Declan Daly - Borderline - An Oral History of the Brexit Wars 2020-2022

There was no super reliable experienced guy who a IRA commander could go to and say ‘take these three cells and cooordinate an attack please without any of them knowing about each others role’. So their own old command structure was no longer familiar to themselves and they had to learn new tricks as well. While this affected their ability to fight, it also affected ours. If we couldn’t cripple them by removing the operational level leaders because they didn’t exist, then we had to beat them on the field. We went round and round with that one to find something better that might actually work, but we kept coming back to that as the only real option if we were to stop things getting out of hand, nationally.

Over the run of things during the whole winter of 2020, we were of course cogniscent of the existance of the other groups – you couldn’t miss the killings going on in the North – but with the assets that we had as a country and the fact that these were new and developing groups, we really had no choice but to deal with the imminent threat first, and then see how things developed. And remember, all that up there should really have been the responsibility of the UK, but the policing only model was already under increasing strain, in the face of the firepower they were facing. Some in the media have said that we beat the IRA and all we achieved was to facilitate the new groups rise, but we had to defeat the near enemy first anyway. The others were just rising at the same time regardless of anything we could have done.’

With units sweeping in from the Northwest as well as the midlands (this being Finners 28 Bn and most of the force used to dislodge the IRA from the Sliabh Blooms) in order to try to defeat a force from Ulster in the Cooley Mountains, it was almost ineivitable that the operation to utterly destroy the IRAs’ ability to make war on a large scale became known as An Tàin; after the semi-mythological raid by Queen Maedbh to seize the Black Bull of Cooley. Whereas that raids army fell largely by the sole work of Cuchulain, the modern Defence Forces fared much better. It is undoubted that much of the IRAs combat force had been spent in the Sliabh Blooms, but they had also been coming under increasing dissident pressure and police pressure in the North. If the midland mountain range was to be their means of spreading their campaign and taking pressure off themselves in the border, then their north eastern keep was to be in situated in the Cooleys. With it’s back to water on three sides, occupying this range allowed them to monitor approaches and use such personnel as they had left to block access to the peninsula in Co Louth. Watching the IRA from the outside, the Defence Forces now essentially faced two options.

Reeling still from the shock of their catastrophe in the Sliabh Blooms, the IRA might split and factionalise. This would allow each weaker group to be picked off successfully but over a longer period of time. This relied however on hoping that the IRA would split, hoping they could then be picked off easily or brought to surrender, hoping that not too many innocents would die in the waiting. Hope was in short supply however and enough, but by no means all, in power were beginning to see that things won’t always work out the way you want, just because you’d like them to. This first option, did not have many supporters.

The second option was to continue the momentum of Operation Garden Harvest and attempt to deal a decisive blow, while the majority of the enemy were still on the Cooleys working out their own next move. Smaller area, fewer civilians at risk, a better chance of applying conventional tactics to the task. The downside of course, was that no operation of that scale would be able to go ahead without casualties, indeed, with the infamous destruction of Wolf 2, the Defence Forces would lose more people in one fell swoop than in any other single act of combat to date, including during the ambush at Niemba. The other downside was of course that the relieve effect of the the newly trained recruits, and the introduction of the first and second line reserves, was only beginning to be felt and did not yet have a universal effect.

The question was asked – did the troops of the old army have this one last push left in them, while still helping with securing the border? The opportunity was considered too good to pass up and the risks were accepted at the political and strategic levels. Compared to the intricate planning that went into Garden Harvest , time did not afford as much preperation. Nevertheless, Operation Swallow was given the go ahead. An Tàin – The Raid – was on.

Late April 2021

Cooley Mountains

Comdt Dave Heally

‘The force coming out of the Sliabh Blooms, plus the combined efforts of the 28 battalion from Finner, plus as many of the people like ourselves that could be scraped off the border without completely leaving it open were pretty much what we had for Operation Swallow. The plan of course, was that we would essentially form a line, pretty simple really, form a line across the peninsula and then work our way through, all the way to the sea on the eastern side. We had the use of as many helicopters as the Air Corps could give us. This number had been just recently increased, actually, by the addition of several more AW139s, but this was before the Chinooks had arrived. So, in total I think we had something like eight AW139s available to us plus two smaller EC135's. The others were being held back to continue supporting the reserve efforts on the border, where things had been spread very thin to get this operation happening at all. We were worried about that to be honest.

As well as that, on the air side we had a PC-9s again. Four, I think, had been dedicated to us. I was less involved in that; I just knew they were going to be there with a CAP, that’s a Combat Air Patrol set up for us. In addition to that of course we had the PC 12 Spectres, which were beginning to really make their presence felt as an ISR asset. They were gold for us in terms of identifying the layout of the IRA defences. We didn't have paratroops this time. As an organisation, we just did not have the time available to kind of really assess how it had gone in the Slaibh Blooms and ask ourselves what problems we had gotten away with initially that wouldn't work here. But to be honest that actually worked in our favor um, what the Spectres were able to tell us was that every place that looked like it could be a drop zone for anything upwards of a platoon, was being covered off by elements of the IRA. So, they had split their forces and they were in static positions. This of course was of great use to us. Some of these areas were, shall we say, thoroughly prepared by artillery; as a deception plan more or less, but also this is where the first hits were brought in on IRA personnel. So, between the combat air patrol, the helis, the artillery, our own drones it was pretty busy airspace over a small area. From what some of the Air Corps guys have been telling me, it was comparatively packed – we couldn't fit much more in there even if we did have it available, but yeah it worked quite well up to a point.

How we maneuvered through the area, what we essentially did was, through ISR, from the Spectres, through the use of the helicopters for direct recce, and the drones, and whatever else we had available to us, we began moving in usually platoon strength units on three or four 139s, which had their own machine guns and then also with the EC135s with snipers on board. Commanders like myself were on board the 135s and that provided a bird’s eye view for us, to direct the ground movements of our troops. It worked very well, we were sitting beside the Air Corps Air Mission Commander, we were both looking at the same screen – a little flip down laptop in the back of the aircraft. That had our blue force tracker's as we call it so we had a common picture of what was happening and could coordinate between us instantly. Along with an ISR feed, to top it all off, we had a sniper sitting beside us for when we had to,ah, not so much for our own protection but for taking out individuals who would escape outside the cordons we were sending in around them on the other aircraft..