A rapid reaction force is a military or police unit designed to respond in very short time frames to emergencies. When used in reference to police forces such as SWAT teams, the time frame is minutes, while in military applications, such as with the use of paratroops or other commandos, the time frame is hours to days.
Rapid reaction forces are designed to intervene quickly as a spearhead to gain and hold ground in quickly unfolding combat or in rather low intensity conflicts, such as uprisings that necessitate the evacuation of foreign embassies. Because they are usually transported by air, such military units are usually lightly armed, but often extremely well trained to compensate for their lower calibre weapons and lack of heavy equipment like tanks.
Famous quotes containing the words rapid, reaction and/or force:
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“In the capsule biography by which most of the people knew one another, I was understood to be an Air Force pilot whose family was wealthy and lived in the East, and I even added the detail that I had a broken marriage and drank to get over it.... I sometimes believed what I said and tried to take the cure in the very real sun of Desert D’Or with its cactus, its mountain, and the bright green foliage of its love and its money.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)