[Special Ops/Covert Ops] Equipment for Mercenary Operation in 1990-1991

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by fula farbrorn

Thermals where declassified in 1992 and its unlikely that mercs would be using them, even the soviets where lacking in it.

People have this image of 'mercs' that is taken from 1960s events and didn't really exist after that. Since then, the reason to hire foreign Private Military Contractors has become that they are technical experts and can train your personnel on using modern military equipment. If Executive Outcomes hadn't had better communications, surveillance and intelligence technology than Angola was receiving from the Soviets, Executive Outcomes would have been no more valuable than the Soviet advisors that had trained MPLA before it became the FAA (Angolan national military).

Furthermore, FLIR can't have been that secret, Hollywood directors knew about it, see Aliens (1987). Which is not weird, considering how long the technology had existed, though at the time Aliens was made, FLIR modules were mostly too expensive and finicky for widespread civilian SAR use. It was not too expensive for operations where the difference between having it and not having it was whether your Mi-17 helicopters were shot down by MANPADS.

Which is why Executive Outcomes used FLIR-equipped Pilatus PC-7 (I was wrong about which of their aircraft did which, they equipped the PC-7 with rockets and another with radio relays and GPS system to act as an aerial forward observer for artillery and air) Beechcraft King Air aircraft from the start. Texas Instruments were making modules that fit a lot of aircraft from the 1970s and by the early 1990s, other companies, less hesitant than they were about signing deals, were selling to all sorts of Western-aligned nations. Some of the US firms sold to British ones (and were later acquired by them, though that was slightly later in the 1990s) and French and Israeli companies had competing approaches to Texas Instruments by the 1990s.

And Executive Outcomes, for example, started as a company through which Eeben Barlow prepared and taught classes on developing and using intelligence to South African Special Forces. His background, other than being a military engineering officer who had commanded the 32 Battalion Reconnaissance Wing, was the CCB intelligence officer in charge of Europe and the Middle East, where one of his duties had been to follow foreign military technology and acquire it for South Africa if practical.

At the time, with records-keeping much worse, a lot of companies sold military equipment as long as they could show a valid end-user certificate, they didn't care whether anyone actually followed them, as long as they had one, they had covered their ass.

As it happened, though, the UK accepted Angolan end-user certificates for what Executive Outcomes wanted to buy for their contract of training the FAA (the national Angolan Army, of the legitimate, UN-approved government, which, ironically, Executive Outcomes were demonized for working for, while the United States and South Africa kept supporting UNITA in defiance of international law and treaties they had specifically signed binding all parties to the result of elections that UNITA rejected when Dr. Jonas Savimbi didn't win).

Eeben Barlow doesn't specify the model of FLIR they bought for their aircraft, but the contracts were signed in London. That probably means they came from British Aerospace or GEC-Marconi and were either licensed from French SAGEM or from HAC (later Raytheon).

Originally Posted by fula farbrorn

AN/PRC 77 radios would be good for manpacks, there are really not a lot of good man portable options for man to man, i would consider the 4855 Personal Role Radio (500 meter range 3 pounds weight single man radio)I am a bit unsure about cameras for airplanes and such, probably a Minolta 700 with a large objective mounted to take photos at a 45 degree angle downwards ?

3 lbs. personal radios with 500 meter range make sense if a relay station mounted on the circling aircraft up in the 'Telstar' role can amplify that enough for communications between elements on the same battlefield.