Nothing personal, but is anyone in charge of the FID effort in the Corps who knows what they are doing, or are they just randomly picking people, stamping them with SOF labels, calling them FID/UW experts, and launching them without the proper training, mission planning, and prep?
Go to the library and get the area study for some light pre-deployment reading. If you do not know what language the inhabitants speak, culture and area orientation must be out of the question.
I have spent the majority of my adult life in and around Latin America, speak the language with a 3/3, have been to every country in the theater but two, and I still would not deploy on a mission there without doing a full mission analysis, area study, etc., probably taking a week or more. Read the papers, log onto their internet sites, check their news, get a feel for the people and their culture. Since you are not the first, you might look for some AARs and Lessons Learned.
Picking people to do FID who do not work the same area for their careers is a recipe for disaster. I understand that it is a necessary evil. Asking questions is a good start. Please think what you do through and don't screw anything up for those who will have to follow you.
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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