What such a scenario does not describe, however, is the extensive planning behind the strike, and that a seemingly automated killing was in fact the climax of a very human process of intelligence gathering by an unusual hybrid of soldier spies who have become the front-line fighters in America's global shadow war. The latest front in that expanding war includes Somalia and Yemen. America's shadow war is becoming as critical as its battle against al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Indeed, it is understood that this year the United States will have as many drones in the skies above Yemen and the African nation of Somalia as it will have over Pakistan and Afghanistan. Africa is also the continent in which Australia's latest covert unit, the SAS's 4 Squadron - was operating last year. Officially, the SAS has three squadrons, but in 2005 the Howard government raised a fourth. It's existence has never been acknowledged. The squadron has been operating in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe, three countries with which Australia is not officially at war. Authorised by Defence Minister Stephen Smith in late 2010, the soldiers have, among other things, been assessing border controls, exploring landing sites for possible military interventions and possible escape routes for the evacuation of Australian nationals and military assessments of local politics and security. They are doing this out of uniform and without being accompanied by officers from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, with whom undercover SAS forces are conventionally deployed. This has raised concern in military circles that should these soldiers be captured they would not have adequate legal protection or contingency plans.

Australia's close links with the US may have influenced its decision to create 4 Squadron and subsequently dispatch its troops to Africa. Because the US has not declared war against any African country, international law prevents it from conducting the same kind of war it does in Afghanistan. But the same legal requirements do not apply to intelligence agencies that, with a few exceptions, are not trained to capture or kill high-value targets. Thus the US created a merged capability that took the best of both worlds - the human intelligence gathering talents of spies and the tactical battlefield expertise of soldiers. These new soldier spies are controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command of the US military, or JSOC. In an e-book titled The Command published last month, US journalist Marc Ambinder and former US paratrooper D.B. Grady, suggest the killing of Osama bin Laden last year highlighted just how effective JSOC has become.

''Here, government agencies worked together in secret, in pursuit of a single goal. No boundaries separated the intelligence community from the military or one military unit from another. ''It was the perfection of a process thirty years in the making - operations by joint military branches conducted seamlessly with multiple agencies of the intelligence community.'' In the mid 2000s, Australia was paying close attention as JSOC was increasingly becoming the driving force behind America's war against al-Qaeda. According to Ambinder and Grady, in April 2004 JSOC was involved in less than a dozen operations in Iraq. By July 2006, this had increased to more than 250 operations a month. During this time, Australia was already working closely with the US, and it is likely Australia recognised a similar need to create a capability that enabled it to continue to work side by side with its close ally at the highest level. Thus, it created the 4 Squadron.

Given the Australian military's desire to be able to dovetail with JSOC, it is no surprise that 4 Squadron may well been modelled on several super-secret units created by JSOC. Within JSOC there are, according to Ambinder and Grady, four squadrons of Delta Force soldiers, and another four squadrons of SEAL Team Six personnel (the men who killed Osama bin Laden). While covert, all are considered ''acknowledged''. Beyond these two groups of four squadrons, however, both Delta and SEAL have a single, far more covert - or ''black'' - squadron that Ambinder and Grady say perform ''exceptionally sensitive reconnaissance missions, such as cross-border, high-value target hunts in Pakistan.'' They are also both smaller than the other four squadrons of Delta or SEALs. Then there is the blackest unit of all, the most ultra-secret elements within JSOC's already clandestine world. While the name of JSOC's most covert and unacknowledged unit changes too quickly to keep track, it is known by most as the Military Support Activity. It is also known as Task Force Orange or ''The Activity''. The main role of The Activity is to collect ground-level intelligence before other elements of American special operations forces go in.

But according to a series of articles by Sean Naylor, a reporter for the independent American newspaper Army Times, The Activity has also undertaken a series of missions in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, that involved tapping mobile phones, working with local warlords, and even purchasing anti-aircraft missiles, all to probe al-Qaeda's east African affiliate. The idea that Australia has borrowed from JSOC's covert units such as The Activity makes some of the country's most experienced strategic analysts uncomfortable. The ANU's Professor Hugh White says blurring the line between the function of special forces such as the SAS with the role of civilian intelligence agencies such as ASIS in collecting human intelligence is dangerous and should only be considered in the most exceptional of circumstances. ''It blurs lines of responsibility for things where lines of responsibility need to be really clear and unambiguous, and also because it tends to distract people from their proper functions.'' White says it's important ASIS focuses on collecting human intelligence and not be distracted by ''more glamorous'' operations.

''On the other hand, we build and maintain special forces to be able to undertake some very specific kinds of military operations and to confuse that with intelligence collection risks degrading that core function.'' His concerns may be partly based on Australia's infamous attempt to create a covert paramilitary capability under the stewardship of ASIS director-general John Ryan. This ended in disaster when, in what was meant to be a mock hostage rescue, a group of masked and heavily armed ASIS officers terrorised guests and staff at Melbourne's Sheraton hotel while pretending to rescue diplomats from the top floor. As they fled through the hotel foyer, guests had silenced machine guns waved at them, and the hotel manager was assaulted. A subsequent royal commission led to ASIS losing the right to use guns, undertake paramilitary activities or use violence. That decision was reaffirmed in 2001, when the Howard government created the Intelligence Services Act which restated those legislative limitations.

But two years later, then foreign minister Alexander Downer had a change of heart and announced amendments to the act that allowed ASIS officers to use guns for personal protection, have bodyguards, and co-operate in violent operations as long as they themselves did not use force. But in the period between the Sheraton incident and the Howard government's decision to once again allow ASIS officers to become involved in violent operations, both the SAS and ASIS continued to advocate for a merged capability. ''There was always a bit of a tendency from both sides to think that they had something in common and might profitably collaborate [but] it always seem to me … Australia's interests were served by keeping them as separate as possible,'' White says. That is not a view shared by all analysts, however, and UNSW's Professor Alan Dupont says the transferring of skills between military and civilian agencies has been successful in the past.

He says the CIA, Britain's MI6 and ASIS all had foundations in military skills that were adapted to a civilian world and that the convergence has again become necessary. ''And this is when we get a convergence of the military and the intel world meeting where the special forces are. ''Provided it's done properly with the appropriate safeguards, ministerial safeguards and so on, I don't in principle have a problem with it,'' he says. Sydney University international law expert, Professor Ben Saul, says that 4 Squadron's African operations are different from 4 Squadron's activities in Afghanistan for one simple reason - Australia is not at war there. A UN Security Council authorisation, the ability to be able to directly link an operation to the protection of Australian citizens or Australia's self-defence more broadly is required, he says.

''Without any of those factors applying, Australian military presence on foreign soil would be illegal under international law and would be a violation of the UN charter,'' he says. ''All of that starts to unravel if you get a kind of chaotic situation where countries just decide to insert their armed forces wherever they like, potentially without the permission of the host government.'' Meanwhile, Sean Naylor says the world of warfare has changed and Australia cannot afford to be left behind. Loading ''The primacy of special operations forces is absolutely a fact now. We've seen special operations flag officers getting promoted into much higher positions that aren't special operations specific than we would have seen 10 years ago. ''And of course even the US doesn't have an infinite supply of troops, and as the country and the politicians have wearied of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I think a special operations focused effort has a lot to attract them.''