Book Review: "Relentless Strike"

"Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command", by Sean Naylor, an epic book, revealing much of the public tactics, intel, technology, missions, successes, and failures, of several special operations groups that formed the infamous JSOC in The War on Terror. The book was eye opening in regards to how the multiple groups worked together, specifically JSOC and McChrystal,  and how intel fed operations and vise-versa, when intel was dry then operations would stir up sources, both moving at a driving pace. I listened to the book on audible for about $20 at ~20 hours of highly entertaining and enlightening audio. Overall, I give this book 6/10 stars as it's both entertaining and inspiring, but only has a few chapter and themes pertaining to intel and infosec, largly being focused on military operations. I recommend the book to aspiring intel analysts, anyone working in a cross organizational task force, or anyone interested in the War on Terror. I also appreciate how well they described the Little Birds (MH-6) and their various operations, the staple special operational flight vehicle used by the JSOC. The following is the chapters of the book, in my typical fashion, to give any potential readers a better idea of the contents of the book:

Part I - The Ferrari in the Garage

Chapter 1: A Phoenix Rises

Chapter 2: JSOC Gets Its Feet Wet

Chapter 3: Frustration in the Middle East

Chapter 4: Payoff in Panama

Chapter 5: Manhunts, Motorboats, and Mogadishu

Chapter 6: Forging Bonds in the Balkans

Chapter 7: Loose Nukes and Missed Opportunities

Part II - A New Era Dawns 

Chapter 8: "Fairly Ponderous and Enormously Heavy"

Chapter 9: Risky Missions and Empty Targets

Chapter 10: "Carte Blanche"

Chapter 11: Precious Cargo

Chapter 12: Rumsfeld Falls for JSOC

Chapter 13: Bin Laden Slips Away

Chapter 14: "Patton's Three Principles of War"

Part III - Building The Machine

Chapter 15: Invasion

Chapter 16: The Deck of Cards

Chapter 17: Building a Network

Chapter 18: "JSOC on Steroids"

Chapter 19: Snake Eyes

Chapter 20: Killing Zarqawi

Chapter 21: A New Campaign Against an Old Enemy

Part IV - A Global Campaign 

Chapter 22: Close Target Reconnaissance in Syria

Chapter 23: Back to Mogadishu

Chapter 24: A Victory in Mosul?

Chapter 25: Rangers Step Up in Afghanistan 

Chapter 26: Hit and Miss in Pakistan

Chapter 27: A Reckoning in Abbottabad

Chapter 28: Successes, and a Failure

Chapter 29: Extortion

Chapter 30: Old Enemies, New Challenges

I especially liked the chapters that talked about unofficial cover operations, deep cover trade craft that involved recruiting agents, keeping cover, and high tech spy devices. I also really like the stories of the night time halo drops by Seal Team Six, this extremely stealth, forward reconnaissance capability was very cool. But the technology discussed in Chapter 18, "JSOC on Steroids", were by far my favorite! The digital attacks spearheaded by The Computer Network Operations was phenomenal, such as the ability to track and listen through cell phones, even when they were off!! They turned the oppositions communications networks against them, a massive increase to their intelligence gain on their enemy. Including the ability to clone phones and receive messages surreptitiously was a capabilities game changer from an intelligence perspective, that also had very real world operations impact, highlighting the high synergy between intelligence and operations in the JSOC. I also really enjoyed the parts on F3EAD (Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate), which is a targeting methodology that can also be applied to digital incident response tactics! F3EAD worked hand in hand with their "Strike to develop" methodology. All in all, it was very cool to hear its origins and applications in the War on Terror, as it's a pretty excellent tactical targeting methodology. The following is the author of the book, talking about his JSOC experiences in general: