More Than Door-Kickers

[The Reaper]

Interesting article.

Does SF really have a future in the leadership of SOF or the Army?

TR

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/story.php?F=1520947_0306

Sunday, April 02, 2006
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More than door-kickers
Special ops forces are misused as man-hunters, critics say
By Sean D. Naylor

For the United States’ special operations forces, these should be the salad days. In late 2001, a relatively small number of Army Special Forces (SF) A-teams worked with the CIA and U.S. airpower to topple Afghanistan’s Taliban regime in what was universally seen as U.S. special operations forces’ finest hour. They followed this triumph with a superlative performance during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, during which multiple joint special operations task forces managed to fix far larger Iraqi conventional formations, facilitating the rapid seizure of Baghdad.

These successes resulted in vocal support for special operations forces (SOF) on the part of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon team, a respect mirrored on Capitol Hill. “Everyone’s infatuated with SOF,” said a Special Forces officer posted to Washington. “To do anything against SOF would be absolute sacrilege on both sides of the aisle.”

This consensus has allowed Rumsfeld to confer unprecedented authority and resources on U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCom), and if the Quadrennial Defense Review released Feb. 6 is any guide, this trend can only continue. The QDR promises a 15 percent increase in special operations forces, including a “one-third” increase in Special Forces battalions.
So why are so many folks in the special ops community wearing such glum faces?

A major factor is a growing perception among special operators that in the Pentagon and, increasingly, U.S. Special Operations Command, senior leaders are only interested in missions and units that emphasize one set of special ops skills — namely, man-hunting and direct action, known colloquially as “door-kicking.” Direct action and man-hunting have long been the preserve — indeed, the raison d’être — of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and its associated units: the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (aka Delta Force), SEAL Team 6 (aka Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru), the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), among others. Direct action is also one of Army Special Forces’ “seven principal missions.”

What troubles many special operators, particularly those from the SF community, is that another six principal missions, as well as the contributions of the Army’s civil affairs and psychological operations units, are undervalued by their leaders. Those missions include unconventional warfare (fostering and promoting an insurgency, as the SF troops did with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban), foreign internal defense (helping a friendly government defeat an insurgency) and information operations. These are missions that, unlike direct action, place a high priority on Special Forces’ language skills and cultural awareness (each of the Army’s seven SF groups has a regional focus).
“My concern is that all we’re focused on is direct action, to the absolute exclusion of all other things,” said Mark Haselton, a retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel. “The war we are fighting (and will be fighting for years to come) will require the ability to export training in ways that others can use to organize their own capabilities. If we spend the rest of our lives ‘capturing and killing’ terrorists at the expense of those SF missions that are more important — gaining access to the local population, training indigenous forces, providing expertise and expanding capacity — we’re doomed to failure.”
An active-duty SF lieutenant colonel agreed that the Pentagon seemed more interested in direct action and man-hunting missions than in foreign internal defense, unconventional warfare and civil affairs.

“The direct action-type missions are usually fast and violent, and you can show effect immediately,” he said. “In an insurgency, though, they’re detrimental to your cause. Civil affairs, MPs, SF doing foreign internal defense, civil-military operations — those kind of things are the ones [that work]. Insurgencies by their nature last a long time, and they take a long time to defeat. So you’re going to defeat an insurgency by doing the things that it takes to defeat it, which are civil-military actions, psyops, CA [civil affairs], not necessarily DA [direct action]. With DA you create more insurgents than you eliminate. For every one guy you kill, you’ve just created five or six more.”

SOCom spokesman Ken McGraw said the facts did not support the critics’ contention that nondirect action special ops missions, such as foreign internal defense (FID) and civil affairs, are undervalued. He said combined joint special operations task forces with Special Forces at their core are performing foreign internal defense missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines. “FID missions are also taking place in other parts of the world,” he added. “[SOCom commander] Gen. [Bryan “Doug”] Brown says all the time that civil affairs is the key to winning the global war on terror, because it attacks the underlying causes of terrorism.”

DEARTH OF QUALIFIED GENERALS
Critics who perceive a bias toward direct action point to an apparent mismatch between the lack of Special Forces-qualified generals in leadership positions in the war on terror and those with a background in far smaller sections of the special ops community, such as the Rangers and the 160th SOAR.
Of SOCom’s approximately 52,000 personnel, 10,000 — almost one-fifth — are in Army Special Forces Command. This includes support personnel who are not SF-qualified but does not include all the SF-qualified soldiers who serve in the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School and other headquarters.
But, the critics note, of the eight flag officers at SOCom’s MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., headquarters, only one — Brown — has any Special Forces time, and that was one tour on an A-team as an enlisted soldier. His special operations experience as an officer was as an aviator, commanding both the 160th SOAR and JSOC.

Brown’s deputy is a SEAL — Vice Adm. Eric Olson — and the director of SOCom’s Center for Special Operations, which is responsible for planning and synchronizing the command’s role in the war on terror, is Army Lt. Gen. Dell Dailey, who is also a former commander of the 160th SOAR and JSOC.
“How can they understand ... what regular Special Forces bring to the table?” asked a special operations source rhetorically. “They’ve never experienced it.”
However, McGraw said, Brown has plenty of Special Forces experience close at hand. His executive officer, aide and senior enlisted adviser are all Special Forces men. In addition, McGraw said, four of the five theater special operations commands, which fall under the geographic combatant commands like Southern Command and European Command, are led by SF officers.
The exception is the Central Command’s special operations command (SOCCent), which runs all non-JSOC special operations missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The SOCCent commander is Brig. Gen. (P) Frank Kearney, who has a Ranger background and served as JSOC’s operations officer during the first phase of the war in Afghanistan. Kearney’s boss, CentCom commander Gen. John Abizaid, is a former Ranger company commander.

The commander of Joint Special Operations Command, Maj. Gen. Stan McChrystal, is another Ranger. The Pentagon plans to expand the flag officer structure of JSOC from its current model of a two-star commander with two one-star deputies to one with a three-star commander, a two-star deputy and at least two one-stars underneath them, according to several special operations sources. Under this plan, McChrystal would remain JSOC commander and be promoted to lieutenant general, and Kearney would be promoted to major general and move from SOCCent to JSOC as McChrystal’s deputy. The two one-star positions in JSOC remain in the hands of Air Force and Navy officers.

Another Ranger in a leadership position is Lt. Gen. Robert Wagner, the commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which includes Special Forces Command. Special Forces officers note that the past two commanding generals of SF Command, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Lambert and Brig. Gen. Gary “Mike” Jones, retired at the end of their tenures.

[The Reaper]

Those who perceive a bias against Special Forces officers do not claim, for the most part, that the Rangers, 160th alumni and SEALs who are running the war on terror are weak officers. McChrystal and Kearney, in particular, earn high marks for their professionalism and drive. But those asking questions wonder why a branch that seems so relevant to the fight against a global Islamic insurgency seems so underrepresented at the highest levels.

“I always said to myself that we will see if SOCom is serious about the war on terror and in fact considers white [nonclassified] SOF an important entity by what they do with Mike Jones after he leaves SF Command,” said a former JSOC staff officer. “My thought was he would go to the CSO [Center for Special Operations] and be in charge of it. But when he was essentially being shipped off to nothing, that really meant that ... the Ranger/JSOC mafia was the team that was going to be in charge.”

Beyond the four theater special operations command heads and one or two others like Maj. Gen. Gary Harrell, who now holds down a NATO job in Europe, there are few signs of a wave of SF generals on the horizon. The 31 colonels the Army selected for promotion to brigadier general last year included no Special Forces officers. The SF lieutenant colonel said the absence of SF generals from positions of influence was a topic of discussion among his peers. “A lot of SF guys talk about that, because it’s noticeable,” he said. “There’s kind of an agreement that there is a leadership vacuum when you get to that level.”

However, the dearth of SF generals might have as much to do with the paucity of quality SF officers who remain from the generation that joined the branch in its infancy, he said. The Special Forces branch was created in 1987. When today’s colonels and brigadier generals were company and field-grade officers, the downsizing of the Army was in full swing. “The SERB [Selective Early Retirement Board] was happening, they were giving big bonuses to folks to get out,” he said. “You had this new branch that was just starting; you had a dynamic in the military of zero defects. Risk takers were not promoted and people were getting out — not good for a developing organization. Where were all your strong guys going to go?

“The guys who were majors and lieutenant colonels at the time are now one-, two- and three-star generals. Those were the people that were rewarded for having no incidents in their battalion. Are those the guys that you want to lead in combat? Not necessarily.”

A former special mission unit operator agreed. “There’s just a complete dearth of quality guys,” he said. “They’re just living with the hangover from those early years of the branch.”

This dynamic will probably change when officers in year groups 1988 through 1993 are eligible for promotion to brigadier general, according to the Special Forces lieutenant colonel. “Eighty-eight through ’93, SF branch is really fat,” he said. “We’ve got too many officers in the branch where we don’t have enough positions to put folks into company command [and] battalion S-3 [operations officer]. It’s very competitive now for battalion command. It’s very competitive for group command. So I think what you’ll see in the next couple of years is you’re going to get a different crop of Special Forces officers coming up. ... I think you’re going to see some good guys in the next couple of years.”
U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman Lt. Col. Hans Bush vigorously disputed any notion that Special Forces is undervalued by the senior leadership, citing the expansion of Special Forces laid out in the Quadrennial Defense Review to support his case.

“The QDR clearly demonstrates the value that our national leadership places on special operations forces, and Special Forces within the Army especially,” said Bush, a Special Forces officer. “The desired growth and resourcing called out in that document sends a clear message to our command that our national leadership values what we bring to the table. The challenge is on us to meet these goals.”

There are five active-duty SF groups and two in the National Guard. McGraw said the command plans to create five new SF battalions — one per active-duty group — by the end of 2012. The two Guard SF battalions will receive a total of 500 extra soldiers, he added.

DIFFICULT MISSION

But several special operations sources expressed doubt that the Army, which is struggling to fill the A-teams it has now, could man those extra battalions without lowering standards.

Only a mind-set that equates SOF with direct action and man-hunting could have convinced the Pentagon that it would be able to create all the extra SF battalions laid out in the QDR, the former JSOC staff officer said.

“There aren’t enough people in the Army to come up with the raw material for these extra battalions,” he said. “So the only way this can be done, in my estimation at this time, is reducing standards and focusing on a very narrow mission set. And UW [unconventional warfare] is the most difficult mission set — you’re talking about more mature folks, you’re talking about language, you’re talking about culture, you’re talking about people who have a lot of in-country experience and are really sort of savvy in a street way, which you can’t learn in school. This can’t be done overnight. The QDR that came up with this requirement can only be thinking about putting more commandos on the streets; in other words, we want more Rangers, let’s just do more Ranger training.”

Haselton agreed. “You’re going to end up with five battalions of shooters,” he said.

“That’s not the plan,” McGraw countered. “The language requirement will remain the same. The mission set they’re training for will remain the same. They’ve ramped up the schoolhouse to be able to accept a larger student load while maintaining the same standards.”

Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces officer now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, is an advocate for creating more Special Forces battalions. But he acknowledged that it takes time to fill those units. He said recruiting the additional SF soldiers could be achieved, at least in part, via the 18 X-Ray program, which recruits personnel straight from the civilian world; the planned expansion of the Ranger Regiment by three companies; and improved pay and benefits.

“We’re creating an SOF that’s basically as big as it’s ever been at the height of the Vietnam War, but we had a much, much bigger Army in those days,” he said. “So this is a far more SOF-intensive force, which poses big challenges.”

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Interesting article and I have seen this before somewhere else. Seems to me everyone in the SF community knows this and agrees with it. Along with the problem of non-SF folks in charge and those that wear SF tabs that were grandfathered as SF qualified back in the days of the birth of the branch so that they could be "competitive" as 18s where they were not in their basic branches at the time because of repetitive assignments in SOF related activities in the black community, SF does not have a powerful mouth-piece to educate the unwashed. SF also has done a good job in eating their own and does not understand how the "Army" operates polictically and the folks like Dick Potter who knew what buttons to push ,and pushed them hard, are no longer around to irritate the hell out of the Army Staff to make things happen. So this is a double edged sword and while the Army doesn't understand SF, SF doesn't understand or play well with others in the Army. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the 18 series when it comes to the "Os". While we all know what it takes to grow an 18A and we all want them to go thru all the 18A career progression steps we have made a major trade off here when it comes to dealing with the unwashed as long as SF is seen as an Army force and the Army is part of the bill payer for SF's existence.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Valid concern I think, given the amount of time required to develop these other skills. My guess is the Quiet Professionals will continue to work quietly, professionally, in the shadows. We have always managed to get the job done and attract the right people despite the lack of notoriety or attention from the stars.

Besides, do we really want to have to provide a junior engineer to be the general's driver?;)

[Team Sergeant]

I had the pleasure to serve with LTC Mark Haselton while I was assigned to 1st Gp, Okinawa.
He's a very sharp and extremely intelligent individual. (Swatsurgeon met him at my wedding......;) )

TS

[kgoerz]

I remember the days when we were called Teachers in Baggy Pants..... You are right they are forgetting that we are Advisers. When SFAUC came out more focus was put on Door Kicking and shoot them all in the face attitude. Like NDD said we will always find a way to accomplish the Mission.

[The Reaper]

I had the pleasure to serve with LTC Mark Haselton while I was assigned to 1st Gp, Okinawa.
He's a very sharp and extremely intelligent individual. (Swatsurgeon met him at my wedding......;) )

TS

Mark and I went through the SFQC together.

He is good people.

TR

[Team Sergeant]

Lord knows I’m not one of these fancy terrorism “experts” but I have worked with people that were. I’m not going to sit and become an armchair quarter back when I don’t have current intel to draw conclusions upon. That said I do know that “Counter-Terrorism” is in our in our list of Special Forces “TASKS” and is a Special Forces doctrinal mission. I’m not aware of any other unclassified unit besides the Navy SEALS that has the task of counter-terrorism in their charter or listed as a doctrinal mission.

Special Forces units perform five doctrinal missions: Foreign Internal Defense, Unconventional Warfare, Special Reconnaissance, Direct Action and Counter-Terrorism. These missions make Special Forces unique in the U.S. military, because it is employed throughout the three stages of the operational continuum: peacetime, conflict and war.

Counterterrorism.
Counterterrorism includes the full range of offensive measures to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorism. This chapter, however, addresses only those actions taken to terminate an incident or to apprehend individuals responsible for a terrorist act. Other counterterrorism measures--preemption, intervention, or retaliation with specialized forces operating under direction of the NCA--have the characteristics of strikes or raids. FM 100-20
There’s a reason Special Forces soldiers (and SEALS) put the fear of allah into terrorists and the same reason there’s been a bounty on our heads in the major conflicts we’ve been involved in, we are trained and equipped to hunt and kill terrorists, period. Now if I were the regional commander and my staff told me we need to reduce/terminate the terrorism threat who else are they going to turn to?

“Direct action and man-hunting have long been the preserve — indeed, the raison d’être — of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and its associated units: the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (aka Delta Force), SEAL Team 6 (aka Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru), the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), among others. Direct action is also one of Army Special Forces’ “seven principal missions.”

I don’t agree with this line of thought for a number of reasons most of which I will not discuss on a public board. It remains a fact that Counter-Terrorism is still a Special Forces task and when called upon we can and will accomplish that task as well as any unit in the US military. Hell, our soldiers already over-threw Afghanistan. Are there more countries in need of a Special Forces attitude adjustment? I’m sure there are but currently none on the radar. So we turn to our task list and prioritize our “to do” list. If that list has “terminate terrorists” so be it. It that upsets other units, so be it.

Team Sergeant

[Razor]

I guess I haven't been paying close attention...what are the 13 'principal missions' of SF (not SOF) to which the article refers? I know of the 5 primary missions as listed by the TS, and a bucketful of collateral missions, but I missed the briefing on the 13 principals.

[The Reaper]

Actually, Naylor is correct in that they added two more primary SF missions in the past few years. From the USASFC website:

"Special Forces units perform seven doctrinal missions: Unconventional Warfare, Foreign Internal Defense, Special Reconnaissance, Direct Action, Combatting Terrorism, Counter-proliferation, and Information Operations. These missions make Special Forces Command unique in the U.S. military, because it is employed throughout the three stages of the operational continuum: peacetime, conflict and war.

Special Forces Command’s Unconventional Warfare capabilities provide a viable military option for a variety of operational taskings that are inappropriate or infeasible for conventional forces, making it the U.S. Army’s premier unconventional warfare force.

Foreign Internal Defense operations, SF’s main peacetime mission, are designed to help friendly developing nations by working with their military and police forces to improve their technical skills, understanding of human rights issues, and to help with humanitarian and civic action projects.

Often SF units are required to perform additional, or collateral, activities outside their primary missions. These collateral activities are coalition warfare/support, combat search and rescue, security assistance, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, humanitarian de-mining and counterdrug operations."

Concur with your comments about SF and CT. The USASFC policy statement above reinforces the comments about the uniqueness of UW and FID as well.

I am not privy to any classified info now, but the primary candidates for additional UW efforts right now would seem to be Iran and NK.

If we have not identified indigenous groups in those countries with the potential for resistance yet, we are making a big mistake. Obviously, any NK effort would be largely material with possible SK support. In Iran, I believe that we could actually operate near the border areas (particularly the Iraqi and Afghani borders) with team sized elements. I personally believe that there is sufficient opposition to the governments of those two countries, particularly among the young, to create a good resistance movement in both countries. Even if the movements remained small, they would give the governments an internal threat to worry about, likely further alienating additional members of the populace. PSYOP and IO would play a great part in those efforts as well.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR

[bost1751]

The direct action train of thought contridicts what a former SOF CG said a few ago. He had no SF experience but did have Ranger time. He was called Baby Ranger, known as Gen Wayne Downing. Downing stated SF soldiers were too well trained and the Army had too large of an investment in them for SF to be called on to conduct DA missions. That is what the Rangers and infantry were for. SF had uniques talents and would continued to be called upon to use those talents.

Prior to the 18 series it was a kiss of death for an officer to spend more than a year, maybe 18 months, in an SF assignment. they had to play army to keep a career. It sounds like it may be a similiar situation now for 18A officers. I can not think of any time when SF truely liked by the Army. Gen Abrams did everything he could after VN to get rid of us.

[CPTAUSRET]

Gen Abrams did everything he could after VN to get rid of us.

He certainly tried to hang Col Robert Rheault, during VN

Terry

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

The direct action train of thought contridicts what a former SOF CG said a few ago. He had no SF experience but did have Ranger time. He was called Baby Ranger, known as Gen Wayne Downing. Downing stated SF soldiers were too well trained and the Army had too large of an investment in them for SF to be called on to conduct DA missions. That is what the Rangers and infantry were for. SF had uniques talents and would continued to be called upon to use those talents.

Prior to the 18 series it was a kiss of death for an officer to spend more than a year, maybe 18 months, in an SF assignment. they had to play army to keep a career. It sounds like it may be a similiar situation now for 18A officers. I can not think of any time when SF truely liked by the Army. Gen Abrams did everything he could after VN to get rid of us.


In 1974 the arugument used to create the Ranger Battalions was exactly that train of thought. I was snow birding at Benning prior to the Infantry Officers Advanced Course and was given the mission to help write the TOE for them and got to read all the background information from DA concerning why and how they were to be formed. The actual driving force behind this had to do with a lot of the wartime mission requirements for SF, particularly in Europe, which where calling for mission requirements of going in on a DA mission and reverting to UW which sort of created a whole bunch of problems as you might imagine. SF was actually pretty insturmental in getting the Ranger concept up and running because of this lunacy of DA and then UW follow on.

As far as the kiss of death for officers who spent repetitive tours in SF before the onset of the 18 branch, I lived through that whole era starting with my first tour in SF in 67 and can say that there is some validity to that statement. However, it still boiled down to how you did your job and not necessarily where you did it. The problem came from missing career progression windows that made you branch qualified. It had a lot to do with how senior you were when you moved back and forth between SF and conventional assignments and just what was available when you walked thru the door of your next unit of assignment. I just lucked out, I commanded two conventional companies and did conventional staff time as an S4 and S3 and was still able to command two A-Teams, two B-Teams, S3 of a SF Group and Battalion, and a SF BN XO before the branch came into existence. I was picked up for SF Battalion Cmd before the branch came around and was branched during that tour. Now I was
"hurt" by my last tour in the 10th SFG(A) because I was deployed on a classified MTT that was only supposed to last 6 weeks and lasted almost a year. During that time I was supposed to be completing CGSC which sort of got shifted to the way side for obvious reasons. Dispite all the efforts by the country's Ambassador, SATMO, and the chain of command to grant me a waiver for the lost time, I was passed over for LTC the first time around but picked it up the nest year with concurrent selection for command so the only thing it did to me was put me behind my peers who made 06 one year ahead of me-big whoop:D Now I never really cared a whole lot about rank or career progression windows and would have much preferred to have been able to spend even more time than I did in SF slots but 19 years out of 27 is not bad. As it was, I know having repetitive tours in SF made be a better soldier and I am relatively sure it made me a better officer who saw things a little bit differently than my contemporaries when it came to working with troops in conventional assignments. After all an officer's performance is only as good as the soldiers for whom he is responsible and while soldiers will always do their best in spite of their officer they will do a whole lot better when he is in tune with what makes them perform at their best. Just my opinion based on my experience-FWIW.

Jack Moroney-withdrawing back into the recessess of my MSS.

[Razor]

Actually, Naylor is correct in that they added two more primary SF missions in the past few years. From the USASFC website:

"Special Forces units perform seven doctrinal missions: Unconventional Warfare, Foreign Internal Defense, Special Reconnaissance, Direct Action, Combatting Terrorism, Counter-proliferation, and Information Operations."

See, I'm always the bottom man on the phone tree. :D Looks like I need to do some info searching.

[magician]

Talk some more, please.

Great conversation.

:)

[NousDefionsDoc]

Jack Moroney-withdrawing back into the recessess of my MSS.
LOL - yeah right Sir. Can anybody on this board honestly even imagine the Colonel:
1. Withdrawing?
2. Sitting in a MSS?

[Surgicalcric]

Talk some more, please.

Great conversation.

Not that my opinion matters or Magician needs a parrot on his shoulder but please do continue.

I know, I know; back to the medic stuff....

Crip

[bost1751]

Jack:

Thanks for the information. I kind of think you were and exception to the unwritten rule in the previous era. However, you did get out and punch the right tickets when needed. Bo Baker was another that got to stay around and move. I don't think he was as fortunate as you on the SF time though.

[Box]

The integration of an infantry regiment and an aviation regiment into the Umbrella of 'Special Operations' is where real "Special Forces" began to get pushed back to what is slowly becoming second class citizen status... I know my opinion is unpopular with lots of people, but we have let ourselves get pushed aside by what I like to refer to as "conventional SOF" We now "expect" that an infantry regiment should get certain benifits... some of us no longer believe an aviation regiment is a 'support' element. Now-a-days I am more likely to get my ass chewed for grooming violations than a buck sgt 11b in the infantry regiment. Most of my real complaints are poorly addressed on an 'open' web forum, but thats how it goes...

Long gone is "Strat' Recon" now its just "Special" We have added more "missions" to our focus.... not because thats what "Green Berets" do.... but because it allows us to "include" others. Combatting Terrorism, Counter-proliferation, arent they all direct action type missions that fall under the scope of things we formerly refered to as "collateral activities" ?

Some services consider small unit actions (commando style raids) as "Unconventional Warfare" Isnt it just a raid? Does it become 'unconventional' because we used a different helicopter or a different type of gun? Information operation? Civic Action? Are they new missions or collateral parts of UW.... If they are "missions" why in the world did I have to clean some old womans barn at the end of the Q-Course? Why didnt a civil affairs trainee come out and do it?

When I am doing the "life saving steps" on someone, am I practicing "SOF-medicine" or am I just doing first aid? Does an airfield takedown stop being "special" if the 82d does it? I have been around for a day or two... but I seem to have missed a few "key-meetings" at some point, and just need to be brought up to speed so I can understand who and what "Special Operations" really means.

I stopped feeling "Special" a long time ago.... I continue to do what I do because it needs to be done and everyone else in the military has gotten waaaay too high speed to do it.

I hope I didnt stir the pot more than it needed.... but if the pot dont get stirred every now and then some of the stuff settles to the bottom and burns.... then the pot is ruined.

...and I dont know about the rest of you, but I hate eating stew out of a burned up pot.

...just my two cents
I could be wrong.

[The Reaper]

Billy:

You said nothing untrue, or that didn't need to be said.

The tough thing is that USSOCOM and USASOC are necessary for Special Forces to thrive, but at the same time, they compete for limited resources and for the most part, are not really fans of SF.

I have seen years when the Infantry Regiment's budget exceeded that of several SF Groups, and when infiltration platforms (which consume roughly 80% of USSOCOM's budget) allocated ZERO hours of blade time to white SOF.

Note the core of the Aviation Regiment were the aircraft and personnel formerly assigned to each SF Group. Yes, kiddies, at one time, each and every SFG had their own infiltration platforms ASSIGNED. They were "consolidated" to provide "better support", and to provide economy of scale savings. IMHO, the day they left was the last day SF got regularly scheduled aviation support.

Preach on, brother!

TR

[CPTAUSRET]

Billy:

You don't post often, but when you do I always listen!

Terry

[magician]

I hear you, Billy.

I agree: a raid is a raid is a raid.

One of the things that felt so good to me when I first joined SF (I was a Bat boy beforehand, a very radical, rebellious Bat boy, and it was a foregone conclusion that I was heading to SF, if only because I knew why the Big Ranger in the Sky included pockets on uniform trousers) was the license that I was suddenly granted to think outside the box.

This was illustrated to me a few times, when we pulled whoppers and generally played unfairly, as used to be the hallmark of old SF.

My favorite example is when I was in the SF Detachment Commander's course. We had a raid to plan. The muldoons in my class wanted to stage a standard raid. I argued for something a little more imaginative, but I was voted down. Whatever.

A Colonel came in and sat down to hear our concept of the operation. He was bored, I could tell, though there was nothing really wrong with our plan. It was straight out of 7-8.

I then committed the cardinal sin of saying, "well, sir, we also had another idea," and I then proceeded to explain how I thought that it made more sense to hijack a van that was used to bring the guard replacements in, then put our own guys in the van, and pull a trojan horse entry onto the objective.

Well. The Colonel woke up. And he told us to plan and implement the mission in that way.

I was forever after considered a spotlight Ranger by the other studs in the course, but...in retrospect, I consider that a compliment. Too many of those guys were water walkers and backstabbers and top blockers, anyway. We actually had one guy who was wearing an unearned Ranger tab. He was busted on the last day of the course.

They let the guy graduate.

He had to take the tab off. But he graduated, and he went on to command an ODA in 7SFGA.

Anyway. I digress.

I honestly do not know what solution to propose. I do know that old SF is different than the risk averse SF that emerged in the early 1990's.

I think that there is a place for the old style Sneaky Petes.

Yes, you have to keep them away from everyone else in peacetime. But when the balloon goes up, you need those guys.

What I would not give to be 20 years younger.

:)

[NousDefionsDoc]

Great post Billy.

[Box]

the day they left was the last day SF got regularly scheduled aviation support.

BINGO!

TR.... the Navy gets more support from the aviation regiment then I have seen delivered to SF in a loooong time.

The fact is... if a 'group' REALLY REALLY needs aviation support... I feel better about asking a leg unit for help because I know they wont back out on my requirement at the last minute because a "cooler" mission came along. Not to mention, the paper trail is a lot less painful

special my ass....


$ 0.02

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Long gone is "Strat' Recon" now its just "Special" We have added more "missions" to our focus.... not because thats what "Green Berets" do.... but because it allows us to "include" others. Combatting Terrorism, Counter-proliferation, arent they all direct action type missions that fall under the scope of things we formerly refered to as "collateral activities" ?

I could be wrong.

No you are not wrong, but you are going to have to give me some leeway here as I am just an officer that has been allowed only briefly to walk with you from time to time and have listened to many of your contemporaries and those that have come before voice the same concerns. This is not a recent phenomenom, it has been going on since SFs inception. When I started out in this profession ,SF's primary doctrinal manual (FM31-21, dated 1961) was called Guerrilla Warfare and Special Forces Missions. That manual recognized exactly what you are saying that a raid is a raid, recon is recon, and FID (for the most part) was the flip side of UW. It also recognized that virtually all those mission we have today were going to be executed in some form or another during UW missions either by the team, their guerrillas, or surrogates trained/supported/or inspired by SF teams and that , for instance, PSYOPs was part of the necessary skill sets for GW.

The labeling today of missions as "Special" has more to do with the bean counters and allocation of resources in terms of force structure, materiel, doctrinal responsibility, and turf protection. While you are absolutely right when you say a raid is a raid and all of the subsets that now have their own names are still a raid what it boils down to is resourcing units tasked for those missions with the materiel, time, facilities, etc, etc, for which they will be held accountable. Manuals are not just for those of us that use them to define what we are supposed to do they are for the education of those who do not have the requisite qualifications needed to make decisions on our employment both within the SF community, SOF community and the Joint community at large. It used to be, and I do not know if it still is done, that when a new doctrinal manual was written it would have to be presented at a Doctrinal Review Approval Group (commonly know as being DRAGed) to all the other Army School Commandants not only so they knew what we were doing but where in the big picture they fit and where we fit in the overall scheme of warfighting. Having had the unpleasant experience of being the DOTD for SWC for a while I fought out some of those meetings defending our roles and codifing what it was that we do. Most of the time we won, sometimes we compromised, and rarely did we lose. You see as long as SF is part of the Army it will have to compete for resources that are not paid for by the joint monies and the only way to accomplish this is to define what it is you do with names that recognize that this particular purview of "special" this and "special" that is understoond by the joint community at large.

Now back to common sense, you and I both know that a raid is still a raid and "Special" reconnaissance encompasses many tasks-to include Strategic Reconnassaince but the TTPs don't often change regardless if you are gathering intell at the tactical, operational or strategic level with the exception of the tools and toys that are made available for us to use. The term Special Operation has also taken on a life of its own and it has gotten ridiculous as you have pointed out. The only term with Special in it that still has a clear line for definition is SF and has little to do with the name of the various missions and collateral activities and everything to do with the folks.

So, your frustrations are not new and as long as SF continues to set the standard when it comes to soldiering everyone will want to attach "special" to what ever they do just like they all wanted a frigging beret. But headgear and adjectives to define missions and activities aside, a raid is still a raid but the measure of those that execute the missions, whatever they are called, will be judged by the excellence in execution which will always be your hallmark whether or not you feel "special".

Jack Moroney-humbled by the shadows cast by those with whom I had been given the privledge to serve and the responsibility to command.

[Peregrino]

Sir - In defense of "knuckle draggers" everywhere, I wish SF's leadership did a better job of educating the troops about the points you've made. The part about educating the Army and redefining missions to "fence" pieces of the pie needs to be understood by every SF soldier. What you explained in a couple paragraphs cost me several years of "learning the ropes" - and I've always liked "redefining things to get more resources/lattitude". Now if guys on the teams would just understand that it's about resources and approach the fight as another battle with words/ideas the weapons of choice (isn't that supposed to be one of our strong suites?) and other consumers their/our adversaries maybe they'd be a little more enthusiastic about what now seems to be "distracting word games with no useful purpose". Unfortunately I think the team guys that complain the loudest about semantics are so focused on fighting alligators that they've forgotten the mission included draining the swamp. My .02 - Peregrino

[dennisw]

Colonel Moroney said:

I just lucked out, I commanded two conventional companies and did conventional staff time as an S4 and S3 and was still able to command two A-Teams, two B-Teams, S3 of a SF Group and Battalion, and a SF BN XO before the branch came into existence.
Sir:

Now that special ops is a distinct branch of service, do you believe an officer could serve their entire time, other then the initial command, in special ops and still become a qualified general officer? I do not mean in the eyes of the regular army, but in your eyes?

[NousDefionsDoc]

dennis,
Neither the time nor the place.

[bost1751]

I know I am sounding like a stuck record, but as the old wagon turns the same spokes continue to come around. The term "special" seems to be attached to everything these days. I retired 12 years ago and I still recall much of what is being said today also being said years ago. We, SF NCOs, were being told if we didn't conventional time we would not get promoted. We were drafted into the drill sgt program and so on. The rumors turned out to be just that. Others were out to get rid of SF, or it appeared thay way anyway. If you have not already experienced it, you will, that you are nearly hated by several out in the conventional Army. The reason is simple, professional jealousy.

The term quite professional is fitting for SF. You do your absolute best in everything you do. You don't brag about it or look for pats on the back and a parade in your honor. You because you are professional. Others may get credit for what you did. To me that is the basis for the unit's name " Special Forces".

The Col's articles were very educational for me. You are right in not every being educated in why some things that absolutely ludicrus are done. I was fortunate enough to have a couple of SGM's along the way that explained a water down version of the The Col explained to us.

It sounds to me like the now 7 missions are still the same as we always had. Now they have just split a couple of them and attached new names to them.

[uboat509]

When I was in the 18F course the SWCS CSM came and talked to us. He was angry because he had caught one of our guys needing a haircut. He came to the class expecting to just issue a blanket asschewing and move out. What he walked into was a bunch of students and instructors who were angry about some very big SWCS mandated changes to the course. Instead of just telling us to quit whinning and suck it up he took the time to hear our grievences and to explain SWCS' position and to promise to try to mitigate some the problems. One of the things that he said was that we can teach any knucklehead to shoot but only SF can do what we were doing.

SFC W

[NousDefionsDoc]

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2007/06/ap_specialoperations_070627/

Spec ops leaders want return to fundamentals

By Richard Lardner - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jun 28, 2007 10:47:31 EDT

TAMPA, Fla. — Almost six years after the worst attack ever on U.S. soil, special operations commanders believe that simply killing terrorists will not win a war against an ideologically motivated enemy.

That view is reflected in a series of transitions in special operations leadership posts. New senior officers are expected to give greater weight to an indirect approach to warfare, a slow and disciplined process that calls for supporting groups or nations willing to back U.S. interests.

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld turned special operations forces into a “giant killing machine,” said Douglas Macgregor, a former Army colonel and frequent critic of the Defense Department.

Now, with Rumsfeld gone and Navy Vice Adm. Eric Olson about to take control of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Macgregor anticipates a return to the fundamentals drilled into Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other specially trained troops.

“The emphasis will be on, ‘If you have to kill someone, then for God’s sakes, kill the right people,”’ Macgregor said. “In most cases, you’re not going to have to kill people and that’s the great virtue of special operations. That’s been lost over the last several years.”

Olson has been deputy commander since August 2003; Army Gen. Bryan Brown, the command’s top officer for the past four years, retires from the military next month.

At defense industry conferences and in congressional testimony, Olson has said the manhunts that grab bad guys as well as headlines will continue to be necessary against terrorists.

“The nation expects to have forces that can emerge from darkness with precision and daring to conduct missions that are especially demanding and sensitive,” Olson told the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing June 12.

But these assignments, known as direct action, are means to a broader end.

“We understand well that it is the indirect actions that will be decisive,” he testified.

Through the indirect route, support can be overt or covert. But it always is aimed at eliminating safe havens for terrorists. This is done by training foreign militaries, supporting surrogate forces or providing humanitarian, financial and civic backing to areas viewed as possible breeding grounds for terrorists.

It is not uncommon for a battle-ready Army Special Forces team to rumble into a remote village and spend most of its time painting mosques, drilling wells and running medical clinics.

“It’s basically anything that doesn’t involve combat operations against terrorists,” said Andrew Feickert, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service in Washington. “As Admiral Olson has said, we’re not going to kill our way to victory.”

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing in June 2006, Max Boot, a national security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said critical indirect tasks had been “shortchanged by SOCOM in favor of sexier SWAT-style raids.”

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism and unconventional threats, said the blame rests with the Bush administration. By choosing to invade Iraq, the administration gave special operations forces a heavy combat role.

“The main thing holding them back at this point is Iraq, which is pretty much all direct action,” said Smith. “The desire has been there, and I think General Brown was trying to move it that way as best he could.”

Brown, through a spokesman, said the command “has always emphasized the indirect approach because that is the approach that will ultimately prove decisive.”

Formed in 1987 in the wake of the failed attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Tehran, Iran, Special Operations Command is now an extensive network of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who use unconventional methods against untraditional enemies.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the command has received more money, more people and more authority to go after terrorist networks.

In 2001, the command had an annual budget of $2.3 billion and roughly 46,000 military and civilian personnel. The command now has a budget of about $7 billion. By 2012, nearly 59,000 people will be attached to the command. Its headquarters is at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

Two years ago, President Bush put the command in charge of “synchronizing” the global fight against terrorism. This new role has been a source of friction within the Defense Department.

More than half a dozen top special operations slots are changing hands over the next few months. These moves are driven by the regular rotation of officers as well as “a better understanding of the complexities of the type of ‘war’ we are involved in today,” according to Pete Gustaitis, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

Beyond Olson, Gustaitis pointed to the upcoming promotions of Army Maj. Gen. David Fridovich and Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Wurster as bellwethers.

“Both officers have been very vocal about using indirect methods,” said Gustaitis, a retired Green Beret colonel.

Fridovich will run the Center for Special Operations, a 4-year-old organization located at MacDill that plans and oversees anti-terrorism campaigns. He will replace Lt. Gen. Dell Dailey, who has retired and been nominated by Bush to be the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism.

Fridovich has spent the past six years in the Pacific region helping guide what the military considers a successful effort against Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida outgrowth in the Philippines.

In a recent edition of the military journal Joint Force Quarterly, Fridovich wrote that the U.S. “cannot simply enter sovereign countries unilaterally and conduct kill-or-capture missions. It must blend host nation capacity building and other long-term efforts to address root causes, dissuade future terrorists, and reduce recruiting.”

This indirect approach, Fridovich added, “demands diplomacy and respect for political sensitivities.”

Money helps, too.

Earlier this month, the U.S. paid $10 million to four Filipinos who provided information that led to the killing of two top Abu Sayyaf leaders.

Wurster, a combat pilot with more than 4,000 flying hours, will run Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field, Fla. The current commander, Lt. Gen. Michael Wooley, is retiring.

Along with Fridovich, Wurster has substantial experience in the Philippines. From 2000 to 2003 he was the senior special operations officer at U.S. Pacific Command.

In a telephone interview, Wurster called the rewards a “pretty effective tool” that send an important signal. When people in a community are willing to turn in the enemy for cash, it means they are confident the white hats outnumber the black ones.

“That is when your campaign is properly structured and producing the desired effects,” he said.

Rep. Smith, an enthusiastic backer of Brown and Olson, said it will be a major challenge to translate success in the Pacific to the volatile Middle East.

“Winning hearts and minds is one thing when you’re coming into a relatively stable place where there’s a minor insurgent problem,” he said. “It’s very hard to do those things in the environment that exists in Iraq.”

[NousDefionsDoc]

Colonel MacGregor was n Armor Officer.

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Colonel MacGregor was n Armor Officer.

He is supposedly a pretty smart cookie despite the simplified outlook that his quote seems to imply. But then, when you have wandered around the battlefield for as long as he has with multiple tons of homosexual steel protecting your brain housing group you have to make allowances for simple views of complex issues. It might just be his way of talking to his contemporaries so that they can keep their eye on the ball.:D

[John A. Larsen]

I have been on the road for a few days and am catching up on what has been happening. This is a very interesting subject and goes along with a book I have just started "Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare" by HY S. Rothstein. One thing it seems that it is an continuous process of trying to educate the Conventional Army to what, specifically Army SF, can bring to the table. It has been going on for a long time, and sometimes I wonder if anyone listens. There is a quote in the book from when General Lindsay took command of the new USSOCOM on 1 June 1987 made by Admiral Crowe, advising General Lindsay to integrated the new command into the mainstream military. Crowe said " First, break down the wall that has more or less come between special operations forces and other parts of our military, the wall that some people will try to build higher. Second, educate the rest of the military-spread a recognition and understanding of what you do, why you do it, and how important it is that you do it. Last, integrate your efforts into the full spectrum of our military capablitities." While we have sometimes been our own worst enemies, I have seen many conventional folks who IMO are building that wall, not SF. On an exercise in Thailand we were working with the 25th ID, but had not gone OPCON to them yet. About 2300 we get a radio message, telling us to do all sorts of missions. When we inquired about our OPCON status, we were told if that was the way we were going to be that the 25th could not worry about things like checking artillery fire even though we were in the area. Of course no real firing was going on. We send out 3 or 4 Teams to set up LZ's, and lead elements of the 25th to their objectives. Earlly in the morning, we see many Huey's heading North. Long story short, only one of the 25th elements used their Team waiting for them to move to the objective, the other Teams were told they were not needed. Guess which of the elements made it to the objective, and which ones did not? Soon a ground convoy showed up just below our position, but could not cross the river there as the bridge was out. One of our NCO's walked down and informed the Captain if he went 300 meters East along the river he would find a ford. The next day we get another call from the 25th asking if we have had contact with one of their elements, as they have not heard from them in 24 hours. Bottom line was the 25th IMO resented our presence on the ground. They never asked for any intel on the area, or if we would run a commo net for them, since they were out of radio range, and as a result had units on the ground, that could not call for a medevac if needed. Yes the missing element was one that said they did not need the Team's help in getting to their objective. In other cases when "Allowed" to work with conventional units, we got along fine as they appreicated what we could and did do for them. In any case it is something that has been going on for a long time, and I expect it will never entirely go away.

[The Reaper]

Things have changed a lot over the years.

We integrated SF into NTC and JRTC rotations for years just to build those sorts of bridges.

My next door neighbor is a deployed Major in the 82nd. He informs me that they have two ODAs "attached" to them. Regardless of the command relationship, it is clear from the comments on this board that we have a lot of contact with conventional forces, and most of it is positive.

Having said that, we have not yet had a SOCOM Commander yet who was an SF guy. The rest have been Ranger, AF, Aviation, or Infantry guys who happen to have had at most, one tour in SF a long time ago (and who never wore the Tab prior to commanding SOCOM). Lindsay was extremely conventional, and IMHO, was part of the problem. Most of the people working at SOCOM are not SOF, and the vast majority are not SF.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR

[Max_Tab]

Things have changed a lot over the years.

We integrated SF into NTC and JRTC rotations for years just to build those sorts of bridges.

My next door neighbor is a deployed Major in the 82nd. He informs me that they have two ODAs "attached" to them.

TR

Man, I'd hate to be on those ODA's. :D

[NousDefionsDoc]

He is supposedly a pretty smart cookie despite the simplified outlook that his quote seems to imply. But then, when you have wandered around the battlefield for as long as he has with multiple tons of homosexual steel protecting your brain housing group you have to make allowances for simple views of complex issues. It might just be his way of talking to his contemporaries so that they can keep their eye on the ball.:D
Just making an observation Sir...not implying anything...;)