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Understanding Why Terrorist Operations Succeed or Fail
Title: Understanding Why Terrorist Operations Succeed or Fail
Bibliographic Entry: Jackson, Brian K. and David R. Frelinger, “Understanding Why Terrorist Operations Succeed or Fail.” RAND Corporation, c. August 2009. http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP257.pdf
Electronic Link: http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP257.pdf
Key Words: terrorist attacks, terrorist groups, terrorist operations, capabilities, resources, security countermeasures, intelligence efforts, investigative efforts, threat analysis, threat assessment
Summary of Key Points, Issues, Conclusions:
The authors of this report have used past research examining a variety of terrorist groups and security planning problems to develop “a unifying framework that brings together the range of factors that can influence the success and failure of terrorist operations in a practical and applicable way.”
“At the heart of our model lies our contention that the past success or failure of a terrorist operation—or the likelihood that a future attack will succeed—can be best understood by thinking about the match or mismatch between three key sets of characteristics:
• terrorist group capabilities and resources
• the requirements of the operation it attempted or is planning to attempt
• the relevance and reliability of security countermeasures.”
For a terrorist attack to have the greatest chance of success, there needs to be (1) a match between its capabilities and resources and the operational requirements of the attack it is seeking to carry out and (2) a mismatch of security countermeasures and intelligence/investigative efforts with both the group and its plans. Previous studies of why terrorist operations may succeed or fail include a variety of specific examples of factors that fall into each of these three classes, but in considering how such factors shape the outcomes of attacks, we argue that analysis and threat assessment should focus on the match or mismatch between factors rather than on the factors themselves…”
The authors conclude that “focusing attention on a small set of practical relationships in this manner—how different characteristics do or do not match one another— could help to guide analysis of why past terrorist operations went as they did, and, more importantly, could help to identify opportunities to shape the chance of success or failure of future operations.”
Date Posted: September 11, 2009