AMERICA'S SECRET MILITARY FORCES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402970017-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: April 22, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Yl Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402970017-5
NATIONAL AFFAIRS
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22 April 1985
America's Secret
Military Forces
`Special operations' is glamorous-and controversial.
S hortly before dawn on April 25, 1980,
the most ambitious peacetime comman-
do raid in U.S. military history lay in smol-
dering ruins in the Iranian desert-grim
testimony to America's seeming impotence
against terrorist threats. The botched hos-
tage-rescue attempt was attributed to insuf-
ficient helicopter support, inadequate plan-
ning, confusion over command and failure,
to use the best resources the military afford-
ed. Since then, the Reagan administration
has undertaken an intense effort to revitalize
America's elite, secret "special operations
forces" for just such counter-
terrorist missions and other an-
gry little wars. But five years
after the fiasco at Desert One,
there are serious doubts-even
among administration officials
directly involved-that the
United States could successful-
ly field such a mission today.
The special-forces buildup
itself has been shrouded in se-
crecy. Manpower has grown
from 10,000 to 15,000, and the
units' budgets have more than
doubled-to $500 million last
year. But some of the appropri-
ations have been disguised in
the defense budget just as
some of the personnel sport ci-
vilian haircuts or false insignia
to camouflage their move-
ments. The units themselves
range in and out of the shad-
recently as the hijacking of a Kuwaiti air-
liner in Iran last December. (One Task
Force 160 pilot on standby deployment for
the Los Angeles Olympics last summer was
asked about his mission by a National
.Guardsman. "If I tell you, I'll have to kill
you," he replied.) A grab bag of other spe-
cial-operations forces-including Delta
Force and Task Force 160-was used in the
assault on Grenada-and their presence
was one of the reasons the Reagan adminis-
tration banned reporters from the early
hours of the conflict. Last year three con-
lief workers in 1983, two Delta
Force officers using a suitcase-
size receiver obtained photos of
vast uncharted desert areas and
pinpointed the rebel com-
pound. Perhaps the most con-
troversial weapon was devel-
oped even before Reagan and is
now prepositioned in Ger-
many: a nuclear land mine one-
twelfth as powerful as the bomb
at Hiroshima. A smaller ver-
sion-the "backpack nuke"-
can stop an enemy advance,
crater a landing strip or destroy
key tactical targets.
Avionics: Helicopter tech-
nology has also improved since
the Iran fiasco. In fact, better
equipment was available at the
time. NEWSWEEK has learned
A Green Beret in training at Fort Bragg: No overall strategy? that if there had been indica-
th t Ayatollah Khomeini
a
ows-from the relatively well-known Army
Rangers and Green Berets to Task Force
160, the Army's secret helicopter unit -
whose existence was revealed for the first
time only last year. Other special-operations
units include Delta Force, the counterter-
rorist commandos involved at Desert One,
and "psyops"-psychological operatives.
assigned to win hearts and minds behind
enemy lines. In the Navy, the SEALS-Sea,
Air and Land Soldiers-are expert in under-
water demolition and reconnaissance. And
the Air Force's First Special Operations
Wing is trained and equipped to transport
special-operations troops in and out of hos-
tile territory.
Grab Bag: The activities of the units are
even more closely guarded. U.S. counter-
terrorist personnel have assisted or ob-
served as many as 50 hostage situations
around the world in the last five years, as
ttons
gressional committees investigated charges planned to kill the hostages, the U.S. mili-
that such units have been used in combat in tary was prepared to attempt a second res-
Central America in violation of the War cue-Operation Honeybear-using nine Si-
Powers Act. Congress found no evidence to korsky HH-53 helicopters designed for
support the charges, and U.S. officials vig- search and rescue missions. * Outfitted with
orously deny that the special-operations airborne refueling capabilities and avionics
personnel have done more than advise and including terrain-following and avoidance
train indigenous forces there. radar, the HH-53s are far better equipped to
More details about the nation's "secret navigate through a sandstorm like the one
armies" may come to light this spring when that hobbled Desert One. What's more, the
the House and Senate Armed Services Com- Air Force has outfitted some HH-53s and
mittees begin a new round of inquiries-this some Combat Talon choppers with Stealth-
time, to determine why the military has like radar-resistant properties.
lagged in responding to Reagan's revitaliza- But that helicopter capability is at the
tion order. "[By 1983) we found that people heart of the biggest special-operations dis-
were dumping water on our heads and tell- pute in the administration. Last May, with-
ing us it was raining," fumes Assistant Sec- out consulting the Pentagon's civilian lead-
retary of Defense Noel Koch, head of the ership, the Air Force and Army proposed to
revitalization effort. "There was no prog- .The HH-53s. stationed in New Mexi= were not used in
ress on this-nothing." The problems range the original mission because the military preferred the Sea
from inter-service rivalries to the military's Stallions already on the nearby carrier Nimitz.
onstan ing ambivalence about special-
operations forces in general. Even helicop-
ter support remains uncertain. Of nine Air
Force choppers specially designed for coun-
terterrorist operations. only seven are func-
tioning-one fewer than were planned for
the Iran mission. In the meantime, the
Army's Task Force 160 has been trying to
duplicate the Air Force's capabilities with-
out its sophisticated gear. As a result, the
unit has suffered a startling number of casu-
alties in training accidents (page 24).
There have been some improvements un-
der the Reagan initiative-most notably, a
host of new military technology worthy of
James Bond's "Q." Using a sort of underwa-
ter garage and a series of "swimmer delivery
vehicles," Navy SEALS can leave a sub-
merged submarine and carry out reconnais-
sance and demolition operations without
ever surfacing. Portable satellite-linked
communications terminals now enable
commandos in remote desert regions to call
anywhere in the world and even receive
copies of intelligence data maps and photo-
rraaphs_NEWSWEEK has learned that when
Sudanese rebels kidnapped five Western re-
I
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402970017-5