Special reconnaissance (SR) is conducted by small units, such as a recon team, made up of highly trained military personnel, usually from special forces units and/or military intelligence organizations. Special reconnaissance teams operate behind enemy lines, avoiding direct combat and detection by the enemy. As a role, SR is distinct from commando operations, but both are often carried out by the same units. The SR role frequently includes covert direction of airstrikes and indirect fire, in areas deep behind enemy lines, placement of remotely monitored sensors, and preparations for other special forces. Like other special forces, SR units may also carry out direct action and unconventional warfare, including guerrilla operations.
In intelligence terms, SR is a human intelligence (HUMINT) collection discipline. Its operational control is likely to be inside a compartmented cell of the HUMINT, or possibly the operations, staff functions. Since such personnel are trained for intelligence collection as well as other missions, they will usually maintain clandestine communications to the HUMINT organization and will be systematically prepared for debriefing. They operate significantly farther forward than even the most forward friendly scouting and surveillance units.
In international law, SR is not regarded as espionage if combatants are in proper uniforms, regardless of formation, according to the Hague Convention of 1907, or the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. However, some countries do not honor these legal protections, as was the case with the Nazi "Commando Order" of World War II, which was held to be illegal at the Nuremberg Trials.
History
While SR has been a function of armies since ancient times, specialized units with this task date from the lead-up to World War II.
In 1938, the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the War Office both set up special research departments: Section D and "Military Intelligence (Research)" to investigate possible sabotage and other ways to attack the enemy. These later merged in 1940 with the propaganda unit Department EH to form the basis of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which would conduct irregular warfare operations in occupied Europe.
In 1941, during the North African Campaign volunteers from Allies formed, under the auspices of the British Army, the Long Range Desert Group for reconnaissance and raiding behind Italian lines and the Special Air Service a commando group.
In 1942, following the onset of the Pacific Theater of World War II, the Allied Intelligence Bureau, was set up in Australia. Drawing on personnel from Australian, British, New Zealand and other Allied forces, it included Coastwatchers and "special units" that undertook reconnaissance behind enemy lines.
During the Winter War (1939–40) and the Continuation War, which was the name of the Finnish theater of World War II active between 1941 and 1944, Finland employed several kaukopartio ("long range patrol") units.
The US Government established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), modeled on the British SOE, in June 1942. Following the end of the war OSS became the basis for the CIA.
During the Vietnam War, respective division and brigades in-country trained their Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol members (now known as the Long Range Surveillance units). However, the US Army's 5th Special Forces Group with support from seconded Australian SASR and AATTV instructors, held an advanced course in the art of patrolling for potential Army and Marine team leaders at their Recondo School in Nha Trang, Vietnam, for the purpose of locating enemy guerrilla and main force North Vietnamese Army units, as well as artillery spotting, intelligence gathering, forward air control, and bomb damage assessment.Ankony, Robert C., Lurps: A Ranger's Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri, revised ed., Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Lanham, MD (2009)
During the war on terror, the US Army began to develop a limited number of special reconnaissance platoons at the battalion level of conventional infantry units. These platoons were most often composed of Ranger-qualified soldiers and given selection of advanced training in order to allow them to work in close conjunction with Special Forces and US Government Agencies.
Appropriate missions Special forces units that perform SR are usually polyvalent, so SR missions may be intelligence gathering in support of another function, such as counter-insurgency, foreign internal defense (FID), guerrilla/unconventional warfare (UW), or direct action (DA).
Other missions may deal with locating targets and planning, guiding, and evaluating attacks against them.
Target analysis could go in either place. If air or missile strikes are delivered after the SR team leaves the AO, the SR aspect is intelligence, but if the strikes are to be delivered and possibly corrected and evaluated by the SR team, the SR mission is fires-related.
Intelligence-related missions Every SR mission will collect intelligence, even incidentally. Before a mission, SR teams will usually study all available and relevant information on the area of operations (AO). On their mission, they then confirm, amplify, correct, or refute this information.
Assessment, whether by clandestine SR or overt study teams, is a prerequisite for other special operations missions, such as UW or FID. DA or counter-terror (CT), usually implies clandestine SR.
Hydrographic, meteorological and geographic reconnaissance
Mission planners may not know if a given force can move over a specific route. These variables may be hydrographic, meteorological, or geographic. SR teams can resolve trafficability or fordability, or locate obstacles or barriers.
MASINT (measurement and signature intelligence) sensors exist for most of these requirements. The SR team can place remotely-operated weather instrumentation. Portable devices to determine the depth and bottom characteristics of waters are readily available as commercial fishing equipment or more sophisticated devices specific to military naval operations.
Remote-viewing MASINT sensors to determine the trafficability of a beach are experimental. Sometimes, simple observation or use of a penetrometer or weighted cone that measures how deeply weights will sink into the surface are needed. These however have to be done at the actual site. Beach measurements are often assigned to naval SR units like the United States Navy SEALs or United Kingdom's Special Boat Service.
Beach and shallow water reconnaissance, immediately before an amphibious landing is considered direct support to the invasion, not SR. SR would determine if a given beach is suitable for any landing, well before the operational decision to invade.
There is a blurred line between SR and direct action in support of amphibious operations when an outlying island is captured, with the primary goal of using it as a base for surveillance and support functions. Despite being a large scale operation by SR standards, an early example is the attack by elements of the 77th Infantry Division on Kerama Retto before the main battle. Operation Trudy Jackson, which involved the capture of Yeongheungdo, an island in the mouth of the harbor before the Battle of Inchon, by a joint CIA/military team led by Navy LT Eugene Clark is much more in the SR/DA realm. Clark apparently led numerous SR and DA operations during the Korean War, some of which may still be classified.
IMINT (imagery intelligence)
Basic photography and sketching is usually a skill for any individual performing an SR mission. More advanced photographic technique may require additional training or attaching specialists to a team.
Lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles with imagery and other intelligence collection capabilities are potentially useful for SR, since small UAVs have low observability. SR team members can be trained to use them, or specialists can be attached to a team. The UAV may transmit what it sees, using one or more sensors, either to the SR team or a monitoring headquarters. Potential sensors include stabilized and highly magnified photography, low-light television, thermal imagers and imaging radar. Larger UAVs, which could be under the operational control of the SR team, could use additional sensors including portable acoustic and electro-optical systems.
SIGINT (signals intelligence) and EW (electronic warfare)
If there is a ground SIGINT requirement deep behind enemy lines, an appropriate technical detachment may be attached to the SR element. For SIGINT operations, the basic augmentation to United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance (Force Recon) is a 6-man detachment from a Radio Reconnaissance Platoon. There is a SIGINT platoon within the Intelligence Company of the new Marine Special Operations Support Group.
Army Special Forces (SF) have Special Operations Team-Alpha that can operate with an SF team, or independently. This low-level collection team typically has four men. Their primary equipment is the AN/PRD-13 SOF SIGINT Manpack System (SSMS), with capabilities including direction-finding capability from 2 MHz to 2 GHz, and monitoring from 1 to 1400 MHz. SOT-As also are able to exploit computer networks, and sophisticated communications systems.
The British 18 (UKSF) Signal Regiment provides SIGINT personnel, including from the 264 (SAS) Signals Squadron and SBS Signals Squadron to provide specialist SIGINT, secure communications, and information technology augmentation to operational units. They may be operating in counterterror roles in Iraq in the joint UK/US Task Force Black.
If the unit needs to conduct offensive clandestine electronic warfare, any electronic countermeasures (ECM) devices are usually operated remotely, either by the SR force or, preferably, by remote electronic warfare personnel after the SR team leaves the area.
MASINT (measurement and signature intelligence) and remote surveillance
Passive MASINT sensors can be used tactically by the SR mission. SR personnel also may place unmanned MASINT sensors like seismic, magnetic, and other personnel or vehicle detectors for subsequent remote use. Remote sensing is generally understood to have begun with US operations against the Laotian section of the Ho Chi Minh trail, in 1961. Under CIA direction, Lao nationals were trained to observe and photograph traffic on the Trail. This produced quite limited results, and, in 1964, Project LEAPING LENA parachuted in teams of Vietnamese Montagnards led by Vietnamese Special Forces.
The very limited results from LEAPING LENA led to two changes. First, Project DELTA (LEAPING LENA's replacement), used US-led SR teams. Second, these Army teams worked closely with Forward Air Controllers (FAC) which were instrumental in directing US air attacks by fighter-bombers as well as strategic bombing via BARREL ROLL in northern Laos and Operation STEEL TIGER in southern Laos. While the FACs immediately helped, air-ground cooperation improved significantly with the use of remote geophysical MASINT sensors, although MASINT had not yet been coined as a term.
The original sensors, a dim ancestor of today's technologies, started with air-delivered sensors under Operation Igloo White, such as air-delivered Acoubuoy and Spikebuoy acoustic sensors. These cued monitoring aircraft, which sent the data to a processing center in Thailand, from which target information was sent to the DELTA teams.