Mercenary Army Aviation Special Operations FARP Team? Where to recruit?

[Icelander]

Old man J.R. Kessler, the PCs' Patron from Caribbean by Night, the secret protector of humanity from threats most of them don't believe in, owner of a lot of airplanes and rotorcraft for Monster Hunting logistics, secret Patron of a lot of occult research and the Patron behind one PC moving a whole bunch of reluctant Zimbabweans, once Mugabe's massacres in Matabeleland had made it impossible for many Ndbele, Kalanga, Shaangan and others to support him, as new settlers in Dominica in 1990, where they formed Reserve African Rifles to defend their new homeland, but also three rifle Commandos and a Support Commando for deployments if small teams of Night Riders (Monster Hunters) ever get into a supernatural situation which cannot be solved without at least a troop, if not a company or bigger unit, needs to recruit a mercenary force to go ahead of any such deployment and set up a Forward Arming and Refueling Point for helicopters.

He's doing this in 1990-1991, at the same time shady arms dealers with connections to his network of connections were in the former USSR with long wish lists of military hardware they were to attempt to bribe unpaid base commanders, factory managers, warehouse staff, underground cache maintenance and anyone else with access to military stuff they could sell for just the cost of some bribery and transport.

Those were wild days and anyone looking to arm secret supernatural organizations could score some crazy deals. Those were also just about the only time in history you could recruit former KGB, Spetsnaz and other elite ex-Soviet forces and be 100% sure that the recruit was not a double-agent, because no Soviet intelligence agency was thinking about the future or actually functioning well enough to run an operation with that kind of long-term planning behind it.

So, hiring anyone the Soviets had trained in infiltration other countries and setting up secret forward arming and refueling points for Mi-8 Hip transport helicopters and Mi-24 Hind gunships was absolutely on the table. One issue is that I don't know who the Soviet would train to do that.

GRU Spetsnaz? VDV airborne pathfinders of some kind? Spetsnaz under the some Army formation, maybe a Guards brigade? Just conscripts in helicopter units who were willing to be trained in infiltration methods like parachuting? KGB Spetsnaz? Naval Spetsnaz?

All of the above?

What are some other places for personnel with the special skills you need?

They need to be able to infiltrate by sea, air and land. Some of them need to be experts with boats and sailing, others need to be parachute experts, yet others will need to be able to drive or hike through all kinds of terrain without being detected. Plus, you need the ordnance and refueling experts for helicopters, as well as experts in aerial resupply, meaning parachute riggers and experts at taking air-dropped fuel and ordnance and camouflaging it in a way that it is still quickly accessible if helicopters need it.

At least some of them need to be able to operate undetected among civilian populations, like Tier 1 SOF Advance Force Operation experts or simply paramilitary intelligence officers. Some might fly in commercially or arrive on yachts or fishing boats, pretending to be tourists.

And while you initially establish this unit in 1990-1991, you need to maintain this capability until the modern day, so you need to recruit replacements for any injured, dead or retired members.

The difference between these and your Night Riders and the Reserve African Rifles is that these will not know for whom they are working or anything about the troops they are supporting by establishing FARPs. So, while they do need to be trustworthy, they don't have to be family or best friends of one of your existing recruits. They just need to be professional mercenaries who are loyal to their paymaster.

They'll probably have the option to choose to have vacation homes in Costa Rica or Panama, while being legal residents in Honduras. Initially, they'll have a (perfectly legal) training facility in Honduras, but in 2003, some changes in Honduras law for Private Military or Security Companies (PMSC) cause them to move that facility to Guatemala.

Where they will mostly train boating and waterborne infiltration will be the Darién Gap of Panama, where Panama cannot and will not patrol too much, as then they'd be stuck dealing with all the illegal immigrants that otherwise just pass through their country and become the problem of Mexico and the US. They'll also parachute in there frequently, but also train parachuting in Honduras and then Guatemala, where their legal compound will be. Some of their training will actually consist of infiltrating the countries where they will operate the most, Dominican Republic and Haiti, and leaving caches there, both arms caches and fuel. Infiltrating other Caribbean islands to bring arms there would also be natural training.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Plus, you need the ordnance and refueling experts for helicopters, as well as experts in aerial resupply, meaning parachute riggers and experts at taking air-dropped fuel and ordnance and camouflaging it in a way that it is still quickly accessible if helicopters need it.

Refueling helicopters is not rocket science. The only hard parts are managing condensation and other contaminants in the tanks (which I'm not sure Soviet aircraft are even sensitive to) and maintaining the fuel pumps or setting up a gravity feed system.

Re-arming is more technical, but still not difficult. Actually re-arming in a non-permissive environment is highly unlikely. Once the shooting starts, the local military and/or gendarmerie will take a very dim view of any armed combatants that stick around too long. Note, though, that Hinds probably have enough internal cargo capacity for one reload of ammunition, if needed.

Parachute rigging is a special skill -- but only on the packing end. If you don't care about re-using the parachute(s), you don't need any training at all to de-rig a load on the ground.

There are generally three approaches to this problem:

1. Bring fuel (and maybe ammo) with you, in logistical support aircraft. These could be fixed-wing tankers or even other cargo helicopters with aux tanks. Support personnel can accompany the aircraft or onboard crew (crewchiefs and pilots) can resupply themselves.
2. Use agents in place (with or without hired local help) to receive airdropped supplies and set up caches. The actual replenishment is still probably carried out by the crew themselves.
3. If it can't be done any other way, the equivalent of pathfinders or combat control teams can set up a DZ/LZ as a deep FARP. This is risky, however, as a considerable number of people are hanging around in bad-guy territory, waiting to be discovered.

[benz72]

Just as a dummy question,
If you are doing support prep in a place like that, why not just make is part of something legit?
If I've got enough money to pay ground support staff to set up and maintain refuel/rearm/repair points I should also have enough to set up a NGO transport hub or a helicopter tour company that sells thrill rides to instagrammy ecotourists (or something).
If the locals come looking they see a small organization just barely afloat with legitimate reasons to have lots of helicopter parts and fuel around.
Maybe only 2 or 3 people even know it is anything other than what it purports to be.
Plus, it does something to offset the cost.
They may need to keep the fun stuff in somebody's basement until it is needed though.

[The Colonel]

Are you aware of the historical example of Neal Ellis - who operated an aviation PMC in Sierra Leone? Might be a good inspiration...

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Are you aware of the historical example of Neal Ellis - who operated an aviation PMC in Sierra Leone? Might be a good inspiration...

Yes, I've read all his books and most of what has been written about him, I imagine. His example of how to do this on a shoestring is illustrative, but he was never projecting power as far from friendly lines as what the PCs might need in the course of the campaign. Hence, a lot more resources thrown at the problem, and, ideally, a whole mercenary force dedicated to nothing else than arming and refueling the helos you're operating deep inside the territory of someone else's sovereign territory, saving their people from supernatural threats they will hopefully never learn about.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by thrash

Refueling helicopters is not rocket science. The only hard parts are managing condensation and other contaminants in the tanks (which I'm not sure Soviet aircraft are even sensitive to) and maintaining the fuel pumps or setting up a gravity feed system.

It's not rocket science, but you do want to have people who've done it before, in a shooting war, teaching your people the right way to do it. Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters operated pretty far from Soviet bases in Afghanistan, but even more so, they operated continents away in Angola, Mozambique, etc.

Originally Posted by thrash

Re-arming is more technical, but still not difficult. Actually re-arming in a non-permissive environment is highly unlikely. Once the shooting starts, the local military and/or gendarmerie will take a very dim view of any armed combatants that stick around too long. Note, though, that Hinds probably have enough internal cargo capacity for one reload of ammunition, if needed.

Since Panama in 1989, the 160th SOAR has done this, in non-permissive environments. So much so that they were in a firefight while re-arming Little Birds, which they went and unloaded on the enemy which were firing at them.

I find it somewhat implausible that the Soviet never tried to train anyone in that capability, given that they sent Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters to take part in proxy wars in a lot of African countries, and sent KGB, GRU and Army Spetsnaz with them to develop helicopter doctrine in revolutionary and counter-revolutionary warfare.

If no Soviet serviceman ever trained to re-arm a Hind or a refuel a Hip under combat conditions, then I guess we can't recruit from former-USSR countries, but then other users of USSR equipment would be possibilities. Angola must have re-armed helicopters while not secure in possession of the ground. As must Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mozambique, Botswana, etc.

Originally Posted by thrash

Parachute rigging is a special skill -- but only on the packing end. If you don't care about re-using the parachute(s), you don't need any training at all to de-rig a load on the ground.

The US Army 160th SOAR has aerial delivery experts who have the parachute rigger MOS and specialize in preparing loads for parachute drops to supply FARPs, being deployed ahead of everyone else (along with the aviation fuel and ordnance MOS guys) by parachute or helicopter, and then receive the drop capsules and in as little time as possible, make it no longer parachute drop capsules and turn it into fuel or ordnance that can be used to arm and fuel helicopters.

It's like how any proficient motorist at TL7 and early TL8 could change a tire with a spare, but only a highly trained NASCAR pit crew could do it under maximum time pressure.

There are generally three approaches to this problem:

Originally Posted by thrash

[*]Bring fuel (and maybe ammo) with you, in logistical support aircraft. These could be fixed-wing tankers or even other cargo helicopters with aux tanks. Support personnel can accompany the aircraft or onboard crew (crewchiefs and pilots) can resupply themselves.

In case you do anything overt enough to seize air fields, that's perfect.

Originally Posted by thrash

[*]Use agents in place (with or without hired local help) to receive airdropped supplies and set up caches. The actual replenishment is still probably carried out by the crew themselves.

Yeah, that's why I want to recruit actual intelligence officers or Advance Force Operations special operations personnel, to do this part, which makes everything else so much easier.

Originally Posted by thrash

[*]If it can't be done any other way, the equivalent of pathfinders or combat control teams can set up a DZ/LZ as a deep FARP. This is risky, however, as a considerable number of people are hanging around in bad-guy territory, waiting to be discovered.

Deploying a company-sized Commando into a sovereign country which did not ask for help and is not aware of the supernatural threat you are protecting it from is inherently risky. Because the network you serve exists to prevent the end of the world, though, you still train for it, because if such a deployment is ever necessary, you better be the best in the world at it, and able to do it without blowing the organization wide open.

That's also why the mercenaries doing this part are cut-off from knowing any important secrets. They are people doing a job. Like them or hate them, if they are caught, they can't compromise the entire organisation, all they can do is compromise a support structure that exists to support them, because they don't know about anything else.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by benz72

Just as a dummy question,
If you are doing support prep in a place like that, why not just make is part of something legit?
If I've got enough money to pay ground support staff to set up and maintain refuel/rearm/repair points I should also have enough to set up a NGO transport hub or a helicopter tour company that sells thrill rides to instagrammy ecotourists (or something).
If the locals come looking they see a small organization just barely afloat with legitimate reasons to have lots of helicopter parts and fuel around.
Maybe only 2 or 3 people even know it is anything other than what it purports to be.
Plus, it does something to offset the cost.
They may need to keep the fun stuff in somebody's basement until it is needed though.

In Honduras (until 2003) and in Guatemala (from 2003 to now), they have a legit Private Military or Security Company, which will train Colombian, Honduran, El Salvadoran, Guetemalan, Costa Rican and Panaman intelligence, military, police and security units in helicopter tactics with Mi-8/Mi-17 transports and Mi-25/Mi-35 gunships. They will be doing legitimate things as much as they can, especially training, even though they'll lose money on that pursuit, by offering it cheaply to anyone official from that part of the world.

[Donny Brook]

It seems that if this is a "buy vs. build" decision, the answer is build.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

It seems that if this is a "buy vs. build" decision, the answer is build.

In 1990-1991, you'll need to purchase the loyalty of some USSR helicopter pilots, crew chiefs, mechanics and support staff.

Arms dealers who work for you are buying helicopters, or, perhaps more technically, bribing what used to be Soviet base commanders into allowing them to steal them. Successor states like Russia did not immediately come into actual existence, more a theoretical one. For example, several military bases were now on foreign soil, with soldiers from the Caucasus or Siberia stationed in the Ukraine, and no one having a plan how that would work, how they would get home, if they were under discipline, who their superiors were, etc. Many successor states also did not start paying their public servants, including soldiers, because there were days, even weeks, when no one knew who was in charge or if there even was any money to pay out.

It seems logical to try to recruit highly trained helicopter support staff, possibly ones who ended up having to re-arm and re-fuel Hinds and Hips deep in the Hindu Kush, in Afghan-held territory, during the fighting 1984-1988 which was dubbed 'the Caravan War', but codenamed Operation Curtain.

You'll also want to try to find some Spetsnaz trained to infiltrate Asian or African countries where the Soviets officially did not have troops, and re-arm and re-fuel the helicopters allegedly used by local forces, when those local forces had no pilots or trained enlisted aviation personnel.

Deeply criminal arms dealers supplied with ambitious wish lists of military vehicles and ordnance tried to infiltrate the Leningrad Naval Base, to bribe their way into leaving with a landing hovercraft or more than one, if things went well. Things did not go well. Leningrad was not some cut-off base of former USSR soldiers with no one in charge. There was confusion, arrears in pay, and, yes, scenes of corruption, but there were also GRU officers who defaulted to doing their jobs, even in the absence of orders, and tried to arrest a pair of foreign arms dealers, and the two black marketeers they had with them for local knowledge. There was a firefight, the black marketeers were wounded and captured or killed, one of the arms dealers was wounded and some of the GRU men were shot.

Fortunately for the pair of arms dealers, they were working with a man whose career at the dark intersection of French intelligence, mercenary work and arms dealing spanned the entire second half of the 20th century. There were few wartorn and corrupt countries where he had not bribed officials and developed agents, but during the re-birth of St. Petersburg, he pulled off a masterpiece. Leveraging the usual antipathy between GRU and KGB officers, he bought, wholesale, an entire section of KGB officers concerned with military matters (whom he had collected dossiers on in preparation for using them to obtain more ordnance from the profitable wish list).

Using their networks and access, he kept his colleagues out of the hands of the GRU and alive through a somewhat inefficient manhunt. With false reports and deceit, he confused and confounded all pursuit while obtaining medical treatment for his wounded partner, and even kept the haddock-brained American-raised son of an old mercenary friend alive, though the boy had fired an assault rifle at GRU pursuers on a crowded street, hitting no one but cvilians, making the manhunt a Militsiya matter as well as the security services.

Ultimately he got his colleagues out of the city and into a fishing trawler sailed by a KGB asset. The fishing trawler deposited them in Tallinn, Estonia, in ordinary times far from free from GRU pursuit, but during the times, few mechanisms of power worked and most Soviet intelligence officers were more concerned with personal survival than doing their jobs for an empire no longer in existence. The eight KGB officers who helped him pull off his magic trick were aware that as soon as things quieted down, odds were that a competent investigation would, at some point, be carried out. Rather than wait for their role to be discovered during such an investigation, they fled Russia, those of them who had families taking them along (except one, who detested his wife, and used this opportunity to secure a clean break from her and his mother-in-law, the only woman he liked even less than his wife).

None of the KGB men were elite commandos of the caliber sought for aviation special operations advance force operations and covert FARP teams, but several of them had served in Afghanistan and as KGB officers concerned with military matters, they had knowledge and connections useful for anyone foolhardy enough to go into the chaos of the former USSR and try to recruit a bunch of highly skilled experts, many of whom specialized in clandestine infiltration and covert warfare, and any of whom might try to turn them in.

That will be an interesting mission, for someone who enjoys old Kessler's absolute trust, but who exists somewhat outside his inner circle, so that if the men he recruits are not all 100% loyal, they cannot compromise the whole counter-supernatural network, just their small, independent part in some effort where they are ignorant of the goals, objectives and identities of their ultimate employer.

The early recruits will likely be ex-USSR military, intelligence and security services, simply because that is where this kind of expertise with Soviet arms and helicopters is found. Plus, the coincidence of the KGB men who'll write down lists of potential recruits of various Spetsnaz, VDV and Guards units, and especially paramilitary KGB officers and KGB spetsnaz.

Many with the required skill sets will likely be from GRU Spetsnaz units, but the KGB men will not know enough about their rivals to even make good educated guesses on who might be trustworthy, not turn the recruiter in, and be receptive to an offer of a new life in the tropics, paid good money in their choice of Western currency, to do pretty much what the USSR trained them to do, just with better living conditions and ten times the salaries.

After Russia becomes a functional state once again, recruiting from there is too dangerous. In 1991, you could be sure that no Soviet intelligence or security service would be deliberately trying to place a double agent in your organization, because, a) The organization was new and the Soviets could not even have heard of it yet, and b) Everything was too chaotic for some kind of long-term plan with an agent placed somewhere, potentially over months or years, for results irrelevant to the fight of the ex-Soviet intelligence and security agencies fighting for relevance and thus survival. Your old recruits might suggest men they trusted implicitly, family and such, and maybe you'd take the chance for an exceptional man with skills possessed by few others.

I imagine that other recruits might be former USSR or Eastern European elite soldiers who went into the French Foreign Legion once their former countries stopped paying them. Kessler's network has a lot of former Legionaires and they maintain contacts with old friends who retired close to Legion barracks and still hear things. Placing someone into the Legion for at least five years is too much effort to go to in order to place a double agent in an organization not all that important to Russia.

This can get you men with training in arming and supplying Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip and Mi-24/Mi-35 Hind helicopters, as well as Commando Paratroops of the 2e REP, graduates and instructors of the CEFE jungle warfare school in French Guiana and other valuable skills. Given that many more potential recruits must be 'probably loyal and reliable' than 'definitely, 100% worth trust as you would trust family', there must be many potential recruits who can't be trusted with learning all they would learn by being part of the Night Rider teams, but who can serve with these Aviation Special Operations / Pathfinder Commando FARP Teams.

So, you keep up numbers by regularly recruiting new members. Perhaps even from Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guetamala, Honduras, and Panama, as even if they lack the world-class training, they have cultural familiarity and language skills. There might be unpolished gems among private military contractors and former soldiers from these countries, who can be trained to sufficient levels. Plus, your intelligence support will recruit Dominican Republic and Haitian agents who can help infiltrate their countries. Jamaicans too, I imagine, maybe even people from other Caribbean islands, but Cuba and Puerto Rica are, each in their own way, possibly too dangerous to run penetration operations against.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by benz72

Just as a dummy question,
If you are doing support prep in a place like that, why not just make is part of something legit?
If I've got enough money to pay ground support staff to set up and maintain refuel/rearm/repair points I should also have enough to set up a NGO transport hub or a helicopter tour company that sells thrill rides to instagrammy ecotourists (or something).
If the locals come looking they see a small organization just barely afloat with legitimate reasons to have lots of helicopter parts and fuel around.

Maybe only 2 or 3 people even know it is anything other than what it purports to be.
Plus, it does something to offset the cost.

Keeping de-milled Mi-8 Hip helicopters as part of a commercial front company is no problem at all. Register them in countries where they have a commercial type certification with the local equivalent of the FAA and you can lease them out to anyone you need.

Armed Mi-24 Hind helicopters are more of a challenge to justify as part of any tourist or commercial helicopter lease operation. However, a legally-registered Private Military Company can have one for the purpose of leasing it to a Western military for OpFor training. In the real world, actual companies in the US have done that. And when it comes to less affluent militaries, one's without as many UH-60 Blackhawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters as they would like, they might be using Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip and Mi-24/Mi-35 as part of their own forces and could use advanced training in operations with them.

In the region, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela all have used one or both the Hind or Hip, aside from, obviously, Cuba. And El Salvador, Guetemala, Honduras or Panama might need to train against them, due to their security situation, not to mention how any wary neighbour of Cuba might want to have access to Mi-8/Mi-17 Hips and Mi-24/Mi-25/Mi-35 Hinds for tactical exercises against infiltration or invasion.

Because they don't actually need to make a profit, while they do need constant training (and joint training with Latin American and Caribbean militaries is extremely valuable to them, as they might learn about air traffic radars in the region, as well as weaknesses to infiltration), they'll offer their helicopter leases and training contracts at extremely low rates, complete with NDAs about the terms. Their goal is to get legitimacy for their training.

Originally Posted by benz72

They may need to keep the fun stuff in somebody's basement until it is needed though.

Until 2003, they can legally keep the fun stuff in Honduras, as long as they manage to get citizenship there. After 2003, they can do so in Guetemala, where there isn't even a citizenship issue.

But, sure, they'll stash military equipment in several places, in Panama, of course, and then near likely infiltration spots in the Dominican Republic and in Haiti.

But they need constant access to military equipment any time they are not on leave, because realistic SOF don't maintain their skills without regular and extensive training.