Defiance
Terror, Pavel Constantin (Romania)
To have humility is to experience reality,
not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence.
It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves.
Then, how much disappears, and all that remains falls into place
--Dag Hammarskjold, former UN Secretary-General
I am open to the guidance of synchronicity,
and do not let expectations hinder my path
--Dalai Lama
_______________
The book is total ooh-rah regarding the selection, training and employment of the Bad Boyz in the making. The plot can be summarized thusly: A bunch of high school football players can't make college ranks, so the beefy boys join the Rangers and later go over to Special Forces.
Defiance, based upon a true story, depicts a classic Unconventional Warfare/Guerrilla Warfare scenario. This is exactly what the 1950's-70's era SF types were trained for and were expected to perform if the U.S. entered into a general war with the Soviets. In effect, SF would continue where the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) left off in 1945.
SF would function as force multipliers training and equipping guerrillas and insurgent forces deep in enemy territory. In the 1980's, Special Operations Command Europe had objectives 450 klicks forward of the FLOT. Unfortunately also in the 80's, SF emphasis was shifting to Direct Action. The edges of SF were starting to get squishy.
In the 1970 version of SFOC, the officer students were trained in Internal Defense and Development (IDAD) and Population and Resource Control (PRC). However, our graduation exercise was a definitive application of all training to converge exactly upon the UW/GW mission of SF. We were expected to infiltrate, link up, train, equip and lead UW/GW fighters arrayed against Soviet forces.
In the Republic of Vietnam, this is exactly what the CIDG and Mike Force troopers did for a living. They executed a UW/GW against the North Vietnamese Army.
All SF and Ranger ooh-rah books proudly boast of the physical requirements for these units, but nowhere do they discuss the mental and I.Q. requirements. What stood SF out from the rest of the Army was our intelligence.
SF NCO's were smart and were partially selected for their brainpower. Smarts were a more important determinant of success than brawn. That is said with the tacit understanding that all of us performed at Airborne levels of physical proficiency before going over to SF.
When the U.S. fights a general war, SF/UW/GW skills will be essential at Theatre Army levels. Concernedly, the force capabilities will be lost due to the atrophy of these synergistic skill sets.
The definition of SF and Special Operations Forces needs to be reified to address real threats to America, threats that go beyond turning SF assets into soldiers who make explosive, door-kicking entries.
There is nothing special about that.
Labels: rangers, special forces, UW/GW + PRC and IDAD as Special Forces missions
posted by rangeragainstwar at 12:14 PM
2 Comments:
there have been changes in the philosophy and make up of the teams too ranger. some of them are things that i think are good for the troops and the mission, others, well....
when i was in one could not walk up to somebody and say "i wanna be in the teams." there was a vetting process that the teams did while folks were in training, boot, a-schools, ocs, the academy. what they were looking for was a very strong intellectual foundation (the minimum IQ for the teams was higher than for annapolis), language mastery (the more the better), weapons proficiency was an added plus but not mandatory. they figured if they found volunteers who were intellectually qualified and psychologically sound they could beat the physical quals into you (and lord ranger, they sure did). during my training, arduous as it was i always had the sense that as long as i didn't quit, and didn't break down physically, the instructors would move heaven and earth (but never, ever, the standards) to help me find my way through to success.
one incident stands out during the BUDS hell week. during a five day stretch of constant harrasment, constant motion, never ending stress i was singled out by a master chief boatswain's mate. he pulled me away from my class for some "extra" training. his regular orders were shouted for all to hear, but while i was performing each of my tasks he was talking to me sotto voce saying "i've seen guys like you before. you pick yourself a level between outstanding and piss poor and do just enough to get by. i want you to know that's not good enough for us. we need everything you got. your classmates need everything you got. if you're holding back a little something extra for later in the field, somebody might die. if you drop, you drop and we'll deal with it. if you're getting through the next rotation and you see a classmate falling behind, i expect you to dig a little deeper and help him through. give me 50 more and rejoin your boat team."
the wisdom of that training style was made absolutely clear to me when i was in vietnam. i had only been there a few months, we had lost one of our senior nco's in an ambush. i went to meet the chopper and found that very same master chief boatswain's mate hauling his seabag and war chest off. i knew then that each of my instructor's were very aware that each candidate that they vetted for the teams was a man that they would not hesitate to deploy with.
now we have folks coming over from other services to try and make the teams. i don't know if that's better, or worse, i just know that is something that has changed.
the training these days is longer, more thorough. our jump quals were done mainly by standing us up by open doors and kicking our asses out. everybody who made in down in one piece was considered to be qualified.
there is also an indoctrination period that helps people prepare themselves physically and mentally for the rigors of BUDS and the other training. i think that is a good thing.
in my day, they wanted us on the razor edge of out of control. they wanted independant thinking. they wanted men who would say "no."
i'm not so sure any more.
one final thing about the college jocks. in our class we had an annapolis football golden boy. great things were expected of him. he had it all, looks, brains, body by michealangelo. he rang out a week before hell week.
MB,
The football players had a different kind of strength. Us skinny fucks were carrying less meat on our bones and could travel farther while expending less energy.
In my day Ranger school was not sending people directly to the 75th bns.so the outlook was more individual but we couldn't make it without pulling together.
Your experience is more in line with the SF of old scenario. When you and i were coming up the ww2 generation was basically fading away and it was becoming a whole new game.
I now question why there separate tabs and schools for SF and Ranger? They seem awful similar to this old fool. There are common core themes that are core to the curriculums, so why not combine them? While at it throw in Pathfinder POI and then cover them all with one tab- hell ,forget the tab just make it part of the MOS qualifier.
Our SF Officer course was mostly cerebral since we all had a basic level of physical proficiency from being Airborne troops.
jim
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