Well, that explains the Terminator being used even on a small-time op like the Savannah-grab, since the human operatives had managed to botch things repeatedly and a large number of them had been killed.

I guess if the team that went to the lighthouse was supposed to go after Savannah next, that would explain why Savannah's picture was on their phone, but that's pretty sloppy of them. Having them carry their plans for future missions with them while doing a mission is great to... well, to have what happened happen.

If that's the case then I'm starting to think you might be right about these guys really sucking. Failing in their attacks on the Connors was an understandable result of having a poor understanding of what they were up against: they weren't expecting the lighthouse to have been made so defensible as a fallback point and rigged with suicide explosives, they weren't expecting Sarah to find the transmitter and know they were coming for her, and they weren't expecting Cameron to be a robot. Of course, there's definitely some planning problems if they didn't plan around a worst-case scenario in the case of the lighthouse and Sarah, but it's believable that they might underestimate the opposition in that way.

Carrying such important intel on their person during a firefight, however, is a pretty big goof.