[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.”