Special Operations Question

Nope. But I do know that there are a whole bunch of folks whose job it is to make sure the cool kids can do their job.

I’m just enjoying poking the bear.

I mentioned Hollywood earlier. Think about the TV shows about WW II. The most popular was Combat. About a rifle squad. Even one about Viet Nam, Tour of Duty was about an infantry platoon.

These days it has to be Seals or some such.

No one seems to be satisfied having folks think of them as regular grunts or clerks anymore. Yet those are the folks with the most impact.

 

@JEEPNIK you're absolutely right

 

I’ve worked with pretty much every Special Ops unit you can think of. I’m not Special Ops. Just trained in every survival school the Air Force has and can tell you how to eat worms, start fires in -40 degrees and not drown when your jet gets shot down. Aside from that I did stay at a Holiday Inn once and I still have a .mil email. I think Rangers look gay in their bikini shorts. Every branch has a mission just like every unit has a job.

Aim High

 

I saluted some enlisted Navy people, they just laugh, their ranks are shiny and Marines don’t know any better.

 

Fuck special forces.

 

Farce

 

I blame the internet.
it's a lot of information being thrown around.
media professional mis-interpretation, laypersons trying to interpret what they perceive, and a lot of abject lying.
throw it into a massive container with the very seldom insertion of rare useful and accurate professional information and it ends up looking like gold-mining. it's basically turning layperson end-users into open source intelligence gatherers, which has the useful side effect of being a disinformation distribution tool

so you build a matrix of accuracy, intent, and placement.
accuracy (including relationships in localization of source and material): accurate, partially-accurate, inaccurate
intent (reason, value, meaning): leading, ignorant, misleading
placement (context, timing, audience): accurate, partially-accurate, inaccurate

what you'll end up with usually looks a lot like an airsoft mil-sim kid, a youtube robot voice video, or a trollface jpeg.

 

it depends on to who and what the element is tasked.

for instance, my favorite example: Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was not keen on using special operations forces for task completion during major operations, and didn't trust subordinate unit leaders to even seriously consider what they suggested in how they could best be employed. subordinate missions simply weren't a consideration, it was Schwartzkopf's large conventional fight or the highway. General Schwarzkopf simply didn't have the knowledge, experience, or inclination to properly deploy special operations forces during his last major command.

This mentality is still prevalent in a lot of combat arms occupations, the only real exceptions being infantry, aviation, to a lesser extent armor.

this is a reason why the army has made strong moves to create interaction between occupations in the formal use of maneuver centers for internal education. it was also a real consideration when the army opened ranger school to any occupation, being the last "big" school to open a pathway to special operations interaction-internalization for the force at large.

the current problem isn't aversion, but simple misapplication. which usually stems from misunderstanding of capabilities.

in this sense it's like having a super-car.
you have an amazing tool, but maybe not many great places to drive for that kind of car.

 

Dude, we might have served together! We sure got in a few pickles. Let's ketchup some time.

 

I fucking love support. JAG took care of my powers of attorney and my will, finance made sure my family had money for a house and food and gas while I was doing stupid-scary shit, dental made sure I could eat after I blasted into a fucking door frame in the dark on a live-fire, medics and docs put me back together after getting sewn up a few times.
even in a line unit medics held a special place in my heart. doc is a term of endearment, they earn the name. "doc" is your doc, your fucking primary health care provider. and they do your job too, rucking and jumping and running with you, doing their job probably after you fucked up at yours. and they'll lay down suppressive fire like a line dog, because they understand preventative medicine.
aviators are some of my favorite people. I don't have to walk a fucking mountain because they know how to fly at night in a part of the world where dust storms and altitude have killed-off plant life.
and there are few things more beautiful to hear than the sound of a calm dustoff or pedro pilot burning air to reach you after you've collected some holes and scrap metal. air medics are amazing, I just remember reassuring yelling and nitrile gloves and body armor and how they covered me on touch down. protecting me even from dust as the doors opened. nothing was going to hurt me anymore, not while they were there.
Supply weenies had to deal with the most bizarre collection of shipping regulations as mundane shit like my batteries passed through the hands of the likes of contracted personnel, merchant marines, the navy, the air force and a half-dozen other units, all the while having to defend it from being hijacked from anyone who could figure out how cool my batteries were.

anyone who bad-mouths their support is either doing so out of thoughtlessness, selfishness, or with professional malice of the worst sort.

I always went out of my way to include whoever supported me. wanna go do something cool with us? let's go.
I have always seen (and later created) a deliberate and concerted effort to integrate support personnel whenever we came into contact with them, especially for extended periods. everything from comparing tactics, techniques, and procedures all the way down to having cookouts together before we deployed.

My favorite example here: we had a communications team working with us, they got into the act so much that one of them bought some of these goofy glasses from Amazon that made it look like you had a black stripe across your eyes, but they were sunglasses.
so every time we'd take a photo with these guys we'd whip out these hilarious sunglasses. they understood our sensitivity and privacy issues, we acknowledged their relationship with our interaction. they wore our gear in photos, horse head masks, captured weapons, fake mohawks, stormtrooper outfits, like that. they were seriously cool to work with and I still maintain contact with several of those folks, even after retirement.

I have another example to answer the converse as well: I was tasked out to work with a group of direct action light infantry dudes that had a lot of junior enlisted personnel with limited experience. but they were cool guys, they said so.

We took an osprey to where i was going to link up with another element, and they were going to remain on the bird as quick reaction force.

after we landed this dude climbs the ramp and asks "are you guys operation so-and-so?" and one of the junior enlisted cool guys hands back a "I have no knowledge of any operation, nor would I be able to tell you if I were part of such an operation, blah blah blah"

Dude on ramp: "cool, I guess" who I quickly recognize as a chief of operations and until-recently a very experienced special operations unit guy.

he waves to another dude on a nearby dune buggy, and a specialist takes the ramp dragging a few coolers.
it's food and gatorade and some coffee thermoses. they start passing out trays of amazing looking sandwiches and stuff and the cool guys are basically drunk with "sweet, they got us food"

and the operations dude waves off the specialist when he gets to the toolbag "no, we didn't bring him food, he's with a secret operation for assholes."

did I mention it was 0000-0100-ish?
and freezing.
and this was a follow-on mission.

don't get me wrong, the dude still got food. but he had to get it from those around him.

 

yeah man remember the pretzel bread ied? we made it out!

 

It’s the crayons.

messes with your head.

 

LMAO

 

To answer op, rangers are a cool guy unit that pulls security for tier one and does other cool shit, and probably gets into way more firefights than tier 2 generally in times of peace. technically they are 'tier one' when supporting tier one ops. but generally moving from ranger to sf is a step up in responsibility. moving into a small team setup from a ranger platoon (which is set up generally in infantry style) requires a different skill set. occasionally tier two does the same shit for tier one as rangers too, so it is way complicated. if you want to get treated like an adult though, ranger and recon are not the way to go. unfortunately especially recon these days, as the marine corps owns them as opposed to socom, and the marin crops is currently a shithole. back in the day (5-15 years ago) recon was on par with ranger. smaller teams generally select for decision making capability and ability to work alone.

sf work with local factions usually, seals are more direct ops, and marsoc is in the middle. generally. but there is a ton of flexibility there. airforce is more specialized and not really apples to apples, but cool nonetheless.

I think the best way to understand and compare them is in terms of responsibility. a tier one "team" is the smallest, with the greatest responsibility per man, and the highest effect on the area of ops. tier 3 is lowest responsibility per man, largest "team", and generally less effect on area of ops.

 

Prior J6 here hello haha. Deployed with one of the aforementioned groups above there was a lot of guys like you to include me in things. I did so much "cool guy shit" I felt spoiled. One guy had a Veteran Overland shirt and we chatted about off-roading and such, though he had a jeep. I wouldn't necessarily use the word "fun" but it was much more bearable than your typical big army deployment. Plus no uniform, carried a glock around, shooooot