Regionally Aligned Brigades
 

Sorry if it has been posted before, but when I searched for Regionally Aligned Brigades, it came up with nothing.

What are your opinions on this? For those of you who do not know what it is, it is the Army's new plan to align a brigade(hence the title) with each theater command to provide training for host nation forces(sounds familiar eh?)

http://www.dialogo-americas.com/en_G...eature-ex-2871


http://defense.aol.com/2011/10/11/ne...o-op-missions/

What could go wrong with this plan?

An E3 with Basic and AIT behind him and no language skills should be able to teach his HN counterpart equally as well as an E7 with 10 years of experience, SF and Ranger School, and cultural/language training.

Why not just use infantry squads for VSO without the SF guys?

Same-same, right?

TR

I read that and all I could think "I'm pretty sure there already is one of those out"

When I first heard about the Regionally Aligned Brigades, I was a little disgusted. It seems everyone is trying to get into the FID realm with out any of the proper training. The SEALs are evening doing it, with nobody qualified in the language.

Nothing wrong with being area oriented, with vehicles and troops camo'd for the area, a bare minimum of language training, maybe even some cultural training. Tie it into weather, terrain, and it would speed up the prep for deployment into that area.

Just so long as they realize they are not Special Forces, and don't try to be Special Forces.

Yeah, except they won't. I work in Theater Security Cooperation with Mexico. Whenever the RAB concept is discussed, it is always characterized as "you know, that stuff SF used to do."

That is not the proposal on the table.

What you are referring to has long applied to apportionedand theater based forces.

Looks to me like the Big Army trying to steal a page from our playbook to remain relevant and to compete for forces.

One of the biggest issues from the VSO program with conventional attachments has been the assumption by the VSO force that they were now "SF."

TR

Wow...saying something like that is asking to get karate chopped in the throat!


I think with this, you might hear more conventional commanders saying "We can do the same thing SF can, but with out the special pays"

This is probably very true indeed,like the magazine Wired recently stated that SEALS are IN, and Special Forces are OUT..........:eek:

Big Teddy :munchin

We shouldn't kid ourselves any longer...

There are battle space owners that already overtly wonder exactly what it is that SF can do that they can't do by themselves. Hell, we have as many terps as 'they' do...

...and they can do it without all of the uniform violations and opfund problems.

Our collective attitude as a force coupled with our collective ego has put us in a very uncomfortable predicament.

Well said.

I think that in itself is its own endless thread about our "unwanteds".

So if the whole Army can get this up and going, where does that leave us as a Regiment?

At the GO level there is an insatiable demand for SOF, particularly SF. They receive everyone's SITREPs and raw information reports, and can tell the difference. ODA SITREPs are read in their raw form by theater commanders. No one at that level cares what an Infantry Captain writes on a daily basis. While 2LT Snuffy or LTC Dickwad may think they can do what SOF can do, GO's at the theater level know better.

Country Teams and Geographic Combatant Commanders will always understand the capabilities that SOF and SF bring to the table, and when given the choice will always spring for SOF vs non-SOF when it comes to the Title 50 FID. No GPF FID partner has reached the capability of a SF partnered unit in any theater....people notice.

While we need to tighten the shot group on some issues, we aren't facing a threat to our existence. Regardless of what GPF does or doesn't do, SF will have a job for a long, long time.

Ask the boys that just got back from MEZ how their rotation fared with the 82nd being in charge of the SOTF.......yes our guys reported to the 82nd, an essentially had to train them in their jobs. Very tense relationship........YMMV