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I do not think this is possible without lowering the standards. There are already more SF soldiers as a percentage of total soldiers in the Army than ever before.
We already have rewickered the Q Course to allow virtually anyone with a hope of making it through the pipeline to attend, just to try and better fill the AD SF units to their authorized levels. That bumped the annual graduates from the SFQC up to 750. With the continuing loss of AD SF personnel to the world of private contractors, retirements, better paying jobs, etc., I see no way that the current end strength of the Army and the eligible pool of enlistees eligible for the 18X option will be adequate for the increases they mention for SF. We will be lucky to be able to field the force at 90% of authorized strength. The recently discussed decision to put SFQC students into the 18F program and to deny 18F attenedance to 18Ds and Es in the future are indicative of a force experiencing contraction, not expansion.
The same is true for adding another squadron to a special mission unit. Can't be done with the current pool of applicants without changing the standards.
What they can do is add support personnel and send over the Marine element, which will have about the same effect as adding a brigade of the 82nd Airborne to USSOCOM would have. More competition for already short infil platforms without adding the language, area orientation, maturity, specialized skills, etc. that SF brings. This appears to me to be a bad idea intended to make more numbers without the requisite skills. Marines are great. They just do not currently have the skills and training to be SF replacements.
The smart thing to do would have been for the Klintons to have not eliminated two Reserve SF Groups from the force structure when they were in charge. I would be surprised if you could not man an additional two NG SFGs today with willing enlistees.
Just my .02, YMMV.
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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