‘Hunter Troop’ Is The World’s First All-Female Special Operations Unit

Nordic SIGINTer.


norway-girls-550-79.jpg
 
I read that article before and it made me wonder. If they are such bad asses, why are they in gender-segregated units? If they're "tough as nails," why aren't they in with the men? And if they're so "special," how come they haven't been deployed operationally?

Smacks more of propaganda than badassery.
 
I don't know who translated "Jegetroppen" to "Hunter Troop", but it's not quite right. The Norwegian military term "Jeger" - which literally translates as "hunter" - doesn't actually have an English equivalent. It's a term used for some long-range recce, SOF and Ranger-type units. The closest translation would be "Ranger", but that's not right either. The Ranger Regiment is an actual unit, not a type of unit. And you'd have "Special Rangers" - the Spesialjegere - the actual operators in FSK, the Jegertroppen's parent unit. And "Naval Rangers" - the Marinejegere - which would be our SEAL equivalent. Both of those just sound stupid, and they are not the equivalent of the Ranger Regiment. However, all in all, they should probably have used Ranger, or not translated the name at all.

On a side note, "Christine" as mentioned above, is not a SIGINTer. Nor is Christine her actual name. It's close though. I happen to know who she is as we have several people we know in common, and I used to work at the base where she did her NCO course. Small world.
 
Marauder06 said:
I read that article before and it made me wonder. If they are such bad asses, why are they in gender-segregated units? If they're "tough as nails," why aren't they in with the men? And if they're so "special," how come they haven't been deployed operationally?

Smacks more of propaganda than badassery.
Click to expand...

To say a few words about the Norwegian military in general, and these units specifically. Note that this is my subjective view and not official military info...

The Norwegian military is still a conscript force. Back in the day, it used to be based more on quantity than tech. However, after the Cold War ended, and with technology progressing, it was downsized and downsized and made more high-tech. At the same time, we still kept the conscription. It used to be mandatory for all men the year they turned 19. However, with the current size of our military (the Army has 3 standing infantry/mech Bns), no more than a few thousand positions need to be filled every year.
Currently, conscription lasts for 12 months of active duty and another 6 months of reserve duty to be completed, if ordered, as training days/weeks until the age of 44. Conscription has always been open to women, if they volunteered. Not many did. A few years ago, it was made mandatory for women, too. Stated intent was obviously to be able to select the best candidates for the positions needed to be filled - it does take a lot of work to turn a civilian into a CV90 crewman or dog handler. Not a lot of units are actually 50/50 men and women, though, despite a focus on recruiting women.

The military does have a few fully professional units, though - including MP Close Protection, the Army's Telemark Battalion (a mech inf unit), Intelligence/HUMINT units, SOF and some "jeger" units, to mention a few. To my knowledge, all of these have always been open to women, providing they go through the same selection course as men. On the SOF/"jeger" side, no women have made it so far, including the units open to conscripts. For the rest, women make up between 0 and 10% of the numbers, depending on the unit (guesstimate). Not including pilots, ground crews, aircrew, and so on, who obviously aren't conscrips.

As for the Jegertroppen, FSK's published info on the unit is pretty vague. The intent seems to be to fill a void for urban SR, HUMINT and similar operations where two burly, bearded men wearing hiking shoes, cargo pants and Arc'teryx jackets kinda stick out a little. Based on the documentaries and articles, the training partly or mostly overlaps the Fallskjermjegere (conscript SOF platoon focusing on SR and DA with a parachute insertion capacity, to which no women have so far been selected), with some added urban ops work that may or may not overlap. However, when they finish their conscription year, there is no automatic offer of a place in the ranks of FSK. They may attend operator selection along with everyone else.
 
I'm sure there is. English isn't my first language, and it's getting pretty rusty these days.

On the subject of gender-equal conscription: as was noted in the first article, the women have slightly different PT standards for entry in Jegertroppen. That goes for most units in the military, and there's been a few issues with women not passing our "combat fitness tests".

Drifting off topic from Jegertroppen now (not that that hasn't happened already in this thread...). I have seen a couple of the girls in action doing PT tests on another selection course - a bunch of guys performed worse than they did. :thumbsup:
 

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