I’ve read articles of groups like Red Cell, that are/were designed to infiltrated American bases to test security there. Are these fictional? Also, what if some private sees a member of red cell cutting a fence on the base and shoots him? Would he be tried with murder?
Basically, how far could these scenarios go?
I’m not familiar with exactly what you’re describing, but the Air Force has…or at least had when I was in, an Aggressor Squadron, that provided opposition during certain training exercises. I flew with one of the guys that had done a tour in that unit. He did a great Russian accent, which really added something to the scenario.
Red Cell was real, but Richard Marcinko, the guy who was in charge of it, never had a great reputation and I’ve read his exploits with a grain of salt. From what I understand, their successes infiltrating bases are probably accurate.
I don’t know the answer to your question but I think bases were given a time frame of when they would be tested, and that would probably minimize any chances of someone shooting first and asking questions later.
Was there really a necessity for Red Cell? Was there a realistic threat that some Spetsnaz team was going to break into Fort Hood, for example, and abduct some general?
Or conduct sabotage, or steal top secret information, or just shoot a bunch of people up and cause chaos.
It is interesting that you suggest Ft. Hood as an example for agents of the enemy to infiltrate.
I remember when I was in the Navy in Charleston there was an exercise where the base Shore Patrol chased some Seals or something around.
According to Cracked (which offers cites, but whose writers tend to utilize hyperbole, so take it with a grain of salt):
That article on Cracked is probably as accurate as you can get, which means it reads like it is based on Marcinko’s autobiography and probably no one else has ever said a word about Red Cell. I’ve heard and read of other SEALs around at the time who steered clear of Marcinko because they thought him and his group were a bunch of unprofessional hard partiers that were going to go down. Come to think of it, I think there were a couple of alcohol related wrecks that were somewhat scandalous to Red Cell, but I can’t remember any details.
At any rate, my only point is that Marcinko’s autobiography is probably the only source on details of the Red Cell exercises, and he reads like a braggy guy with a chip on his shoulder but I assume the results of their exercises are pretty accurate. But things like “disgruntled commanders decided to have Marcinko railroaded”, I dunno, that’s Marcinko’s POV, for sure.
I would think so. It’s like the people who try to sneak guns through TSA security as a test, but to test the security of a whole base or nuclear submarine or something, you have to attack however you can. Realism is generally good, but some of their exploits seem a little over the top and some of the vulnerabilities probably could have been pointed out instead of acted out, but this was done in a cold war mentality so it probably made sense at the time.