Military planners have a phrase, “teeth to tail”, which they use to explain what is necessary to put troops on the ground and keep them supplied.

Right now, on the Golan Heights, the 130 men and women with the 48th Infantry Group deployed with Undof (United Nations Disengagement Observer Force) are the teeth.

Back home in Ireland, there’s a very long tail, a one-third to two-thirds ratio of Defence Forces personnel whose role – in planning, communications, logistics, etc – has been crucial. The tail is also already well-advanced in planning the next rotation in October 2015 – as well as for the ongoing needs of all the other 15 UN missions to which Ireland’s Defence Forces remain committed.

In July 2013, the Austrian government decided, after 39 years, to withdraw from Undof because of the deteriorating security situation in Syria. The Irish Government responded to an urgent request from the UN for a replacement force.

The decision to deploy, taken by the Cabinet and supported by a vote in the Dáil, all on foot of a UN mandate (the so-called triple lock policy that must be adhered to before any overseas military deployment), was given legal status within the Defence Forces by what is termed a raising and concentration order (RCO) which is itself the result of deliberations by a joint operations planning group.

The task of raising the necessary troops was given to 2 Brigade based at Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines, Dublin.

The core of the 48th Infantry Group comes from the 28th Infantry Battalion based at Finner Camp in Donegal, with personnel seconded to it from other units of the Defence Forces.

The RCO for Ireland’s involvement in Undof was issued on July 19th, 2013, and the unit was ready to be deployed seven weeks later, but was not in fact dispatched for another two weeks because of events in Syria.

The speed with which that RCO was capable of being fulfilled belies the huge amount of planning and co-ordination that went into implementing it.

Each of the three RCOs issued for the rotation of troops since the first deployment in September 2013 amounts to a fine-tuning of that first order, a tweaking based on experience.

Systematic approach

The RCO for the current mission of the 48th Infantry Group is a restricted document – 11 pages plus three Excel spread sheets, detailing all 130 positions within the group, from the officer commanding down through every rank to private.

The military have a great love of two things: systematic approaches to problem-solving and acronyms.

Soldiers are well aware of their penchant for acronym hieroglyphics and have invented several to make the point. They include TLA and FLA, meaning three-letter acronym and four-letter acronym; KBA, killed by acronym; and AFUA, another flipping useless acronym, although the word “flipping” is occasionally replaced by another.

Nonetheless, the RCO is clear and detailed. It begins by stating the situation (the Government has directed that a mechanised Force Reserve Company be deployed in the service of Undof) and then the mission – “the Defence Forces will raise and concentrate personnel . . . in accordance with the Government direction”; and how this will be achieved.

The subsequent 10 pages detail what is expected of each of the relevant sections within the Defence Forces. It is a long list but it shows the widespread involvement and degree of planning.

A schedule of pre-deployment training details the countdown, from November 7th, 2014, to the moment, on April 7th last when the main party of the 130 gathered at McKee Barracks in Dublin and was bussed to Dublin Airport for departure to Syria, via Istanbul and Tel Aviv.

Implementing the RCO began almost immediately after Col Brennan signed it on November 7th, 2014. It directed there would be three mission training exercises and a three-day briefing session at the United Nations Training School Ireland (Untsi), part of the Military College in the Curragh. By January 2nd, all personnel for the 48th were selected and, three days later, phase I training began.

This was done in the units in which all members of the 48th remained based and involved a medical assessment, fitness and weapons training, specialist training in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protection, and counter-improvised explosive device training.

Phase II training started on the morning of February 9th, 2015, when the group came together as a single unit for the first time. This training, which lasted most of the month, took place in Finner Camp and was mission-specific, much of it based on the experience of previous Defence Forces deployments in Undof.

During this phase, a group of officers – commissioned and non-commissioned – attended the Untsi briefings.

Phase III training was a mission readiness exercise in the Glen of Imaal, Co Wicklow. It involved putting the group through a series of scenario-based field exercises during which patrols encountered armed opponents, had their presence and authority challenged and experienced simulated battles, with both blank munitions and live fire, day and night.

The RCO timetable concluded with deployment of the main body of troops on April 7th, an advance party going to the Golan on March 30th.

Logistics

The day of deployment is the day planning begins for the next rotation. No one section of the Defence Forces predominates in the behind-the-scenes activity underpinning all this, but none of it could happen without logistics.

“We’re the guys in the back of the piano,” as Comdt James Hourigan of J4 logistics puts it.

There is much gentle ribbing and rivalry between operations and logistics (ops and logs) with mutual accusations of responsibility whenever things don’t turn out quite as planned.

But the fact is that operations on the ground won’t take place – and continue – if logistics does not get what is needed to where it is needed when it is needed.

That involves a huge amount of co-ordinating between sections of the Defence Forces, between the Defence Forces and the Department of Defence, and with suppliers, frequently commercial airlines and shipping companies, to make sure what it needed is obtained and delivered.

Bureaucracy

In the early stages of Irish involvement as the Force Reserve Company, Undof was particularly problematic in supply and resupply terms. Goods, equipment and personnel had to go from Ireland to Beirut and from there, southeast by road to Damascus, before going on, southwest to the Golan Heights – two sides of a triangle in effect.

“As a logistician, you are saying, ‘This is crazy’, but it was part of the bureaucracy we had to deal with,” says Comdt Hourigan.

The Syrian civil war began to make deployment and supply by this route impossible and, with the consent of both parties to the 1974 Israeli-Syria ceasefire agreement creating Undof, the routes in and out of the "area of separation" were changed to Tel Aviv (air) and either Ashdod or Haifa (sea) and from there by road through Israel and Israeli-occupied Golan.

“No deployment plan is going to be generic, you are going to have to have a bespoke solution for everything,” says Comdt Hourigan.

"Every solution we put in place should be agile and flexible; plans change rapidly and Undof is a very good example of that where there was a very rapid shift from one side [of the buffer zone patrolled by Undof] to another and now, from a logistics perspective, we are no longer coming through Lebanon and Syria into the Golan and have to tailor our package accordingly."

But planning and logs and ops and training can only do so much.

The rest is up to training and the calibre of the troops.