[1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Forces
 

The Det, 14 Company, 14 Intelligence Company, 14 Field Security, or the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) had a lot of names, as well as the official cover name of Northern Ireland Training and Advisory Teams (Northern Ireland) or NITAT(NI), but their most important facet for my purposes is that from 1972-2005, they were the only way that a female in the British Armed Forces could volunteer for and go through Special Forces training, not to mention perform active service in dangerous areas, with live weapons, almost tailor-made to provide useful skills for PCs in Action, Covert Ops, Special Ops and even Monster Hunter campaigns.

I have an excellent source on 14 Company, their training and duties. What I don't have is details on what women in the British Armed Forces would do before and after their temporary detail to 14 Intelligence Company. It was temporary duty, six months of training and then 18-36 months of special duties, before being returned to 'the parent unit', which was the regiment or other unit to which the soldier belonged before volunteering.

Anyone of the right rank and age in the British Armed Forces could volunteer. But what are the possible parent units and prior duties for women who might volunteer for the SRU/14 Co in the 1980s?

I know about nurses, secretaries and various clerical work. What else was available?

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

The Ulster Defence Regiment was the first British Army regiment that had women in combat roles,

Since 14 Company spent a lot of time in Ulster, recruiting locals would have been advantageous. Learning the local accents and cultures was not trivial, and an outsider being spotted masquerading as a local on a 14 Coy mission would likely be in serious trouble.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

While they would no doubt have been extremely valuable to 14 Co, the fact that I have not yet managed to turn up any Greenfinch who is mentioned in some kind of source as having served in 14 Co suggests that they might not have been allowed to, possibly because of concerns that if it ever became public that members of the Ulster Defence Regiment were performing espionage-like duties out of uniform, it could cost the regiment what little credibility it had with Catholics in Northern Ireland.

And, in later years, when the UDR had almost no true Irish Catholics in its ranks (its few Catholics were mostly transplanted British soldiers who'd grown up elsewhere than Northern Ireland, but still happened to be Catholic), the Army might have feared using anyone from the UDR in the 14 Co could inflame sectarian tensions and bolster various conspiracy theories (not all of which might have been untrue) about official British involvement in sectarian murders in Ulster.

I'll go through all sources I can find, but given that Rennie mentions the UDR operating in certain sections while he was on 14 Co duties and recounts backgrounds for many of his fellow operators (if only he'd have operated with more than two women who revealed any of their background, I'd know a lot more), the fact that none of the operators seemed to come from Northern Ireland seemed to me... suggestive. The very existence of 14 Co was classified 'Secret', in that the circular asking for volunteers just said 'dangerous duties' and only people with Secret clearance could even read the directive which explained what it was, it's possible that there just weren't many members of UDR who had clearance to know about it.

Training, Specialized Jobs and Careers with the WRAC, WRAF and the WRNS (WRENS)
 

While I am setting aside the excellent suggestion of a female volunteer from the Ulster Defence Regiment while I investigate whether some legal, regulatory or customary reason prohibited such a volunteer from serving with 14 Intelligence Company, I'd like anyone who has historical knowledge of British Armed Forces to suggest some other possibilities.

For example, all women who served with the British Army officially belonged to the Women´s Royal Army Corps (WRAC) for administrative purposes, all women who served with the Royal Air Force belonged to the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) administratively and all women who served with the Royal Navy belonged to the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS), which in practice got called Wrens, for administrative purposes.

Fair enough, I've read about that, but what I'm not totally clear on what duties they could be attached to regular units to for. I know women didn't go to sea on Royal Navy ships for a long, long time, and the change came after the period which matters for the campaign I'm preparing, so I'll need ideas for Wrens who are shore-bound. For women attached to the British Army or Royal Air Force, I know they are supposed to be kept away from combat duties, so they don't get to fly Harriers or Tornados in attack formations and there are probably no attachment to infantry companies, but what about infantry battalions, regiments or larger formations?

They could be secretaries to senior officers, work in clerical pools in various headquarters and handle the often manpower-intensive work of pre-digital communications, when telegram operators and switchboard operators were necessary for military units to function.

What about security clearances? In WWII, female code breakers presumably had the highest possible security clearances, as everything they did was classified, but what I'm not totally clear on is if a woman has important, sensitive duties working with a Signals unit doing highly technical things, what is her 'parent unit'?

Did the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS have lots of individual little parallel units to the structure of the British Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy? Were there REME, Signals, Intelligence and other specialized units within the Womens' versions of the Armed Forces to act as their 'parent units'? And how did that work, exactly?

Were all the technical courses and careers open to women, assuming they did not take place onboard a ship or in a fighter or bomber flown over potentially hostile soil or ocean? Could they sign up to become shipfitters, military police, interrogators, electronic intercept experts, radar technicians, Russian interpreters, naval intelligence analysts or small arms repairers?

And if they did, what did their parent unit become? Men who went into such specialized careers would have parent units become units under the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Royal Corps of Signals, Intelligence Corps, Royal Military Police, etc.

Did parallel units to all of these exist under the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS just for the purpose of acting as 'parent units' for women who had attended courses to learn special skills and were attached to regular military units where they exercised those skills?

Or were they just paid and promoted through the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS while their 'parent unit' was the unit where they performed their duties and were stationed?

Re: Training, Specialized Jobs and Careers with the WRAC, WRAF and the WRNS (WRENS)
 

The latter, basically.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

It's likely you've already done your online research, but if not there appear to be good sources of historical information about women in the UK military linked to the various British military museums.

Most of the information is about 21st century expansion of women's roles in the military, however.

Looking at the various articles gives me the impression that the situation for women in the RA was pretty bleak in the 1970s. Legally, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 limited women to support roles only. The closest a woman was likely to officially get to combat was as part of the medical corps. Even then, they wouldn't be combat medics but nurses or physicians in field hospitals.

Unofficially, however, the 1970s was the peak of "The Troubles" in NI so any member of the British military would unofficially be in harms way. While macho sexism and the relative scarcity of female soldiers would have limited combat exposure, a relatively open-minded commander might have be willing to use a female member of a support unit with unique skills in a potentially dangerous situations.

If you're willing to broaden your horizons a bit, I believe that the British intelligence services like MI5 did use female operatives. If their role required it, they might well have received "combat like" training before going undercover in NI.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

14 Intelligence Company was a British Special Forces unit, existing alongside the SAS, with operators of 14 Company receiving Special Forces pay like SAS troopers. It was developed to target Catholic and Protestant terrorist organizations in Northern Ireland, it was open to both men and women of the British Armed Forces, who went through brutal selection that weeded out about 85% of them, then received six months of surveillance and self-defence training before being deployed, and the operators served for 18-36 months after their training, before being returned to their 'parent unit'.

So, I know where the women will receive their extensive training in adventurer skills and experience in using them. What I need is further information about the lives of female volunteers for 14 Company, their backgrounds in the military and their parent units. What did they do in the military before volunteering for Selection and what are the units and duties they return to once their service in Northern Ireland ends?

Basically, the people hiring PCs and personnel who'll serve alongside the PCs are looking for people with a very particular set of skills, who are either out of the military, or unhappy enough in their current assignment so that they might resign their commission if offered adventure, excitement, riches and so forth.

Among their requirements are women trained for undercover roles and self-defence, because a group of fit Military-Age Males (MAM) travelling together basically screams "We're potential danger!" to every militia, police, security and terrorist organization.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

In addition to SRU (later 14 Company), women were seconded from MI5 or MI6, plus allied intelligence services (in particular Commonwealth allies) for intelligence gathering, undercover, counter-terrorism, and support roles.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

Sure, but contrary to cinema, SIS and the Security Service were neither armed nor trained with firearms, for the most part. MI5 would operate with RUC Special Branch and the RUC are armed, most likely not the Security Service personnel. Shots fired during an RUC operation means testimonies in open court and it's infinitely preferable to have the legally constituted officer, with training and the legal authority to carry a weapon, sitting there in that witness dock.

As for SIS, I don't see the benefit. If conspiracies within British politics, civil service, intelligence or security services wanted to commit crimes in Northern Ireland, they'd probably have special military units, police or security services recruit an agent within sectarian militias, and then use such agents for whatever extrajudicial activities they are doing. Sending an actual SIS officer to Northern Ireland for professional purposes is just as illegal, but has no upside. RUC SB Inpectors already know how to turn informants and as for 'pseudo-terrorist' operations and the PRU, that was apparently organized under the auspices of the military, as 14 Company was, just as it was in Borneo, Malay, Aden and Kenya.

I'm not looking for where women can learn to become Jane Bond in the 1980s, because 14 Company teach exactly the skill set needed, and has a pre-set duration of secondment, after which the operator is 'returned to their parent unit'.

I need to know what jobs women who volunteer for 14 Company were doing in the British Armed Forces before they found out about a chance to volunteer for dangerous duties. And I want to know what parent units they would have returned to after their 14 Company rotation and whether any of them perhaps took stock of their life, thought about doing that job for the next two years, and might instead be recruitable for another adventure.

Found Jobs for Wrens, but still don't have a handle on WRAC
 

I found a site with good examples of careers for Wrens, but I still don't have the same grasp of what careers were possible in the WRAC.

What were the major vocational, technical, Signals and specialized careers in the WRAC?

Did they have translators and linguists? If so, as enlisted or officers? And what would their actual job title be? Would they be a 'Signals analyst' or something else?

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

Most intelligence gathering, undercover, counter-terrorism, and support roles don't need firearms. Their being seconded was for other purposes, not least of which being less suspected of being involved, but also potentially have significant skill set variations that might have been needed. It's factual that they were seconded, so there was clearly a considered need and benefit, particularly set against a general prohibition on women serving in many roles.

Re: Found Jobs for Wrens, but still don't have a handle on WRAC
 

This is the best I can find:

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/womens-royal-army-corps

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

The main reason is the same reason why the PCs need females. A pair or group of fit military-aged males looks like they might be threats. A couple, man and woman, look like husband and wife or young people out on a date.

There were areas that the unarmed Security Service personnel simply didn't go, though. Hardcore militant strongholds, where strangers could be snatched by armed men minutes after drawing suspicion, were off-limits to surveillance and intelligence operations by anyone other than 14 Company and the SAS, who were armed, trained and had their own QRF ready to launch hostage rescue immediately, before a van left the neighbourhood.

Those areas were only patrolled by massive shows of British Army or RUC force and they were only targeted by intelligence operations where the operators considered kidnapping so likely an occupational hazard that about half their training was about avoiding and countering it.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

Yep, definitely there were no-go zones, certainly officially and, given the likely potential fallout, probably even unofficially.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

They are likely to have been doing jobs that involved contact with intelligence work, such as signallers, cryptographic operators, analysts or linguists. They're likely have had to go to some effort to volunteer.

They'd have a much better chance of being accepted if they were conspicuously athletic: there are quite a few people in the British services who are keen on sports and physical training and spend a lot of time on it.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

One character concept stems from the method of selecting these potential adventurers, i.e. through the social networks of relatives of a former British Army officer, whose family is no longer all that rich, but can trace their line of descent on one side to a knight in William the Conqueror's train and his land-holding Saxon heiress wife and on the other to Scottish and Anglo-Irish aristocrats descending from the High Stewart of Scotland, a Breton knight arriving shortly after the Conquest.

Their generational wealth has dwindled, at least in the case of the branch which produced the NPC discreetly looking for people with a very specific set of skills, but they still have valuable family connections to simply enormous numbers of upper class twits, owners of grand estates, and vast numbers of cousins with a tradition of service as military officers, in Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service or as officials of what was in the period Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS), but used to be the Colonial Service and Indian Civil Service.

Among the people his many relatives know is an aristocratic young woman whose views on gender roles and equality are conspiciously modern, but believes that this means she should have the same opportunity her brother has to attend Sandhurst and become a real military officer, risking her life for her country with the same genteel sangfroid as generations of her forebears have done. I imagine she would become an officer of military intelligence, as that, at least offered a somewhat better chance of an interesting foreign posting than the Royal Military Police, as well as being closer to her image of the military service of her male relatives.

Where would such a young lady have gotten an excellent education, before university, and/or Sandhurst? Which public schools open to girls in 1961-1988 were not just posh, but also known for elite academic performance?

The aristocratic young woman above rides like a centaur, awaits weekend shoots as avidly as her father, uncles, brothers and cousins, plays tennis, skis, swims, and travels with some frequency to hike various nature trails and even summit mountains.

What are some sports a more working-class woman, someone whose brothers were factory workers, tradesmen, fishermen, barkeeps or postal workers, might engage in, born in the fifties or sixties, so in school at some point between 1961-1988, depending on her age?

Today, there are women in most sports, but there used to be some resistance to girls participating in sports with lots of physical contact or with high velocity projectiles, like cricket. Beyond knowing that rounders exists, I'm not at all sure what sports British society from 1961-1991 considered acceptable pursuits for teenage girls and young women. Exceptionally athletic and talented girls must have practised the sports women competed at the time in the Olympics, gymnastics, track and field, swimming and so forth, but what were the most common athletic or active hobbies of teenage girls and young women in their twenties in the UK at the time?

At some point, it became perfectly acceptable for girls to play association football, take the game seriously and play into adulthood. When I was growing up in the 80s, it was very rare to see girls over 13 continue playing, as teenage peer pressure discouraged girls doing anything so stereotypically masculine. Field hockey, volleyball, swimming and gymnastics were less associated with maleness, but, of course, never anywhere near as popular as football. Actually, for most sports, female participation rates plummeted much faster than male ones as kids grew older and discovered other interests.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

The St. Trinians girls always seemed to have hockey sticks.

Which was inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Trinnean%27s_School and two private girls' schools in Cambridge – Perse School for Girls, now known as the co-educational Stephen Perse Foundation, and St Mary's School for girls, a Catholic school established by the Sisters of Mary Ward.

Universities and/or Professors Known for Russian Literature in Cold War Britain?
 

I don't know if it's worth a whole thread on its own, but among the very particular set of skills that this particular adventure calls for is a working knowledge of Russian*, with the ability to pretend to be a native not necessarily being a precondition, but acknowledged as a very big plus and probably at least as helpful as a survival skill for what they will be doing as combat skills.

During the Cold War, there are a few ways to have such knowledge of Russian while still being someone Western intelligence and security organizations might trust. Your parents or other relatives might be White Russian émigrés, you or your family might be more recent defectors from the Soviet Union or another country behind the Iron Curtain, you might be a trained linguist or intelligence officer taught Russian specifically for national security related reasons, or you might have studied Russian at university.

Any of these might apply for characters in this particular campaign, but for the last one, I'd quite like to know more about the universities in the UK where Professors who might know Russian at Native level are teaching and what Russian Literature department might be regarded as the best in Great Britain or the entire Commonwealth.

Does anyone know about any UK or other Commonwealth universities particularly associated with Russian language and literature studies, not only in the modern day, but having been so historically, before Russian-speaking academics could more easily have moved to English-speaking countries?

*While the skill set of 14 Intelligence Company, the SRU, and its modern successor, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment is broadly applicable to almost all of my campaigns, certainly for all of them which are set at some point between the 1980s and the modern day, it is perhaps especially relevant to campaigns with any connection to the network of occultists supported by Texan-born and Caribbean-focused billionaire, J.R. Kessler, Patron of the PCs in my campaign of Caribbean by Night, and its setting, which I've named 'Monstrum', consisting of the modern Earth with supernatural elements starting to emerge in subtle way, almost as if they are elements of other realities leaking through into our own as reality frays and tears, according to some occultists centered around certain geographic regions, as with the theories of biologist, cryptozoologist and paranormal writer Ivan T. Sanderson and his Vile Vortices. Aside from certain NPCs in the Caribbean leveraging a Commonwealth element in the recruiting of adventurers, potential PCs and their colleagues and support staff, any campaign set in the world of Monstrum might be particularly concerned with British characters due to my fictionalization of the late Queen Elizabeth II as aware of the occult when almost no governments in the world were, and her 'Shadow Court' of other subjects of the Queen who shared her knowledge and have a benign conspiracy to prepare Great Britain for the fundamental changes in the world when governments and people at large realize what is happening, as well as the self-dubbed 'Rangers' who feel that they must do what they can to protect the people until that happens, though, of course, such conspiracies of people in the know, benign or not, to hunt monsters humanity doesn't realize prey on them, might exist anywhere in the world, and call themselves all kinds of names.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

About the only one that really springs to mind is netball, maybe hockey. Tennis to my mind has was not a working class sport.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

If you're looking for "posh + elite" public/private schools, also consider exclusive institutions in places like Switzerland. That would guarantee extensive foreign language training, both formally and informally.

Any institution offering an International Baccalaureate program is likely going to be both posh/exclusive and academically demanding. Since the program was founded in 1968, some of the first graduates of the program might have been accepted into the Royal Armed Forces by the early 1970s.

I know from personal experience that any academically elite institution will start kids with second language programs when they're tiny. That might be the norm outside the English-speaking world, but is a distinct rarity in the U.S., at least in the late 20th century. I believe that that was the case for the UK as well.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

I had never even heard of this sport. This honestly sounds like something from an alternate reality...

I did know a girl who played ice hockey back in 2010-2012. Goalie, tough, fearless, swore like a sailor. Then again, even in those more enlightened times, that was viewed as a very masculine thing for her to do, on par with smoking cigars and drinking hard liquor from the bottle. She went to vocational school and ended up a carpenter. Takes all sorts, I suppose.

Field hockey is generally viewed as more girly than ice hockey, though I suspect the St. Trinian's girls were not meant to be aspirational. :-)

Agreed, that's why I put it on the list of sports the aristocratic character did.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

Good points.

I unconsciously assume that education means learning several languages (English is my third, out of the six [counting the native one] students on the humanistic track learned, while the STEM branch only offered four). I just expect educated upper-class British people to mostly stick to French and German, as well as small Latin and less Greek.

Russian is a lot more unusual choice and the extremely limited emigration and travel from behind the Iron Curtain would have severely limited access to Russian teachers, so few schools would even have been able to offer it as an option. You're probably more likely to find a Russian defector or non-native scholar who has mastered it totally at a world-class university with a famous department of Russian Literature than in a public school for teenage pupils.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

Women's cricket has been playing international matches since 1934. It was a sport for the eccentric at first, but was well-established, if not -funded by the 1970s.
That's another level of the joke.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

I learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute from 89-90. At the time it was a 48-week immersion basic course, though one of my classmates went immediately into the advanced course. Does the UK have an equivalent?

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

I'd have thought the parent Units for females in 14 Co in the British Armed Force would be a mother and father.

'Parent Unit' Under a Regimental System of Organization
 

That's parental units and in a military organized under a regimental system, the regiment is almost always the 'parent unit' and more or less replaces (or at least supplements) regular parental units, as the Regiment becomes both mother and father to the troopies, soldiers, sappers, etc. who belong to it.
;-)

Joint Services School for Linguists and What Were Its Successors?
 

As Phil Masters helpfully pointed out in this post in a different thread spawned by this consideration, they did, in the Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL), from 1951-1960.

Unfortunately, the JSSL appears to have closed by 1960, but Cambridge and Oxford provided assistance when the school was active and may have continued teaching graduates of it or other intelligence, military or security personnel. The individual services, British Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, might also have continued via some successor program which was only for their own personnel, smaller in scale and harder to trace evidence about without real research, through archives and service historians.

I'm hoping that someone more British, and/or more learned about UK conscription and voluntary military service from 1960 to 1989 than I am, could point me in the right direction for sources accessible in some digital way for a reasonable price (I'll buy most Kindle books for campaign research willingly, but I've usually passed on very niche academic textbooks with their €100+ pricing).

American Characters Educated at the DLI
 

The major reason for European characters to act as recruiters is because the US/Caribbean-based real paymasters are hiring mercenaries whom they intend to keep at arm's length and never allow them to know about secret facilities, key personnel or any other information which could compromise their operations if some of the mercenaries are less than loyal or just if they are arrested/captured.

This is also why none of the characters dispatched behind the former Iron Curtain, to act as talent scouts and recruiters, are permanent cadre. They're not even tied in any way hostile analysts could trace to those who are permanently part of the inner circle. Delegating the hiring of these talent scouts and recruiters to friends or family of certain well-connected people in another part of the world, ones they haven't seen in decades and who'll never be a part of anything secret again, don't do much more than give some advice, and will never meet any of the recruited mercenaries, seemed like sensible tradecraft.

That being said, using cut-outs, and getting recommendations from friends few people can even connect to you through publicly available data, there's really no reason why an American spymaster could not hire a few Americans with similar skill sets and language fluency as the Angolan, Batswana, British, Colombian, French, Finnish, Honduran, Irish, Israeli, Moldovan, Namibian, Nicaragua, South African, Yugoslav and Zimbabwean personnel already part of the various facets of the operation.

Russian fluency is a survival skill for this operation, but normally irrelevant to the people hiring permanent cadre for what they do in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico. For this one, they can pick out someone who might not be perceived as 100% trustworthy, there might be doubts about character or they might not be perceived as good enough at their speciality to qualify for being let into the inner circle, but still, because of Russian language facility and having the right skill set for this particular operation, they might be hired through cut-outs for just this one time.

The job is just to be recruiters and talent scouts to pick the right former Warsaw Pact talent, before anyone else snaps them up. Granted, they'd be doing this during a period of seismic shifts in geopolitics and international security, operating in exactly the areas which might suddenly erupt in civil war or fragment between warlords with nuclear warheads, for all people know. Some female operators to form mixed groups during undercover work are a requirement, so that the group of recruiters doesn't look like a potentially hostile group of soldiers or spies. Hence the 14 Company female operators, as some of the few women in Europe with the necessary training and experience in this era.

So, these recruiters need to speak Russian or possibly another former Warsaw Pact language, but that's not the only requirement. They also need to be able to tell the difference between poseurs pretending to be highly trained experts in certain intelligence, military or security skill sets. And they need to have some training and/or experience of their own, at least be able to operate in semi-undercover fashion or at minimum, not draw too much attention while armed in civilian clothes. Plus, they need to be able to escape danger, evade pursuers, meet at a rally point and know basic SERE protocols. Defensive driving, personal security detail training with armed and unarmed self-defence are not strict requirements, but highly desireable.

Obviously; Army Special Forces, Air Force Special Tactics, Navy SEALs and Marine Force Recon personnel who have finished a DLI course in Russian or another relevant language would meet the requirements, but they'd also be much more likely to be recruited for a more permanent position.

Who else would be sent to the DLI to learn Russian? What kind of MOS go there, aside from the obvious, and what stage in their careers? What kind of graduates could take care of themselves as part of a small group working undercover in a potentially hostile country? And would any women who graduate a Russian course from DLI in the 1980s also have SERE, defensive driving, small arms and self-defence training?

To take one kind of job as an example, see this thread for further details:

What kind of Russian-speaking American intelligence, military or security personnel might be RIF-ed when the Cold War ends and have the skill set needed to travel behind the former Iron Curtain and hire a bunch of Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip and Mi-24/Mi-25/Mi-35 Hind pilots, mechanics, fuel and ordnance specialists, as well as the airborne pathfinders and Spetsnaz needed to infiltrate tropical countries, maybe in rain forests, maybe remote islands, and set up the aerial resupply drop zones as well as forward arming and refueling posts to keep Hip and Hind helicopters operating inside the borders of an unfriendly country?

They don't need to know how to do this themselves, but they would need to find prospective candidates inside former Warsaw Pact countries, using lists of names and certain career details supplied by KGB turncoats, and recruit those of the lists who seemed the most trustworthy, sane and capable. And at least some experts in infiltration, aerial resupply and helicopter FARPs would need to evaluate the recruits at some point.

Re: [1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Force
 

When a friend of mine went to work for No Such Agency in the 80s he was sent to DLI to learn Russian. He flunked out quickly as expected because his tests when hired had languages as his worst thing. But because they need lots of Russian speakers/readers they were apparently sending everyone when hired just in case they could actually learn languages. After that they put him in a job he actually tested as being good at. So at least some civilian agencies also use(ed) it.

Technically Civilians With the Right Language, Undercover and Self-Defence Training
 

That's a good point.

I remember that at some point after 2001, there was reporting to the effect that the overwhelming majority of CIA, NSA or other similar agencies still did not carry firearms and almost none of their employees had been trained to use them. A deranged shooter changed that, in that CIA employees (and possibly other government employees) were authorized to carry a handgun for self-defence at work. Whether they actually ended up getting their employer to pay for training, the handgun and a holster, I don't recall.

But in the 1980s and all the way up to late 1990 and early 1991, when I expect to start play, most CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA, etc. staff do not carry firearms. Sworn Special Agents of alphabet agencies specifically tasked with law enforcement do, but generally only within the United States. Some of them may be trained to operate undercover, but that would be a tiny minority.

What would be the background of someone from a civilian alphabet agency, with Russian language credentials from the DLI, and particularly likely to be hired to recruit military helicopter pilots and technical experts, commandos and special operators in former Warsaw Pact countries?

Most of all, the people hiring these recruiters need women. They can't have all male groups travelling together, especially not fit military-age males, those draw unwanted scrutiny almost anywhere in the world. They've got a few Russian-speaking men with the right skill sets to recruit special operators and other military experts, from a variety of sources, but they're missing a few more women to round out the teams.

And they'd prefer not to put someone without the right skill set to be there in danger, so they're not hiring someone who doesn't have training or experience in being undercover, SERE or an equivalent, armed self-defence, etc. Or, at least, the more someone can take care of themselves, recognize when a situation is about to turn dangerous and get away safely from a punch-up with drunk thugs in a Kazakh bar or an extortion attempt at a police checkpoint in Moscow, the better the odds of them being hired.

What would be some Russian-speaking graduates of the DLI who'd also have the desirable skills to go into the cauldron of chaos of the former USSR in 1990-1991, and recruit Spetsnaz, Hind pilots and technical crew, airborne pathfinders, etc.?

Americans who Might Have Graduated from the DLI in the 1980s
 

I absolutely do not need to know details of you or your friend's application process, security clearance, work field or anything else that might be bound by NDA, confidential, NFORN or literally classified, but I'd like it if you, or anyone else with any experience of the Defense Language Institute, to speculate with me.

NSA is composed of computer scientists, cryptographers, mathematicians, physicists, programmers, signals analysts and a veritable legion of other technical experts and analysts. What they do not have is armed paramilitary spies. Nor does any other intelligence agency in the United States, with the single and solitary exception of the CIA, which is charged with certain duties abroad that no other government agency can perform.

In the UK, it's not like the SIS ('MI6') or the Security Service ('MI5') are much like the movies, either, as they're unarmed too, and when they absolutely need to enter dangerous areas, for example, to place technical surveillance equipment, MI5 agents are accompanied by RUC Special Branch officers and 14 Company operators, if they are in a very hard paramilitary area. If SIS (MI6) intelligence officers have to do the same outside the United Kingdom, there is evidence that current or 'former' SAS troopers accompany them to keep them safe.

Officially, the MI5 agents aren't trained with weapons or allowed to carry them, but 14 Company operators have admitted to lending them pistols for self-protection on such operations, mostly because they felt it would be too terrifying for untrained civilians to be somewhere they could be kidnapped for torture and execution, and not even have a weapon. If SAS troopers have ever felt the desire to arm untrained intelligence officers while undercover abroad, they did not share such information with any source who's gotten back to me.

So, okay, I'd like to encourage realistic and plausible speculation on what kind of women might have attended the Defense Language Institute from 1980 to 1991, while also having undercover work, armed and unarmed self-defence, and recruitment in her skill set.

Now, I don't know if the CIA use the DLI or if they use the Department of State's School of Language Studies, under the Foreign Service Institute. In practice, I'd imagine that CIA analysts and those case officers who will spend their careers under official cover as Foreign Service Personnel use the SLS, while paramilitary officers recruited from the armed forces are more likely to attend the DLI, probably under the cover that they are still serving soldiers, airmen, sailors, etc.

What about federal law enforcement or agencies with a domestic counterintelligence brief?

Would FBI agents attend a Russian-language course, either at the start of their career, if they scored very high in languages and other skill sets needed for them to be planning to go into the Counterintelligence part of FBI, or later in their career, perhaps before an assignment with CI implications?

How about prospective criminal investigators or Special Agents (1811) of the Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), United States Army Counterintelligence (ACI) or their naval equivalent, which was successively named the Naval Investigative Service (1966–1985), the Naval Security and Investigative Command (1985–1988) and the Naval Investigative Service Command (1988–1993), but is today best known as the United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)?

In any of those cases, would they only start language school once they had been through a full background check or is it possible that they could be in language school when they got the news that because of some irregularity in their past, they would not be getting the necessary security clearance to perform their duties?

Ulstermen (or -women) in 14 Intelligence Company
 

My Irish source, freshly back from a sojourn over the border to buy cheaper whiskey, says he cannot see any kind of UDR soldier, female or male, being allowed to serve in 14 Company during the Troubles. Too much of a security risk, even if they were to just accidentally say anything to their friends or family.

I mean, the 14 Company people were there under false names and not allowed to socialize with locals while their tours lasted, so anyone whom the local people might recognize would have been pulled out for their own safety. They sent operators home early if they were seen without a balaclava by a lot of people during an op, because it burned them for further operations.

This fits with everything else I've seen. I've not found an absolute prohibition, but it's made absolutely clear that no one who passes the psychological and security screening to get into 14 Company is allowed to have emotional attachments to any side of the Northern Ireland question.

As Rennie, the author of the definite book on the subject, says, the way you can be sure that there was never an officially condoned plan to assassinate PIRA leaders is that no one ever knew where they were at all times, except 14 Company. So no such plan could have moved past the barracks talk, because if it was adopted for real, 14 Company would have to have been a full participant and he doesn't believe they'd obey orders to assassinate unarmed people, even criminals, when they should arrest them instead. If one of 14 Company went bad, they could go very bad indeed, considering everything they knew, and their skill sets, but Rennie says he doesn't believe any of his fellow operators would take part in assassination missions in Northern Ireland.

Rennie has some philosophical theory it has to do with how their team ethos and central tenets were founded in professionalism. The personality types who made it through were those who were patient, organized, detached even under stress and that they justify all the boredom, discomfort and tension by the belief that if they are professional enough, they'll prevent terrorist attacks without creating any new martyrs or new terrorists with grudges.

The operators of 14 Company also get to spend their time on operations all the time. They don't train to the peak of absolute perfection in killing people and breaking things, like the SAS, and then get asked to wait quietly. There was an SAS troop on duty with them in Northern Ireland, at all times, except those boys didn't get called out except for massive raids, which happened... almost never.

So, Rennie says that the SAS troopers, like young and adrenaline-charged men everywhere, talked a lot about how they wanted off the leash and kill all the buggers. But they couldn't have, not without 14 Company, because all the targets continually moved around between safe houses, and 14 Company was the only one with any actionable intelligence. Which Rennie says was never used with a Home Office warrant and the RUC Special Branch there to make arrests.

On balance, I think the evidence supports his description of the unit he served in. No one has ever linked 14 Company to the activities of the Force Research Unit and the very existence of that unit, apparently duplicating the official intelligence roles of RUC Special Branch, Security Service (MI5) and 14 Company, suggests that senior Army figures felt that the existing organizations were too constrained by legalities, warrants and the like.

14 Company carried out surveillance and worked with the local police to make arrests based on that surveillance. They helped the Security Service (MI5) to set up technical surveillance equipment, bugs, video, trackers, etc. Crucially, however, they didn't run agents and they weren't in any way associated with the British Army Intelligence Corps. They were not trained by them, run by them or reporting to them.

Rennie never mentions the FRU and, technically, it would probably have been secret from him. Neither the British nor anyone else tend to give out broad, all-sources security clearances. Anyone running covert ops will usually be supposed to deconflict ops to make sure there's no friendly fire, but 14 Company wasn't supposed to fire except in dire self-defence, so there were forces they did not deconflict with (the UDR, for one), and I strongly think that FRU and their masters didn't tell others about secret units working under other parts of the UK military, intelligence or security forces, not unless they really have to.

On the subject, though, Rennie mentions that because of the frustration of the SAS troopers, waiting all the time for a chance to use their skills, and resolve the situation in the way they were trained, if the military had ever been given the green light to start stacking Irish paramilitary bodies, there would have been no problem finding SAS troopers willing to act as shooters.

As most soldiers everywhere, they have a pretty simple view of the world. Anyone who counts as 'the enemy' is someone they figure they ought to be taking out, with their weapons and their skills, and anything preventing that is just red tape that allows a problem to persist. So, if armies were democracies, most of the SAS troopers would have voted for shooting all the members of paramilitaries, on any side they claimed to be, and then going home for Christmas. Lovely chaps, Rennie says, just continually frustrated by their role in Northern Ireland, which could be summed up by, 'Wait'.