History of the Special Forces and Special Operation Forces
 

THE FUTURE

Throughout the later half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, special forces have come to higher prominence, as governments have found objectives can sometimes be better achieved by a small team of anonymous specialists than a larger and much more politically controversial conventional deployment. In both Kosovo and Afghanistan, special forces were used to co-ordinate activities between local guerrilla fighters and air power. Typically, guerrilla fighters would engage enemy soldiers and tanks causing them to move, where they could be seen and attacked from the air.

Operational Detachment A-Team Forces in AfghanistanThe US-led invasion of Afghanistan involved coalition special forces from several nations, who played a major role in removing the Taliban from power in 2001-2002. Coalition special forces have continued to play a role in combating the Taliban in subsequent operations. Special forces involved in these operations, occasionally working together, included US Special Operations Forces, UK Special Forces, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, the Canadian Joint Task Force 2, the Polish GROM, the German KSK, the New Zealand Special Air Service and the Norwegian Forsvarets Spesialkommando and Marinejegerkommandoen. Special forces from other nations have supported the parallel NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Special Forces have been used in both wartime and peacetime military operations such as the Vietnam War, Falklands War, The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the first and second Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, first Chechen War and second Chechen War, the Iranian Embassy siege (London), Operation Defensive Shield, Moscow theater hostage crisis, Japanese Embassy hostage crisis (Lima) and in Sri Lanka against the LTTE.

A Delta Force soldier (right) and a British Special Air Service soldier (left) pictured in Iraq, 2008. Delta Force are part of a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF), with and ever changing code names (TF-88, Task Force Black being among the most recent, publicly acknowledged, monikers). This Task Force includes/has included Tier One Special Operations forces from the U.S. (Delta, DEVGRU), the U.K. (SAS, SBS) and Australia (SASR) along with supporting Tier 2 units (US Army Rangers, UK SFSG) and Special Ops aviation and intelligence elements (U.S. 160th SOAR, ISA, U.K. SRR, MI6). The Task Force, based in Baghdad, has been systematically targeting key elements of the insurgency and Al Qaeda In Iraq (AQI) such as the bomb technicians, insurgent leaders.

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