Monday morning quarterback Opération Satanique as SR gamers, Let's do-over a failed French operation Options

[Wounded Ronin]

So, the year is 1985, and Opération Satanique fails and becomes a huge French PR disaster. Basically some people in the French government decided they should sink a Greenpeace ship docked in New Zealand in order to punish Greenpeace for intruding on French naval territory during nuke tests. They wanted to do so without any collateral damage, so they attached 2 limpet mines to the hull. They exploded the first one, which wasn't powerful enough to sink the ship, thinking that hearing this first explosion would cause everyone to leave the ship. However a few people went to investigate or retrieve valuables, and so when the second one went off and the ship sank some people were killed, some were flung into the water Rambo style, etc. At first France denied involvement but then their super black ops agents were captured by the neighborhood watch ( (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) ), and France was humiliated. This made New Zealand get pissed off and turn against nuclear testing, thus the whole thing really blew up in France's face. It turned out that apparently authorization for the mission had come all the way from Francois Mitterand.

Here's the wikipedia article with all the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

It occured to me that the French plan was probably the stupidest plan I've ever read about, because of course there was no guarantee that an explosion on board a ship would cause everyone to evacuate the ship, especially if the crew are left-wing militant hippies who sail into atomic testing instead of away from it. Maybe if it were a corporate oil tanker with actual safety procedures people might have left but we're talking about Greenpeace here. I realized that on this forum, since everyone plays Shadowrun, we could probably monday morning quarterback this whole thing and come up with a better plan than the French government did. I also thought it might be fun to write a one-shot tactical campaign using SR3 rules or something set in 1985 where you are the French agents and you have to figure out how to sink the Rainbow warrior and escape.

Anyway, after getting pumped up on this NSFW music ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsusJVaAWf8...feature=related ) here is the plan I thought of this morning after I woke up:


Underlying Assumptions

The basic idea behind my plan is that a two-step limpet mine scuttling of the ship didn't work as planned because it was needlessly complicated (it required the crew to react in a certain way, besides for the engingeering problem of whether or not the ship would actually sink) and that it is difficult for people who were directly involved in a bombing on an island nation to leave using normal transportation channels.

According to Wikipedia, a couple of French agents had been eventually extracted by submarine:

Three other agents, Chief Petty Officer Roland Verge, Petty Officer Bartelo and Petty Officer Gérard Andries, who sailed to New Zealand on the yacht Ouvéa, were captured by Australian police on Norfolk Island, but released as Australian law did not allow them to be held until the results of forensic tests came back. Expecting the tests would show they had transported the bombs to New Zealand, the crew was picked up by the French submarine Rubis, which scuttled the Ouvéa. They were never punished.

The way I see it, if France was capable of fielding a nuclear submarine in the first place, they should have just used the submarine to blow up the vessel. A modern nuclear submarine would be much more likely to escape from an island than a man or woman on foot. I'm assuming that New Zealand at the time didn't have crazy ridiculous sonar networks that would have made it impractical to torpedo a single non-moving civilian vessel and escape. So, the basic idea is to use a submarine instead of limpet mines smuggled across the world by civilian yacht.

At the time it might have seemed less scary to French decision makers to use limpet mines instead of a multi-million dollar torpedo of European origin, but since we're monday morning quarterbacking here we can see that even the limpet mines were investigated by the bomb squad and it didn't really make a difference in terms of whether or not France was massively humiliated when their agents were caught, and it didn't seem to mollify the legal issues that were brought up in the UN any. Since the submarine is a lot more likely to escape in the first place it's best to use the submarine instead of sacrifice that extraordinary ability to escape for some halfassed pseudo legal quasi ass-covering by using limpet mines instead.

Now that I've explained my basic underlying thought, here is my alternate plan for the French operation for humiliating and terrorizing Greenpeace while at the same time not having any collateral damage.

Resources Fielded

The theater of operations is the port of Aukland, New Zealand, where the Rainbow Warrior is docked. The year is the summer of 1985. As the French person in charge of the operation, I am fielding:

*1 nuclear submarine, capable of firing torpedoes, escaping from New Zealand by stealth, and inserting or extracting a small team of operatives
*10 north African operatives who don't look French, maybe they're from the French Foreign Leigon or something. They will insert via submarine and their job would be to remove all civilians from the Rainbow Warrior, so they will be equipped with a variety of quiet less-lethal weapons and prisoner handling kits.
*20 French-looking socialities who will enter New Zealand in advance of the operation through normal channels. They won't do anything illegal but it will be their job to draw as many civilians off the vessel on the date of the operation as possible through social means, by taking them out drinking, etc. According to Wikipedia, in the historical operation, the French agents had planted the mines while the ship had been open to public viewing, so the public viewing would be the socially acceptable time for the socialites to board the ship and schmooze the crew.
*2 Vietnamese-looking operatives who drive a black van. They enter via normal channels, and extract via normal channels the very moment they're done with their part. They take a flight to Vietnam to further deflect suspicion from France.

The Plan and Its Execution

The operation begins on a day when the ship is open to public viewing. When I was in Micronesia, Greenpeace had actually stopped by port and opened their ship to public viewing, so I feel I know a bit about what it's like. Basically they open the ship up, give limited tours, explain what they're all about, and chat in a friendly way with you, talk a bit about life living on a ship, and so on. In my experience they were very nice and affable. So, in my monday morning quarterback plan, the 20 socialites, who have presumably shown up to the public viewing of the ship, do their best to schmooze the crew and get as many of the crew to come out drinking in the town. Their goal of course will be to keep those crew members out drinking past the time of the rest of the operation.

The operation will take place at night, at 2 or 3 AM, following a day when the ship is open to public viewing. The idea behind the time is that it's still dark, and people who have left the ship in order to party haven't come staggering back yet.

At this time, the submarine stealth-inserts the 10 North African looking operatives who board the Rainbow Warrior from the water. These operatives are equipped with zipties, opaque head-bags, tasers, CS gas canisters, gas masks, paintball markers with pepper balls, simunitions, and suppressed .45 caliber siderams in case a situation arises where they are forced to use deadly force to defend themselves. (If that happens the mission is scrubbed and everyone extracts immediately.) These operatives clear the entire ship as quickly and quietly as possible. They ziptie everyone on the ship and put bags over their heads. They also deploy a couple of video cameras on the ship so that the folks in the submarine can be absolutely sure that nobody happens to wander onto the ship before they torpedo it.

At this time, the black van driven by the 2 Vietnamese looking operatives is at the ship. The North African looking guys cram all the prisoners into the back of the van, and return to the submarine. The Vietnamese guys pump the prisoners up with drugs (maybe force them to ingest pot, since that is the sterotypical hippie drug, but of course any drug will do...you could even force them to huff paint) to the point that they are incapacitated, strip them naked, paint them green and write green slogans on their bodies, and smear them with tuna fish. Next, the Vietnamese guys dump all the naked drugged people in the most slummy and dangerous part of town that they can find, torch the van, and immediately leave New Zealand for Vietnam.

The idea is that the Vietnamese guys would have plane tickets for, say, 3 or 4 AM, so that they would be gone within minutes of dumping the Greenpeacers and torching the black van. Since it's 1985 it would take time for any kind of word to go out to the airport about suspicious persons so the idea is that if they get there fast enough they should be able to just slip out.

As soon as the North African looking team is back on the sub, and the black van has driven away, and the video feeds still show all clear, the submarine goes out a safe distance, fires a low-speed torpedo at the Rainbow warrior in order to destory it, and escapes. If through some extraordinary stroke of bad luck someone somehow wanders onto the ship after all this crap has gone down, the torpedo strike is cancelled. At least if the crew has been humiliated and roughed up the French goal of making them feel harassed has been met.

Wrapping up

So, if everything goes as planned, most of the Greenpeace crew are out drunk with sexy French socialites, and the few that remained have been cleared by North African looking badasses with less lethal weapons. The ship itself is destroyed by a torpedo strike, and the Greenpeace crew that was removed from the ship is humiliated by being naked and drugged in a slum. With any luck most people will conclued that Greenpeace is wacky and those folks just had some kind of crazy orgy with too much drugs. The weakest link in this plan is probably the extraction of the Vietnamese looking people, but IMO that all comes down to timing.



So, what do you think of the plan? Can you think of a better one?

[Generico]

The basic idea behind my plan is that a two-step limpet mine scuttling of the ship didn't work as planned because it was needlessly complicated (it required the crew to react in a certain way, besides for the engingeering problem of whether or not the ship would actually sink) and that it is difficult for people who were directly involved in a bombing on an island nation to leave using normal transportation channels.

...

That is the exact opposite of simpler alternative!

Better plan:

1. Wait for eco-nuts to violate your military zone
2. Activate ECM
3. Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again
4. Run news report about eco-nuts attempting to ram your warship
5. High-fives!

[Tanegar]

Wounded Ronin's plan is superior in that it adheres much more closely to the Rule of Cool.

[Generico]

I just don't see how you can call a plan where you get to hose down unsuspecting activists with autocannon fire, in broad daylight, and then high-five infront of the burning wreckage, and then brag about it, and not get punished is less awesome than hours of tedious cloak & dagger bullshit.

[Tanegar]

I guess that depends on whether or not you think it's realistic to expect that nobody will ever uncover the truth (that you fired on an unarmed ship without provocation), creating a massive PR backlash whose aversion is the entire point of this exercise. At least the "tedious cloak & dagger bullshit" makes an effort to be clandestine.

[toturi]

I'd say that instead of actually sinking the Rainbow Warrior, plant items of dubious origin onboard - some bricks of commercial plastic explosives, a couple of AK-47s, some RPGs, etc (with identifying prints and other biometric data like DNA) and then set off a charge using the same type of commercial explosives. Arrange to have French media (perhaps French owned international media company) do a story on the courageous eco-warriors, whatever it is, the key is to paint Greenpeace as dangerous eco-terrorists who should not mess around with commercial explosives much less be allowed near a nuclear test site. Use the supposedly friendly media coverage to burn Greenpeace. Have diplomatic personel at hand to ensure that the tape does not mysteriously disappear at the hands of the sympathetic media and pressure the NZ government to do a thorough investigation, so as to turn up the contraband.

[Generico]

I guess that depends on whether or not you think it's realistic to expect that nobody will ever uncover the truth (that you fired on an unarmed ship without provocation), creating a massive PR backlash whose aversion is the entire point of this exercise. At least the "tedious cloak & dagger bullshit" makes an effort to be clandestine.

Because being clandestine implies you have something to hide.
As you say yourself people will discover the truth.

I this case, Greenpeace were entering a military restricted area, and refusing to leave.
The "normal" thing to do is fire a warning shot and escort the ship out. If they resist, you sink them.
If the French had done that we would all be hearing about crazy eco-nuts invading military sites and getting what they legally deserve.

Instead the French hatch an elaborate, highly illegal plan which backfires and leaves them looking like monsters.

Because they wouldn't exercise their right to sink an invader but they still wanted them to leave.


I will repeat for emphasis, If the French fired on the ship while it was in the military zone that would be 100% legal, instead they hatched crazy elaborate lawbreaking.
Why would you ever blow shit up illegally when you can do it legally?

[Tanegar]

Legality bears only a tangential relationship to public perception. If your only goal is to sink the ship, then sure, go ahead and do it out in broad daylight where everyone can see... but be prepared for the fact that you will be branded as the aggressor in that engagement, regardless of the relevant laws. The French wanted to have their cake and eat it, too: they wanted the Rainbow Warrior out of the way, and they wanted to avoid the PR blowback of sinking it in public view, which, I reiterate, is the purpose of this exercise. You can't ignore half of the parameters just because it's inconvenient.

Toturi's plan, on the other hand, shows serious promise.

[toturi]

Legality bears only a tangential relationship to public perception. If your only goal is to sink the ship, then sure, go ahead and do it out in broad daylight where everyone can see... but be prepared for the fact that you will be branded as the aggressor in that engagement, regardless of the relevant laws. The French wanted to have their cake and eat it, too: they wanted the Rainbow Warrior out of the way, and they wanted to avoid the PR blowback of sinking it in public view, which, I reiterate, is the purpose of this exercise. You can't ignore half of the parameters just because it's inconvenient.

Actually public perception is all about the spin. The French could spin it such that they were dangerous terrorist pirates that were trying to steal the bomb and hence were intercepted, apprehended, charged as criminals and sent to hardcore prison. I am not sure about then but this line of argument could find traction in today's world.

[Tanegar]

It might gain traction among the very credulous and hardcore eco-haters, but anyone who does even a cursory amount of research and/or thinks critically about the story is going to realize they're being lied to pretty quickly. Greenpeace and its aims are pretty well-known, and the idea that they would be attempting to steal a nuclear bomb is absurd. The flotilla of private yachts they were planning on leading on their protest cruise would have made it effectively impossible for the French to claim self-defense. There's just no way the French could have sunk the Rainbow Warrior on the open ocean, in front of however many hundreds of civilian witnesses, and claimed that Greenpeace were nuke-stealing terrorists.

[Blade]

(perhaps French owned international media company)

Back then, there was the 1-year old TV5. But even if it's international and French owned, its audience was (and still is) quite small, especially in France itself (it's meant to show French shows outside France, not the other way around).
They could easily have done a media campaign in France, though. Back then most (probably even all) the TV stations were owned by the government. The problem would have been to prevent the opposition (or journalist from independent newspapers) from knowing the truth.

What the french government wanted was to have this ship out since it might have been a threat to the nuclear tests. They couldn't do it officially, since it would have had bad repercussion on the population, even if they did it lawfully. And they didn't want to kill any civilians, because that's not a very good thing to do (I guess you shadowrunners know why).

So their aim was:
* To sink the ship
* Not to be officially known as responsible for this
* Not to kill anyone
And they had to act quickly so any reconnaissance or complex plot were out.

[Nightfalke]

So their aim was:
* To sink the ship
* Not to be officially known as responsible for this
* Not to kill anyone
And they had to act quickly so any reconnaissance or complex plot were out.

Here's a thought...

Why sink it? Why would sabotage be out of the question? Eliminates the worry about casualties.

Slap a blob of C4 on the drive train, and the ship isn't going to be anywhere near anything exept the dry dock any time soon.

[Wounded Ronin]

Well, yeah, the French probably could have done a lot of alternative things to disable or delay the Rainbow Warrior without sinking it. The fact they felt the need to sink it was the cause of a lot of their trouble.

[Nightfalke]

Well, yeah, the French probably could have done a lot of alternative things to disable or delay the Rainbow Warrior without sinking it. The fact they felt the need to sink it without casualties was the cause of a lot of their trouble.

Fixed that for ya.

[toturi]

So their aim was:
* To sink the ship
* Not to be officially known as responsible for this
* Not to kill anyone
And they had to act quickly so any reconnaissance or complex plot were out.

My dad used to tell me, "Son, you'd want 3 things - cheap, good and fast. Pick two, else things will go wrong."

[Blade]

Why sink it? Why would sabotage be out of the question? Eliminates the worry about casualties.

I guess it went something like this:

Advisor: 'The Rainbow Warrior can be a problem to our nuclear tests.'
President: 'Sink it.'

[nezumi]

I assume using a torpedo was ruled out because they assumed the limpit mine wouldn't be so well investigated. If we're going to armchair, we need to operate under the same assumption (even if it's incorrect). However, the plan still sucked.

It seems to me the best way to do this isn't to sink the ship, but to cause enough damage to scuttle it. Wrap chains around the propellors, dump bleach in the fuel tank. This all guarantees 0 fatalities, little fallout (even if discovered), and extremely low cost.

[Vertaxis]

If they knew the ship's schedule, they could have set a limpet with a timer and have it detonate at sea. A good excuse would be that the ship hit a leftover WW2 mine that broke it's mooring after all these years. There are plenty of lost mines and dumped munitions in the Pacific ocean from past wars.

[nezumi]

Except that that not risks drowning people caught inside the ship, it risks killing everyone on deck as well as they're stuck in the middle of the ocean, and it guarantees no crew members are off having drinks. Since one of the mission parameters was no loss of life, that plan seems to go more of the 'ah, frag it, they're only hippies' route.

[StealthSigma]

As the French, I would revoke any non-profit tax exemptions Greenpeace gets in the country.

[nezumi]

I can't speak for French politics, but in the US that would be extremely difficult and expensive, since it requires the collaboration of several branches of government (damn that whole separation of powers drek!) and ultimately, really, is unlikely to make any serious difference in how Greenpeace operates (and would result in France looking petty).


If we go on the assumptions that:
a) The ship must be sunk
b) There must be 0 casualties

WR's original speculation seems to be correct - any sort of distraction portside is better than what they did.

You set up several spotters in nearby buildings to keep track of people boarding and disembarking. You should have a roster of who is normally on the ship, and there's only one or two points of egress, so this should be fairly easy.

You set up several 'lifeguards', boring looking spectators who happen to be olympic-class swimmers. This is the backup should anything go wrong. They can jump in to save anyone floating in the water.

Ideally, you have at least one person put on the ship to tell people to get off, when the time comes. If you can get a plant on board the crew, this would be great. Otherwise, it's a cost-benefits question - is it better to eliminate any links, or to save lives?

The remote control mine is planted.

You set up a fantastic distraction on the street/port right by the ship. Maybe you have a few Green Peace demonstrators get attacked by a street gang. Maybe you have the Sharks and Jets have a dance-off. It doesn't matter, as long as it's loud and fantastic. These guys can be hired out via your Johnson, so they aren't really a liability (assuming your Johnson does his job right) and they don't know what's coming next. If you're going to plant someone on the ship to keep people from going belowdecks, this is when you'd do that. You want to get everyone on deck, or better, on the dock to watch, take pictures, intervene, whatever. The spotters count heads, and when every person is either off the ship or on deck, they give the go ahead. You can also call ahead to emergency services, since you know they will keep stupid hippies from going back onto a sinking ship, and will work to save anyone already on board/in the water.

Detonate the mine.

The swimmers are already off because apparently there's a submarine waiting for them (although even if they just have a zodiac, they can putter their way across to another point for a pick-up). Your spotters should have no problem vacating at their luxury, since in the chaos, emergency services will be busy saving people, not getting warrants to check nearby warehouses. Your diversion was 'hired help', so whether they're caught or not doesn't matter, they don't know anything. Your lifeguards are your one real liability, and you can decide how to deal with them based on how much confidence you have in their ability to not be idiots. At best, they can be pulled in as witnesses and give confusing details, mentioning smoke prior to the explosion, a suspicious looking German skulking around aft-decks or whatever. At worst, they can disperse as soon as there's no one apparently drowning, or emergency services show up.

[Sengir]

I this case, Greenpeace were entering a military restricted area, and refusing to leave.
The "normal" thing to do is fire a warning shot and escort the ship out. If they resist, you sink them.

If they *actively* resist, shooting somebody who is just standing in a restricted area and not even trying to evade you should not be covered by the ROE. Unless the French have far stricter rules for that, but I doubt it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


@topic: Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC ships don't blow up by themselves. So the whole idea of bombing a ship and hoping that nobody will suspect the guys the owners most recently clashed with is kinda weird (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)
While this does not seem to be a problem for shadowruns, in real life you might as well send in a few people in broad daylight.

[Octopiii]

If they *actively* resist, shooting somebody who is just standing in a restricted area and not even trying to evade you should not be covered by the ROE. Unless the French have far stricter rules for that, but I doubt it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

There is a world of difference between what you can do, and what people will accept.

[toturi]

There is a world of difference between what you can do, and what people will accept.

What people?

[Warlordtheft]

In order of priority I think the french felt these were the goals of the mission:

1. Not get caught-to avoid a diplomatic incident with New Zealand (above all else).
2. As an extension of 1. avoid casualties on both sides as much as possible (none would be preferable).
3. Make the rainbow warrior inoperable.


So first to avoid getting caught-frogmen would be an ideal. However using explosives (aka the limpet mines) led to an investigation that may discover the culprit. My solution---use a slow acting corrosive agent to weaken/destroy the hull to make the ship inoperable (I believe there a variety of chemical agents that would work). This would mean that at best the ship would sink or begin to gain water in port a few days later, at worst it happens at sea (a tragic accident due to failure to maintain the ship). To further implicate Greenpeace, I would also leave some suspicious transfers from the GP's accounts to offshore bank accounts that are in the name of the leaders (particularly those relto a few of their leaders to discredit them). This would then hamper their ability to get a replacement ship as their funding froom donors would dry up.