Operation Nimrod : Kan McRavens och Spulaks principer förklara framgången?

Sammanfattning: In 1980, the Special Air Service launched Operation Nimrod on the Iranian embassy in London. The purpose was to free hostages inside the embassy, who had been kidnapped by six terrorists from Arabistan. The outcome of the operation was a huge success, even if the soldiers had limited operational experience. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the success of Operation Nimrod by studying the phases of planning and execution. To analyze this, the principles from McRaven’s theory about relative superiority and Spulak’s theory about personal attributes are used as theoreti-cal perspectives. Based on a qualitative case study, the result shows that the success could be de-scribed through McRaven’s principles of simplicity, repetition, security, surprise, speed and pur-pose in different variations. But also, through Spulak’s principles of flexibility and creativity. To conclude, both theories could explain the outcome of the success, which shows the importance of both tactical principles and personnel attributes in this specific special operation. In addition, the principles could be seen working together in one situation of the operation, which shows that the outcome could be explained with the two different theories working in symbiosis.