military tactics Military tactics encompasses the art of organizing and employing fighting forces on or near the battlefield. They involve the application of four battlefield functions which are closely related – kinetic or firepower, Mobility (military), mobil ...

, extraction (also exfiltration or exfil) is the process of removing personnel when it is considered imperative that they be immediately relocated out of a hostile environment and taken to an area either occupied or controlled by friendly personnel. Extraction is not always used during hostile environments, but can be used or referred to during training environments as well. There are primarily two kinds of extraction: * Friendly: The subject involved is willing and is expected to cooperate with the personnel implementing the operation, when referring to enemy prisoners of war or being taken to captivity. * Hostile: The subject involved is unwilling and is being transferred by forceful coercion with the possibility/likelihood of engaging enemy personnel in any area either in and/or around the extraction zone. An example of a hostile extraction was the capture and transportation to Israel for trial of the German

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

war criminal

Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
'' Mossad Mossad ( , ), ; ar, الموساد, al-Mōsād, ; , short for ( he, המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים, links=no), meaning 'Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations'. is the national intelligence agency ...

agents on May 11, 1960. An example of a friendly extraction was the joint U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

Canadian government The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-in ...

operation to smuggle six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

in 1980 in an operation later known as the Canadian Caper. Both of these examples have been used as plots for major motion pictures in the US. In most cases, extraction or exfiltration (exfil) are the most commonly known term used when referring to the leaving of an area. Exfiltration is also used when referring data in a military manner.

See also