U.S. Special Operations: Personal Opinions

[Surferbeetle]

1- CAT-As need to be beefed up to the point that they are self-mobile (meaning 4 vehicle crews). Otherwise, they take combat power out of the fight to execute their missions, or their missions will always be second fiddle to combat operations.

2- We acknowledge that we need CA and PSYOP, but only have enough active for the SOF community. WRONG ANSWER. If we need the capability, we need the capability. There is enough issues integrating "non-lethal" because it is NOT (generally) what the Army does. Having your "non-lethal" guy being an overweight, out-of-shape reservist with an attitude ("I'm special so I don't have to comply with your standards") who shows up at the last minute, without resources or collective training, makes integration almost impossible. Yes, I've thrown out every stereotype there is, but believe me, I've seen most of them.

3- If everyone needs CA and PSYOP all the time (or even most of the time), they aren't SOF, and can't remain only in the SOF community. That means that the BCT CA officers, and CA & PSYOP NCOs can't be the cast offs (those that aren't "good enough" to hang with the SOF guys), and that the active BCTs need their own assets, all the time. The best solution I see for this a CO in the BSTB. Yes, CA & PSYOP are different, but they are often focused in the same areas, and alot of their indiividual training requirements (language, culture, etc) are the same. Plus, neither element is large enough to justify a company of its own- a CA CO (even augmented as in 1- above) and a TPD combined would still be among the smaller COs in the BCT.

4- If what surferbeetle is describing is the norm, than there is something completely disfunctional somewhere. If we can have a LAD before we even redeploy, we should be able to align a team at LEAST to meet our ITC, MRE and deployment. And rotating them based on a different deployment schedule is ridiculous. Same as the JTACs, an enabler like that should task organize, deploy with, and redeploy with the BCT- I don't care what service or component.

82nd Redleg has some good points. Keep in mind that I have spent time in all of our Army's arena's: Active, Guard, Reserve, and Civil Service. My observation is that most of the Army has not been resourced and trained like the tier one units such as the 82nd, 101st, and SF; however GWOT has changed many things.

Many of the issues mentioned, imho, can be boiled down to prioritizing and resourcing. Head count for both active and reserve CA and PSYOP types is low, our allocated budgets track with our headcounts, and the majority of active training (from AIT to OBC and onwards) has not addressed the use of CA and PSYOP. Before GWOT the majority of units that I have supported did not know that CA existed. This of course impacted the integration and budgeting process then and it still does to an extent (1610's were not funded, requests for CA support were an afterthought, etc.)

IMHO a civilian Assistant DA, City Planner, City Manager, Civil Engineer, Doctor, a Nurse, a Policeman, and a Teacher is a practicing specialist who brings needed skills to COIN work that are not found on active duty. Most of these folks do not fit the 18-25 year-old demographic (it takes time to acquire mastery in these employment fields). Despite this we need to integrate these types of folks into the COIN fight, others may disagree.

As an aside how many active duty folk also hold a 'part-time-job' in addition to 'active-duty-job' and sometimes risk their 'active-duty-job' in order to serve their nation in their 'part-time-job'? Few do.

Increasing the number of Active Duty CA and PSYOP, training the force on CA and PSYOP, and resourcing CA and PYSOP are certainly answers to some of these issues, in particular if a generalist in this arena can get things done. My observation is that sometimes you need a specialist and it is for this reason that CA and PSYOP reserve types are still around. Your mileage may vary.

As for 120mm's observations, some are valid and some not so. We in the CA community are looking for good, smart soldiers...send me a PM and I will get you linked up with someone who can help you sign up and then you can straighten things out.