Norfolk you have presented some fair challenges regarding our Special Forces. After several years in SF I sometimes wonder how to describe our value, or return on investment without sounding condescending to our conventional force brothers. What makes us unique is not easy to quantify, because it largely based on our culture.

In some ways we’re not much more flexible than our conventional counterparts, for example consider our 12 man ODA concept. The only changes in recent years have been replacing the LT with a Warrant Officer (better for the force), and replacing the Assistant Operations Sergeant with an Intelligence Sergeant (worse for the force).

The ODA organization was designed to support unconventional warfare operation, especially guerrilla warfare which is one aspect of UW, and then under JFK we assumed a key role as advisors in counterinsurgencies, based on the assumption, since we knew how to support an insurgency, who better to fight them? Then seeing the emerging threat of terrorism certain SF units started focusing on the counterterrorism mission (specialized raids), such as Project Blue Light in 5th SFG(A) and some other initiatives throughout the force. However, starting the late 1970's the Department of Defense started forming units that were better equipped and trained to handle high risk CT than SF. UW still had its value, as demonstrated in Afghanistan against the USSR and in Nicaragua when we supported the Contras. It was assumed there was resistance support throughout Europe, should the USSR decide to invade Western Europe (much like the Resistance elements that fought the Nazi’s), so some SF units were hopefully prepared to support that potential. I would argue that a highly trained Infantry unit is not capable of infiltrating a denied environment and then combat advising a resistance force. A highly trained conventional force can and do support community watch organizations in Iraq, but there is a significance difference. True the Brits were not very good at this, and perhaps because they didn’t train for it? An officer who still has the red coat mentality shouldn’t sleep well in a patrol base that mostly composed of irregulars.

Unfortunately, to justify resourcing, especially before the formation of SOCOM we had to show value directly to the conventional fight (apparently the conventional army didn’t see the value of guerrilla type operations in the enemy’s rear, or didn’t think they were feasible), so we focused on special reconnaissance and limited direct action missions. What is interesting, at least to me, is that we didn't change our task organization significantly to adjust to each mission. We tried to make the 12 man ODA fight every mission, whether it called for four men or 20 men.

Since 9/11 and especially the perceived SF successes in Afghanistan and Northern Iraq SF is now growing again. The focus now is irregular warfare, and lucky for our old ODA task organization and training seems to be a near perfect fit for this type of war. Whether the rest of Europe, to include England or our friends down under see a need for this type of organization is irrelevant. It is a needed tool for our national strategy.

I could go on and on about what is broken about SF, but the important piece still remains in tact and that is our culture. Despite an occasional dogmatic officer, we still maintain a unique range of skills that can be applied creatively to solve complex problems. Those skills are implemented by our tools, which are our people. While you can give everyone in the Army better, more SF like, training you still can't make chicken salad out of chicken crap. While approximately 50-70% of a good combat unit could probably graduate the SF qualification course (there are two keys to success, first the ability and second the desire), you have the remainder who can't, and majority who don't want the challenge, so in SF you a unique group of Soldiers who are all mission focused. Does it hurt the conventional army to have our best NCOs in these units? Yes and no, I would argue that many of our talented NCOs wouldn't stay in the Army if they didn't have a place like SF to go where they can self actualize as warriors.