovers, sun compass, shemagh or other LRDG stuff required. You could probably take a taxi.
I lost a comment on this thread earlier on, but I've now read the story, which renders my point moot. I especially like the bit where the SIS agent was expected to get up at 0300 and say he was just off to Benghazi - after all it's the Med, like the white isle, the night out doesn't get started until then - and then drive off and meet the clattering great helicopter within earshot of his house.
ReplyDeleteD^2 said about Iraq that nothing else these people planned worked, so why should this? It's the coalition motto: Whose Idea Was This, Again?
I think they'd have done better to land in the street outside Rebel HQ at midday, having first issued a press release. It wouldn't have been any less conspicuous...
Honestly, Fitzroy MacLean managed to bluff his way into Benghazi harbour without too many problems. O tempora, o mores, eh, readers?
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is how the Tory/Lib Dems have managed to fuck up military operations, a traditionally Tory area.
ReplyDeleteI learned about the purpose of the contemporary SAS from "A Bit of Fry and Laurie," and it seems about right to me:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJW1tzNLwI8
"Whose Idea Was This, Again?"
ReplyDeleteIt's actually a v good question. Does anyone have any sense (inc from Bravo Two Zero, which I've not read*) of how much boneheaded fiasco missions like these are basically dreamt up by bored SAS officers envisioning lucrative book deals and then sold to gullible politicians? Or does the impetus come from ministers suffering lingering nostalgia about prep school CCF night exercises in Home Counties woodlands but no sense of what a real special forces operation can actually do?
*Having just googled BTZ, Wikipedia suggests that team members subsequently gave wildly differing accounts of what the mission was originally designed to accomplish, suggesting some combination of multiple objective functions, abysmally bad communications and everyone involved simply making stuff up afterwards.
What I want to know is how the Tory/Lib Dems have managed to fuck up military operations, a traditionally Tory area
ReplyDeleteThey have traditionally fucked them up.
AB: I think the problem is spookism. As far as I can tell, which is not very far because it is secret (although I am planning on developing a very keen interest in the SAS when I start a new career in the life annuity business; got to keep those women at bay somehow post the ECJ ruling), the Special etc bunch are usually very good at what they do as long as it's a recognisably military thing, like sneaking up somewhere and killing sentries, or (paradigmatically) lying around in Northern Ireland shitting into a plastic bag for up to a fortnight. Where they go awry is when SIS/MI6 get their phone number, usually after the British intelligence services have decided that some form of CIA-style covert operation might be a good idea.
ReplyDeleteThinking that emulating the CIA is a good idea is probably some kind of predictor for the success of an operation.
ReplyDeleteQuite. Even the CIA isn't very good at CIA-style covert operations - read "Legacy of Ashes".
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is how the Tory/Lib Dems have managed to fuck up military operations, a traditionally Tory area
As dd points out, this is the party that brought you Narvik and Suez. And, indeed, B20.
I am planning on developing a very keen interest in the SAS when I start a new career in the life annuity business
...an interesting and novel approach to the problem of longevity risk, but it might fall foul of your compliance team.
I'm sure I've pointed this out before, but many life assurance companies have various closed schemes about the place (generally arising from buying up a smaller rival donkey's years back) that are now effectively tontines, which has always struck me as a great hook for a novel.
ReplyDeleteOn the "paperback franchise" aspect, I once got asked by a French woman whether there actually was a regiment in the British Army called the SAS. I said yes, at which point she burst out laughing and explained that in France it's mainly known as the brand name for a long-running series of successful soft-pron novels with plots loosely involving SF in some way.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the equivalent would be the USAF having a bomber called the Hustler. (B-58, before you check.)
As dd points out, this is the party that brought you Narvik and Suez.
ReplyDeleteSuez wasn't a military error; it was a diplomatic error. (One could hardly have blamed Sèvres on any kind of military reasoning at all.)
Diplomacy is war, Myles. Just war without the additional means.
ReplyDeleteDiplomacy is war, Myles.
ReplyDeleteThat is only if the ultimate aim of diplomacy is not general peace. I am with Woodrow Wilson (and more successfully, the Congress of Vienna) on this: the aim of diplomacy should be peace.
The ultimate aim of war is general peace as well, you know. Just a general peace in which different people inhabit or control specific bits of terrain.
ReplyDeleteDiplomacy, as Will Rogers said, is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate aim of war is general peace as well, you know.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that one is peace with victory, and the other is peace without. I prefer the one without.
For all that is holy, is there any way to get Myles to stop commentIng on every goddamn blog I've been reading for years, and filling up all the comment threads with his tired bullshit. stick to trolling just one blog so I can stop reading it.
ReplyDeletethe Special etc bunch are usually very good at what they do as long as it's a recognisably military thing
ReplyDeleteWasn't the Bravo thing a recognisably military thing? I think it might be better phrased as a recognisably military thing, for which they are well suited. Which, best I can tell, is either commando raids, or reconnaissance. And not poorly defined actions requiring a superhero.
My research (Wikipedia) suggests that participants in Bravo Two Zero gave very different accounts about what it was supposed to achieve, and that one of them involved something vague-sounding about gathering intelligence and setting up an observation post.
ReplyDeleteDD's spookism explanation sounds extraordinarily plausible to me, and I'm going to adopt it as my house view and retail to all and sundry, with appropriate acknowledgements, until something very persuasive comes along to dislodge it.
Where they go awry is when SIS/MI6 get their phone number, usually after the British intelligence services have decided that some form of CIA-style covert operation might be a good idea.
ReplyDeleteOr the local spook who's been happy to send in reports of the sexual dalliances of the Gadafi boys for years panics and thinks 'shit, I have to do some proper spying now' except the only guide for 'making contact with the rebels' is a bad SAS novel.
Even the CIA isn't very good at CIA-style covert operations - read "Legacy of Ashes".
Or see Raymond Blokey non-covertly blowing away people in broad daylight in Pakistan. What kind of CIA name is 'Raymond', anyway? Johnny 'Mike' Spann in Mazar had a proper CIA name.
My research (Wikipedia) suggests that participants in Bravo Two Zero gave very different accounts about what it was supposed to achieve, and that one of them involved something vague-sounding about gathering intelligence and setting up an observation post.
ReplyDeleteIt was a classic roadwatch operation: set up a covert observation post overlooking a main supply route and watch for military traffic in general and Scuds in particular, in order to call in targets for the air force to hit. There were a lot of Scuds being launched from western Iraq at Israel in those days, and stopping that happening was a priority for the Coalition, for obvious reasons (ie preventing the Israelis from trying to do it themselves).
Asteele has a point: it would be nice to have a Myles-free area.
The Libyan thing does look like a bad case of showing off.
ReplyDelete"So what you need to do is catch a taxi to this location here..." - spook
"Catch a taxi...I don't think you know who you're dealing with here. You want protection, we'll do it this way" - SAS advisor.
Cue pointless bit of bravado. SAS soldiers don't do taxis - there's a brand to protect if they're to make a living in the lucrative security industry after retiring.
I'm not sure you can blame the SAS - it looks more like MI6 officers are now too wussy to put themselves in harms way without the back-up of a special forces team. That's not the way you're supposed to do these things. The upper classes clearly don't have the mettle they once had.
ReplyDeleteBut my favourite bit is that they approached a rebel unit to try and gain access to the leadership - while wandering around someone else's country carrying small arms - what the fuck did they think was going to happen?