Naval postgraduate school monterey, california thesis

1.
 
Hostage Rescue 
Joint Doctrine for Special Operations, Publication 3-05, defines hostage rescue 
operations as:
Recovery of hostages or sensitive material from terrorist organization [are] 
operations conducted to secure hostages and/or sensitive materiel from 
terrorist control, requiring speed, shock, surprise, and violent action. The 
safety of the hostages and preventing destruction of the sensitive material 
is an essential mission requirement (Joint Pub 3-05, 1999, p. II-8). 
A hostage rescue is a special operations mission under the umbrella of combating 
terrorism
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(CBT). It is a specified mission for “…selected units within special operations 
that operate under the direct control of the National Command Authority (NCA) or under 
a combatant command arrangement” (FM 3-0, 2001, 9-12). Counterterrorism is also one 
of the nine special operations core tasks:
Direct Action
(DA), 
Counterterrorism
(CT), 
Foreign Internal Defense
(FID), 
Unconventional Warfare
(UW), 
Special Reconnaissance
(SR), 
Psychological Operations
(PSYOP), 
Civil Affairs Operations
(CAO), 
Information 
Operations 
(IO), and 
Counterproliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
(CP).
Special Operations Forces (SOF) are specifically organized to accomplish these nine 
tasks. The following diagram represents the full spectrum of military operations and 
shows where CT operations occur (hostage rescue operations are offensive measures and 
therefore a subset of CT).
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Joint Pub 3-07.02, Joint Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Antiterrorism, defines Combating 
Terrorism as “…actions (including antiterrorism and counterterrorism) taken to oppose terrorism 
throughout the entire threat spectrum. Antiterrorism (AT) involves defensive measures used to reduce the 
vulnerability to terrorists acts, as opposed to counterterrorism (CT) which consists of offensive measures 
taken to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorism” (Joint Pub 3-07.02, 1998, p. vii).

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Figure 2.
Range of Military Operations. (From Joint Pub 3-0, 2001, p. I-2). 
The myriad of direct action or commando style missions within the CT umbrella 
are characterized by the fundamentals of 
surprise, speed
, 
violence of action
, 
security
, 
flexibility
, 
accurate and selective fires
, and by
 planning at the lowest levels
. In addition, 
they also encompass some of the elements of offensive operations such as 
concentration 
and 
audacity
(FM 3-0, 2001, p. 7-3). Several models are available that provide planning 
templates for success during these high-risk offensive operations. In 
Spec Ops
, William 
McRaven provides six principles for Special Operations Forces (SOF) to achieve relative 
superiority while conducting direct action operations:
speed, surprise, purpose, security, 
repetition,
and 
simplicity
. Other models for these types of operations provide similar 
frameworks to achieve success, but as the McRaven model, they focus only on the 
tactical portion of the operation (once the assault begins), leaving little guidance for the 

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strategic and operational planning process
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. Furthermore, none of these frameworks or 
models can accurately represent the intricacies of a hostage rescue operation. 
The principles of hostage rescue operations presented in this thesis and used in the 
biorhythm model—
surprise, intelligence
, 
operator’s skill, 
and 
deception
, are derived 
from looking at numerous planning models from special operations in direct action 
missions, from personal experience, and the thorough analysis of four historical cases.
The historical cases show that in every instance any one of these four principles was 
overlooked, the operation was doomed. These principles have been determined to be the 
most critical factors that change as the crisis develops throughout the hostage ordeal.