by Tom Clancy
Today’s “Q” Course essentially follows the syllabus laid out a half-century ago by Colonel Bank and his original 10th Special Forces Group (SFG) cadre. Run in three parts (or phases), SFQC is designed to give each SF candidate not only the field and combat skills he will need, but also the technical and professional training to fulfill his particular MOS code. The three phases are broken down this way:• Phase I—Centering on basic skills training, Phase I is thirty-nine days long and is designed to provide a common level of field skills for all participants, no matter which branch they may come from.
• Phase II—In Phase II the group is broken up according to the students’ various MOS specialties, and it varies in length depending upon the technical skills code assigned to a particular soldier.
• Phase III—During Phase III, students are familiarized with their core mission: unconventional warfare ... the “muscle” end of the Special Forces trade. Thirty-eight days long, Phase III culminates in a large-scale field exercise, known as Robin Sage.
Four courses are run each year. But because of the varying lengths for Phase II training, most students wind up finishing Phase III with a different group of students than they started with. Since many SF missions involve “pickup” teams thrown together at the last minute, this inconsistency is probably an aid to training and not a hindrance. Every part of SFQC is designed to mimic the real-world situations that SF troops will inevitably encounter in the field.
The “Q” Course: Phase I
The goals and objectives of Phase I of the SFQC are fairly simple: A soldier who successfully completes this part of the course will be ready to plan, conduct, and lead a squad-sized patrol, accurately navigating cross-country movements with a full combat load to a planned schedule in darkness and bad weather.
While these skills may seem basic, you’d be surprised how few soldiers around the world can actually run such an operation. To the leadership of most armies it is virtually inconceivable that every member of a squad or platoon (the equivalent of a Special Forces ODA) could bring it off. At SFQC such an accomplishment is only a “passing” grade.
For most students, the “Q” Course begins with a return to Camp MacKall and the Rowe Training Facility, where they endured the SFAS. However, whatever the memories they may have of the SFAS (usually unpleasant), there is a basic difference between the SFQC and SFAS. Though failures and dropouts will still happen, at the SFQC the cadre will do everything they can to help the SFQC students win their Green Berets at the end of Phase III.
A member of the Special Forces Assessment and Selection cadre at Camp MacKall, North Carolina. Such Special Forces professionals are the keepers of their almost tribal knowledge, and ensure that every new soldier they mint is as good as those who have come before.
JOHN D. GRESHAM
The instructors are drawn from Company “F” of the 1st Battalion/1st SWTG, who also run Phase III and some elements of the Phase II training.
From the moment a student arrives, every hour of each day is carefully scheduled for maximum training value. The focus is on building a common set of field and combat skills, no matter what a soldier’s background or previous service specialty may be. Phase I levels the playing field of skills, and prepares the students for what follows.
So for example, to folks from branches like armor or logistics, much of what they learn there is brand-new, while infantrymen who have gone through Ranger training probably have much of the Phase I curriculum down cold, and for them it is a refresher course. But—and this is a big but—they are expected to mentor those from other communities, and are judged on how well they do this.
The table below lays out the entire thirty-nine days of Phase I:
Not surprisingly, Phase I begins with a heavy dose of land navigation—a continuation of the skills that they demonstrated during SFAS. The exercises are designed to make the students confident of their movement skills under any conditions imaginable; and they must do this without GPS receivers.
Obviously, every SF ODA deploys with GPS navigation gear, and they are trained to use it capably. However, batteries run down and satellites can be disabled by solar storms or enemy action. A compass and paper map always work. Therefore, the SFQC makes certain that these are a SF candidate’s primary navigation tools.
Actually, proficiency at manual land navigation is not terribly difficult. It just takes preparation time and practice.
For starters, each student must discover exactly how long his stride is. This is done on a measured course, either fifty or a hundred meters long. (Because metric measurements are the standard in civilized countries, and maps everywhere are always drawn in metric measures, the U.S. military has gone metric. The old imperial measures used by the rest of Americans are now Neanderthal ... though I have to confess that I still find comfort in them.)
Usually the students measure their stride (one step with each leg) over several kinds of terrain, so they can bias their measurements accordingly. Let’s say a student measures sixty strides per hundred meters, and this is fairly constant over most kinds of terrain and tactical movement. He can then calculate distance traveled fairly easily. And to make this easier, he is encouraged to use “Ranger beads,” a sort of field abacus that can be hung from his uniform blouse. (Ranger beads don’t crash; they have no batteries to fail; and they work in the dark in any weather.)
Once a student can reliably measure distance, his next problem is to make sure he is going in the right direction. This is done by means of what is called “point to point” movement: The student figures a base course from the start point to the objective. But, if necessary, the journey can be broken into smaller legs to accommodate difficult terrain or covert movement. The student then calculates a bearing from “point to point,” and proceeds on his way. The trick to staying on course is to take bearings on significant terrain features (trees, rocks, poles, etc.), and move between them. By regularly checking his bearings, tracking the distance with his beads, and looking for intermediate calibration points shown on the map (road junctions, buildings, etc.), the student should be able to move quite accurately.
Following land navigation training, the trainees move on to a four-day course in common soldier tasks (marksmanship, first aid, etc.), along with fieldcraft skills (which are not all that different from what you might encounter at a good Boy Scout summer camp).
This training is followed by a week of learning patrolling and other soldier skills. Tactical movement and observation skills are emphasized, but there is also additional weapons training. By the end of the third week of Phase I, the students are ready to move into a series of more complex skills training and exercises.
Week four of Phase I begins with a three-day introduction to the art of ambushes and field reconnaissance. These bread-and-butter SF missions begin to give the trainees an idea of what they will be in for if and when they move on to an SF ODA.
This is followed by a week of field exercises, where the lessons of the previous twenty-four days are put to practical use. The students are broken into six-man squads, and sent out into the countryside around Camp MacKall to conduct simulated ambushes, reconnaissance missions, and other assorted tasks. During this period the instructors get their first real look at how individual students function in the field, and how they interact with team members. Those who clearly do not meet the required performance standards will be dropped (or sometimes counseled to recycle and try again later).
Just as at SFAS, injuries can cause unwanted problems, but the instructors try to nurse the injured along to the extent that is possible. If it is not, the injured candidate is evacuated to the medical facilities at Fort Bragg for treatment, and perhaps a chance to try again during another SFQC session. Generally, a student can take two tries at the “Q” Course.
Day thirty-two begins a two-day session on platoon operations, which is then followed by another five-day field exercise. This time, twelve-man platoons/ODAs are sent out into the forests and fields to run vario
us kinds of missions. Once again, the Phase I cadre can judge whether or not candidates are ready to move on to Phase II training. This is a critical moment, because the really difficult and expensive part of a SF soldier’s training begins in Phase II, and the cadre wants to make sure that only qualified students go further.
The students spend Day 39 doing paperwork and outprocessing, getting ready to head into Phase II.
The “Q” Course: Phase II
Once Phase I is completed, each Special Forces trainee will begin to train for his own unique MOS specialty code, often at facilities other than Fort Bragg or Camp MacKall. For example, the 18Es (communications sergeants) do much of their training at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, while the 18Ds (medical sergeants) perform trauma room rotations in hospitals located in New York City and Tampa, Florida. In all, eight separate 18-series courses are run for Phase II training, varying in length from six to twelve months.
The courses break out this way:28
• 18A (Officer)—Run by Company “A” of the 1st Batallion/1st SWTG (A), this course is six months long. The 18A course is designed to take officers from con-ventionalline Army units and turn them into leaders capable of running an ODA in the field thousands of miles from home base. During the 18A course, the students get a heavy dose of unconventional warfare (UW) training, with a particular emphasis on mission planning and logistics. There is also a great deal of academic work, focused specifically on guerrilla warfare and insurgency operations.
• 18B (Weapons Sergeant)—Company “B” of the 1st Batallion/1st SWTG (A) runs the course for weapons sergeants, which is designed to teach advanced weapons skills for a wide variety of ordnance. An 18B candidate is expected to learn how to operate and maintain every kind of weapon from pistols to rocket launchers. And not only U.S. and Allied weapons, but also firearms from around the world.
• 18C (Engineering Sergeant)—Also run by Company “B” of the 1st Batallion/1st SWTG (A), the 18C Phase II training (at Camp MacKall) is simply a course in how to build things, and then blow them up. This seemingly odd combination of skills actually makes a lot of sense for those who may have to build a dam one day on a peacekeeping mission, and then blow up a bridge in combat on another.
• 18D (Medical Sergeant)—The longest of the Phase II training courses (at twelve months), the medical sergeant’s course is run by the Special Operations Medical Training Battalion at Fort Bragg (which also trains combat medics for the Rangers, Navy SEALs, and others), and it is quite simply the finest first-response medical training in the world. One reason for this is the emphasis on quick response to trauma, especially gunshot wounds. To give the student 18Ds the necessary experience, each candidate conducts rotations at innercity hospitals in the Bronx and Tampa.
• 18E (Communications Sergeant)—SF operations make a lot of demands upon communications—the responsibility of the 18E. Trained by Company “E” of the 1st Batallion/1st SWTG (A) at Camp Gruber, Oklahoma (an Army National Guard post), the SF 18Es are among the most talented and skilled communications personnel in the world. Their six-month course covers everything from basic Morse code training to advanced computer networking and encryption techniques. These are “shade-tree” radio operators, who can design and string homemade wire antennas one day and install computer network routers the next.
Special Forces officer candidates attend an operations planning lecture during Phase II of their qualification course. The “Q” Course has a heavy academic component, which prepares young officers and noncommissioned officers for duty in the field.
JOHN D. GRESHAM
This set of courses is the distinguishing element that sets the Special Forces apart from other SOF communities. Here SF candidates learn not only their particular MOS skills, but also the key principles of UW, such as combat tactics and warfare abilities, and also noncombat and political principles. Because they carry both an olive branch and a gun in their rucksack of skills, SF soldiers can cover a much broader spectrum of warfare than any other SOF community in the U.S. military. This is another component of their “agility.”
One of the more interesting challenges in Phase II is to work the “conventional” Army mentality out of candidates. What do I mean by that? Though many of my friends in the Army will disagree with me, let’s say that in its conventional manifestation it is big, slow, ponderous, resistant to change, resistant to innovation, dogmatic, bureaucratic, closeminded... “Mother.” For many, leaping out of the lap of Mother Army is far from easy, so deeply imbedded are the Pavlovian responses learned during their years of service in “the big green machine.”
One sharp-looking and obviously talented young captain from the armor community showed me how hard it can be. During a map exercise with other 18A candidates, he proceeded to break a simulated operational area into squares (which is the way the “regular” Army does things), with no consideration of the nature of the terrain or of the various groups that might have to operate on it. The Army likes lines and grids; UW is nonlinear. The young captain clearly had trouble with the nonlinear nature of unconventional warfare, and the Phase II cadre criticism hit him so hard that he visibly sagged.
But he learned. His second try was better: He broke the zones by roads, streams, and county boundaries. Later he learned to draw his demarcation lines along impassable or difficult terrain, since these are rarely in dispute between guerrilla bands and military units.
The 18-series Phase II training also includes a heavy dose of teaching skills, since so much of a SF soldier’s time downrange will be spent on training foreign military personnel. There is also an additional dose of cross-cultural skills training, so the students will be ready for their next challenge: Phase III and the Robin Sage field exercise.
The “Q” Course: Phase III
The home stretch of the “Q” Course starts with the beginning of Phase III, which is the advanced training portion of the SFQC, and which concludes with a large-scale final examination known as Robin Sage. At only thirty-eight days long, Phase III is the most concentrated part of the course, and the final chance for the training cadre to evaluate a student prior to certification as a Special Forces soldier. The course schedule is broken out in the table below:
Over half of Phase III is dedicated to the preparations for and the running of Robin Sage, which probably gives you some idea of how much weight the SFQC cadre places on it. Robin Sage ties everything together, and shows once and for all whether or not a student really has the “right stuff” for the Special Forces trade.
Phase III begins with a day of inprocessing and issuing equipment. At the same time, the students are grouped into student SF ODAs, where they will operate for the rest of Phase III (after days two and three).
On days two and three, officers are lectured on Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB—a fancy military term for getting the lay of the land and sizing up possible opponents and targets), while the sergeants learn about mission and operations planning.
Then the students are given refresher training on air, helicopter, and parachute operations and procedures, in preparation for a series of field exercises.
Days seven to ten are used to indoctrinate the student ODAs into the SF practice of premission isolation for planning, training, and packing. Going into ISOFAC (short for Isolation Facility) is one of the cornerstones of SF combat operations, and is drilled hard into the minds of the new SF candidates. The idea is to isolate the SF ODA personnel, so that they can plan their missions with a minimum of outside influence and interference.
Their first chance to try out their new planning skills is on an airborne (parachute) field exercise, which is run on day eleven. This acts as a refresher jump for those who may be out of practice, and gets everyone ready for the Robin Sage insertion two weeks later.
The jump exercise is followed by the last four days of academic instruction, which covers UW and cross-cultural communications skills.
Day sixteen begins the run-up to Robin Sage. Each ODA is given
a simulated set of tasks that must be accomplished during the exercise. The teams then go into ISOFAC, and begin to run their planning and preparations. This includes a series of rehearsals on days twenty-one and twenty-two, as well as evaluations of planning and proposed courses of action by the Phase III cadre.
Once all the preparations are completed, it is time for the “Q” Course’s final examination: Robin Sage.
Final Exam: Robin Sage
In military circles the rule is that if you train for the most difficult and dangerous kind of combat operation, you can probably handle the operations that are easier than that. This is the working philosophy behind the final Phase III field exercise, which is designed to test everything the candidates have been taught in their Army careers. The exercise also has some history behind it: Robin Sage attempts to simulate the missions of the World War II Jedburgh teams that were dropped into Europe by the OSS prior to the D-Day invasion in 1944. On the ground, these teams linked up with local resistance bands and partisans, and helped them to fight the Axis forces.... Extremely difficult and dangerous missions.
Such missions still represent the most difficult tasks that SF ODAs might be assigned to accomplish, and they are a unique training challenge that is not practiced anywhere else in the U.S. military.
To the north and west of Fort Bragg and Camp MacKall lies the vast rural area of North Carolina’s sand hills (which is mostly made up of farms and retirement/ vacation communities). The people here not only support their military neighbors, they actually love to take part in the exercises. So much so that many of them offer their time and land at no charge to help the Special Forces practice their trade. By enlisting hundreds of these patriotic Americans, the staff of the SFQC can vastly expand their normal training ranges during Robin Sage, and has free rein over the imaginary nation they call “Pineland”29 (a number of counties in the Uwharrie Forrest, totaling several hundred square miles), where bands of resistance fighters are trying to overcome an oppressive government. As an added bonus, the local residents have formed a loose association known as the “Pineland Auxiliary,” which supplies civilian roleplayers to augment military personnel who run the exercises.