On September 12th, 1943, legendary Nazi operative Otto Skorzeny boarded a glider along with
a taskforce of hand-picked SS troopers on a mission to rescue Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini from Allied custody.
Surprising the 200 defending Carabinieri guards by landing their gliders just outside the
mountaintop ski resort serving as temporary prison, Skorzeny successfully seized Mussolini
without a single shot being fired and spirited him away to a waiting twin-seat plane.
Under strict orders to personally return Mussolini to German custody, Skorzeny refused to leave
Mussolini's side and forced the pilot at gunpoint to take off with the three of them squeezed
into the small plane.
Careening towards a cliff, the overloaded plane barely managed to lift off in the thin
mountain air just before running out of ground and falling to the valley below.
Skorzeny's raid to rescue Mussolini became the stuff of wartime legend, and a template
for what would become a new, yet old, form of warfare- irregular or asymmetrical war.
Today we know these high-risk operations by elite military forces as Black Operations,
but mankind has engaged in these covert ops for as long as he has been waging war.
Whether sneaking soldiers inside a city via a giant, hollow wooden horse, or infiltrating
a hostile nation to eliminate the world's most wanted terrorist, black operations share
several defining characteristics that set them apart from regular military operations.
Firstly, black operations are so-called because of their highly secretive nature.
This secrecy is necessary to ensure the element of surprise and exploit an enemy's vulnerabilities,
but during the Cold War black operations also took on a new dimension of secrecy- that of
plausible deniability.
During decades of proxy wars between the US and the Soviet Union it became imperative
for both sides to engage in covert military action and yet retain the ability to deny,
or at least make a convincing argument for non-involvement.
This required elite soldiers who took on the risks of operating without any unit or national
insignia nor identifying documents.
While plausible deniability ensured a nation could limit its embarrassment or the repercussions
if an operation 'went south', it also put its operatives at great risks as they would
not be protected by Geneva wartime conventions.
The second characteristic of a black op is its engagement in asymmetrical warfare tactics.
Special forces and covert operatives differ from regular soldiers in that they are specialized
in fighting wars in ways that violate the 'norm' of soldiers facing off against other
soldiers.
Asymmetrical warfare involves everything from recruiting and training partisan guerillas
behind enemy lines, eliminating or kidnapping enemy VIPs, sabotage and destruction of high-value
targets, and conducting psychological warfare against enemy troops or the civilian population.
Often these tactics draw comparison to terrorist actions, and truthfully the difference between
the two can sometimes be fuzzy at best.
Israeli operatives for instance have long engaged in the assassination of Iranian nuclear
scientists, eliminating their targets by poison, gunshot, and one of Israel's favorite tactics:
pulling up to a target's car in traffic while riding in a motorcycle and tossing in a high
explosive before speeding away.
While the aim of Israel's black operations are ultimately to prevent a nuclear Iran and
maintain regional peace and stability, it should not surprise anyone that Arabs often
refer to the actions of these operatives as terrorist in nature.
Black operations also differ from other covert operations in that they often involve a significant
degree of deception meant to mask the identity of the perpetrator or to make it seem as if
someone else was responsible.
After it became obvious that Montenegro's 2016 election would favor the incumbent president
who would go ahead with Montenegro's ascension to NATO, a Russian-backed coup attempt was
initiated, involving 20 Serbian and Montenegrin citizens along with two Russian operatives.
Though the coup ultimately failed, it took months of investigation for Montenegro and
NATO to trace the attempt back to Russian state agencies.
This likely came as little surprise to everyone involved, as Russia had recently issued direct
threats against Montenegro should it join NATO.
While the Montenegrin Coup failed, it bore all the hallmarks of a Black Operation.
By severing any direct links to its two operatives, it became incredibly difficult to find any
physical evidence linking the two Russian suspects back to Russia.
This is similar to other, more kinetic Black Ops where troops are deployed bearing no insignia
and wearing nondescript or non-identifying uniforms.
The shroud of secrecy involved not only gave Russia the plausible deniability it needed
to defer some of the repercussions- or at least it would have if Russia hadn't tipped
its hand months before by directly threatening their target- but it also helped bring the
coup attempt frighteningly close to success.
But the Montenegrin Coup attempt also bore another hallmark of Black Ops- the use of
asymmetrical warfare.
For a full year before the actual attempt, Russian operatives had been busy at work recruiting
Serbian and Montenegrin nationals to infiltrate the nation and its political system.
Using the same full-court press that Russia would later launch against the American election,
Montenegro came under the siege of information warfare, with false news stories being fed
into the media that favored the Russian agenda of removing the current government.
Fake news would become particularly effective across social media, with thousands of false
news items and videos being created and shared across Twitter, Facebook, and other popular
social media.
Awash in disinformation, Russian operatives then stirred up national protests in mid-October
of 2015, culminating in full blown riots on the 24th of October.
Russia's Montenegro operation didn't kill anyone, and did not employ what is traditionally
known as 'kinetic warfare'.
Instead it relied on secrecy and asymmetrical warfare to achieve national objectives, making
it a true Black Op and showing that despite popular media, Black Operations very often
are less violent and more manipulative than one might expect.
With the rise of the internet, it has become easier than ever for nations to engage in
Black Operations against each other, targeting everything from national military or government
secrets to a nation's financial or energy networks.
As our world has become more and more connected, so too has it become one with dozens of undeclared
secret wars, and the civilian population is all too often a casualty of these 'non-kinetic'
Black Operations.
So, Do you know anyone that was involved in a black operation?
Tell us more about it in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called FBI vs CIA!
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