Special Forces Motto: De Oppresso Liber, to Free the Oppressed.
Who and what are United States Special Forces (USSF)? The only
unit in the United States that can be called Special Forces (SF) is the United
States Army Special Forces, also known as the "Green Berets." The
main SF element is the 12 man Operation Detachment Alpha (ODA) or A Team,
sometimes just shortened to Team.
The 1st Special Forces Command,
commanded by Brig. Gen. Darsie Rogers, is the result of the merging of the Army
units who are specifically trained in UW. This command is based around the
United States Army Special Forces Command (USASFC) and pulled in underneath
them are Civil Affairs (CA), Military Information Support Operations Command
(MISOC) formerly known as Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), and the 528th
Sustainment Brigade.
SF is often used incorrectly either by the media or the general
public when referring to any Special Operations Force (SOF) unit. SOF are
components of the Department of Defense's United States Special Operations
Command (USSOCOM), which has approximately 57,000 active duty, Reserve and
National Guard Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and DoD civilians assigned to
the headquarters.
USSOCOM has four components and one sub-unified command that
fall under it. USSOCOM’s components are:
- U.S. Army Special
Operations Command (USASOC)
- Naval Special Warfare
Command (NAVSPECWARCOM)
- Air Force Special
Operations Command (AFSOC)
- Marine Corps Forces
Special Operations Command (MARSOC)
- Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) is a USSOCOM sub-unified command.
The 1st Special Forces Command falls under USASOC.
To make it a little easier, the command structure is as follows
from highest to lowest:
USSOCOM > USASOC > USASFC > SF GROUP > BATTALION
> COMPANY > ODA
For the rest of this article I am going to refer to SF as
"Special Forces/Green Berets" because, even though a green beret is
just a hat, that is the only way many people know who we are. I'm hoping if I
use it enough that, subconsciously, people will start to understand the
difference.
The second most common misconception about Special Forces/Green
Berets from all the "experts" is, "Rangers and SEALs do the
fighting and Special Forces/Green Berets teach, dig wells and build
schools." Part of the reason for this is that all the current movies,
books and television shows talking about high speed commando-like raids (known
as Direct Action, or DA) encourage these inaccuracies. Most people also have a
complete misunderstanding of Foreign Internal Defense (FID), which they
refer to as "teaching," and Counter Insurgency (COIN), which they
refer to as "building schools and digging wells." Many people, even
within the SOF community, think that is all Special Forces/Green Berets do.
What really makes my anuerism act up is that the same people who
say SEALs and Rangers take care of all the DA will then turn around and say
that SEALs also do Unconventional Warfare (UW). Really? Like Inigo Montoya
said: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it
means."
Unconventional Warfare
Activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or
insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by
operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a
denied area. Also called UW. (JP 3-05)
To understand whether a SOF unit has the ability and is
truly designated for UW, one needs to look at a few things:
1. Language requirements
2. What kind of UW-specific training does the unit go through
during their pipeline training?
3. Do they like bacon and look awesome with beards?
Every Special Forces/Green Beret goes through a minimum of 4-6
months of language training prior to arriving at their assigned Group, and the
culmination exercise during the last phase of the Q course (Robin Sage) is an
intense two-week UW FTX that takes place in rural NC, with the support and
assistance of locals, who act as role players. Some of these families have been
doing it for generations: "It is
a passion. It is a chance to pay back the soldiers...and
maybe we're just a bunch of rednecks that like to raise hell."
Blake Miles wrote a couple of good articles about UW - A Special Forces Crash Course in Unconventional Warfare and Unconventional
Warfare 101-Part II.
While I'm not sure about the SEALs and MARSOC on the third
point, all Special Forces/Green Berets eat bacon morning noon and night, and we
grow beards that make hipsters weep.
MARSOC is attempting to build this capability, but currently
only 2-4 operators have formal language training. When
MARSOC stood up, many of the original members came from Force Recon but the
instructors were retired Special Forces and their pipeline is based off of the
Special Forces Qualifications Course. Yes, imitiation is the finest form of
flattery, but 60 years of institutional knowledge cannot be
created overnight.
Special Forces traces its roots as the Army’s premier proponent
of unconventional warfare from the Operational Groups and Jedburgh teams of the
Office of Strategic Services. The OSS was formed in World War II to gather
intelligence and conduct operations behind enemy lines in support of resistance
groups in Europe and Burma. After the war, individuals such as Col. Aaron Bank,
Col. Wendell Fertig and Lt. Col. Russell Volckmann used their wartime OSS
experience to formulate the doctrine of unconventional warfare that became the
cornerstone of the Special Forces. In June of 1952, the 10th Special Forces
Group (Airborne) was established under Col. Aaron Bank. Concurrently with this
was the establishment of the Psychological Warfare School, which ultimately
became today’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. Special
Forces Soldiers first saw combat in 1953 as individuals deployed from 10th SFG
(A) to Korea.
Special Forces/Green Berets were created by people who
understood Guerrilla Warfare, and their whole purpose was to build on that
experience and create a new type of unit within DOD, one that, through
rigorous physical and psychological testing, intense and realistic training,
would be designed for the purpose of teaching the art (yes I said art) of
unconventional warfare.
To this day, "Special Forces remains the only force in DOD
that is organized, trained, educated, equipped and optimized to work through
and with an underground, auxiliary, or guerrilla force in a denied
area... the tactical mission belongs
to Special Forces and is shared with its interagency partners."
Unconventional Warfare is training and working "by, with
and through" HN personnel attempting to overthrow a government; the flip
side of that is Counter Insurgency (COIN), where we work with the
Government to prevent insurgents from overthrowing them.
Counterinsurgency
Comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to
simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes. Also
called COIN. (JP 3-24)
When Vietnam popped up on the radar, "An assessment of
insurgent strategy, particularly as it was being practiced at the time in the
Republic of Vietnam, indicated that good use could be made there of the U.S.
Army Special Forces. The requirement for a unit that was combat-oriented,
capable of performing with relative independence in the field, ruggedly trained
for guerrilla operations, and geared for co-operation with the Vietnamese was
admirably met in the organization, training, equipment, and operational
procedures of the U.S. Army Special Forces."
In order to understand how to fight insurgents, who better than
the guys who are also expert at training and developing them. No other unit in
the DOD, SOF or conventional, can go from velvet glove to closed fist like an
ODA. What I mean is, an ODA talks with village elders, negotiates, builds
rapport and yes, digs wells and builds schools (i.e., Humanitarian
Assistance HA missions), and then at the drop of a hat, an ODA can turn the
switch and use devastating but controlled violence to destroy any threat.
Knowing the culture and understanding when the locals are either
helping or hindering are things an ODA, with their expertise, excel at.
When the locals attempt to hinder, the ODA will stop all humanitarian aid
projects and go door to door tearing shit up. They know when and where to drop
in, in the middle of the night blowing doors and clearing the entire village,
and when to drive up in the middle of the day for chai. They know, because they
have studied the culture and language. They have lived, trained, worked and
built relationships with people from the area.
There are many other SOF units that are good at what they do,
but they think, since they are a hammer, that every problem is a nail. It was
frustrating driving into a village where we had been welcomed and well-received
previously, and all of a sudden, your asshole tightens...you get that
feeling...the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, because some part of you
intuitively knows something's not right. And it's only later when you find out
that some unit had flown in the night before, killed a bunch of people and
fucked all sorts of shit up. All the trust and cooperation that you had spent
months building within that tribe was gone in one night.
JSOC's
wack-a-mole technique, while sexy
and fun, is not strategic. It may keep the insurgents on the run, but it does
not build the HN's ability to protect itself or take away the reason's that the
insurgency started in the first place.
Robert Heinlein had a quote that is pretty accurate when
comparing Direct vs Indirect methods, when he said:
"War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is
controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your
government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to
be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing... but
controlled and purposeful violence."
There is another saying I've heard, especially dealing with
insurgencies or guerilla warfare: "You can't kill your way to
victory." This is especially true when fighting against Islamic Extremism:
It doesn't matter how many you kill, they don't care who, or how many die, they
will not quit. Just like cockroaches scurrying, it doesn't matter how many you
step on, they just keep coming.
I can already hear the the intake of breath, the cracking of
knuckles of everyone who is getting ready bash me. I hear the questions:
"How can you say JSOC taking down entire networks is not strategic, then
say training booger eaters how to march and wipe their ass is?"
The object of strategy is to impose one’s will on an adversary,
to create power in order to obtain political objectives. the optimum strategy
achieves this end state whilst “maintaining freedom of action with the least
effort.” These principles of strategy identified by Marshal Ferdinand Foch —
freedom of action (the ability to control circumstances of an event) and
economy of force (the optimum allocation of resources) — define the strategic
environment and in turn the strategic effectiveness of one kind of operation
versus another.
How do unilateral missions "create power?" How do they
have an "economy of force?" When the helicopters come out of
the sky and the door charge blows, your economy of force is limited, you can
only escalate. There certainly is a place for these types of missions during
COIN operations, but most unilateral combat ops conducted are tactical. They
are used to kill people who are attempting to either destroy the new
government, or kill Americans. By destroying these networks they are giving the
new government time, which is vital, to get strong enough so that they can deal
with the threats on their own.
Yes, it could be argued that this is a strategic mission, but I
feel that they are tactical objectives in support of strategic issues. What
have they done that will help and improve the capabilities of the HN? It
doesn't matter how many people you kill ot how many networks you destroy, there
will always be more ready to take up the call. They will adapt, decentralize,
and be smarter and more difficult to catch because the ones who survived the
onslaught have learned many important lessons. In fact, there could be an
argument that these unilateral DA raids do more harm to the strategic goals and
in the end creates more insurgents, but I'm not going there now.
Conventional units trying to conduct COIN, on the other hand,
are too soft. They get manipulated and played way too easy by the locals and
are then despised and considered weak. Locals will milk them for all they are
worth but do not do anything to stop or report any insurgents in the area. They
mock and laugh at the stupid Americans who just keep giving them money.
Most conventional soldiers and marines think that driving up to
a village with a huge convoy, sitting down with the elders for chai and showing
how much trust they have in them by .... wait for it.... taking off their
helmet (epitome of unconventional thinking right there) and throwing money and
resources at a village, then returning to their bases completely separated from
any non-Americans. That is not COIN - I'm not sure what it is, but it's not
COIN.
Look at all the attempts to take CFs and partner them with a
local force in order to train them and fight with them. I'm sure their were
some successes, but from my experiences, it was always a huge failure:
I could talk about the Embedded Training Teams (ETTs) in
Afghanistan, who were staffed by Navy, Air Force and Army. Some active, some
reserve, little to no combat experience. If they were lucky, one or two of them
might have been an 11B before. They received a few months "training"
prior to a deployment, so they got the capital T (Trained).
How about 82nd Inf Platoon partnered with an Afghan Army
Platoon, who set up a temporary COP prior to the elections in 2005. They
brought in HESCOs to surround the COP, but only put dirt in the half that the
Americans were behind. (I can't even begin to dissect that goat fuck.)
Or how about the ETT Sgt who, in the middle of a firefight, ran
up to us saying, "I think my Afghanis booby trapped my HMMWV. I can't open
the door, I think they jammed it." We went over to check it out - an RPG
had skipped off the ground, hit the door, but didn't explode. That not only
shows the caliber of the ETTs, it shows that during the fight, instead of
directing his men, he was trying to hide in his armored vehicle.
This same piece of shit came running out of a house that his men
had just assaulted, tears streaming down his face, saying "I can't do
it." We had taken fire from the house and Apaches had done a gun run on
it. We knew there would be civilian casualties and we needed to secure it so
the medics could start to work. I ended up running in and taking charge of his
men. (I guarantee you - that motherfucker is collecting 100% because of his
PTSD.)
The 101st BN CDR who met with an Iraqi every week, even though
there were numerous reports he was not only a bad guy, but was a known
associate and family member to an AQ militant who was responsible for
kidnapping and executing two 10th mountain soldiers. One report said the CDR was
"getting played like a soccer ball."
I could continue, but I don't think my blood pressure could
handle it. The U.S. historically, while good at killing people and breaking
things, is not so good at nation building. The overthrow of the Taliban and the
creation of the new government in Afghanistan by a small element of Green
Berets highlighted our capabilities and what a small group who has the proper
training can do. And when General Tommy Franks established Combined Joint
Task Force-180 (CJTF-180) to provide an on-scene command-and-control structure
in Afghanistan, mid-May 2002, that showed what happens when conventional forces
try to conduct COIN.
Lesson 2 will prove FID is more than
teaching booger eaters how to march and wipe their asses.
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