U.S. Special Operations: Personal Opinions

[sapperfitz82]

If I understand your general direction, Ken.

They are right up the street, attract/cultivate some great leadership, have a small unit culture and big unit assetts, are pretty much have given up on FLS forced entry as a mission. At least if one counts the amount of training they can devote to that.

My thought was to have a BDE per group and focus them regionally. Get the NCO's to language training and send the O's to some SWC course on FID. The benefit is a very large reinforcement of SF very rapidly, a quick bridging of the cultural divide at the lower level, and CONUS geography (pretty close to SWC already, as well as to the CA/PSYOP guys.)

Down side is the cultural divide at higher levels, as well as some turf issues on who works for whom. But they follow orders, right?

This is pretty much what is going on in theatre in Afghanistan anyway (minus some of the lower level coordination) with SF taking point and GPF providing support. In my experience, the lack of formal relations made for redundent and often conflicting missions. (SF makes contact with a tribe, GPF comes through a week later and does an on-your-face cordon and search.)

[Cavguy]

This is pretty much what is going on in theatre in Afghanistan anyway (minus some of the lower level coordination) with SF taking point and GPF providing support. In my experience, the lack of formal relations made for redundent and often conflicting missions. (SF makes contact with a tribe, GPF comes through a week later and does an on-your-face cordon and search.)

As far as who screws up the other's coin efforts - plenty of examples on both sides - I was the recipent of several Black SOF raids gone bad in my sector, where I had to do the consequence management afterwards.

We consistantly violated unity of effort with SF in Iraq until I left in Feb 07. GPF has little SA on SF ODA ops and vice versa. The "Black SOF" is the worst offender, conducting independent raids into sectors and more often than not leaving a mess for the GPF commander to clean up. Plenty of discussion on the consequence management aspect of SOF raids gone wrong over at company command.

I never understood why the ODA in a BCT sector was not OPCON or TACON to the BCT or even vice versa. Both sides stepped on each others' toes constantly in SOIs and missions because of the parallel chains of command. Relations were highly dependent on the SF team leader and BCT/BN commander personalities to work well. I have seen examples of both sides failing to work with the other due to personality issues.

[ODB]

As far as who screws up the other's coin efforts - plenty of examples on both sides - I was the recipent of several Black SOF raids gone bad in my sector, where I had to do the consequence management afterwards.

We consistantly violated unity of effort with SF in Iraq until I left in Feb 07. GPF has little SA on SF ODA ops and vice versa. The "Black SOF" is the worst offender, conducting independent raids into sectors and more often than not leaving a mess for the GPF commander to clean up. Plenty of discussion on the consequence management aspect of SOF raids gone wrong over at company command.

I never understood why the ODA in a BCT sector was not OPCON or TACON to the BCT or even vice versa. Both sides stepped on each others' toes constantly in SOIs and missions because of the parallel chains of command. Relations were highly dependent on the SF team leader and BCT/BN commander personalities to work well. I have seen examples of both sides failing to work with the other due to personality issues.

I'm so tired of the who has the biggest d*ck on the block mentality on all sides. When an ODA and BCT get along great things come from it, when they do not we all might as well sit that rotation out. SF feels the same pain of those middle of the night unannounced raids. You'd think with the information highway what it is there would be better communication on all levels.

My thought was to have a BDE per group and focus them regionally. Get the NCO's to language training and send the O's to some SWC course on FID. The benefit is a very large reinforcement of SF very rapidly, a quick bridging of the cultural divide at the lower level, and CONUS geography (pretty close to SWC already, as well as to the CA/PSYOP guys.)

Much easier done by integrating both sides early on. Up until GWOT there was very little if any training/operations done between SOF and conventional forces. We sometimes have to sleep in that bed we have made. Coming SF with 14 years infantry experience I had little to no exposure to SF before hand. This can be remedied in multiple ways. CTC rotations, school house, local training, ones imagination is the limit. I do not believe we need set BCTs dedicated to supporting SF Groups, takes too many out of the fight. Big problems arise when you start dedicating troops to one specfic mission, then they always get held back for that just in case we need them excuse. The good thing coming out of the GWOT is the SOF/conventional integration and the experiences being learned. My fear of being OPCON/TACON to a BCT is much like any other attachment; under utilization and misuse. Many conventional and unconventional commanders forget or do not know how to utilize assests properly. My fear goes the same way for conventional forces being OPCON/TACON to ODAs or Group.

One of my good idea fairies thinks one of the best solutions would be cross pollination so to say. With many younger less experienced soldiers in SF today at some point in their career you kick them back to big Army to be SL/PSG, then they get the feel for conventional ways and nothing wrong with bringing a few SSG/SFC Infantry guys to be an extra bravo on the team. Send SF Majors to conventional staffs and conventional majors to SF staffs. Just a thought and a HRC nightmare but might just get us the most bang for our buck in the long run.

[reed11b]

SOF MP's I think this article is relevant. I am kind of surprised something similar has not been suggested seeing the difficulty we have had in both A-stan and Iraq training competent police forces.
Reed

[jkm_101_fso]

I'm so tired of the who has the biggest d*ck on the block mentality on all sides. When an ODA and BCT get along great things come from it, when they do not we all might as well sit that rotation out. SF feels the same pain of those middle of the night unannounced raids. You'd think with the information highway what it is there would be better communication on all levels.

I'll note some of the same habitual problems as Cavguy; my BN owned an AO in Iraq, but an SF team worked indepedently inside a city in our AO. It wasn't that we had a poor relationship with them, but that we weren't privy to all of the operations and "deals" they made with Iraqi leaders inside the city. When they left the AO, all we heard from the local leaders was "Captain Jimmy (SF TL) said this, Captain Jimmy said that". It was a very frustrating obstacle to try and work through. Additionally, the SF team "hired" their own militia that continued independent ops after the SF team left. They even occupied the SF team safehouse as their HQ. Deconflicting their ops (because they weren't IA) was hard, because they had been empowered by the SF team to do so. I will say that the SF team did a fairly good "battle handover" with us when they left, but it was hasty and we didn't get all the details we should have. Our fault for not asking all the right questions and getting all the info we should have.

One of my good idea fairies thinks one of the best solutions would be cross pollination so to say. With many younger less experienced soldiers in SF today at some point in their career you kick them back to big Army to be SL/PSG, then they get the feel for conventional ways and nothing wrong with bringing a few SSG/SFC Infantry guys to be an extra bravo on the team. Send SF Majors to conventional staffs and conventional majors to SF staffs. Just a thought and a HRC nightmare but might just get us the most bang for our buck in the long run.

Agree with much of this. What would be the willingness of the SF officers and NCOs to "go back on the line"? I'm assuming that they wouldn't prefer that. I guess it could be DA mandated. I think there would be much to gain from putting 18 series guys back into 11 series formations.

In the the field artillery world, we send non-SF majors/post-command CPTs to SF groups to be FSOs. Granted, they are on staff and not with the teams, but still learn from their experiences. I think it's a great program and one that the Army will continue. Of the former SF FSOs that I've seen come out of Group, they are great assets to the FA BNs they go back to, because of what they learned with Group.

I believe (but don't know for sure) that 13F/13A from the Ranger BNs also support Delta missions, but aren't Operators. I assume they bring great knowledge and experience base back to Rgr BN and other FA BNs they eventually go to.

[Cavguy]

I'm so tired of the who has the biggest d*ck on the block mentality on all sides. When an ODA and BCT get along great things come from it, when they do not we all might as well sit that rotation out. SF feels the same pain of those middle of the night unannounced raids. You'd think with the information highway what it is there would be better communication on all levels.

ODB,

We're in violent agreement.

[Bob W.]

Good discussion all around.

People talked a great deal about the ability of plugging into enablers throughout this thread; additionally, it is important to note the amount of organic enablers that are now part of SF Groups, or coming on line: dogs, UAVs, Signal, not to mention the CSS discussed earlier.

[ODB]

Good discussion all around.

People talked a great deal about the ability of plugging into enablers throughout this thread; additionally, it is important to note the amount of organic enablers that are now part of SF Groups, or coming on line: dogs, UAVs, Signal, not to mention the CSS discussed earlier.

As of late this new buzzword "SOF enablers" has been a hot topic around the team room beer fridge. Sorry the beer fridge has taken the place of the proverbial water fountain. Personally my verdict is still out there, I'm voting present right now. I see good and bad but don't know if the good out weighs the bad. Instead of streamlining our processes and adding the things we need, we keep getting handed more technology we don't need. I already have too many UAVs watching my every move so arm chair quarterbacks can question the decisions. Additional to this is many know we work the gray areas to get things done, where is my gray area?

When I think of enablers I think in terms of policies and requirements that are streamlined to enable me to do what it is I'm trained to do. Not add additional requirements and more hands to the pot for me to deal with. Enable me to do what needs to be done!

I have not yet had the dogs in country, have trained with them and again admittingly there are growing pains. UAVs I see no gain, sorry but the picture from 10,000 feet looks a lot different than the picture on the ground.

Perhaps others can shed some light that I and others are missing on this.

[Voodoun]

So I'm brand new to this board, and relatively new to the military in general. I recently went through AIT at the exceedingly broken A/3/1 SWTG for PSYOP, and having just read the article this thread is addressing, I think its just applicable, perhaps even more so, to the little sisters who train across the hall from our Green Beret wearing big brothers at the schoolhouse.

Soft Power one thing that distinguishes the special operations community from the big Army, and in a time when UW and soft power capabilities are more critical than they ever have been, it seems that we've been just crippling our capacity in that arena through sub par training, shortened timelines, and organizational screw ups.

Now, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, its a possibility, but as an academic consumer of security policy from my undergraduate years through grad school, I have some inkling into whats required of policy actors. And now as a policy actor myself, I think I've gained a wee bit more insight.

Now, to revisit my point, what happened in this thread is exactly what seems to be happening at SWTG, USASOC, and now USAR - two primary components of SOF, CA and PSYOP, go from being heavily discussed in the article, to virtually ignored in the discussion. Why is that? Is CA not sexy enough? Is PSYOP too much of an unknown commodity?

Or is it that SF is really the only thing people care about?

[max161]

So I'm brand new to this board, and relatively new to the military in general. I recently went through AIT at the exceedingly broken A/3/1 SWTG for PSYOP, and having just read the article this thread is addressing, I think its just applicable, perhaps even more so, to the little sisters who train across the hall from our Green Beret wearing big brothers at the schoolhouse.

Soft Power one thing that distinguishes the special operations community from the big Army, and in a time when UW and soft power capabilities are more critical than they ever have been, it seems that we've been just crippling our capacity in that arena through sub par training, shortened timelines, and organizational screw ups.

Now, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, its a possibility, but as an academic consumer of security policy from my undergraduate years through grad school, I have some inkling into whats required of policy actors. And now as a policy actor myself, I think I've gained a wee bit more insight.

Now, to revisit my point, what happened in this thread is exactly what seems to be happening at SWTG, USASOC, and now USAR - two primary components of SOF, CA and PSYOP, go from being heavily discussed in the article, to virtually ignored in the discussion. Why is that? Is CA not sexy enough? Is PSYOP too much of an unknown commodity?

Or is it that SF is really the only thing people care about?

Thanks for your comments. Believe me, we do care very much about CA and PSYOP (and everyone should remember that SF grew out of the US Army Psychological Warfare Department and most importantly all war is Psychological!)

I think your criticisms have merit but I would also like to remind you that institutional training is not designed to make the graduate an expert. Upon graduation you are an apprentice or journeyman at best and it is not until you get to your unit with opportunity formentoring from your leaders with the experience and the opportunity to deploy and employ what you have learned do you begin to develop the knowledge to become an expert. This is as true of CA and PSYOP as it is for SF. We cannot teach everything during the qualification courses.
Dave

[Voodoun]

I'm not sure that I was suggesting that training should lead to immediate expertise, and if that's what came across I most certainly mis-expressed myself.

When I said training was broken at A co. 3rd bn I didnt mean that because we didn't all leave as experts it was broken, I meant that my class had a something close to a 40% washout rate, 15 suicide watches, 9 of which were serious, we had instructors making serious advances on trainees (one of them apparently married a trainee within weeks of her transfer to Airborne school, before she was MOS Q'd), trainees were being recycled for drinking, and drug tests were not given despite the cadre being made aware of drug use, and the academic "testing" consisted of being able to remember the answers to multiple choice questions already provided to you, not having any actual comprehension of the material. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty "right" there, and the quality of training was leaps and bounds better than BCT, which also had plenty of positive aspects, but since a riot nearly broke out when we had our final sensing session with an SF officer from SWC command (I'm not kidding, trainees actually stood up in the middle of it and walked out in disgust), I'm pretty confident that something was seriously broken.

But again, I might be wrong, I always allow for that possibility. I've only got two years of ROTC in college back in the 90's and 1.5 years enlisted under my belt, maybe my perspective will change in 5 years.

[davidbfpo]

Welcome to SWC and the debates here, please take time to introduce yourself here: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=1441&page=43

It helps others to understand your perspective and within security an explanation what brought you here.

davidbfpo

[Schmedlap]

Now, to revisit my point, what happened in this thread is exactly what seems to be happening at SWTG, USASOC, and now USAR - two primary components of SOF, CA and PSYOP, go from being heavily discussed in the article, to virtually ignored in the discussion. Why is that? Is CA not sexy enough? Is PSYOP too much of an unknown commodity?

Or is it that SF is really the only thing people care about?

For what it's worth, I know of at least two JSOTF commanders and two Group Commanders who considered "IO" - largely to include PSYOP, CA, and a few related capabilities - to be their main effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. And their deeds backed up their words.

The remarkable thing about this is that those "IO" assets were poorly integrated until just prior to - or in some cases after - deployment. Yet they were still seen as tremendous assets and leveraged very well. The greatest shortcoming was not integrating them during training. The perception seemed to be that a commander could just say, "hey PSYOP guy, this looks like a job for something non-lethal. Throw some PSYOP at this."

Elsewhere in this thread, you mentioned something about developing a CAPEs brief. If that brief is to be of any value, it needs to be given to the commander while they are planning their collective training, way prior to deployment. Otherwise, it's too much information, too late. There is a growing consensus out there in the SOF community that the (IO/non-lethal/insert term) assets are valuable. The speed with which they've learned to leverage those assets has been, in my opinion, very slow.

[Surferbeetle]

Elsewhere in this thread, you mentioned something about developing a CAPEs brief. If that brief is to be of any value, it needs to be given to the commander while they are planning their collective training, way prior to deployment. Otherwise, it's too much information, too late. There is a growing consensus out there in the SOF community that the (IO/non-lethal/insert term) assets are valuable. The speed with which they've learned to leverage those assets has been, in my opinion, very slow.

Supported units are getting better at understanding how CAPOC works:

Typically it goes something like this on the reserve side of the house...late night call: "Hey teamleader we need you to time off from work and go to location X. We have rustled up the following troops for you who also have taken time off from work, make it happen".

The correct response is "No problem".

You can only say this when you & your team-members have the benefit of:

Good training on soldiering skills and your AOR; a number of years spent in the same unit with the same people; a civilian job which both exercises your skill set and supports your service to the nation; active duty folk who understand that their CA & PSYOP requests will be answered just before go time with minimally materially resourced (computers, etc.) folks; a solid team capabilities briefing for all key supported unit players on what you can do and what you need in order to be successful as soon as you hit the ground.

Amazingly CAPOC has a bunch of dedicated folks who are willing to play by these rules. The 'divorce' has complicated things since GPF does not understand this well as SF does (and they don't really care for it much of the time). GWOT has been good in that everybody GPF and SOF has had to play together and get used to things as they are. Hopefully things will continue to improve...

[max161]

The remarkable thing about this is that those "IO" assets were poorly integrated until just prior to - or in some cases after - deployment. Yet they were still seen as tremendous assets and leveraged very well. The greatest shortcoming was not integrating them during training. The perception seemed to be that a commander could just say, "hey PSYOP guy, this looks like a job for something non-lethal. Throw some PSYOP at this."

Good points all. The good news is we are now getting the deployment cycles synched so that the CA and PSYOP units can conduct PMT with the JSOTFs. The problem has always been high demand low density for CA and PSYOP. During the "Surge" active duty CA and PSYOP had to support the GPF as well as SOF because the reserve components could not surge enough forces and many reserve component units were used initially during OIF and had dwell issues. Active duty CA and PSYOP units will not have fully recovered from the Iraqi "surge: until this summer but we are now able to get the deployment cycles in line so they can train together before they deploy. Remember though that the JSOTFs are deploying every 6 months which means 7 months in the box and 5 months home.