Weekly Standard cover article.
Interesting, a point I have been making for some time.
There are some minor factual errors, but not bad.
Snaque beat me to it by two minutes so the threads are merged under his.
TR
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...3/330frnuq.asp
The Democrats' Special Forces Fetish
A fatuous promise to "double the size" of our elite military units.
by Michael Fumento
03/05/2007, Volume 012, Issue 24
It was one bullet point in the plan for the Pelosi Congress's "first 100 hours," two sentences in the Democrats' 31-page "New Direction for America" document released last June: In order to "Defeat terrorists and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, we will . . . . Double the size of our Special Forces" (emphasis added).
Sounds nifty, doesn't it, like a bumper sticker reading "Outlaw War Now!"? And, indeed, top-notch warriors play an invaluable role in any war but are most useful in the sorts of guerrilla actions and antiterrorist activity that will probably dominate the military's missions for the next generation. There are just two problems. First, doubling can only be accomplished by going a disastrous route--making special ops no longer special. Second, false solutions crowd out real ones. Much can be done to improve the quality of our armed forces, but this Democratic proposal doesn't make the grade.
Just as it's disturbing that in 31 pages the Democrats couldn't devote a single line to how they plan to achieve their lofty goal, it's unsettling that they can't get their definitions right. "Special Forces," properly speaking, refers to U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. But, as Drew Hammill in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office confirmed to me, what the Democrats want to double is the much broader group of "Special Operations Forces"--SOF in military shorthand, or just "special ops."
Further, just as they don't seem to know what special ops are, it's doubtful the concocters of this soundbite know what goes into creating such troops or what a doubling would entail. But in consulting with special ops leaders, trainers, and members--indeed, by merely looking at the numbers--it quickly becomes clear that this "plan" is pie in the sky.
What are Special Operations Forces?
First, a definition--a proper one. Special Operations Forces are defined by how they are trained, not by how they happen to be employed. In the U.S. military, virtually all SOF are three-time volunteers. They volunteer to enter one of the four branches of the armed forces and undergo basic training, followed by advanced training in their military occupational specialty such as the infantry or combat engineers. They volunteer for airborne school, which is usually the second phase of their training, although Navy SEALs actually undergo their Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs (BUD/S) course before going to jump school. Then they volunteer for the SOF school itself, such as the Army's Special Forces Q Course or Ranger school.
Nor is that the end. Even once the volunteer is officially SOF, with that jaunty green beret or Ranger tab, he cross-trains in other special schools, such as a Special Forces soldier taking an intensive language course or going through HALO (high altitude-low opening) training, in which he learns to jump at very high altitudes using oxygen tanks and then deploy his parachute at the very last second. SOF members also train with special ops troops from other countries. Being SOF means constantly improving your skills.
All special ops are elite, but not all elite soldiers are special ops. For example, all paratroopers are considered elite as well as some non-airborne units like the 10th Mountain Division. But they are not special operations forces; hence they are not part of the Democrats' formula.
As it happens, there is also a more formal definition of special ops--that would be a unit falling under the U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, which was created in 1987 and is based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Marine Force Recon, which long guarded its independence, was an exception but is now being folded into SOCOM. The Air Force, Army, and Navy all have commands under the SOCOM umbrella. The Army command includes Special Forces, Rangers, and five other groups you hear less about. It almost certainly includes Delta Force, but like most things regarding Delta this is officially secret. The Air Force has six units, such as the 720th Special Tactics Group, which includes the men who call in close air support and rescue downed pilots. (Technically there's no such thing as an "Air Commando" anymore, but the term is still used.) Finally, Navy Special Warfare Command includes the famous SEALs (for Sea, Air and Land forces), as well as SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams, and Special Boat Teams.
By the numbers . . .
A look at the current Special Operations Forces numbers, and efforts already underway to expand them, shows there can be no doubling in any meaningful sense of the word. Current authorization for active SOF is about 43,000 (there are about 10,000 more in Reserve and Guard units). The Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon's main planning tool, calls for adding another 13,000 active-duty Special Operations Forces over the next five years. So if the Democrats wish to double the number already budgeted for, it would mean adding 56,000 men; if it doubled the number available today it would still be an additional 43,000. Now keep in mind that a large chunk of those 13,000 to be added came last year from a simple transfer of about 2,500 Marines in Force Recon. Most of the current expansion won't be so easy.
Aside from small (in sheer number terms) increases in Navy and Air Force SOF, almost all of the increase is slated for the Army. The Army's goal is to have 518,000 total soldiers by year's end, though it's authorized to reach 547,000 in 2012. Of current members about 14 percent are women, leaving 445,000 men. Now subtract the men who are already SOF, and you'd need to convert almost 10 percent of what's left into Special Operations Forces.
New SOF will have to be airborne. The current number of men on jump status in our conventional airborne units is about 21,000 with the Ft. Bragg-based 18th Airborne Corps, about 3,000 more with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, and 3,100 with the recently formed 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry, in Alaska. If somehow you were to get every conventional airborne soldier to become SOF you'd still fall dramatically short of the doubling goal.
The SEAL experience
If you like SOF, you love the SEALs. They are the stuff of legend, and I'm proud to be among the few journalists to have been with them in combat in Iraq, thereby allowing me to say with firsthand experience that the legend is deserved. They truly fight like machines. So we want a lot more SEALs, right? Ideally, yes. But Special Operations Command is already "mandated to create two entirely new SEAL Teams by 2010," notes 14-year SEAL veteran Matthew Heidt (who blogs as "Froggy" at
www.blackfive.net). Attrition in the would-be SEALs' first round of training, the BUD/S course, "is 70 percent or more," according to Heidt, and even to man the two new authorized teams by 2010 "will be difficult . . . unless training standards are radically lowered."
Capt. Larry Bailey, a SEAL for 27 years, vouches for the difficulty of expanding the teams. He's best known for tirelessly exposing men who fraudulently claim to have been SEALs (of which there is a virtual epidemic). But he commanded the BUD/S School at Coronado, Calif., for three years in the 1980s. He was given a mandate to graduate more SEALs without lowering the quality and did so temporarily. Nevertheless, "the Naval Special Warfare Center, which runs BUD/S, has been for years doing everything it can, short of lowering standards, to increase the number of graduates from this most difficult course," he told me. "There are just so many souls that can withstand that stress."
Go to
www.navyseals.com and click on "training" and you'll wonder that even 30 percent survive. "Doubling the size is impossible," Bailey told me. "But there's something about special ops that appeals more to Democrats than GOP," he added. "There's almost like there's a craving to be accepted by real men. I don't know any liberal Democrat who doesn't like special ops."
Expanding other units will prove more doable because their attrition rates are lower. But few if any Special Operations Forces units could be doubled, much less the overall force. "Doubling SOF is a joke," says Heidt.