Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command.

• Author: Ball, Rhys
• Position: Book review

RELENTLESS STRIKE: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command

Author: Sean Naylor

Published by: St Martin's Press, New York, 2015, 560pp, US$29.99 (hb).

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Like credible intelligence non-fiction, probing into the sensitive world of Special Forces provides numerous, often impenetrable, challenges to those authors attempting to write factually accurate portrayals of such military forces. However, from time to time, good writers with good access, good sources and a little luck are able to piece together intricate and disparate sources to penetrate the veils of secrecy and operational security; Sean Naylor's Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command is one such publication.

The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is the coordinating body for America's premier Special Forces units; it includes the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEALs and the Air Force's Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Naylor takes the reader on a journey that chronologically maps the evolutionary history of the command, from the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt in 1980 to the invasion of Grenada in 1983 to Panama and Manuel Noriega's capture in 1989 to Desert Storm, Bosnia--Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Iraq. Naylor intricately weaves lesser known rescues, renditions and other direct action operations throughout the volume, in addition to the most well-known of all, the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladin in 2011.

The author's research comes from a variety of sources, including official documents, open-source/publically available material--as well as a significant number of interviews with JSOC operators and commanders. A decade earlier, Naylor had penned Not A Good Day to Die, which chronicled his experiences as a reporter for the United States Army Times--where he was 'embedded' with US forces during key periods of Operation Anaconda, the first largescale military action to involve large numbers of US conventional forces as well as Special Forces. During this deployment, Naylor was able to interview a number of Special Forces participants, and clearly these relationships developed and expanded and have assisted immeasurably in Relentless Strike.

Relentless Strike is a dense text, but it is not an academic volume. It captures the rise and evolution of the JSOC without considering the overall strategic considerations that may have seen this expansion come about. The successful evolution of the...