Friday, July 24, 2015

Terrorist Attack on America: a “Red Team” Exercise (Part 1)

As a Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant (18 Fox), it is part of the job to understand the enemy and learn everything you can about him so you can try to predict what they will do. Part of this is playing Red Team during Course of Action (COA) development, and some of it comes into play during the planning for the mission.
special forcesIn preparing the Concept of the Operation (CONOP) and planning, one of the 18F’s duties is to come up with the enemies Most Likely COA (MLCOA), and Most Dangerous COA (MDCOA). It could focus on a specific target that you are going after, the Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTP’s) that have been historically utilized, the location of these attacks, personal knowledge of the target and numerous other factors. MLCOA is usually not as dangerous as the MDCOA which, by its nature, usually takes the “worst case” option.
I would like to consider these two COAs on what a terrorist attack on the United States by Islamic Militants would look like. The point of this article is not to say they are coming right now, or that any of these attacks will certainly take place. This is simply an analysis of what a potential attack would look like, period.
The MLCOA will have a few categories, from unaligned Jihadist working on his own, to professionally trained cells working under direction of a State, or Non-State actor, under a unifying strategic plan. The MDCOA is actually the scariest, not only by the amount of casualties it could potentially account for, but the ease with which it could be done, plus there are some indicators that point to a test run that was done last year, but the authorities still don’t know who was behind it.
READ MORE: AT HAVOK JOURNAL

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