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Originally Posted by 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.
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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
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.