by Dick Couch
I am no stranger to Fort Bragg; in the past, I’ve lectured to the officer candidates during their Special Forces training. As a young CIA case officer, I attended the Army Military Free-Fall (HALO) School as well as several heavy and special weapons training courses at Bragg. This time I was taken out to Camp Mackall, west of Fort Bragg and just south of Pinehurst and Southern Pines, where the heavy lifting of Special Forces training is done. There’s a world of difference, as I was to learn, between the manicured golf courses in these affluent communities and the wooded sand hills of Camp Mackall. Yet I’ve never been so warmly received or welcomed at a military facility.
Camp Mackall is a fifty-six-thousand-acre military reservation forty miles west of Fort Bragg and the city of Fayetteville. During the Second World War, Camp Mackall was the home of the airborne, where upwards of seventy thousand troops lived and trained for war. The brave men who parachuted and landed in gliders behind the German lines in Normandy prepared for D-day at Camp Mackall. All that remains from those days are the hundreds of concrete foundations that supported the tar-paper barracks and training facilities, and the Mackall Army Airfield, which is still in use. The 82nd Airborne Division, located at Fort Bragg, and other military units still use Camp Mackall for occasional training, but the only permanent training compound at Mackall is the Colonel Nick Rowe Special Forces Training Facility. This is where the serious business of selecting and training Green Berets takes place.
I arrived at Camp Mackall on 1 August 2004, along with my wife, Julia, and our border collie Jenny. We were allowed the use of one of the few residential structures on Camp Mackall. It was a small log cabin built in 1923 by the Baltimore Barber Steamship Company as a getaway for their senior executives. The cabin passed into the hands of the du Pont family for a time before Camp Mackall expanded during the Second World War to train airborne troopers. Following the war, the structure was abandoned and had fallen into disrepair. Only recently had the cabin been renovated by the Special Forces training cadres. It was to be our home for ten months. The last full-time resident of our cabin was the Camp Mackall’s commanding officer during World War II.
Special Forces candidates now train, sweat, and struggle over the same ground as those young men in the 13th, 17th, and 101st Airborne Divisions did some sixty-odd years ago—their grandfathers’ and great-grandfathers’ generation of warriors. As I followed this current generation of warriors over this hallowed ground, I felt the ghostly presence of those bands of brothers who became part of what we now call the Greatest Generation. And with a full measure of respect for those gallant men who helped save the world from fascism, I couldn’t help but wonder if the men whose training I was privileged to document will someday be remembered as saving the world from religious fanaticism. How will history judge them? Well, I hope, for I firmly believe they stand between us and those who have sworn to again bring terror to our land.
Before tackling the business of Special Forces and Special Forces training, we need first to take care of some organizational issues. When we refer to Special Forces, or SF, in this book, we are talking about Army Special Forces—the Green Berets. Quite often in the media, and even some military circles, they’re mistaken for special operations forces. There is a difference. Special operations forces, or SOF, refer collectively to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and, most recently, Marine Corps special operations components. Under the Nunn-Cohen Amendment to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act, the United States Special Operations Command was created to take ownership of our military special operators. The command’s headquarters was located at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Not only did the new command take control of these SOF components, but it was also given the funding as well as the charter for special operations. Thus, the U.S. Special Operations Command became, in essence, a fifth service. Initially, the Marines elected not to join the new force. General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, now wants marines in the special operations mix.
Since its inception, the Special Operations Command has grown dramatically in size, funding, and the scope of its responsibilities. Yet it’s quite small when compared to the other services. Currently, the command has just over 53,000 personnel and its funding is just over $7 billion. In the context of a $400 billion–plus defense budget, this 2 percent piece of the military-funding pie may seem small for the force that Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has tapped to take the lead in the global war on terror. The U.S. Special Operations Command enjoys an efficient “tooth to tail” ratio of about two to one, which means there are two support personnel for every shooter/flyer/boat driver that goes downrange. For ground combat operations, the command has some 15,000 guns to put into this fight. With the need for ongoing training and some semblance of a family life, we’re lucky to keep 5,000 special operators on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world. Not that many when compared to upwards of 160,000 military personnel that have been kept on deployment in the active theaters since the fall of Baghdad. Why so few people and so little money? It has to do with politics and the SOF Truths. First, the SOF Truths:
Humans are more important than hardware.
Quality is more important than quantity.
SOF cannot be mass-produced.
Competent SOF cannot be created after the emergency arises.
Basically, it takes time to make these guys. The training is long and expensive, and the attrition is very high. In the case of Special Forces, a soldier may be able to negotiate the training pipeline in a year or eighteen months, but it will be several more years before he becomes a seasoned, competent Special Forces soldier. This is a business where experience and maturity count. The reality is that training is never over; with each deployment, a Special Forces sergeant learns a little more and becomes more proficient at his profession. A senior Special Forces team sergeant brings two decades or more of knowledge to the battlefield; within that team, the Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, there may be collectively a century and a half of on-the-job experience.
The politics are important and interesting. The defense establishment is an entrenched bureaucracy, and the defense budget is controlled by Congress. Those many billions of defense dollars flow into congressional districts where the defense plants, shipyards, and military bases are located. Neither the president nor secretary of defense can wave a magic wand and reallocate those dollars without congressional approval. And to be fair about it, there are legitimate competing priorities. Within the defense establishment, there are admirals and generals who feel their ships, planes, and armored divisions are just as important to the defense of our nation as SOF components. I sense there’s a general agreement in the Department of Defense and Congress that special operations needs more robust funding, and more money will help—especially in the retention of our experienced SOF operators, whose skills are in high demand in the private sector. Yet it still takes time. Regarding these SOF Truths, the last one may not be so relevant as once thought. This emergency’s going to be with us for the foreseeable future.
Just what are the forces that make up the U.S. Special Operations Command? There are four major commands that fall under this command—three of them with their personnel and their roots firmly grounded in the three major service providers. The Air Force component is the Air Force Special Operations Command, located at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. This command provides special heavy-lift, fixed-wing, and rotary-wing tactical aircraft as well as special-purpose platforms like the deadly AC-130 gunships. Also under the Air Force Special Operations Command are the Air Force Special Tactics Teams, which train and deploy the paramedics, and the Combat Control Teams. Navy-related special operations fall under the Naval Special Warfare Command located in Coronado, California. Their components are the Navy SEAL teams and the Special Boat Teams. The largest of the service SOF providers is the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which calls Fort Bragg home. While our subject is Special Forces and Special Forces training, it’ll
be helpful to take a closer look at the various component commands of the Army Special Operations Command.
First, there is the 75th Ranger Regiment. The regimental headquarters and the 1st Ranger Battalion is based at Fort Benning, Georgia. There’s a battalion of Rangers at Fort Lewis in Washington State and another at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The Rangers are young, tough, and perhaps the finest airborne light infantry in the world. A Ranger can drop from the sky at night, carry a hundred-pound rucksack for a long distance, and fight like a demon when he gets there. Insurgents around the world try not to gather in large numbers lest they find a company of Rangers in their midst. Next there is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, nicknamed “the Nightstalkers.” They specialize in SOF-configured helicopters, which include the MH-47E Chinook, the MH-60K/L Blackhawk, and the AH/MH-6 “Little Bird.” Ask SOF operators on the ground and they’ll tell you the Nightstalkers are the finest pilots in the world. Currently, the Army Special Operations Command also oversees the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command. Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations, or “Psyops,” serve in that twilight between active conflict and peace, and are very helpful in the conditioning of the human terrain in insurgency environments and war-to-peace transitions. The Army Special Operations Command also operates the training command or schoolhouse—the JFK Special Warfare Center and School. And, finally, there’s the Army Special Forces Command, which is the largest single component of both the Army Special Operations Command and the U.S. Special Operations Command. The Special Forces Command is also located at Fort Bragg. In addition to specially trained chemical reconnaissance detachments, the Army Special Forces Command owns the Special Forces groups.
The fourth major component of the U.S. Special Operations Command is the Joint Special Operations Command, also located at Fort Bragg. The composition and missions of this command are closely held information. A significant portion of their portfolio is counterterrorism, which has kept them busy for the last fifteen years and certainly since 9/11. They draw their personnel from Army, Navy, and Air Force veterans of the other special operations components. Collectively, the units within Joint Special Operations Command are known as tier-one forces, and they are some of our very best.
Getting back to the Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. Excluding the 1st Special Warfare Training Group, they are organized into seven operational Special Forces groups. There are five active and two National Guard groups. The organization, location, and regional focus of these groups will be taken up in the next chapter. For now, let’s turn to a discussion of SF and SOF missions.
There are four primary missions that the major SOF ground components address in one form or another. The first is direct action, or DA. Direct action is perhaps the most visible of SOF missions, encompassing raids, strike operations, enemy leadership snatches, and the like. These are typically short-duration actions, potentially involving insertion by helo, fire-and-movement activity on the ground, and close-quarter engagement with the enemy. The media loves direct action and direct-action footage. No matter what the in-theater event, the coverage will likely be accompanied by video of some guys leaping out of airplanes, jumping from helos, racing about the battlefield, and doing a lot of shooting. These video clips may or may not be related to the news being reported. And, sadly, the news coverage may be all out of proportion to the relevance of the direct-action mission. It’s simply a high-visibility event. This does not imply that direct action is not an important and valuable SOF skill, nor one that does not command a lot of attention in SOF training.
Next there’s special reconnaissance, or SR. SR missions have long been a staple of the SOF skill set. In some cases, they may precede or form the basis for a DA mission. Often it’s purely an intelligence-gathering operation. A SOF element often may quietly watch a village from afar for several days, observing patterns of movement or waiting for a target individual to show himself. In the current fight, a number of SR missions have been undertaken to secretly observe a target house or compound prior to a precision air strike in an attempt to avoid civilian casualties. These are seldom reported as they may involve clandestine or covert means. A clandestine operation is one that is kept secret from the enemy. A covert operation is one that is secret and in which the hand or presence of the U.S. government is kept quiet or unacknowledged. Many military units conduct clandestine operations, but covert work for uniformed soldiers is usually reserved for SOF. Clandestine and covert operations are most normally linked with SR missions, but both terms can apply to other SOF missions as well.
The third mission is unconventional warfare—UW. This a broad term, but most usually applies to offensive military operations that are not conventional, that is, do not involve regular U.S. military forces such as armored, mechanized, or infantry divisions. These operations are often clandestine and sometimes covert. In the past, UW has been closely linked with guerrilla warfare—guerrilla warfare in which the guerrillas are the good guys and the regimes they oppose or want to overthrow are the bad guys. A UW campaign is one in which foreign fighters or a government in exile supplies the troops, and we supply the arms, the financial backing, and the advisers. A UW operation can be a long campaign against an entrenched, hostile government, or of a short duration, as in Afghanistan. In most cases, it’s a cheap way to fight a war and leverages Americans on the ground and the taxpayer’s dollar. When it works, it’s a wonderful way to fight a war without deploying a large conventional presence.
Finally we come to foreign internal defense, or FID. During the Cold War, foreign internal defense was an active SOF mission. In this effort, we sent teams of SOF operators to fledgling democracies, and in some cases friendly dictatorships, to teach them how to protect themselves from Communist-backed insurgencies. With the passing of the Soviet Union, much of our FID work centered on helping foreign governments counter illegal drug production and trafficking. The skill set for unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense is much the same. It depends on whether your client is the government in power, which calls for FID, or those seeking to overthrow a regime in power, which is a UW mission. Both call for the training of others—to be insurgents or guerrillas or to conduct counterguerrilla/counterinsurgent operations. And this brings us to the counterinsurgency struggle we face in Iraq and Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency has its own acronym—COIN. A COIN campaign calls on all four SOF mission disciplines, but it’s primarily a derivative of FID.
Regarding these acronyms—DA, SR, UW, FID, COIN, and others in this book—I understand they can be confusing and arresting for you nonmilitary readers. They are freely used in the lexicon of special operators and special operations, almost like a foreign or secret language. However, I’ll do my best to use them sparingly in this text.
The four major SOF mission areas are conducted and/or supported by all SOF components. The Air Force and Army aviation components and the Navy Special Boat Teams are usually support elements, but they can act alone for certain mission taskings, such as activity that involves teaching flying or small-craft operations to foreign allied forces. On the ground, this work has fallen to the SEALs, the Rangers, and the Special Forces. The SEALs, in addition to their unique role as the SOF maritime component, have become a superb direct-action and special-reconnaissance force. Since 9/11, they’ve ranged well inland in Afghanistan and Iraq. But they have limited language and cross-cultural skills, so their capability and utility in counterinsurgency roles has been limited. The Rangers are simply a highly versatile and capable light-infantry force. The bread and butter of the Rangers are small-unit tactics, and while they are capable of teaching this discipline, they’re primarily fighters, not teachers. They, too, have their limitations in foreign internal defense and unconventional warfare. The Army Special Forces have neither the maritime capability of the SEALs nor the self-contained, light-infantry capability of their Ranger brothers. But they can do everything else—SR, DA, FID, and UW, especially FID and UW, all of which make them a
force of choice in a counterinsurgent environment. Why is it that the Special Forces can do it all? Quite simply, it’s because they are teachers. They have to know and practice the full range of SOF disciplines, and they have to have the language and cross-cultural skills to teach them. It’s been said that the Special Forces are the Peace Corps with guns. As we will later see from their origins and their deployment history, this is not far from the truth.
To win in an insurgent environment, you have to win the people. That means you have to be close to them and gain their trust. Only the locals know who’s an insurgent and who’s not. In places like Afghanistan and Iraq, a considerable number of the insurgents are foreign fighters—Saudis, Chechens, Syrians, Egyptians, and the like. They look much the same to us, but not to the locals. They know, and, unless they tell us, we’re often unable to distinguish between friend and foe. The key to defeating an insurgency is intelligence—timely, accurate, actionable intelligence. Said another way, kicking the door and dragging out an insurgent leader is the easy part. Knowing which door to kick is far more difficult. Special Forces have the ability to find the right door, and that’s what makes them the most important Americans in uniform. Direct-action and military-reconnaissance skills are relatively easy to acquire and can be learned in a short period of time. The language and cross-cultural people skills come much harder. They are not as glamorous or media-genic as the running-and-gunning of direct action or the sneaking-and-peeking of special reconnaissance, but they are essential if we’re to defeat the insurgents. The Special Forces also do a lot of other things—coalition building, humanitarian activities, conventional-military support, to name a few—but it’s their counterinsurgency skill and expertise that make them our chosen soldiers.