From the bestselling author of STRIKE BACK, Chris Ryan returns with a new action-packed series. Tough enough? Smart enough? Max will require all his skills just to stay alive as a Special Forces Cadet... A top-secret government programme needs a crack team of undercover military operators. They must have awesome levels of determination, endurance and fitness. They must be able to think on their feet. The recruits undergo the most rigorous and testing selection process the modern military can devise. And in order to operate in circumstances where adult forces would be compromised, the recruits must be under sixteen. Only a few are tough enough and smart enough to make it . . . And once out in the field, they will require all their skills just to stay alive. Which is what happens when Max Silver, Abby Asher, Lukas Channing and Sami Hakim are sent into an armed siege in an inner-city school . . .

From the bestselling author of STRIKE BACK, Chris Ryan returns with the second in his new action-packed series. Tough enough? Smart enough? Jack will require all his skills just to stay alive as a Special Forces Cadet . . . In this second book, the cadets are sent to North Korea. A British agent investigating the rogue state's nuclear capabilities has gone missing. The secretive nature of life in Pyongyang means that unfamiliar adults would be attract suspicion and fall under immediate surveillance. So the cadets form part of a young pioneers tour to the North Korean capital. Once there, they must use their skills and training to find out more about the missing agent. In the course of their investigations, they forget the one rule every undercover operator must obey: trust nobody. When a local teenager they befriend betrays his suspicions to the North Korean secret police, the young cadets must use all their skill to escape the authorities and the country. But can they locate the British agent at the same time?

Darius, son of an escaped Iranian scientist, is a pupil at an exclusive Swiss school, but his father's former bosses want him back and have no regard for the boy's LIFE or his FREEDOM. The Special Forces Cadets are sent to PROTECT Darius. When the assassins launch a DEADLY ATTACK, their only escape is into the mountains. Pursued by their enemies, can the cadets triumph and SURVIVE the deadly natural HAZARDS of the alpine winter?

From the bestselling author of STRIKE BACK, Chris Ryan returns with a new action-packed series. Tough enough? Smart enough? Max will require all his skills just to stay alive as a Special Forces Cadet... The Falkland Islands, South Atlantic Ocean. Intelligence has been received that Argentina is plotting to invade, but is it reliable? The Special Forces Cadets are sent in to investigate, disguised as nature watchers, but when they split up to conduct essential research, two of them are captured and imprisoned. Their lives are in grave danger, but with the main operation at a crucial stage, the others are under orders to leave their friends to their fate. Can the cadets prevent a war and make it out alive?

For 5 days in May 1980, the world watched as the SAS performed a daring raid on the Iranian Embassy in London. Hailed by Margaret Thatcher as “a brilliant operation'' the raid was a huge success for the SAS, rescuing 19 hostages with near-perfect military execution, although 2 hostages were killed by terrorists. Despite the media attention, details of the siege are still largely unknown and those involved and the identities of the SAS troopers themselves, remain a closely guarded secret. This book takes an in -depth look at the siege, revealing the political background behind it and analysing the controversial decision by the Prime Minister to sign over control of the streets of London to the military. Artwork illustrates the moment the walls were breached and show how the strict planning of the operation was critical to its success. With input from those involved in the mission, the author strips away some of the mystery behind the best counter-terrorism unit in the world and their most famous raid.

From the bestselling author of STRIKE BACK, Chris Ryan returns with a new action-packed series. Tough enough? Smart enough? Max will require all his skills just to stay alive as a Special Forces Cadet...

The ghettos of Rio de Janeiro are crawling with street kids. They have nothing, and are forced into lives of crime in order to get enough to eat. Their life expectancies are short, not least because the Brazilian authorities allow paramilitaries to shoot them like rats. But it's with the street kids of Rio that the cadets must become embedded. Some of these kids have been recruited by the cartels. The cartels are causing untold misery, both in Brazil and on the streets of the UK. The cadets must befriend the cartel kids in the hope that they will lead them into the heart of the drug lords' empire. But when you head into the lion's den, you must expect to be bitten. The cartel chiefs are the most ruthless people in the world, and they do not take kindly to the infiltration of their secret, violent world . . .

An SAS team has been captured by a war lord who forces children to become soldiers. The Special Forces Cadets are parachuted into the Congo rainforest to help the team escape. But the operation starts to go wrong right away. Can the SPECIAL FORCES CADETS trust each other? And the jungle is home to creatures even more deadly than desperate children with guns . . .

The defense debate tends to treat Afghanistan as either a revolution or a fluke: either the "Afghan Model" of special operations forces (SOF) plus precision munitions plus an indigenous ally is a widely applicable template for American defense planning, or it is a nonreplicable product of local idiosyncrasies. In fact, it is neither. The Afghan campaign of last fall and winter was actually much closer to a typical 20th century mid-intensity conflict, albeit one with unusually heavy fire support for one side. And this view has very different implications than either proponents or skeptics of the Afghan Model now claim. Afghan Model skeptics often point to Afghanistan's unusual culture of defection or the Taliban's poor skill or motivation as grounds for doubting the war's relevance to the future. Afghanistan's culture is certainly unusual, and there were many defections. The great bulk, however, occurred after the military tide had turned not before-hand. They were effects, not causes. The Afghan Taliban were surely unskilled and ill-motivated. The non-Afghan al Qaeda, however, have proven resolute and capable fighters. Their host's collapse was not attributable to any al Qaeda shortage of commitment or training. Afghan Model proponents, by contrast, credit precision weapons with annihilating enemies at a distance before they could close with our commandos or indigenous allies. Hence the model's broad utility: with SOF-directed bombs doing the real killing, even ragtag local militias will suffice as allies. All they need do is screen U.S. commandos from the occasional hostile survivor and occupy the abandoned ground thereafter. Yet the actual fighting in Afghanistan involved substantial close combat. Al Qaeda counterattackers closed, unseen, to pointblank range of friendly forces in battles at Highway 4 and Sayed Slim Kalay.