All, I will open with a disclaimer, my intent here is dialogue, not a pissing match (especially since I know abc 123, and he greatly outranks me)
. I have been in the army 23 years and SF for 10 because I love it and a care greatly about my SF comrades, the common grunt and our SF Regiment. So without further ado…
We debrief every candidate that returns from SFAS and the SFQC. Their top comments are:
1. The company SFRA and training team weekends prepared us tremendously.
2. The SFRA cadre (our team guys) are very professional. (This is after their exposure to the SWC cadre for comparison in SFAS and the SFQC. Not saying SWC isn’t professional, just giving a comparison to gauge our SFRA).
3. This training (SFRA) was much better than any training I have conducted in my previous unit.
In rebuttal I would argue that:
NG candidates historically do better than AD candidates because the have SF guys giving them solid guidance for passing. I believe the last statistics I saw on AD ‘go’ rates at SFAS were 50-53%, whereas NG candidates are about 60-65%. If anything we are HELPING get more SF candidates into the pipeline because they are better prepared compared to AD soldiers who may at the most have a workout partner.
This close mentoring can be attributed to a higher pass rate, however, more importantly is the individual candidate’s will to become SF. Again, if we send them away for 6 months, it is with solid advice on strengthening their weaknesses and invite them to return. Many do return and when they do they smoke the SFRA which in turn means they are ready to attend the next SFAS class. After all, we only see them a weekend a month, the rest of their training is on them in which case they should be executing our guidance. Please take special note: this ‘guidance’ is the same guidance we give them in our SFRA information packet to prepare for SFRA. There are no surprises, they have a very good idea what they will get evaluated on. The distinction here is the word now becomes reality. The candidates have now experienced at least some of the rigors of SFAS and SFQC first hand. This is a far cry from reading about it. Hasn’t the SFAS handbook been in print for over 30 years? Hasn’t the previously closely guarded passing criteria for SFAS been released? Has this handbook and released information really changed the ‘go’ rate? This information may help but ultimately the onus is on the candidate to execute the best he can with the information given. Often times the candidate says they ‘had no idea it was this hard’ but now they do and they are better prepared to meet those rigors.
SFRA is not meant to replace SFAS, instead it augments it. It is 30 hours long at the most. We are realistic, we understand we are only getting a snapshot of the candidate comparatively to SFAS with instructors trained on assessment as well as the existence of peer evals . We weed out no one when we invite all candidates back. Again, all candidates not picked for the training team are told they can come back 6 months later. 6 months is not long when you are going through a pipeline that is over 2 years long.
Administratively, getting a candidate to school is a nightmare compared to 10 years ago. Before a set of orders, travel, SF physical and a packing list was all you needed to attend SFAS and SFQC. All other administrative tasks were done at SWC i.e. eQip (SF86), DLAB, records etc. Now there is a laundry list of admin requirements with a time line of NLT 45 days prior to the start date of SFAS in which if there is an oversight on anyone’s part i.e. missing lab on an SF physical, missing record etc. sends the candidate back home or pushes the SFAS date to the right another month. This is also taking into account the NG liaison at SWC who are great and who do their bests to police up admin short coming on packets but even they have their limitations as do we. The more SFAS packets we produce the greater the likelihood of a mistake of oversight. Furthermore, I can think of two candidates in which we sought the commander’s waiver to let soldiers straight in the unit. Both came with accolades (tabs and patches) from their previous AD unit (Ranger Regt) both processed into the unit to go to SFAS, both ultimately quit for personal reasons even though we sat face to face and spoke to them about their commitment. We took them on their word. This lack of commitment has bit us time and again before the SFRA. This, as the training NCO, is a great distracter from our company's combat readiness. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Lastly, I will say the NG must be ever vigilant in recruiting and retaining quality guys. Anyone who has been down range assigned under our AD counter-parts knows we are scrutinized and have to ‘prove’ ourselves all over again in theater. The NG SF have suffered numerous black eyes because of a few bad apples. I am proud to say that we have come a long way in cleaning up our ranks and getting well deserved respect from our AD brothers because of such pro-active measures we have emplaced. We have surpassed many expectations and have even received direct commendations from BG Reeder when he said “these guard guys really get it” when referring to the SF mission in Afghanistan and NG ODAs.
I will close with a quote from Colonel Charlie Beckwith which I feel was the glue for our unit this last insane rotation (insane as in high EKIA count) as well as the quote Crip is looking for; "I'd rather go down the river with seven studs than with a hundred shitheads."
