Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces

by Tom Clancy

  Sound like an attractive profession?

  To a few ... To a precious few.

  The recruiters within Special Forces Command face the daunting challenge of identifying and training almost a thousand men every year who are not only unfazed by these challenges but are surpassingly capable in a breathtakingly large number of military and nonmilitary skills ... the Renaissance Men of the military. The task is a big one; and it has recently grown even bigger, as the combination of an exceptionally healthy civilian economy and extreme operations tempos (OpTempos) makes the lure of civilian life ever more attractive.

  It is not surprising that SFC has had a difficult time recruiting enough new SF soldiers to replace those who have retired or else have left the service for civilian jobs and more “normal” lives.21

  This leaves SFC with a difficult challenge: either reduce the standards for new recruits and accept a potentially less capable SF soldier, or hold the current high standards and hope that better recruiting will eventually turn the tide of attrition. Right now, SFC has chosen to maintain the highest possible standards, even if that means they are able to take on fewer missions. It is a lousy choice.

  So how would we describe their standards for selecting, recruiting, and training new SF soldiers? Well, it’s a little hard to do that.

  The official shoulder flash (emblem) of the John F. Kennedy (JFK) Special Warfare Center (SWC) and School

  OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY GRAPHIC

  For starters, it must be understood that the personnel assigned to U.S. Special Operations Forces are not simply highly trained soldiers, but special people given training that is not just specialized but extreme. It is this distinction that separates SOF personnel from conventional units assigned to unusual missions. A good example of the latter would include the B-25 bomber crews led by Jimmy Dolittle on the aerial raid on Japan in April 1942. These were selected from several line medium bomber units, given special training in Florida, then used on a one-time basis for the raid.

  At the same time, it’s clear from my conversations with folks in the organization that there is no such animal as an ideal Special Forces soldier ... or, for that matter, an ideal Special Forces recruit. And that may be the point. In diversity there is strength and depth. And that is exactly what folks like Colonel Remo Butler are looking for.

  Colonel Butler is commander of the 1st Special Forces Training Group—Airborne (1st SFTG [A]), a part of the much larger John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center (JFK SWC). The colonel, a most impressive human being (something like a cross between a college professor and a world-class athlete—he coaches boxing in his spare time), is very particular about the men who are allowed into the SF training program, and even pickier about those who survive to graduate. Along with his boss, Major General Kenneth R. Bowra (the commander of the JFK SWC), Butler has been leading the fight to hold onto the qualities that have made the individual SF soldier legendary.

  The organization where they work, the JFK SWC, is housed in two main buildings on the main post at Fort Bragg (Kennedy and Bryant Halls), as well as a host of subsidiary facilities across the country. It is the institutional keeper of all U.S. Army SOF knowledge, and it is responsible for a wide range of training, procurement, design, and development tasks for the entire Army SOF community (which, in addition to the Special Forces, includes the 75th Ranger Regiment, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), the Delta Force, and the various other units of USASOC). General Bowra and his staff control everything from a museum and archives to jump and SCUBA schools. Truly, if you want to know about Army SOF, you start at the JFK SWC.

  General Ken Bowra, USA, leads a party of dignitaries (including H. Ross Perot and Generals Shelton and Schoomaker) during a Fort Bragg dedication ceremony. General Bowra commands the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  Perhaps the biggest misconception about SOF units is that they are all brawn and combat skills and short on brains and judgment. “A Detachments” are not “Dirty Dozens,” as a visit to the JFK SWC will quickly demonstrate. Over the years I’ve visited scores of military schools in many countries, and none of them has the academic diversity and depth you find at the JFK SWC.

  So, just what kind of warriors are the Special Forces looking for?• Gender—Forget political correctness and the advancement of women. The existing Congressionally mandated Title 10 restrictions deny women the opportunity to serve in front-line infantry units, such as the Special Forces. Until that mandate is changed, the SF world will remain an all-male bastion.

  • Rank/Experience—The top leadership of the Special Forces likes its personnel to be older and more mature than the American military average. Thus, entry into SF is restricted to officers who are captains (O-3) or 1st lieutenants (O-2) already selected for captain. Enlisted personnel must either have reached the rank of specialist (promotable) E-4 and sergeants (E-5), or Special Forces recruits will usually be in their mid- to late twenties or early thirties—hopefully old enough to know what and when to do things, and perhaps more important, when not to.

  • Branch Experience—Though SF candidates are recruited from every branch of the Army, the majority of Special Forces recruits have come from a traditional pool of personnel within the Army’s infantry community—men who have risen from line infantry units to the 82nd Airborne Division, and then into a Ranger unit. However, since recent military drawdowns have been drying up this source, the SF leadership has had to cast a wider net, looking deeper into a greater variety of personnel skills and specialties. Today, an average Special Forces training class will include soldiers from the armor, signals, supply, and aviation branches, as well as the more traditional infantry career path. This trend has an upside: The personnel entering the teams have a broader than ever range of talents and skills, and these are proving valuable in the field on missions.

  • Physical Attributes—No, SOF personnel do not look like Arnold Schwarzeneg ger, Sylvester Stallone, or Jesse Ventura (though you will run into Chuck Norrises). Raw strength is not usually seen as a plus. In fact, Special Forces physical requirements are weighted more toward endurance and mental toughness. Sure, SF soldiers tend to be well muscled, shaped, and toned, but they are not taut hardbodies. In other words, they’re more like distance swimmers or triathletes than Nautilus nuts; and mental qualities are far more valuable than physical strength to future SF soldiers. More on this later.

  • Airborne Qualification—As mentioned earlier, the names of Special Forces units always include an “Airborne” designation. This means that everyone who aspires to the SF trade will either have successfully attended the Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, or be prepared to do so prior to Special Forces Training. This course is a major hurdle in itself, one of the toughest obstacles to getting selected into SF training.

  • Language Skills—By the time a new SF soldier reaches his first team, he will have been assigned at least one foreign language to learn. Some of these are quite easy (like Spanish), while others might require more than a year of study (like Chinese or Arabic). On the other hand, candidates who are already proficient in one of the languages on the SF qualification list have an especially useful edge over other potential Special Forces candidates.

  • Racial/Ethnic Background—Over the years, the SOF community has had difficulty recruiting minority candidates. There are several reasons for this. For starters, there are simply far too few qualified minority candidates, while at the same time, the rest of the Army—not to mention the other military services, governmental agencies, and private industry—has proved to be especially attractive to those who are qualified. All the same, minority recruitment has become an increasingly important priority for the SF leadership, especially in light of the growing overseas commitments where a Hispanic, Slavic, Arabic, or Asian member might open doors that would remain closed to Anglo personnel.

  Since all of these items will be listed in any soldier’s personne
l file, the first step in finding the men who will eventually become new SF soldiers will be a close look at the paperwork.

  But the clerical work is only a start. The real character traits that will qualify a recruit for Special Forces training are far deeper and harder to pin down than the qualities that find their way into personnel files. Let’s call the real traits “survival skills,” that is, those skills held by “survivor types.” Survivor types are the ones still standing after insanely tough or deadly encounters. They are the ones who will seize the opportunities available, steer through chaos, and win.

  How can you tell in advance who the survivor types are? You actually can’t with accuracy, because there is always an element of luck, but you can select for traits that survivors usually possess—and then hope.

  When I asked the trainers of the 1st SFTG to identify the chief of these traits, I kept hearing a single word—“agility.”

  Cats are agile, as are most animals in the wild. And most SF soldiers are agile in that sense. But they are also agile in senses that go far beyond mere animal grace and quickness. To better understand, let’s contrast agility with another term often used in military circles—“flexibility.” Flexibility is of course a good thing. It means you can adapt, change; it means you are not rigid or hidebound.

  But for the Special Forces, this is not enough. To be flexible, in their view, is to be reactive. It’s a way of responding to problems or situations rather than mastering them. On the other hand, agility, whether mental or physical, is a proactive quality. Those who have it have an edge in almost every kind of situation. In fact, to many SF personnel, their agility is their armor. With it they provide themselves with protection lacking in conventional Army units.

  Agile men are hard to find anywhere, but they are especially hard to find in the U.S. military, where the usual policy is to drive qualities like agility out of young soldiers, sailors, Marines, or airmen. The agile ones are seen as rebels, mavericks, or misfits, usually to the detriment of a long-term military career. And yet, such men are exactly the types that the Special Forces need.

  What are some of the other traits one can expect to find in a Special Forces soldier?

  • Military/Combat Experience—Because SF recruits will normally be 03/E-4, they will arrive with the benefit of from five to ten years of invaluable Army experience ... probably including deployed or combat duty (the Army has been very busy since the end of the Cold War). Anyone who has led troops will tell you that soldiers come in two flavors: those who have “seen the elephant” of combat and those who have not. Clearly, the combination of years of experience and a taste of combat is the best litmus for determining who will not freeze or hesitate in a critical situation.

  • Leadership—Leadership is an indefinable quality. Nevertheless, a few years of Army service tend to point out those who possess it. And for both officers and NCOs there are particular times when leadership qualities like initiative and self-motivation skills are most likely to appear. For officers, this time comes during their tours as platoon leaders. For NCOs, it most often comes when they serve as fire team and squad leaders or platoon sergeants.

  • Education—Special Forces leaders look for a solid knowledge base in each potential soldier, along with an indication that he wants to continue learning. Special Forces soldiers will not be academics, but they are intellectually curious: They are voracious readers; they soak up knowledge. Officers (who already possess a college degree when they enter the Army) will attend the staff and continuing education courses that are part of the normal Army career path, but they will also tend to find time for post-graduate programs. Enlisted personnel and warrant officers will work toward—and usually achieve—their own undergraduate or graduate degree. It’s also common to take additional night or continuing education courses.

  • Interpersonal Skills—Military officers and enlisted men are not famous for smooth, skilled interpersonal relations. And too often they are clumsy and abrupt enough to make civilians uncomfortable, threatened, or even hostile. Such an outcome is not an option to SF personnel if they are to successfully accomplish the range of overseas missions they’ll be called upon to do. If they are not already comfortable dealing with other people, other communities, other cultures, or other races, Special Forces soldiers have to learn how to do that. Not everyone has the temperament for that kind of openness, and that quality is closely monitored during the selection process.

  • Entrepreneurial Spirit—This is almost cognate with agility. The greatest entrepreneurs have vision. They’re adaptable. They take risks, but the risks more often than not pan out. They are alchemists, who can create a successful enterprise from nothing but raw ideas. They have incredible drive and energy. And they can focus the drive, energy, and ideas of others toward a desired outcome. Given the nature of Special Forces missions and the variety of circumstances they encounter, there is a pressing need for an entrepreneurial spirit within each SF soldier. The leadership, understandably, selects for it.

  Let me add a last, sobering observation to the above thoughts: During any given year, the number of candidates eligible for recruitment into the Special Forces is just a few thousand out of the more than one million soldiers (active, reserve, and National Guard) in the Army. Out of these few thousand, fewer than four hundred will successfully complete the journey to the awarding of the Green Beret.

  Special Forces: The Mix

  All military units require a balanced mix of personnel whose skills are matched to their potential missions. Nowhere is this truer than in those small combat units that the Special Forces have designated as Operational Detachment Alphas (ODAs or “A” Detachments). The ODAs are the basic building blocks of the Special Forces. We’ll talk more about how these fit into the larger picture of SF organizations and missions later on, but right now I want to concentrate on how they are put together.

  Officially, each ODA is composed of twelve Special Forces soldiers. It is commanded by a captain (O-3), who is assisted by an assistant detachment commander, normally a warrant officer. They lead ten SF soldiers, whose skills cover six specific specialties, or technically, five Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) codes.

  Special Forces branch codes all begin with the number 18 (the number reserved for them in the Army system). These are broken down as follows:• 18A (Officer/ODA Commander)—The 18A branch code is reserved for Special Forces officers who will command ODAs on missions. 18As also provide the leadership for every other significant leadership position within the Special Forces community. Each ODA has one 18A assigned to it.

  • 180A (Warrant Officer/Assistant Detachment Commander)—To back up the 18A commanding the ODA, each A Team is assigned a 180A warrant officer to act as the assistant detachment commander.22-24 When the team operates together, he backs up the 18A and is prepared to take command in the event that the captain is absent or incapacitated. Also, should conditions or the mission dictate it, the ODA can be split into two equal teams, with the 18A and 180A each commanding one part.

  • 18B (Sergeant/Weapons)—The ODA 18Bs are the weapons specialists, and they are capable of operating and maintaining a wide variety of U.S., Allied, and other foreign weaponry. This includes not only personal weapons like the M4 carbine, M249 light machine gun, and M203 40mm grenade launcher, but also larger and more powerful weapons like the M2 .50-caliber machine gun, Javelin antitank missile, and mortars. 18Bs who have attended one of the Army’s two sniper courses can also act as snipers. Each ODA is normally assigned two 18Bs.

  • 18C (Sergeant/Engineering)—Since an ODA may be called upon to blow up a bridge one day, and then help rebuild it on another, each team is assigned two 18C engineering sergeants. 18Cs are specialists across a range of disciplines, from demolitions and construction of field fortifications, to topographic survey techniques. This means they are a significant force multiplier for planners in missions ranging from direct action strikes against enemy targets in wartime to humanitarian operations in time of crisis
or natural disaster.

  • 18D (Sergeant/Medical NCO)—Since ODAs may have to operate behind the lines for months at a time, it is essential that each team have an organic medical capability. The two 18Ds who provide those services to each ODA are generally considered to be the finest first-response/trauma medical technicians in the world. Though primarily trained with an emphasis on trauma medicine, they also have a working knowledge of a range of skills such as dentistry, veterinary care, public sanitation, water quality, and optometry.

  • 18E (Sergeant/Communications NCO)—Another organic capability within each ODA is the ability to communicate back to base from virtually any point on Earth. A pair of 18Es provides these services. 18Es can operate every kind of commu-nicationsgear, from encrypted satellite communications systems to old-style high-frequency (HF) Morse key systems, but they also have serious computer/networking skills.

  • 18F (Assistant Operations/Intelligence NCO)—Since many ODA missions involve behind the lines activities in denied (i.e., hostile) territory, each ODA is assigned one 18F intelligence specialist. The 18F is fully qualified to collect and evaluate information for transmission back to higher headquarters, as well as to supply vital data on enemy units, targets, and capabilities. He will also provide the team with an interrogation capability should enemy prisoners be captured.

  • 18Z (Sergeant/Operations NCO)—Though shown on the organizational chart as an “operations planner,” the 18Z is actually the senior enlisted man in the team. Usually flagged as the “team sergeant,” the 18Z is responsible for making sure the entire team runs as a unit and is properly outfitted and supplied. While looking after the other sergeants on the team, he relieves the 18A and 180A of more mundane tasks, which allows them to concentrate on leading and planning missions for the ODA.