We've discussed this numerous times on the board already. So long as USASFC/JFKSWCS don't really give a crap about who can be a red hat in their units, they are sometimes going to have substandard support guys. AND... SF guys are going to be suspicious of support guys they no personal experience with, or at least have a warm and fuzzy assessment of from someone else they trust.
As well they should be.
Regiment had paperwork, but generally the only paperwork that the line units saw was counseling forms, and hand reciepts... and very rarely when shit went sideways equipment wise, sworn statements or statements of charges.
You'd have to do your big army paperwork for promotions and the like, but even that was minimal.
We had a whopping 6-9 "support" guys per company.
Training room and armory? Ranger Infantrymen with injuries and longer term profiles, or who were within a year of getting out with no intent of re-enlisting but a high level of "I'm working till I'm out" motivation.
Supply was done by supply, and commo was done by commo. Medics, 1 per platoon with tack-on's from HHC depending on mission planning or support requirements for ranges. FO's, one per platoon. Everyone directly contributed to combat missions. Our supply guy would do his loggie work getting requests sent back for more shit we needed inbetween patrols with the CO/1SG. The commo guys would be working radios and also rolling with the CO/1SG on missions unless the RTO was competent and SGT/SSG Commoman knew that Ranger Psych (as an example) would make sure everyone could talk with no disruption. NBC dude would make sure that shit was straight and would be giving classes to the smarter and pushed forward for classes Rangers about the additional equipment we had for known/likely NBC operations to be able to provide detection and decon.
HHC had an obviously higher concentration of dedicated support MOS people, 6-10 medics/medic team augmentees/PA/Surgeon/PT, S1 shop of paperwork Rangers who still did EIB, roadmarches, jumps, the whole 9. Intel had a couple guys who were rarely seen but always got us the best info possible. S3 was all staff captains or senior NCO's, S4 had 1-2 dedicated MOS ammunition handler people plus mid level NCO's from each company that provided support for that company flexing as required. The motor pool had 3-6 mechanics and other duty positions, half of which usually ended up pushing forward with us. Sometimes on patrols, but we had less than 5% downtime on our entire motor pool because they worked incessantly to make sure rigs were functional, Rangerproof, and if they did succumb to Mechanical Rangeritis, those mechanics would work late and bust ass to get it up both stateside and overseas. Supply had a couple more NCO's and a Warrant to keep the books straight and do the big supply shit... and the cooks made sure we had our chow squared away as well as contributing directly to combat support operations such as Casevac missions because we would get them all EMT qualified, they'd join in sometimes as an attachment to rifle squads and teams for training rotations to get squared away, etc.
Never mind the fact that as a general rule, even as a softskill, you'd be going to Ranger school to get to be an NCO.
I don't know many support guys outside of Regiment who are bad ass enough to start off Commo, get sniper qualified, get their Ranger tab, become an Infantry team leader and be fantastic at it, go on to be a Sniper and president's 100, then move on to be a fucking D-boy... guess what, my team leader at one point was a perfect example of how bad ass support guys in Regiment are.... SFC Van Aalst. RIP, but he was a stellar infantry team leader and I will admit, for about 30 seconds when I learned he was going to be coming to replace my ETS'ing TL, my internal conversation was "great, now I'll have someone who don't know what they're doing in charge of me on live fires"
Then we went out and he taught me ways to do about 200 of my Ranger tasks and duties more quickly, accurately, efficiently, with repeatable results within the first week of being my TL.
Holey shit was I wrong. He taught me a ton of stuff that I applied across the entire spectrum of conducting operations both in garrison and in the field, throughout my military career.
Badasses abound within Ranger Regiment, and not all of them wear infantry blue. Can that be said for other SOF that have no selection process? I think the fact that there's an argument about it going on here proves my point rather well.
160th has a selection for their guys... never hear about issues with their support guys getting cool-guy-itis... because they ARE cool guys and earned their fucking stripes.
SF needs to figure that out, and unfortunately due to the multitude of SF oriented classification varying operations, big army can get away with "owning" the support MOS postings..... until the SF Regiment makes a push to finally takes full ownership of the full spectrum of duty positions that conduct and support the missions they are tasked with.
One idea I had, albeit never having been and rarely even working with SF in general, is that they could co-task their SFAS course cadre (they're already tasked with conducting selections so it wouldn't be extremely hard to add into the repertoire) with holding SFSS. Throwing them at some parts of SFAS with a reduced requirements scoresheet so there's some suck, some self-select "fuck this" quits, some that don't end up cutting the mustard, and a couple stateside woods operations either supporting actual teams doing trainups or in Robin Sage, doing what they would be doing overseas, with who would normally be doing the job supervising as well as grading on their performance...
This would provide a controlled situation, graded, taste of the suck and the reality of the mission they perform within the larger scope, so the support guys realize that this is serious shit and they need to be able to pull their weight at their job because they are supporting guys that have small to no margins for failure.
No idea if it would be feasible since I ain't SF and never will be, but it sounds like it'd be a completely better process than currently utilized.
