Ok- here we go!
Thanks
@amlove21 for opening this up and engaging.
So for right now SR is strictly an AF asset?
So, the short answer is "yes", with nuance. We just published the career training plan for SR and stood up their Apprentice (like their finishing school) course. when students actually enter the pipeline after this next A&S is the first time people will be following the new plan, while the rest of the current force gets all the training they didn't have before (freefall, Ranger, Sniper, SUAS, etc etc).
So, with that being said, it will be a while until a fully qual'd no-shit SR dude is out there.
The nuance is this- a major misunderstanding people are having is imagining an entire team (even a small team) of SR dudes, out there doing their mission set- that's not the case. SR will complement Special Tactics Teams, comprised of PJ's, Controllers, TACP and Special Warfare Officers. They will provide air-centric data collection, exploitation, and real-time defeats of near-peer adversaries in contested/denied environments.
Now, as I said above- I can definitely see a time where the sister services get wise (and stop bagging on the initiative) and say to themselves, "Hold on- I can get a dude that specializes in Recon, can integrate air power and data collection into our formation, and is also an operator capable of holding their own in tactics on the X? AND I can request them for support along with a PJ and a Controller??" I think that is VERY attractive.
Think of it like this- everyone has JTACs- but people still want CCT's in the SOCOM world because of the unique air-centric skills they bring to the fight to aid their ground counterparts. Everyone has medics- but why do they want PJs? Air centric mindset, medical, technical rescue. I imagine SR falls into that same lane.
I may have been trying to shoehorn RRP into SR to see what gaps SR fills. But it looks like SR has a much more diverse skillset on the data-side of the house than RRP does. This is where I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole on what those skillsets are, unless you wish to guide that one.
Do me a favor- hit me with a PM, and let's get on to one of the more secure messaging apps and tell me what skills you want to talk about. If they're kosher, we will do it in the open. So to speak.
Honestly I don't know much about air-centric operations when it comes to Special Tactics and how you guys do things, or what SR brings to the AF, so I will have to do some more research. It does seem like the same way the Marine Corps created the MAGTF is how the AF SR can be a tremendous asset to the AF and the Service as a whole.
So the major thing we always bring to the fight is the ability to dominate the vertical space in order to support violent and covert/surreptitious /clandestine ground operations for small teams. That can be leveraged in a million different ways- but just know, we like to say we build the mission from the air to the ground, and not the other way around.
I like to think of it like this- we think about everything the ground team isn't. PR. What CASEVAC looks like in a MASCAS. Stacks of AC ready to bring hate when needed. SR is going to get after- "What's over that next ridgeline? Is anyone talking about us on ICOM? How about counter drone (think about those explosive drone strikes in the Armenian conflict these last six months- counter-drone is a skill set in SR)."