Study and Training Group for Military Reconnaissance (Germany)

The Study and Training Group for Military Reconnaissance (German: Lehr- und Ausbildungsgruppe für das Fernspähwesen der Bundeswehr; LAFBw) was a highly classified clandestine unit of the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) from 1964 to 1979.

[2] In 1956, the BND took over these networks and merged them into one SBO, the Lehr- und Ausbildungsgruppe für das Fernspähwesen der Bundeswehr (LAFBw) or Teaching and Training Group for Long Range Reconnaissance of the German Armed Forces.

[3] Stay-behind agents were instructed to survive an invasion, and to lie low and quiet during the early occupation phases.

[5] Only in what the BND described as the third phase, ‘every-day/routine occupation’, would they start sending messages, recruit fighters, and then conduct ‘massive sabotage operations’.

[3] In the 1980s, the BND tried to regain one of its stay-behind missions to assist friendly aircrew to escape from Warsaw Pact-led forces by conducting SAR ops.