Does the "Regular Army" hate SF?

[The Reaper]

Also a great Surefire poster.

Pardon the quality of the quick pic.

TR

[NousDefionsDoc]

Great post Magic Man. I worked for Frank Wallace somewhere. I can't remember where. Good people.

I like that poster Boss.

[C/S PHOENIX 10]

Well, another great question. I think the views of the conventional forces Commanders are what ever side of SF we choose to display to them. We as a force have much more exposer to the conventional side than in many years past. Pior to OEF/OIF we had very little inter-action with our bothers on the conventional house, other than what they see walking around main post and such. That has changed much in the last few years. One of the things I truly love about our job is the fact that we have such wide limits to operate within. But at times some of our fellow SF'ers take the freedom to the limits and bring unwanted attention to ourselves. During the early days of OEF, the boys from 5th did an awsome job making things happen using non-standard uniforms and what ever else it took to make it happen. Well the whole issue of non-standard uniforms came to a head because we had guys riding around in GMV's wearing jeans and flip flops. While this may look cool, it does little to effect the battlefield. We took an operational need to mislead our enemies by operations in non US uniforms into a joy ride. To top these kind of actions off some would do this in the faces of the conventional forces. It does not take a degree in astro physics to see that jeans are not a Afghan native dress or wearing them in a US vehicle is a operational need. So commanders throw the bullshit flag, and our commanders didn't have a leg to stand on to justify these actions. Well we squared away ourselves and now have fixed these small short falls. This is just an example of some of the things we do that is not the brightest. We just need to be smart about when and why we do things, just being a "quite professional" will get you by.

Back to the real question. I think that the conventional commanders see the operational need and respect what we bring to the table. I know in my three tours we have done 2 BDE, 3 BN and tons of company and below ops with conventional forces. Always had great feed back from our SF commanders AAR with the conventional CDR's. Many times we would pass off targets to the CONV guys to give them a bone.
This respect was topped off by a high level US civilian leader's visit to Afghanistan. Well we just lost some key assets to the border fight, and during his visit to one of the remote bases where the Marine were base. A marine CDR stood up and stated that SF is the only game in town and the JTF needs to provide them we what ever they need. The cool thing about this was during that visit we were doing an op and there was no SF rep at the briefing, but the conventional guys had the mindset and took up for us while we were gone. Needless to say I was floored when I heard this statement back down the CoC.

We have the responsibilty to take every oppunitity to educate not only our Key leaders but every person we meet from the lowest PVT to 4 star generals. The more they understand not only what we do, but more importantly why, all the bad feelings will be gone.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by C/S PHOENIX 10

We have the responsibilty to take every oppunitity to educate not only our Key leaders but every person we meet from the lowest PVT to 4 star generals. The more they understand not only what we do, but more importantly why, all the bad feelings will be gone.

Concur with everything but the last sentence.

Some people will never like SF.

Ever.

Best we can do is to make them accept us for what we can do for them. They still won't like us.

TR

[C/S PHOENIX 10]

Reaper you are correct some people will always have a bad taste in their mouth. My last statement was a little over the top.

[magician]

unfortunately, that is true, in my experience.

I was flummoxed by it.

my primary weapon against petty prejudice was silence.

backed up by extreme competence, technical and tactical expertise, and a thorough grounding in doctrine. Confidence, not arrogance. It was important not to rise to defend against every snide comment, or attempted back stabbing.

knowing how a conventional commander would approach a problem was useful. Presenting an unconventional option, even when I knew that they would look askance at it, generally was ok, as long as it relied on surprise, timing, and other force multipliers. It had to be viable, even if it was outlandish. Sometimes the most bizarre concepts turned out to be the best ones.

conventional guys are taught to think a certain way. They are products of their own pipeline.

I remember when I went to the 18A course, I was with a bunch of guys who had all had commands, multiple commands, in conventional units. Bunch of backstabbers, top-blockers, kiss-asses and water walkers and yes-men. All that they cared about, most of them, were their careers. Making general. Most of them made me sick to my stomach. These were the kind of guys who could order a platoon to "take that hill" and shrug off the resulting casualties, as long as they did not have to lead the attack. We were planning an operation, and they were thinking in terms of standard infantry tactics.

I listened for awhile, then said, "why don't we surveil the target to determine when they change their guards, set a trap for their relief, ambush them, replace their relief with our guys, then drive up in their own vans and cruise right into the compound?"

they just looked at me, then laughed. "Nah, that won't work." Others said, "they'll never let us do it." They raised objection after objection. They told me that I thought that I was James Bond.

I said ok, then sat back, and faded back into the background.

When this light colonel came to listen to our COO, he was quiet. He did not say too much. So I seized the opportunity. I told him that we had wargamed another option, and presented it to him.

He was all over it.

And that was the option that we planned, after that.

Those fuckers, the other students, really hated me after that. Envy, I guess. They thought that I was a grandstander.

I just wanted to do the op the way that I thought that it could and should be done.

Well, we went out to the field, and actually did the op. It went pretty well.

I was surprised by some of the peer reports that I received after that op. Some were very negative. Some were very complimentary.

But they illustrated that loathing of SF, and the SF mindset, was very entrenched, and it was entrenched even in the brainpans of the guys who were coming to the 18A course to become team leaders.

SF had changed by that time....this was in '92. I had been gone for awhile, and I had grown up in a different milieu. It was more....corporate, I guess.

When I chose to go to SF, I remember the reactions of other Officers I knew (with a few exceptions who all somehow ended up in SF themselves). It was as if I was proving that I really wasn't a professional Officer. A professional Soldier, but not a professional Officer. It's hard to explain, but it certainly was there.

Back then, AD Officers usually spent one tour with SF and then went back to their branch. But not Reserve Officers. Reserve Officers were known to turn down promotions to stay on an ODA, to commute by air in order to stay in SF as they were promoted. In 5 years in C/2/11 SFGA, we had a turnover of less than half a dozen officers... in 5 years.

SF had a particular image, one that Magician described, that attracted many of our members. "Fight smart, not hard", "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't trying" (the latter referring more to finding out of the box solutions than to cheating in an academnic manner). Sometimes it manifest itself in ways that weren't so smart.

My second Team Sergeant had come from the Ranger Battalions. He didn't look for conventional solutions, but he did insist on some things that made a lot of sense that others rebelled against because they were "regular Army". Packing SOPs, standardized weapons and core equipment, using contingency plans, OPORDs, Warning Orders, FRAGOs and not just "winging it".

The mix of those things he insisted on and the willingness to look for unconventional solutions made us better. A lot better.

But that image that we had back then, and the cockiness that some carried with it, that pissed off a lot of the regular Army. And once they made their minds up, it is darn hard to change them. Look at General Schwartzkopf and his attitude towards Special Forces. If at some point, General Schwartzkopf had been favorably impressed by SF in Vietnam instead of unfavorably impressed, think how much more could have been accomplished in Desert Storm.

We have a huge opportunity. SF accomplished what no one outside of our community thought possible in Afghanistan. But it doesn't take very much to reverse that positive, that "atta-boy".

[BMT (RIP)]

When the 4th ID was getting ready to move into Cambodia, CCS offered help"we were told they didn't need our kind to fight a war"!! They didn't find SHIT! One battalion from the 101st was attached to the 4th ID, we offered the same help". The only question ask was "is this intel from a US source". We explained the intel had been gathered by US lead RT's. They kicked ass and found more SHIT than the Whole 4th ID.

BMT

[21BravoInDaSand]

Originally Posted by magician

When I was a young man in the 2d Ranger Battalion, many, many years ago, there was a bias against SF, a cultural thing, as SF was viewed as "slack," a haven for longhairs, guys who wore sunglasses, cruised around with their hands in their pockets, and who sometimes called their officers by their first names while they squatted around fires with tribal forces that they were working with in godforsaken geographical cul-de-sacs of the third world.

Sounded good to me.

I was lucky, though, as I had guys like Roland Nuqui to look up to, and Greg Gardner, and Ron Braughton, and Frank Wallace, who had all come from SF backgrounds. Nuqui, as you guys know, had run recon. Gardner had been an SF medic, Braughton had been with Project 404, and Wallace had worked with Braughton at Det A. So, these guys all influenced me, and corrected my false impressions, and helped me realize that the biased impression that ran rampant through the ranks was incorrect.

For me, SF was the natural progression of a military evolution as a professional soldier. I was subjected to pressure not to go to SF, of course, but I was intent on it, and after all, the choice was mine.

Later, I became aware of the pressures that others suffered. When I went to IOBC, I was hanging out with Kevin Egan, and met a platoon leader in 3d Ranger Battalion who was ostracized pretty hard when he put in his packet. When I went to the 18A course, there was a guy there who had gone with 3d Bat to Just Cause, and had made the combat jump onto Tocumen, and HE had been given a pretty rough time.

As you guys know, there is a close relationship, for various reasons, between the Ranger Regiment and other special operations units. Those other units also happen to procure a lot of their talent from the ranks of SF. Why there is such a bias against SF among Rangers is something that I really do not understand.

I used to believe that it was cultural, that SF represented the antithesis of many superficial things held dear within the old Battalions, and later, the Regiment, like haircuts, no sunglasses, no hands in the pockets, extreme discipline, etc.....but after I was in SF myself, I realized that hair is just hair, it grows out, and can be cut in a heartbeat, according to the dictates of the mission.....pockets exist for a reason, and if you put your hands in them it does not mean that you lack discipline.

In fact, discipline is in the heart, it is derived from your professionalism, and the discipline of the Ranger Battalions was perfect for its role, for the men in its ranks, who are typically much younger than guys in SF.

SF is different.

In retrospect....I think that there was a strata of old NCOs in the Ranger Battalions who just never went SF, for whatever reason....they were too "old school"....something put them off.....who the hell knows. Then you had a class of officers who recognized that they would lose their best and brightest, most independent-thinking sergeants, to SF....and of course that would not be a good thing, for them, thinking parochially, thinking only in terms of their fiefdoms....and there was the effect on discipline, which Rangers always had to guard against, even when they were working with other special ops units, with their long hair, their sunglasses, their non-standard equipment, methods, tactics, and ways of interacting with one another.

Rangers are elite light infantry. They have to operate that way. Their traditions run deep.

SF is SF. We are not infantry. We can operate alone, in pairs, in split teams, in any of a variety of permutations. Our missions are wildly different.

Different strokes.

I myself believed then, and I believe now, that SF can get some stellar candidates out of the Ranger Regiment. Rangers have an op tempo that is unparalleled elsewhere in the Army, and guys who spend years there get seriously experienced and seasoned. These days, with the long tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, SF will benefit, getting an even better selection of seasoned professionals from the rest of the Army, but the Ranger Regiment will still provide some great candidates, considering the types of missions that they do, and the sorts of mission packages that they participate in.

I do not think that the rivalry will ever completely go away.

It is cultural, and after all, we cannot expect mere men to be mature, reasoned, sensible, and to always see the larger picture.

Can we?

Insight like this is the reason I will spend upwards of 6 hours reading from this site while putting up with the music at starbucks...gotta get free wifi somewhere at NTC. Thanks for your post.

[Richard]

FWIW - when the Ranger Battalions were being reconstituted, SF was stripped - many involuntarily - of its Victors to form the nucleus of its expereinced cadre. And so it goes...

Richard's $.02

[Mitch]

Originally Posted by magician

Sounded good to me.

I was lucky, though, as I had guys like Roland Nuqui to look up to, and Greg Gardner, and Ron Braughton, and Frank Wallace, who had all come from SF backgrounds. Nuqui, as you guys know, had run recon. Gardner had been an SF medic, Braughton had been with Project 404, and Wallace had worked with Braughton at Det A. So, these guys all influenced me, and corrected my false impressions, and helped me realize that the biased impression that ran rampant through the ranks was incorrect.

Back at Det A, Braughton, who was an E5 when he first got there, had a nick name - of "Captian America" I won't explain exactly why (it wasn't a name that he particularly liked), but, he was one squared away dude.

I can see how he was able to leave a positive impression on you!

[alelks]

I'll add my 2 cents worth here.

Look at those people that try and talk you out of doing something that will better yourself like this.

If you take a crab and put him in a pot he will crawl out.

If you take a crab and put him in a pot with other crabs every time he tries to crawl out the other crabs just pull him back down.

If you want a very rewarding experience and get a chance to travel and meet people from all over the world don't let those people hold you back.

AL

[Mitch]

If you go way back - you've got the Creighton Abrams factor - he took over for Westmorland in Viet Nam. Abrams was the Leg's Leg - Leg all the way. Had his feet planted firmly in the mud and had an unholy hatred for Special Forces.

This all came to a head in the (famous at the time) famous Green Beret Murder Trial. Read about it:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...901231,00.html

The whole case was fictionalized in a Robin Moore book called "Court Martial"

A good near/true account - names changed to protect the guilty.

[alright4u]

BMT has laid out the truth as we offered senior US CO's our INTEL. I ran into all of one US BDE CO who made a point of coming by the launch site with his S-2 major to get briefings from the launch site NCOIC.

Many conventional unit CO's refused to avail themselves of our INTEL. Those that did had Intel to include trails not on maps, plus much more.

[futureSoldier]

Referring back to the original post... this is still going on today. I had a soldier who was an 18x and got hurt in the pipeline. He did everything right after he got here-consistently scored over a 300 on his pt, always did more than what was asked of him, and most importantly he studied hard and became 1/1 in Arabic. He put his paperwork in for Psyops at the last minute and got picked up. First he was threatened of the consequences of what his life would be here after his packet was pulled from Psyops by the CSM. Then I was threatened by the BC about the same thing and that "If you want to redeem yourself from this, you need to make sure that he does not go through with this-whatever it takes." The anger over this was in the name of stopping him from "deserting the unit" 8 months out from deployment. Point is, the guy did EVERYTHING right and still was almost stopped. It didn't matter that the whole reason he was even serving was to be in the SOF community and that he re-uped as soon as he was picked up by Psyops-everyone won and the unit was still furious that someone would consider to go outside of the norm. He was not stopped-he left and until the BC left I never made it out of the doghouse because I told him that there was nothing I would/could do to stop him.

Side note-this guys good buddy was selected in November. He was treated the same way. Pretty much "you tried to better yourself outside of the unit-go to hell."