The Troubles

The attack on Derryard checkpoint was a raid carried out on 13 December 1989 by a Provisional Irish Republican Army unit against a British Army... permanent vehicle checkpoint manned by soldiers of the King's Own Scottish Borderers . It occurred near the Northern Ireland–Republic of Ireland border at Derryard, near Rosslea, County Fermanagh. The IRA team withdrew after the rapid reaction of a British Army patrol. A large van bomb left by the attackers also failed to detonate. The action left two British Army soldiers dead and one badly wounded, while another was slightly injured. According to journalist Ed Moloney, the IRA Army Council, suspecting a large degree of penetration by informers at the grassroots level of the organisation, decided to form an experimental flying column instead of the usual active service unit in order to mount a large scale operation against a permanent vehicle checkpoint along the border. The idea was to find an effective way to prevent any leak which could result in another fiasco like the Loughgall ambush in 1987.
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Operation Conservation was a British Army attempt to ambush a large Provisional Irish Republican Army unit along the Dorsey Enclosure, between... Cullyhanna and Silverbridge, in south County Armagh. It took place on 6 May 1990. The operation was uncovered and thwarted by the IRA South Armagh Brigade. The British Army, in the hope of luring a large IRA active service unit into attacking an entrenched Light Infantry unit, deployed its troops around the route between Cullyhanna and Silverbridge. A heavy machine gun ambush had taken place on another Light Infantry patrol on 28 April near the same area. More than 180 rounds were fired and a soldier was wounded in the leg. The main position was to be surrounded and watched by 16 concealed sections belonging to the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards. The goal was to surprise and destroy any IRA unit attempting to penetrate the area. The troops were inserted into the zone on the first hours of 3 May. The IRA South Armagh Brigade watched these movements and was able to spot several of the hidden observation posts .
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The Glasdrumman ambush was an attack by the South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army against a British Army observation post.... It took place on 17 July 1981 at a scrapyard southwest of Crossmaglen, County Armagh. The crisis triggered by the Hunger strikes of IRA and INLA prisoners in 1981 led to an increase of militant republican activity in Northern Ireland. Intelligence reports unveiled the IRA intentions of mounting illegal checkpoints and hijacking vehicles on the IRA-controlled roads in South Armagh, near the border. To counter it, the British army deployed the so-called COPs , small infantry sections acting as undercover units, which was introduced by Major General Dick Trant in 1977. On 6 May 1981, a day after the death of hunger-striker Bobby Sands, one IRA member from a three-men unit was arrested while trying to set up a roadblock east of the main Belfast-Dublin highway by 12 members of the Royal Green Jackets divided in three teams. A second volunteer crossed the border, only to be arrested by the Irish Army. The third IRA man escaped, apparently injured. A total of 689 rounds had been fired by the soldiers.
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The Drummuckavall Ambush was an attack by the South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army on a British Army observation post... southeast of Crossmaglen, County Armagh, along the border with the Republic of Ireland. It occurred on 22 November 1975 and resulted in the deaths of three British soldiers. During the mid-1970s, the most violent decade of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the monitoring of the border between south County Armagh and the Republic of Ireland by the British Army was carried out from several static observation posts , in order to prevent attacks launched from beyond the border. These part-time manned positions were highly vulnerable to attack, as proved by a 1974 bomb attack which claimed the lives of two Royal Marines at the outpost of Drummuckavall. It was not until 1986, when the first surveillance watchtowers were erected by the code named operations "Condor" and "Magistrate" that the army tried to regain the initiative in the region from the IRA. The intelligence and control over the area relied until then, and for a lapse of ten years, mostly on mobile posts, comprising small uncovered infantry sections.
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