Special Escort Group - under attack.

[StingrayOZ]

Easier to just hijack a truck based ICBM in the middle of someplace quiet in Russia - there's parts of that country you could have a war and no-one would notice for a few days. In the UK, you'd be pretty busy in minutes.

Ian

UK I would think seconds. There is so much survellience, so few "dark areas" and loyalty is so high the groups of people that they would trade family members for country. Its a small island so getting anything, anyone on or off without detection would be improbable. Your going to write yourself into dead ends. Unless you can trick them into it its not going to sound believable.

You would have more luck on the continent. Perhaps weapons based in germany (US, UK, French or something) where you could perhaps write in a some sort of confusion and dozen different ways to disapear. Eastern countries offer so many more possibilities. There are quite possibility soviet stuff out there that has been overlooked or at least poorly secured. There are plenty of states that don't like Russia and/or Russia doesn't particularly like to make it seem more believable. Then using ex-uk forces would sound more believable, heck they could even be undercover agents, perhaps one or two could be tripple agents.

That would be more believable than ~5% of the ex UK SF defecting to turn on their comrads and their country to secure a dangerous weapon to dodgey people and no one leaking it or shooting all those involved with western weapons in one of the most difficult countries to operate in.

 

[StobieWan]

Erm think they are the warheads themselves the size of a small car not a bus and do weigh in at around 2,000lbs or so.

The all up package is 10,000 pounds near enough for a B53 nuclear warhead - the warhead was repackaged as the W53 Titan II warhead and that skipped all the airdrop kit, bringing it down to 8000 pounds or so. That's a fecking big chunk of hardware, you'd need a medium sized commercial van to move it and a decent size chopper to extract it. You'd definitely need some established harbour or jetty to offload it onto a boat.

A W76 warhead as carried on US D5's on the other hand, weighs 165Kg. You tell me, if you're in a densely populated country assuming we're still staging this in the UK, surrounded by all sorts of attention, with AWACS overhead 24/7, a very good -airforce and the fifth biggest Navy in the world - which would you prefer to be stealing - a four TON warhead or something two physically fit men can carry between them ? Bearing in mind, you've just had to fight your way through what I'd suggest would be one of the more highly trained counter terrorist groups in the world and might be a bit tired or wounded etc?


I'm just wondering..

 

[RobWilliams]

Reading this gets me thinking up my own things :roll

As said before, doing this in the UK would seem most unrealistic. I recommend what a previous poster said before about a strike in the Russian wilderness due to the sheer remoteness

 

[bulletproof400]

What I can say is that no matter what move is made, the important thing is to achieve the goal. It's also best to ensure safety and protection. Perhaps wearing a lightweight bullet proof vest will be helpful...

 

[gf0012-aust]

What I can say is that no matter what move is made, the important thing is to achieve the goal. It's also best to ensure safety and protection. Perhaps wearing a lightweight bullet proof vest will be helpful...

a bullet proof vest is going to have little effect against a team that is intent on overmatching the forces protecing those warheads. by default they will have aspired to an overmatch ability.

self protection forces are designed to hold and cause maximum damage to the attacker until they can get supporting heavier protection assets in place..

its akin to heavily armed first respondents (SF) holding the ground until 2nd respondents (eg commando type, ranger type) support arrives. ie light vs heavy force constructs.

such a convoy will have secondary support factored in to respond and "be there" within "nn" minutes of receiving the assist request. They will be waypoint planned along the way.

Its another reason why such weapons will need to be mapped through and transported though an area where the second respondents can assist in the time frame required to relieve and hold to support the accompanying escort.

real life support of such material is different from Tom Clancy scenarios

 

[cynicalbeard]

Couple of thoughts:

I would imagine that the convoy would be in constant radio contact with it's headquarters (or at least checking in on a very regular basis), so the secondary support would probably be rolling in shortly after the convoy failed to check in (potentially as soon as the radio jammer was activated) probably also with a request for tertiary support and/or general mobilisation of anything and everything near enough to get there promptly.

Any choke points would be fairly obvious to both sides, meaning that they would be scouted (and probably also manned) ahead the convoy, so the idea of hitting it away from any choke point shouldn't be overlooked.

With respect to getting the required weaponry to/in the UK, there is one distinct possibility that you should consider: while the PIRA is committed to putting it's weapons beyond use, the RIRA (or whatever flavour of alphabet soup replaces it) did include the PIRA quartermaster general, so assuming (for the benefit of the story) that a "donation to the cause" could be made then your assault troops could have access to AKMS assault rifles, Sa vz. 23 and Uzi submachine guns (not to mention RPG-18, RPG-22 and/or TM500 or Semtex to use in IEDs to disable/destroy the escort vehicles). They were caught by the Croatian police trying to smuggle out a consignment in 2000, but at least one load left Croatia in 1999. It's probably buried in a field somewhere.
That or because of their clandestine nature the locations of PIRA/RIRA weapons caches were closely held (i.e. known only to one or two people), so it isn't beyond the bounds of possibility that a cache or two could have dropped off the grid when their keepers died in car accidents or had heart attacks (or, just thinking for the book, if a RIRA QM could be identified, they could be coerced into revealing the location of a cache, probably just before being eliminated).

 

[mjm79]

A few points!

Questions & Comments:

1. Are the vehicles armored?
   If so, will the sniper rifles penetrate, or do you need something heavier, maybe much heavier?
   The glass may also be one-way so that the drivers cannot be targeted.
2. Does the security unit have body armor? If so, then the submachine guns are of limited effectiveness.
3. How many men in the security unit? Given surprise you will probably want at least a 2 to 1 advantage in numbers and firepower.
4. The Marines are almost certainly better trained as a unit than the attackers and have a preplanned series of responses that they will execute aggressively. Factor that into your force ratios. Better make that at least a 3 to 1 advantage.
5. What do you do if all or part of the security detail refuses to exit the vehicles, but instead just hunkers down inside (if armored) or under the vehicles (if unarmored) and calls for backup? Their job is to protect the nukes, not defeat your ambush. This tactic would be especially effective if the vehicles are armored because you submachine guns would be totally useless.
6. The nukes are going to be in a heavily locked container, probably armored enough to take a combined 120mph (200kph) collision, extremely fire resistant, and securely bolted to the truck chassis. How are you going to open or remove it?
   Note: Only the locks are a deliberate security element. The rest is primarily for the public safety in case of a traffic accident, even if it makes an extremely effective vault. That is why they are using Truck Cargo Heavy Duty carriers.
7. How are so many men going to make their getaway? Or at least get the nukes out if this is a suicide unit?

It would be near impossible, the trucks a very heavily armoured and the tractor units have own air supply. There are many many armed officers, far more than you could counter without detection. Finally only one in ten of the runs actually contain a warhead they make dummy runs to fool would be terrorists. There are also always three heavy trucks that may only carry one warhead between them. So the chances would be slim to say the least. If it was me though i would target the convoy at its weakest point the secure overnight stopover point.

 

[Quiller]

May I ask a question I haven't seen posed yet in this thread? For what purpose, exactly, does this rogue CIA cell intend to use these warheads for if successfully stolen? The answer to THAT question will solve some issues about what warheads to steal and whose warheads to steal. (Maybe ICBM warheads aren't even necessary; perhaps lower-yield and much lighter warheads would do, such as warheads designed for cruise missiles). Their intended use (blackmail, trigger a war event, whatever) also may provide answers to logistics --- to where and how far they have to be moved, etc.)

In this context, the suggestion of trying to snatch non-US or UK maintained warheads has significant merit too. You are writing, after all, a ficitonal novel. Don't abandon the obvious (India or Pakistan) or the more exotic (China) for instance.

It is generally useful to understand the FINAL GOAL of any organized purpose -- military or civilian -- before choosing the method to achieve it.

 

[StobieWan]

On why, I'd suggest a false flag operation of some sort - it's generally possible to "fingerprint" a warhead from the stuff it kicks up - so you can work out where a warhead was manufactured, where the fissile materials were refined, so if you were specifically after a US or UK warhead, you'd be wanting to try and implicate a western power in detonating a nuclear weapon someplace that'd kick off a major international incident. I think Tom Clancy already used that one in Sum Of All Fears however...

 

[Quiller]

On why, I'd suggest a false flag operation of some sort - it's generally possible to "fingerprint" a warhead from the stuff it kicks up - so you can work out where a warhead was manufactured, where the fissile materials were refined, so if you were specifically after a US or UK warhead, you'd be wanting to try and implicate a western power in detonating a nuclear weapon someplace that'd kick off a major international incident. I think Tom Clancy already used that one in Sum Of All Fears however...

Well yes of course. But my question was specifically addressed to the author. What is the ultimate goal of HIS particular story. Starting his tale with a heart-thumping active-shooting helicopter-downing nuclear-weapon snatch operation is all well and good... but his novel needs scope and purpose. What nuke to steal and whose to steal might well be goverened in his narrative by its ultimate use. I mean... rogue INTEL cells from any nation have to have a logical purpose to be believable. Planning a novel of this sort around "some sort of false flag op" isn't especially riveting. That op needs to have its own command presence to drive the story.

The big question still remains though. Why would a rogue CIA cell want to obtain a nuke via a running gun battle using heavy weapons and MANPADS to down security helicopters? Really? In England? That isn't particularly believable either. Stealing one from a third world Nuke member makes more sense. But I guess that's not quite as dramatic.

 

[StobieWan]

Well yes of course. But my question was specifically addressed to the author. What is the ultimate goal of HIS particular story. Starting his tale with a heart-thumping active-shooting helicopter-downing nuclear-weapon snatch operation is all well and good... but his novel needs scope and purpose. What nuke to steal and whose to steal might well be goverened in his narrative by its ultimate use. I mean... rogue INTEL cells from any nation have to have a logical purpose to be believable. Planning a novel of this sort around "some sort of false flag op" isn't especially riveting. That op needs to have its own command presence to drive the story.

The big question still remains though. Why would a rogue CIA cell want to obtain a nuke via a running gun battle using heavy weapons and MANPADS to down security helicopters? Really? In England? That isn't particularly believable either. Stealing one from a third world Nuke member makes more sense. But I guess that's not quite as dramatic.

I'd suggested as much earlier in the thread. Running this op on mainland UK has "death warrant" written all over it.

CIA makes no sense at all as they could probably buy a working nuclear weapon on the open market (there are about 70 nuclear devices designed for tactical use, so called, "suitcase nukes" un-accounted for in the former USSR alone for instance)

Given that, I was trying to provide a helpful suggestion for the OP.

 

[boguszewicz]

OK, you have an 11 vehicle convoy, but only 14 men? Or are those 14 men only the protective detail, and there are an additional 11 drivers, plus relief drivers and a couple of officers, say an additional 24 men? How are those personnel equipped?

How many snipers do you plan to have to take out all 11 vehicles? If you don’t get them all the survivors will either hit you in the flank and rear, or block your escape routes.

Since the vehicles are armored are they equipped with firing ports? If so, the defenders will probably fight from inside if they lack body armor, or at least the vehicle crews will, and being under cover will be much harder to aim at.

You are going to issue medium machine guns in the place of SMG’s? Why not just go with old style battle rifles like the FN FAL or HK G3 using the same round? But don’t be too surprised if the armor can stop AP in that caliber.

Definitely a BFO spanner, and more than a few bolts. You will also need a crane with a capacity over 2 tons in order to lift it. But it is basically a safe, and can be cracked the same way. But be careful to damage the warheads.

As for hijacking the THDCs, if you shoot the driver while it is moving where do you think the vehicle is going to come to a stop? Probably stuck in a road side ditch, maybe with a busted axel (Break out the BFO spanners and the crane).

Going to trick/force them to stop before you shoot? The lead vehicle will be a minimum of 1/2 mile (1 km) or more (depending on speed and terrain) ahead of the convoy, and will signal the convoy to stop and deploy in a defensive lager if the road is blocked, road side accident begging for help, unexpected construction going on, etc. The target is now much tougher, and probably out of position.

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I would suggest you will need to add AT rockets and a couple of .50 cal machine guns and crews to your order of battle, as well as more infantry. There are just too many vehicles, you need more men. You also need to add specialists, like the safe cracker and probably and EOD man.

why not have the lead truck stoped for some reason then when the main convoy stops have the ambush half a mile back and cut them off from support shoot down the hellicopter with the stinger then you have 5 min before air support shows up but if it's in a wooded area you will have problems moving the nukes thats saying you can get past the gaurds but thats the best i can come up with but i'm only in high school