Originally posted by
Jacknola>
I just saw this program. It purported to be a profile of the selection process for special forces training. Truthfully, I am discouraged and dismayed by this program. If this is an example of what is required for special forces today, then it is no wonder that in my opinion, SF has "lost its mission" and morphed into just another direct-action force.
What was shown was pure and simple exaggerated ranger training, not the original concept of SF. The "survivors" selected for SF were the top physical-endurance direct action types and the process of elimination insured that those were the only types that survived because that was what the DIs were apparently looking for.
Not once did I get the impression that the qualities emphasized in the original SF, flexibility, teaching ability, maveric improvization, cultural camealeans, were qualities in demand. Guys were "eliminated" because they could not climb a damn 30-ft ladder in a specific amount of time. WTF does that have to do with SF missions?
It is no wonder that the idea of A-camps, training and leading large force-mulitplier CIDG forces, etc. has [apparently] not been a widespread operational concept for SF in Afghanistan... I have heard that the Army found that they could not initiate the Viet era SF mission in Iraq either, because that was not what SF was training for.
Apparently, what the vision for SF today is as a type of spike team MACV-sog direct action US-indig force. If this is the case, then it is no wonder that the CIA is taking over the original SF mission... SF apparently abandoned it volutarily when the direct-action types gained assendency in the organization.
This is not to denigrate the modern SF soldier. They can apparently do direct, endurance, commando-type things that many of us SF vets might have struggled with back in the Viet-Laos-Thailand-Congo-Bolivia, etc. days. But we did
a lot of cold-war missions that relied on personal initiative and small-unit-trains-big-unit shadowy operations that the selection process I just saw on TV has absolutely nothing in common with.
And we used odd soldiers, east-european refugees, old guys, young college boys, many of whom would not that made it in that ranger-type training... yet these soldiers had that thing SF was looking for back then... the ability to go into a strange environment, live with an alien culture, gain the trust and loyalty of the locals, improvize, train, supply, pay, lead a local-force battalion.
I hope that SF TV program was just highly stylized.