Elite Special Forces in Danger of Cracking as Demand is ‘Outpacing Capacity’
Elite Special Forces in Danger of Cracking as Demand is ‘Outpacing Capacity’ by Rowan Scarbourgh, Washington Times
America’s in-demand global force against terrorists is showing signs of stress and appears to be gliding toward a decline in readiness, says a Pentagon budget overview on special operations forces.
With the end of U.S. military operations in the Iraq War, the thought was that fewer deployments would give some relief to special operations forces after a dozen years of overseas fighting.
But the 2015 budget overview says demand for special operations forces is up, not down.
It talks of “significant stress on the force” and notes that the demand for Delta Force troops, Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other commandos is “outpacing capacity” and has “initiated a downward trend in SOF readiness” this year…
We need to be very careful here. The knee jerk reaction to the “stress on the force” will be to cut back deployments. While that is necessary and fine for some special operations forces (and we should keep in mind that jointness does not equal sameness even within special operations – Delta, Special Forces, SEALs, Rangers, Civil Affairs and PSYOP forces are not interchangeable despite the bean counters who want to count “SOF Teams” ) for those forces that conduct special warfare there is a need to sustain their deployment tempo not only to support persistent engagement but also to sustain regional expertise. Furthermore, most soldiers who came into Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and PSYOP did so because they want to deploy and work in foreign countries with indigenous forces. While the force may be tired form Afghanistan and Iraq, that does not mean that forces conducting special warfare do not want to deploy. While perhaps counterintuitive to some I think we will face a real morale problem among certain forces if their deployments are scaled back too much in response to the cries of the “stress on the force.”
Just an opinion from the past—when it was just individuals rotating in an out of teams instead of whole teams deploying as say during Iraq and AFG individuals did not get worn out as they knew there was X amount of time between the next war assignments usually then two years between one year tours. SF in the old days was surprisingly able to handle VN (5th) and still maintain the 1st, 8th, and 10th missions.
For those FID type missions then entire teams deployed which was handled at the same time as the war replacements that were coming and going. Sometimes yes the teams deployed understrength but due to the cross training as many carried multiple MOSs (to include ROs) the FID missions still were successful.
Puzzled by the comment on increased suicides —even at the height of VN –alcohol and drugs yes—but due to PTSD that the system did not want to recognize and that was after coming back. Suicide was not known.
Marriage failure rates were high, but at that time the majority of the team members were single and not married due to the ops tempo and there not being much support for families in the old Army days nor where the salaries high enough to support a family.
Since the entire Army seem to go to whole units in the deployment process vs the individual replacements there seems to be the standard same problems across the entire force. That shift was done as a direct reflection on the problems supposedly seen in VN.
Where is the soldier graduating the Q course that doesn’t want to go to afghanistan as soon as possible? The only ones I’m aware of have been there in previous units. In group it may be different but here in the course guys are mad because they are afraid they won’t get their piece.