Special Operations & Irregular Warfare

The Chinese strategist's Six Secret Teachings set out the recruitment of talented and motivated men into specialised elite formations tasked with seizing commanding heights and making rapid long-distance advances. It represents one of the earliest doctrinal statements of the elite-unit concept underpinning special operations.

A dedicated chapter on the use of spies argued that foreknowledge gained through covert means was worth more than any other advantage in war, an idea that continues to underpin how states think about reconnaissance and unconventional warfare.

Hamilcar Barca maintained troops trained to launch several offensives per day during his Sicilian campaign. The article cites this as an early example of specialised elite forces in ancient warfare.

Specialised Ranger units in Colonial America were first recorded by Captain John Smith. Learning frontier skills from friendly Native Americans, Ranger companies provided reconnaissance, intelligence, light infantry and scouting for offensive frontier strikes.

Church commanded the first American Ranger force, and his ranging philosophy was copied by many colonial officers who raised their own Ranger units. This established a continuous American tradition of specialised light-infantry reconnaissance formations.

Rogers' Rangers, based on Roger's Island at modern Fort Edward, New York, trained under 28 'Rules of Ranging'. These are regarded as the first known manual of modern asymmetric warfare tactics used in special operations, and the site is called the spiritual home of US Special Operations Forces.

The Corps of Guides was one of two special forces deployed by the British Indian Army during its border wars. It was later joined by the Gurkha Scouts, formed in the 1890s and first used as a detached unit in the 1897–1898 Tirah Campaign.

The Tiradores de la Muerte, or 'Marksmen of Death', were an elite unit of the Philippine Revolutionary Army drawn largely from former Filipino members of the Spanish Army. They spearheaded major battles of the Philippine–American War, and in December 1899 at Paye one of their sharpshooters killed US General Henry Ware Lawton.

During the Second Boer War the British Army needed more specialised units, and the Lovat Scouts were raised from Scottish Highland woodsmen in ghillie suits skilled in marksmanship and field craft. Reporting early on to Major Frederick Russell Burnham, Chief of Scouts, the unit formally became the British Army's first sniper unit after the war.

Raised during the Second Boer War, the Bushveldt Carbineers are described as an early unconventional warfare formation. It formed part of the British response to irregular fighting that drove the creation of specialised units.

The German Stormtroopers and Italian Arditi were elite assault units trained far above average infantry standards and tasked with daring raids on enemy defences. Unlike the Stormtroopers, who sat within infantry divisions, the Arditi were treated as a separate combat arm.

Formed from August 1932 ahead of the Battle of Boquerón, the regiment was recruited from former outlaws to fight Bolivian forces in the Chaco War. Bolivia fielded a comparable specialised formation, the 50th Infantry Regiment or 'Knives of Death', which relied almost exclusively on blade weapons.

The Brandenburgers were created as a special forces unit for infiltration and long-distance reconnaissance, first used in Fall Weiss in 1939 and then in the Fall Gelb and Barbarossa campaigns of 1940–41. They were the principal German special operations formation of the early war.

Trained in Britain along British special forces lines with curricula tailored to each soldier's specialisation, the 'silent and unseen' paratroopers were dropped into Poland to sustain the structures of the Polish state and train the resistance. They took part in the Warsaw Uprising.

The GRU's Spetsnaz and the NKVD's Osnaz were developed and expanded during the Second World War, including naval, army reconnaissance and parachute troops. The Spetsnaz name became the generic Russian-language term for special forces of any country.

The OSS was created under William J. Donovan and combined intelligence work with special forces missions. It was the predecessor of the CIA, whose elite Special Activities Division is the direct descendant of the OSS.

Conceived as a sabotage ski brigade for operations in Norway, the 'Devil's Brigade' instead fought in the Aleutians, Italy and Southern France. It placed both US and Canadian special forces in a shared lineage.

Volunteer kaukopartio teams operated far behind Soviet lines gathering intelligence and raiding supply depots, notably harassing Soviet logistics at the Battle of Ilomantsi. Their operations were kept secret, and one commander, Lauri Törni, later joined the US Army to train American personnel in special operations.

Churchill's directive to set occupied Europe ablaze created a British organisation dedicated to sabotage, subversion and support for resistance movements, establishing unconventional warfare as a distinct state function separate from conventional military command.

Following Churchill's demand for specially trained troops able to raid the enemy coast, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Clarke's proposal was approved by CIGS Sir John Dill and the first Commando raid took place on 23 June 1940. By autumn over 2,000 men had volunteered, and in November 1940 they were organised into a Special Service Brigade that expanded to twelve Commandos.

The LRDG conducted deep penetration reconnaissance, intelligence missions and attacks behind Axis lines from 1940. It also provided the transport that carried SAS raiding parties to targets such as Bouerat.

Training began at Wilson's Promontory in Victoria in early 1941 with British instructors, each company establishing 17 officers and 256 men as 'stay-behind' forces. Eight companies were raised before mid-1943, when they were reorganised into 11 commando squadrons under cavalry commando regiments.

Lieutenant David Stirling argued that small teams of parachute-trained soldiers operating behind enemy lines could do more damage than a platoon, and after meeting General Auchinleck his plan was endorsed by Army High Command. L Detachment, SAS Brigade began with five officers and 60 other ranks, trained at Kabrit camp and raided Western Desert targets including Bouerat, Benghazi and the Crete airfields, with 30 aircraft destroyed at Fuka and Mersa Matruh. By attacking Axis airfields and supply lines behind enemy lines, the unit established the small, specially selected raiding force as a distinct and permanent part of modern militaries rather than an improvised wartime expedient.

M Special Unit gathered intelligence while Z Special Force undertook direct-action missions in the South West Pacific. Z Special Unit's Operation Jaywick sank several Japanese ships in Singapore Harbour in 1943, though the follow-up Operation Rimau in 1944 failed.

In mid-1942 Major-General Lucian Truscott submitted a proposal, developed under Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, for selectively trained Ranger soldiers. This revived the colonial Ranger tradition as a modern special operations formation.

Brigadier Charles Haydon set up the depot in the Scottish Highlands, with Lieutenant Colonel Charles Vaughan commanding the training of whole units and individual replacements. Its regime of live-ammunition exercises, speed marches, mountain work and unarmed combat was far in advance of normal British Army training and set the template for later special forces selection.

On 16 February 1942 the Marine Corps activated a battalion tasked with securing beachheads and other special operations, becoming the first modern US special operations unit. It took the Raider name from Admiral Chester Nimitz's request for 'raiders' in the Pacific.

Special Warfare Command units incorporated small commercial-derived reconnaissance and strike drones into direct action and reconnaissance training, following lessons drawn closely from Ukrainian special operations practice.

Special forces from Nigeria and neighbouring Lake Chad basin countries continued raids and clearance operations against fragmented jihadist factions, even as the wider counter-insurgency campaign struggled to hold and govern recovered territory.

Special operations units trained alongside partner forces from Central Asian and other Shanghai Cooperation Organisation members, part of a broader effort to build interoperability and influence among states along China's western periphery.

Intelligence and special operations elements reportedly struck air defences and missile launchers from within Iran in the opening hours of a direct conflict between the two countries, working ahead of and alongside the wider air campaign that followed.

A long-prepared operation launched first-person-view drones from concealed positions near several air bases deep inside Russia, damaging a number of strategic bomber aircraft in one of the most elaborate unconventional operations of the war.

Drones, sniper rifles and night vision equipment from Turkish manufacturers found a growing export market among special operations and paramilitary units abroad, part of the country's broader rise as a mid-tier defence exporter.

Annual Balikatan exercises grew in scale and included more island and littoral warfare training, reflecting growing attention to how special operations forces would support a wider force in a contingency involving the South China Sea.

Elite army and paramilitary units conducted an extended search and clearance operation in the aftermath of an attack that killed a number of tourists, part of a response that also included cross-border strikes and a brief conflict with Pakistan.

Investment and training shifted further toward tasks relevant to potential conflict with a major power, including reconnaissance in contested areas, resilient communications and training partner special operations forces across the Indo-Pacific.

With forces largely expelled from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, French special operations training and support increasingly focused on coastal states such as Cote d'Ivoire and Benin as jihadist violence spread south from the Sahel interior.

As gender restrictions were removed in parts of the world, women began applying for special forces selection. Norway's Hunter Troop was the first all-female special operations unit of its kind.

In his posture statement to the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, the USSOCOM commander described the direct approach as technologically enabled small-unit precision lethality with focused intelligence on a digitally networked battlefield. The indirect approach he defined as empowering host nation forces, assisting humanitarian agencies and engaging key populations.

A helicopter assault on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, ended a decade-long manhunt for the al-Qaeda leader, and stands as the most publicly prominent special operations raid of the post-9/11 era.

Special forces and intelligence officers working alongside Afghan opposition fighters, calling in air strikes rather than fighting as a conventional army, helped remove the Taliban government within weeks, a template later cited for unconventional warfare with local partners.

USSOCOM was a product of the Reagan administration under Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, and Operation Prime Chance, stemming from Resolution 598, was its first deployment. The unified command consolidated American special operations forces under a single headquarters.

Nearly forty years after the Second World War the Army instituted the Special Forces Tab, later extending it to personnel with at least 120 days' wartime service before 1955 in units including the Devil's Brigade, the Alamo Scouts and the OSS Operational Groups. This formally placed those wartime formations in the lineage of modern US and Canadian special forces.

British special forces stormed a besieged embassy in London in a raid broadcast live on television, ending a six-day siege and establishing a global template for how a national counterterrorism unit could resolve a hostage crisis by force.

A US attempt to rescue hostages held in Tehran collapsed after aircraft losses and a fatal collision at a remote staging site, a failure that drove a sweeping overhaul of how American special operations forces trained, equipped and were commanded.

Israeli commandos flew to Uganda and freed hostages held by hijackers at Entebbe airport in a night raid, demonstrating that a small, well-prepared force could conduct a rescue operation deep inside hostile territory with little warning.

The failed rescue of Israeli athletes taken hostage by Palestinian militants, handled by police without specialist training, led West Germany to found GSG 9 and prompted other states to establish their own dedicated counterterrorism units in the following years.

Khaled Mosharraf and A. T. M. Haider raised a 17-man commando platoon trained at Melaghar Camp, which reached Dhaka on 4 June 1971 and launched operations from 5 June. Its aim of proving that East Pakistan was not normal succeeded: the World Bank mission reported a hazardous situation and urged an end to the military regime.

The Arditi Distruttori Regia Aeronautica regiment raided Allied airbases and railways in North Africa, destroying 25 B-17 bombers in one mission. Italy's Decima Flottiglia MAS separately sank or damaged considerable British tonnage in the Mediterranean.

In late November 1943 Lt General Walter Krueger created the Sixth Army Special Reconnaissance Unit from small teams of highly trained volunteers. They operated behind enemy lines gathering intelligence and conducting tactical reconnaissance ahead of Sixth Army landings.

British and Indian long-range columns operated for months behind Japanese lines in Burma, resupplied by air drop alone, showing that ground forces could sustain unconventional operations far beyond normal supply lines given enough air support.

After Germany occupied Greece, Air Force Lt Colonel G. Alexandris proposed an SAS-style unit, and 200 men were assembled in Palestine under Major Antonios Stefanakis. Renamed the Sacred Band, the unit trained at the SAS base at Qabrit in cooperation with David Stirling and fought alongside the SAS in the Western Desert and the Aegean.

On 14 February 1942, 425 men of the 1st Parachute Raiding Regiment seized Palembang airfield on Sumatra while the 2nd Parachute Raiding Regiment took the town and its oil refinery. Paratroops were later used in Burma, and the brigades were organised into the Teishin Shudan, the first division-level raiding unit, based at Karasehara Airfield.