Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The United States has also seen variations of small unit tactics. One came
in 2007 in the form of the Fort Dix, New Jersey, plot. Its execution called for
armed assaults against a military installation in the United States. In the sum-
mer of 2009, Australian authorities arrested four Australian citizens believed to
have trained with Al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabaab, for planning an armed assault
on the Holsworthy army barracks outside of Sydney. During the late 1960s and
throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, the Black Panther offshoot, the Black
Liberation Army, killed a number of police officers across the country including
New York City police officers Joseph Piagentini, Waverly Jones, Gregory Foster,
and Rocco Laurie.
But what really changed the way we look at the terrorist use of small unit tactics
was the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, by the militant group Lashkar-
e-toiba. What was so fascinating about Mumbai was that for 60 hours, the assault
team brought a city of 20 million people to a standstill. The attackers outgunned
the defenders and were trained down to the smallest detail. Unlike other instances,
Mumbai was not an event that took place in a containable venue, changing to
multiple venues over time. It was a hybrid attack using intermodal means (land and
sea) and used small arms and small IEDs. A small armed cell was able to change the
battle space not only by using technology as mentioned previously but also by win-
ning the battle of time. The attackers were successful in penetrating the area of vul-
nerability, which slowed down an already-slowed response on the part of the police.
Until challenged by the defenders, the attackers have the luxury to act freely, and
this is what the Mumbai attackers managed to do. There were conflicting reports
of whether the Mumbai attackers took hostages for the sake of taking hostages, yet
in terms of the terrorism espoused by Al-Qaeda, death for the attackers and the
hostages is the intended end result.
Abu Eisa al-Hindi thought of multiple attack scenarios during his surveil-
lance of financial centers along the Eastern seaboard of the United States in
the summer of 2000 that spanned from simple arson to the Gas Limo Project.
The Gas Limo Project called for explosives, gas cylinders, and shrapnel to
be placed inside a black car similar to those used by executives at one of the
buildings cased, as they drew little security attention from security personnel.
According to notes found during the investigation, “Perhaps the best example
of how a building can be totally gutted by an inferno (blaze) and more was
that of the WTC (World Trade Center),” the project said, referring to the
September 11 attacks in 2001. Although al-Hindi was arrested before this
plan could come to fruition, an element of this form of attack was seen in the
2007 failed VBIED attack outside a London nightclub.
