2RHPZ
06-15-2004, 04:03 PM
Terrorism ? the ADF?s response
The world changed in September 2001 and the ADF?s response to the threats facing Australia and its interests have changed as a result.
By a Special Correspondent
On the evening of May 5, 1980 television viewers throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere watched transfixed as 30 members of the British Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) demonstrated just how the military dealt with terrorists.
For the previous five days, six Iranians opposed to the new Islamic regime in Tehran had held 19 hostages in the Iranian embassy building in London.
*They demanded the release of 91 prisoners held in Iran. With negotiations faltering, they shot dead one of the hostages.
Twenty minutes later the SAS went in and 15 minutes later it was all over with five terrorists dead and one captured. One hostage died and two were wounded but the remainder walked out.
All up it was a good result.
It's difficult to under-estimate the impact this had on the counter-terrorist business, establishing an enduring doctrine for dealing with hostage situations and underlining in the public mind the efficacy of special forces in general and the SAS in particular in being the final arbiter of any terrorist incident.
But the world has changed and with it the Australian Defence Force which is now able to provide a broad range of counter-terrorism responses, ranging from assets protection by reservists to a high end response by either or both of the army special forces Tactical Assault Groups.
The changing nature of terrorism increasingly raises the prospect that special forces action may need to be a first response not a last resort. In Australia, the London embassy siege must have confirmed the wisdom of those in the defence hierarchy who had decided two years earlier that the Perth-based Australian SAS Regiment (SASR) should have a role in counter-terrorism.
That move actually predated the defining event of Australian counter-terrorism arrangements, the Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing of February 13, 1978.
According to SASR historian David Horner, the decision to raise a unit within the SASR, capable of rapid deployment to deal with any terrorist attack dates from August 1978 and followed a fact-finding tour of Europe and the US by an army officer.
By then Australia had experienced plenty of terrorism ? overwhelmingly committed by anti-communist Croatians and directed against local outposts of the Yugoslav regime. But the Brits and Germans, with long experience of IRA and Baader-Meinhoff terrorism, were judged as having the most to offer.
One of the prime movers in pushing for this new capability was then Lieutenant Colonel Mike Jeffery, now the governor-general.
*Liberal Defence Minister Jim Killen gave the go-ahead in May 1979. The new team was to be called a tactical assault group (TAG), a name that remains. But that didn't happen straight away. The SASR needed to develop training infrastructure and doctrine, done with a little help from the British SAS. The first TAG, called Gauntlett 1, was declared operational two days after the London siege.
Horner says the members of Gauntlett 1 were preparing for their final exercise when they, along with everyone else, watched the finale on TV.
Since that time, the SASR has refined its skills and developed substantial training infrastructure at its base at Swanbourne, Perth. That includes the famed killing room where soldiers incessantly practise close quarter battle and even a mostly complete aircraft for counter hijack drills.
In two decades they've never been needed. There's a body of thought which says they never will be because terrorists have moved on prolonged sieges involving hostages.
There's several reasons for that. One is that they seldom get what they wanted and the rise of dedicated counter-terrorist units meant they often didn't survive the experience.
More importantly terror groups have realised they can make their point through mass casualty attacks in which the perpetrators have no intention of surviving.
In its strategic assessment for 2002, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) noted this change in tactics coincided with the rise of militant Islamic networks.
"This shift in tactics reflects a difference in the political objectives of today's global networks compared to those of their predecessors," it said.
*"Unlike organisations such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation or the Irish Republican Army, al-Qaeda and its affiliates do not want negotiation, compromise or concessions and are not trying to build support within established political frameworks.
"There may therefore be no constraints on the scale of violence they use and no level beyond which they might think that carnage would be counter-productive to their aims."
In another paper ASPI said it was very hard to quantify the terrorist risk to Australia.
"But it is reasonable to make three judgements. First, Australia is still a fair way from the top of the global terrorist hit list. Second, the risk nonetheless is real and has grown since September 11. Third, unless our security measures keep pace with those elsewhere, we risk attracting further terrorist attention."
ASPI noted that Australian counter-terrorism planning had been dominated by thinking about how to respond to a siege situation and the Moscow theatre siege last year showed that can still happen. But they appear less likely.
Counter-terrorism planning has traditionally envisaged a steady escalation involving the state police taking charge of the scene, terrorists making demands followed by protracted negotiations with the military only called in as a last resort. Such a situation would have allowed plenty of time for the SASR to deploy from Perth.
But mass casualty terrorism aims to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible with no though to negotiation and no time for a protracted response.
ASPI said the traditional response needed to shift from managing an incident once under way to preventing such an attack in the first place, limiting damage as much as possible and helping victims and the community recover as quickly as possible.
In the first instance that depends on good intelligence.
It follows that the Australian Defence Force may need to be the first and only resort for dealing with an impending terrorist incident. For example, TAG East might need to respond within the hour to intelligence revealing a terrorist cell was planning truck bombing in central Sydney.
To that end the government has significantly ramped up the ability of special forces to respond promptly and decisively.
The first major steps, announced at the May 2002 budget were formation of a new East Coast TAG and the Incident Response Regiment, both to be based at Holsworthy, just outside Sydney.
The initial announcement didn't make it completely clear that the new TAG would be formed out of the army's commando unit, the 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. But it made sense for plenty of reasons. The obvious one is that any terrorist incident is more likely to occur in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, not Perth. The ADF now has a far greater ability to respond to multiple incidents.
Another is that 4RAR had plenty of good people from which to build such a unit, although they clearly drew on the SASR to get up to speed. Although designated as a commando unit, 4RAR had in effect become light infantry and did a tour of East Timor on that basis.
As well, the move must have taken some of the pressure of the hard-worked SASR which has had to maintain a counter-terrorist capability while also mounting major deployments to East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.
It hasn't been made completely clear what training infrastructure 4RAR has at Holsworthy but the 2002 budget allocated $32.6 million for vehicles, weapons, communications and night vision equipment and for recruiting and training replacement personnel for the parent unit in Perth. Total funding of $219.4 million was to be provided over the next four years.
The Incident Response Regiment was established out of the advanced capability for dealing with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosive attack developed for the Sydney 2000 Olympic games and renewed post-September 11.
The role of the IRR is to provide specialist chemical biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives support to national agencies.Its functions include search, decontamination, medical support, threat reduction and emergency response.
Defence Minister Robert Hill said the September 11 attacks highlighted the growing threat of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction.
"While there is a low risk of such an attack in Australia, the potentially grave consequences mean we must plan for anycontingency," he said.
The budget provided $121 million for the IRR. It's since been claimed there were major problems in finding enough of the right people for the unit.
However, members of both the IRR and 4RAR were deployed to the Middle East. The IRR was there in the event of Iraqi chemical or biological attack. Element of 4RAR served as a ready reaction force, standing by to fly aboard Australian Chinooks into Iraq to bail out any SASR unit in trouble. They weren't needed although some did fly operationally into Baghdad aboard a RAAF C-130 delivering medical supplies.
The next major change came in December 2002 when the government announced a major revision of special forces command arrangements and an expansion of special forces numbers.
Prime Minister John Howard announced that there would be an extra 310 special forces warfighters and 24 headquarters staff.
In what appears to be a direct takeoff of the Florida-based United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Mr Howard announced that a new Special Operations Command would be established as a Joint command within the Australian defence Force with status equivalent to maritime, land and air Commands. It will have offices in Sydney and Canberra.
"The new Command will provide better joint, inter-agency and alliance co-operation to defeat terrorism in any form." Mr Howard added the well-regarded Brigadier Duncan Lewis had been promoted to Major General to head the new organisation.
*Special Operations Command comprises a joint headquarters, the SASR, 4RAR, TAGs East and West, 1 Commando Regiment and the IRR.
With the expanded special forces numbers and new command structure came the creation of the Special Operations Combat Service Support Company to provide the specific logistics, heavy weapons and communications support for the SASR and 4RAR.
Mr Howard said the government would also accelerate the purchase of additional troop lift helicopters to enable a squadron of helicopters to be based in Sydney. They now have use of a some Black Hawks for exercises but moves towards getting a whole squadron seemed to be somewhere in the Air 9000 process.
This seems to be following the US example where SOCOM has a wide range of embedded special support capabilities including their own private air force, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, aka the Nightstalkers.
With the December 2002 announcement, Mr Howard said he had given defence force chief General Peter Cosgrove the job of coming up with other proposals for the greater involvement of ADF Reserves in the response to domestic terrorist threats or incidents.
That appears to go down two avenues. One is the use of reserves for vital asset protection in event of a terrorist threat. The other is giving the army's reserve commando unit, 1 Commando Regiment a useful role.
The government officially launched the Reserve Response Force (RRF) in July last year, although the idea had been around much longer. The RRF is actually part of the High Readiness Reserve program which aims to lift reserve force skills so they can better integrate with the regular force. That led to formed reserve units deploying as part of regular battalions to East Timor.
Company-sized groups of about 150 personnel have been created in each of the six reserve brigades specifically for domestic security tasks.
Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence Danna Vale said the RRF would protect important sites, conduct searches and give logistic support to the regular forces.
"What we're able to provide to government now is a more flexible and more adaptable force that can deal with an entire range of circumstances," Army chief Lieutenant General Peter Leahy said at the launch in Melbourne.
*It's all well and good giving reservists this sort of a role but it seems an altogether different matter putting them in the special forces order of battle. But that's just where the men of 1 Commando Regiment now stand.
*The unit, a descendant of the Independent Companieswhich served with great distinction during World War II, numbers about 350 of which about 90 per cent are reservists. The sharp end of the unit, the new Commando Reserve Response Force, numbers about 150 trained in commando skills including amphibious operations, parachuting and demolitions.
*"We are the premier unit of the reserve," the unit's commander Lieutenant Colonel Tony John, a veteran of special forces operations in Afghanistan in 2002, told reporters at a demonstration of the regiment's capabilities in Canberra last year.
"I would back this unit against any other reserve unit. Uniquely, we are the only reserve unit of special operations command. Our major role is and remains commando warfighting in which we back up regular units."
The world changed in September 2001 and the ADF?s response to the threats facing Australia and its interests have changed as a result.
By a Special Correspondent
On the evening of May 5, 1980 television viewers throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere watched transfixed as 30 members of the British Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) demonstrated just how the military dealt with terrorists.
For the previous five days, six Iranians opposed to the new Islamic regime in Tehran had held 19 hostages in the Iranian embassy building in London.
*They demanded the release of 91 prisoners held in Iran. With negotiations faltering, they shot dead one of the hostages.
Twenty minutes later the SAS went in and 15 minutes later it was all over with five terrorists dead and one captured. One hostage died and two were wounded but the remainder walked out.
All up it was a good result.
It's difficult to under-estimate the impact this had on the counter-terrorist business, establishing an enduring doctrine for dealing with hostage situations and underlining in the public mind the efficacy of special forces in general and the SAS in particular in being the final arbiter of any terrorist incident.
But the world has changed and with it the Australian Defence Force which is now able to provide a broad range of counter-terrorism responses, ranging from assets protection by reservists to a high end response by either or both of the army special forces Tactical Assault Groups.
The changing nature of terrorism increasingly raises the prospect that special forces action may need to be a first response not a last resort. In Australia, the London embassy siege must have confirmed the wisdom of those in the defence hierarchy who had decided two years earlier that the Perth-based Australian SAS Regiment (SASR) should have a role in counter-terrorism.
That move actually predated the defining event of Australian counter-terrorism arrangements, the Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing of February 13, 1978.
According to SASR historian David Horner, the decision to raise a unit within the SASR, capable of rapid deployment to deal with any terrorist attack dates from August 1978 and followed a fact-finding tour of Europe and the US by an army officer.
By then Australia had experienced plenty of terrorism ? overwhelmingly committed by anti-communist Croatians and directed against local outposts of the Yugoslav regime. But the Brits and Germans, with long experience of IRA and Baader-Meinhoff terrorism, were judged as having the most to offer.
One of the prime movers in pushing for this new capability was then Lieutenant Colonel Mike Jeffery, now the governor-general.
*Liberal Defence Minister Jim Killen gave the go-ahead in May 1979. The new team was to be called a tactical assault group (TAG), a name that remains. But that didn't happen straight away. The SASR needed to develop training infrastructure and doctrine, done with a little help from the British SAS. The first TAG, called Gauntlett 1, was declared operational two days after the London siege.
Horner says the members of Gauntlett 1 were preparing for their final exercise when they, along with everyone else, watched the finale on TV.
Since that time, the SASR has refined its skills and developed substantial training infrastructure at its base at Swanbourne, Perth. That includes the famed killing room where soldiers incessantly practise close quarter battle and even a mostly complete aircraft for counter hijack drills.
In two decades they've never been needed. There's a body of thought which says they never will be because terrorists have moved on prolonged sieges involving hostages.
There's several reasons for that. One is that they seldom get what they wanted and the rise of dedicated counter-terrorist units meant they often didn't survive the experience.
More importantly terror groups have realised they can make their point through mass casualty attacks in which the perpetrators have no intention of surviving.
In its strategic assessment for 2002, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) noted this change in tactics coincided with the rise of militant Islamic networks.
"This shift in tactics reflects a difference in the political objectives of today's global networks compared to those of their predecessors," it said.
*"Unlike organisations such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation or the Irish Republican Army, al-Qaeda and its affiliates do not want negotiation, compromise or concessions and are not trying to build support within established political frameworks.
"There may therefore be no constraints on the scale of violence they use and no level beyond which they might think that carnage would be counter-productive to their aims."
In another paper ASPI said it was very hard to quantify the terrorist risk to Australia.
"But it is reasonable to make three judgements. First, Australia is still a fair way from the top of the global terrorist hit list. Second, the risk nonetheless is real and has grown since September 11. Third, unless our security measures keep pace with those elsewhere, we risk attracting further terrorist attention."
ASPI noted that Australian counter-terrorism planning had been dominated by thinking about how to respond to a siege situation and the Moscow theatre siege last year showed that can still happen. But they appear less likely.
Counter-terrorism planning has traditionally envisaged a steady escalation involving the state police taking charge of the scene, terrorists making demands followed by protracted negotiations with the military only called in as a last resort. Such a situation would have allowed plenty of time for the SASR to deploy from Perth.
But mass casualty terrorism aims to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible with no though to negotiation and no time for a protracted response.
ASPI said the traditional response needed to shift from managing an incident once under way to preventing such an attack in the first place, limiting damage as much as possible and helping victims and the community recover as quickly as possible.
In the first instance that depends on good intelligence.
It follows that the Australian Defence Force may need to be the first and only resort for dealing with an impending terrorist incident. For example, TAG East might need to respond within the hour to intelligence revealing a terrorist cell was planning truck bombing in central Sydney.
To that end the government has significantly ramped up the ability of special forces to respond promptly and decisively.
The first major steps, announced at the May 2002 budget were formation of a new East Coast TAG and the Incident Response Regiment, both to be based at Holsworthy, just outside Sydney.
The initial announcement didn't make it completely clear that the new TAG would be formed out of the army's commando unit, the 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. But it made sense for plenty of reasons. The obvious one is that any terrorist incident is more likely to occur in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, not Perth. The ADF now has a far greater ability to respond to multiple incidents.
Another is that 4RAR had plenty of good people from which to build such a unit, although they clearly drew on the SASR to get up to speed. Although designated as a commando unit, 4RAR had in effect become light infantry and did a tour of East Timor on that basis.
As well, the move must have taken some of the pressure of the hard-worked SASR which has had to maintain a counter-terrorist capability while also mounting major deployments to East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.
It hasn't been made completely clear what training infrastructure 4RAR has at Holsworthy but the 2002 budget allocated $32.6 million for vehicles, weapons, communications and night vision equipment and for recruiting and training replacement personnel for the parent unit in Perth. Total funding of $219.4 million was to be provided over the next four years.
The Incident Response Regiment was established out of the advanced capability for dealing with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosive attack developed for the Sydney 2000 Olympic games and renewed post-September 11.
The role of the IRR is to provide specialist chemical biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives support to national agencies.Its functions include search, decontamination, medical support, threat reduction and emergency response.
Defence Minister Robert Hill said the September 11 attacks highlighted the growing threat of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction.
"While there is a low risk of such an attack in Australia, the potentially grave consequences mean we must plan for anycontingency," he said.
The budget provided $121 million for the IRR. It's since been claimed there were major problems in finding enough of the right people for the unit.
However, members of both the IRR and 4RAR were deployed to the Middle East. The IRR was there in the event of Iraqi chemical or biological attack. Element of 4RAR served as a ready reaction force, standing by to fly aboard Australian Chinooks into Iraq to bail out any SASR unit in trouble. They weren't needed although some did fly operationally into Baghdad aboard a RAAF C-130 delivering medical supplies.
The next major change came in December 2002 when the government announced a major revision of special forces command arrangements and an expansion of special forces numbers.
Prime Minister John Howard announced that there would be an extra 310 special forces warfighters and 24 headquarters staff.
In what appears to be a direct takeoff of the Florida-based United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Mr Howard announced that a new Special Operations Command would be established as a Joint command within the Australian defence Force with status equivalent to maritime, land and air Commands. It will have offices in Sydney and Canberra.
"The new Command will provide better joint, inter-agency and alliance co-operation to defeat terrorism in any form." Mr Howard added the well-regarded Brigadier Duncan Lewis had been promoted to Major General to head the new organisation.
*Special Operations Command comprises a joint headquarters, the SASR, 4RAR, TAGs East and West, 1 Commando Regiment and the IRR.
With the expanded special forces numbers and new command structure came the creation of the Special Operations Combat Service Support Company to provide the specific logistics, heavy weapons and communications support for the SASR and 4RAR.
Mr Howard said the government would also accelerate the purchase of additional troop lift helicopters to enable a squadron of helicopters to be based in Sydney. They now have use of a some Black Hawks for exercises but moves towards getting a whole squadron seemed to be somewhere in the Air 9000 process.
This seems to be following the US example where SOCOM has a wide range of embedded special support capabilities including their own private air force, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, aka the Nightstalkers.
With the December 2002 announcement, Mr Howard said he had given defence force chief General Peter Cosgrove the job of coming up with other proposals for the greater involvement of ADF Reserves in the response to domestic terrorist threats or incidents.
That appears to go down two avenues. One is the use of reserves for vital asset protection in event of a terrorist threat. The other is giving the army's reserve commando unit, 1 Commando Regiment a useful role.
The government officially launched the Reserve Response Force (RRF) in July last year, although the idea had been around much longer. The RRF is actually part of the High Readiness Reserve program which aims to lift reserve force skills so they can better integrate with the regular force. That led to formed reserve units deploying as part of regular battalions to East Timor.
Company-sized groups of about 150 personnel have been created in each of the six reserve brigades specifically for domestic security tasks.
Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence Danna Vale said the RRF would protect important sites, conduct searches and give logistic support to the regular forces.
"What we're able to provide to government now is a more flexible and more adaptable force that can deal with an entire range of circumstances," Army chief Lieutenant General Peter Leahy said at the launch in Melbourne.
*It's all well and good giving reservists this sort of a role but it seems an altogether different matter putting them in the special forces order of battle. But that's just where the men of 1 Commando Regiment now stand.
*The unit, a descendant of the Independent Companieswhich served with great distinction during World War II, numbers about 350 of which about 90 per cent are reservists. The sharp end of the unit, the new Commando Reserve Response Force, numbers about 150 trained in commando skills including amphibious operations, parachuting and demolitions.
*"We are the premier unit of the reserve," the unit's commander Lieutenant Colonel Tony John, a veteran of special forces operations in Afghanistan in 2002, told reporters at a demonstration of the regiment's capabilities in Canberra last year.
"I would back this unit against any other reserve unit. Uniquely, we are the only reserve unit of special operations command. Our major role is and remains commando warfighting in which we back up regular units."