Quote:
Originally posted by Hognose
So... if I was king, I'd stress:
1) cultural/language orientation & area studies.
2) Instructional training & preparation.
3) Combat training. .
4) Next in priority is infiltration and movement skills.
5) Finally, special skills. SOTIC, ASOT, climbing, CIF type stuff, parachuting (s/l and halo), SCUBA.
This is just my opinion, and we all know what opinions are like....
-nose
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First off, excellent post "nose" and welcome to the board and this community!
I have to respecftully disagree about the order of priorities you've suggested. Of course I"m one of "those guys" that would rather spend time on the range than studiing a language, because as a very good friend and former Team Sergeant of mine once said "noone has ever been killed in SF because they couldnt find the embassy".
I think that you have to place your basic combat skills (shoot, move, and communicate) at the top of the list, those in my opinion are true survivability tasks in todays environment. I absolutely agree with you that all members of the team must be able to pick up and employ all weapons found in the SOA, as guys are doing today in Iraq and Afganistan.
These skills are followed closely, if not connected to, our infiltration and movement skills. Many guys today dont like to train on basic dismounted tactics because they feel we'll never get to use them, and want to focus on more specialized skills (CQB, Mounted ops). I think that just like basic markmanship lays the foundation for advanced, so does the basic drills set forth in FM7-8 provide a foundation for more advanced SOP development so you must train hard in this.
Next I'd place your training/teaching/briefing requirement, as it is important but not a survivability skill. It certainly is happening with the ICDC daily becaue in most areas SF teams are the guys that initially organized and trained them, and continue to use them.......teaching abilities are a must!
Then I'd have to lump special skils and languae/cultural training last to take place after those survivability skills have been addressed........
probably not the most popular opinion on this board, or in the community for that matter.......but my .02
mp