The next Legion I had a few thoughts on was the Alpha Legion. Now, pretty much everybody implicitly knows what they're supposed to be about - and have at least a vague conception of them as "special forces" - or, as has been suggested by some commentators here, "Green Berets", "CIA" and "Shin Bet".
It's not that I disagree with these classifications. Indeed, quite the opposite. But I do think they could use some fleshing out with regard to actual historical praxis. And I think i've found *just* the force/figures to do it.
Enter Iran's Quds Force. And, in specia, the chap commanding them - Major General Qasem Soleimani. [ who has been described as something of an intelligence agent's ghost story] The former reason for their existence was something along hte lines of 'exporting the Revolution'; which later on morphed somewhat into acting as a combination paramilitary/special forces/intelligence/diplomatic/black ops organization dedicated to often decidedly unorthodox Iranian power projection. This became increasingly necessary in the wake of the Iran-Iraq war, which fairly convincingly suggested to the Iranians that conventional approaches - diplomacy and force of arms - weren't going to be particularly viable in advancing their geopolitical agenda.
If we look at their operational style, the Quds Force appears to do everything from building and co-ordinating with local forces in both advisory and command roles (for example, Shi'ite militias in Iraq, and the Syrian Army in Syria - they've also a very good longstanding relationship with Hezbollah), through to direct actions themselves in a battlefield context. However, they also occasionally get up to hijinks like attempting to hire a Mexican drug cartel to carry out a targeted assassination in Washington of the Saudi ambassador to the US (which, while it might sound pretty Alpha Legion ... loses XXth points because the guy they reached out to turned out to be a DEA plant, which is where the whole operation came unstuck ), and other such acts of nefarious arguable terrorism. More interestingly, though, they (or, rather, Soleimani) also appear to act as a bit of a diplomatic corps - with Soleimani allegedly playing a critical role in bringing the Russians on-board with the idea of intervening in the Syrian civil war [the account linked has Putin personally requesting Soleimani's involvement]; and even apparently securing the American withdrawal from Iraq that accompanied the formation of the Maliki government (which, obviously, made Iraq into that much more of an Iranian playground - a strategic aim achieved via political manipulation which oculd not have been done via bullets). There's also reports of Iranian diplomats directly taking orders from Soleimani [including a substantial period in 2001 wherien Soleimani appears to have been closely co-operating with the Americans in Afghanistan]; and of the Quds Force flooding particular warzones (whether late-2000s Iraq and Afghanistan, or present-day Yemen) with occasionally rather advanced weapons (such as the somewhat armour-piercing, motion-sensor triggered EFP bombs].
Now as applies the Alpha Legion, the foundations for a rather close comparison ought appear immediately and strikingly obvious. Instead of fighting conventionally, these guys engage in just about everything but - whilst still retaining the capacity to conventionally engage if necessary. Assassinations and working through local catspaws are one thing; but what really swayed me was the perspective that what these guys have effectively managed to do over the thirty or so years of their existence ... is build up an impressive Iranian sphere of influence stretching from eastern Afghanistan through to the Mediterranean in both Lebanon and Syria in ways that conventional military action by Iran would simply have been unable to (which puts Quds on a different level, arguably, to Mossad or whatever - because whilst Mossad's record of foreign operations is undeniably impressive, I don't think they've *quite* pulled off pulling together a reasonable swathe of an entire region of the globe under regional power suzerainty). This is not to say that large-scale interventions haven't taken place - of course htey have. But it's all the more impressive (in my book, anyway) when you manage to rope in Russia and a whole boatload of other forces to do your work for you.
Now THAT'S Alpha Legion!
On top of this, I did also consider elements in what's tenuously identified as the "Arabian way of war" as being fairly emblematic of the Alpha Legion. This account by a retired US Colonel with experience in the region highlights tendencies towards "evasion, delay and indirection [...] winning wars without battles". There's also some interesting remarks toward the end about a culture of outright falsehood when it comes to dealing with allies as part of a strategy of manipulation [for example, Sadat is supposed to have had an /entire secondary set of operational plans/ drawn up so as to fool the Syrians into doing what Egypt wanted against Israel in '73].
As an example of Egyptian strategic misdirection bearing fruit, the pre-engagement phases of Operation Badr spring to mind [the crossing of the Suez Canal which opened the Yom Kippur War]. Probably not nearly as sneaky as most sorts of things tha the XXth get up to (as the Israelis still effectively wound up with six hours' warning of the impending invastion), but still importantly effective (Israeli defensive plans were predicated upon having 48 hours' warning; and had it not been for the serious strength of misdirection and obfuscation employed by the Egyptians, would almost certainly have noticed and responded to the rather substantial troop-buildup taking place on their then-border - making the crossing of the Suez an unquestionable bloodbath).
Rounding out the profile for the Alpha Legion (because while there are many other potential examples to draw upon ... it's a quarter past five in the morning, and I'm trying to avoid excessive text-walling beyond what i've done already ) is probably Otto Skorzeny. In specia, not just his incredibly daring commando antics (including his Post-War activities as a sort of a Mossad agent - which hinged around his German targets presuming he was still .. well .. German-aligned rather than working for the people the Nazis hated most), but his role in Operation Greif as part of the Battle of the Bulge. Here, the unit he formed - Panzer Brigade 150 - made a point of having forces capable of speaking English, wearing American uniforms, and visually disguising German armoured vehicles as their rough Allied equivalents; with the goal of using the ensuing confusion and misdirection to seize two important bridges. This recalls rather strongly the Alpha Legion practice of repainting hteir armour or otherwise disguising themselves as other Legion forces. [which reaches some heights of ridicularity with the "I AM ALPHARIUS" ascended-meme ... and gets more than a little confusing during one of the Alpha Legion novels, in which Iron Hands disguised as Alpha Legion wind up engaged against Alpha Legion disguised as Iron Hands disguised as Alpha Legion or something]. [the "I am Alpharius" practice, apart from its obvious point of inspiration with "I am Spartacus", has quite some 20th century precedent to it as well]
Oh, and something I keep meaning to do is look into the historical precedents for the character of Mendacs in Liar's Due. Because again - THAT'S how the Alpha Legion wage war in my head. Not so much through Serpent Beneath style over-elaborate heist movie double-blind infiltrations [which are the bits we customarily see the most of]... but also by looking at the overarching strategic picture, and deploying the least effort possible (in this case, a single operative) to take an entire string of worlds in succession. I'm also a great fan of the implication from the third Black Book that Paramar V was taken for the express purpose of tying down the Warmaster's forces and thus subtly tilting the balance of the galactic conflict against the rebels for a bit; and would be mad interested in finding a real-world equivalency for this.
Anyway, I've once again gone wildly over-length ... but hopefully that's fleshed out some historical points of reference/inspiration for how the Alpha Legion might act. I can't stress enough how much I perceive the actual table-top engagements of the Alpha Legion to be an extreme minority of XXth Legion warfare - the "tip of the iceberg", if you will. Much of the time that the Emperor's forces wind up fighting the Alpha Legion, they probably don't have any idea that they're actually fighting the Alphas - either because the forces they're engaging are Legion catspaws, unwitting pawns [c.f the Orks against hte White Scars in the early scene from The Serpent Beneath], or disguised. And that many of the Alpha Legion's victories or strategic designs are events we don't actually wind up playing out on the tabletop (Inq28 possibly excepted) precisely because they use other tools like politics and diplomacy to accomplish outcomes without having to resort to battle. [with, of course, the obvious caveat that they remain Astartes, and fully ready to step unto the breach if their covert operations fail to properly come to fruition, or they're discovered in flagrante] [or, at the very least, the idea that the Alpha Legion you CAN see probably aren't all or most of them, and that they're doing something unexpected elsewhere while their distraction body holds your attention - which, by the time it's noticed, is alread ywell too late]
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