If you thought “Mad Max”-esque moments can only occur with the help of CGI, think again. On Monday, France24 uploaded a video showing a group of Syrian Kurds attempting to blow up an explosives-laden truck driven by an ISIS fighter. The Kurds succeeded, in an event so dramatic it begs the question: When does Tom…
Category: Examining Terrorist Tactics
Learning From Terrorist Tactics: ISIS’ Sniper Propaganda
For those of you interested in this subject of Guerilla Snipers and how Propaganda in sniping can often be a valuable weapon in and of itself, I would highly recommend the Book Fry the Brain by John West. -SF Snipers stalk the sprawling battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Hiding, quietly waiting and squeezing off long-distance…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: Hezbollah Develops New Skills in Syria
When Hezbollah first intervened on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Israeli defense analysts saw the foray as a blessing – better to have their Lebanese arch-enemy entangled in a war in Syria. But there is increasing concern that Hezbollah is getting valuable battlefield experience in Syria, especially when it comes to large-scale,…
Espionage Files: Pakistani Intelligence Possibly Financed 2009 CIA Outpost Bombing
Pakistan’s powerful spy agency may have provided the funding for a deadly 2009 suicide attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan that ranks as one of the deadliest days in the agency’s history, according to a newly declassified State Department cable. The heavily redacted cable, sent about two weeks after the attack on Dec. 30,…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: Are Dirty Drones a Realistic Threat?
ISIS is planning to kill thousands of people by sending drones delivering radioactive material over Western cities—or so British Prime Minister David Cameron warned last week at a summit on nuclear terrorism in Washington. Rather than carrying a “dirty bomb” to disperse material with explosives, the drones would work like toxic crop sprayers—”dirty drones” perhaps—and…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: Soft Targets of Terror
ISIS has “upgraded”the Al Qaeda playbook and determined that several teams of shooters and bombers or suicide bombers working together and attacking multiple SOFT targets simultaneously is much more effective than one big operation against a hard target. Tactically, attacking multiple targets in unison let’s the terrorist take advantage of the mass confusion and the…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: The Changing Logic Behind Suicide Bombings
(Note from Hammerhead: It was just announced that yet another ISIS suicide bomber killed 29 people in a Football Stadium in Baghdad). What was once purely a strategic action has become a tactical move meant to help hold territory. In October 2015, two suicide bombers killed more than 100 people outside a railway station in the Turkish capital…