Sonny mentioned the film Red Dawn (1984) starring Patrick Swayze. The premise centers on the Russian invasion of the United States and the attempts of a rebel force to keep it at bay. C. Thomas Howell, who plays Ash Spenser on the show, is the one who yells "Wolverines" in Red Dawn.
The dog's name is Cerberus. From Greek Mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving.
ODA is short for Operational Detachment Alpha, or the "A-team", a unit of the United States Army's Green Berets.
The episode title, is in reference to how the mission incursion on foreign soil was to be completed under the cover of dark in order to escape detection.
Alpha Group is the NATO designation for the Spetsgruppa Alfa, the lead group of the Special Purpose Center, an elite sub-unit of Russia's special forces within the Federal Security Service (FSB). Little factual information is known about them, however US intelligence considered them to be Russia's most elite special forces unit, their equivalent to the US Tier One SMU's. However Alpha Group's operations cover more than just military operations, they are known to conduct police duties, paramilitary operations and covert operations both domestically and internationally. In essence they are both a military covert ops unit, like Delta Force and DEVGRU, and a federal law enforcement tactical team like the FBI's HRT unit.