I think everybody and his brother is going to have an interest in having the ability to conduct reconnaissance and sabotage. At the risk of constantly referring to my own work, folks who don’t have pre-war SO/LRS (special operations/long range surveillance) are going to develop them as time and resources allow.
Fort Huachuca builds its own LRS capability from the ground up using a handful of veterans from Europe, the Middle East, and Korea and USAF operators who make their way to southern Arizona after Albuquerque and Kirtland go south. The emphasis is on gathering information—hardly surprising for an MI command. Almost immediately, the trigger-pullers who run the training and operations program start agitating for an expanded role for LRS. MG Thomason refuses to authorize an expanded mission profile until 2000. Huachuca greatly benefits from having cadre and students from the USAF SO arrive on-post in the second half of 1998, courtesy of the collapse of civil order in Albuquerque and the Mexican invasion of New Mexico. Not everyone is going to have this luxury.
USCG First District in New England, for instance, has to make do with homegrown material. There are a few Marines and soldiers with some of the right experience available, but it would be impossible to compare this situation to having proper facilities and cadre. The Maritime Rifles develop a doctrine for reconnaissance based on small watercraft and waterborne infiltration. Here again, just getting to the point at which intelligence gathering can be conducted costs many lives. First District has an active interest in sabotage and assassination, but heavy losses have made the leadership leery of overreach with their sophomoric reconnaissance troops. Even during the raids on pirate strongholds in 1999 and 2000, the LRS types are used almost exclusively for information gathering. Not until the 2001 offensive against the UBF do the Guardians attempt to mix combat engineering and sabotage with reconnaissance.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, on the other hand, light infantry infiltration combined with assassination and combat engineering develops rather quickly. The nature of the terrain (heavily urbanized) works against large-scale infantry operations. Local combatants are forced to develop infiltration and counter-infiltration tactics rather quickly. Combat engineering grows from its roots of arson into a surprisingly sophisticated art form by early 2001. Local militias/police throughout the Bay Area have small groups who have accumulated the skills to move into enemy areas unobserved to attack caches of food, arms and ammunition, and other useful materials. The so-called “legitimate governments” have certain advantages in this area because they have some support from MilGov (principally US Navy) personnel who can show them how to employ explosives and booby traps effectively. However, the various gangs and warlords of the area are quick learners; whatever they lack in formal training they make up for in cunning, desperation, and keen powers of observation.
The Shogun maintains little in the way of LRS. His security comes from having his secret police in place throughout his realm and the constant and unpredictable movement of his motorized army, the Gunryo. Information about the outside world comes from EPW and the occasional merchant convoy.
Webstral
|