Readers of MT would have been appalled to see coverage of the 16-hour siege at a coffee shop in Sydney, Australia in December. Any loss of life is tragic but once the decision has been made to employ a hostage rescue mission, anything is possible. Australia has a very mature counter-terrorism (CT) capability with the Tactical Assault Groups (TAG) East and West comprising 2 Commando and Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) respectively, compounding armed police units across the country. And there are few units across the globe who would have completed the ground assault with any better outcome. On the tactical side, whichever units were actually involved in storming the Lindt cafe, lessons learned would have been quickly identified in a hot debrief after the event with any relevant changes to tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) immediately implemented following more in-depth after action reviews and investigations. However, this attack has serious impli cations for CT operations around the world on a strategic level as well.
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