U.S. Special Operations: Personal Opinions

[Voodoun]

understand that not everyone is going to have access to E8 team sgt's with multiple deployments on their first tour out. I'm glad I have a venue in which to absorb all these opinions prior to my deployment. The highest ranking NCO in my company is an E6. No one with PSYOP deployment experience is going to be deploying with us, as far as we know right now. My entire Detachment has zero combat deployments.

[jkm_101_fso]

understand that not everyone is going to have access to E8 team sgt's with multiple deployments on their first tour out. I'm glad I have a venue in which to absorb all these opinions prior to my deployment. The highest ranking NCO in my company is an E6. No one with PSYOP deployment experience is going to be deploying with us, as far as we know right now. My entire Detachment has zero combat deployments.

Is your unit new? Wow, that is pretty unbelievable after seven years of war; considering the high number of deployments for CA/PSYOP.

[Voodoun]

My unit is brand spanking new, and so are A LOT of the units rotating into the field over the next 12 months.

At this point our only NCO PSYOPers with combat deployments as PSYOP are ETSing before our deployment.

Our 1st Sgt is an E6 (we have an E7 Training NCO, but he's admin support, so I didnt count him).

We have the one WO test case for PSYOP, and a couple Det Cmdrs with deployment experience, but I'm not going to see my DC but what, once or twice in a deployment?

So like I said, I'm eager to absorb the musings you guys have about all this stuff, because while I may have a pretty impressive civilian history, that has little bearing on soldiering.

See, I've already learned - whatever adjustments I feel I need to make when working in the field I'll make, but I won't come strolling back onto the FOB that way. I could have spent my entire deployment affecting my relationship with my supported unit and never known, because I wasnt given the heads up by an E8 team sgt with experience!

[Ken White]

...He would not have focused so much attention on this foolishness unless there was significant emphasis on it from higher up because he admittedly did not care about the issue otherwise.
. . .
The Colonels and Generals aren't doing their jobs if they're wetting their pants over this stuff.

concerned with appearance than with combat capability -- much less combat competence...

Penalty of being raised in an overly rank heavy 'peacetime Army' that places image ahead of performance and compliance ahead of innovation and that goes out of its way to stifle initiative by significant overcentralization. It is an institutional problem and not totally the fault of the worrywarts.

[Ken White]

...Our 1st Sgt is an E6 (we have an E7 Training NCO, but he's admin support, so I didnt count him).

I've seen a bunch of less than E8 1SGs -- including an Artillery Battery E-5 (and a NCOC graduate at that) in combat. Many do a better job than a lazy 8 would...

... but I'm not going to see my DC but what, once or twice in a deployment?

That's okay, too.