Posted: 4/3/2005 2:35:23 PM EDT
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I was looking at the Chris Reeve Neil Roberts Warrior Knife, which is, as many of you know, dedicated to the memory of Petty Officer First Class Neil Roberts, killed in action during Operation Anaconda, Afghanistan 2002, and the first SEAL to lose his life in action since 1989. I was reading an article last night that was about U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elseware. There are many, many Army SF guys that have been killed over there. However, Neil Roberts was the first SEAL to be KIA since 1989. I was wondering if any of you guys know why so many Army SF guys are getting killed over there, while SEALs aren't. Is the Army trying to train the SF guys too fast, or is the training not good enough, or what?? I know the main mission of SF is Foreign Internal Defense (FID), and the main mission of SEALs is fast strike raids, ambushes, etc. So I'm starting to assume that SF are trained less on actual small-unit combat tactics like raids, stalking, ambushes, patrolling, but more on leading large numbers of indigs in more simple conventional infantry-type attacks, while SEALs are more trained on small unit tactics. So, I went on the ever intellegent internet and did some research. This is what I came up with for actual combat training for the SEALs and Army SF: First, SEALs: 3rd Phase of BUD/s is Land Warfare Training, which is 9 weeks in length. After BUD/S, there is STT (SEAL Tactical Training), which is 4 months long. Then, once in a SEAL Platoon, they undergo Land Warfare training again. (I've also read that SEALs often contract trainers to teach very specialized combat training) Now Army SF: Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) Individual Skill Phase II: 46 days of small-unit tactics and live-fire events. So, it SEEMS that SEALs get MUCH more individual combat training than Army SF does. What's up with this? |
| The difference between the training length is that the Army SF guys come from combat arms fields and the SEALs come from everything else. One day youre a pipe fitter and the next youre trying to become a SEAL. SEAL trainees have no foundation in ground combat skills so, they have to learn everything from scratch. Thats not the case for the SF guys. They learn ground combat skills from day one in the Army. SF is a progression for CA guys. For the majority of guys who try out for SF, they already came from the Ranger regiment or the 82nd ABN. There are those however like one SF man I met who came over from Armor. Special Forces takes a seasnoned soldier and makes him even better. The SEALs take a motivated yet unexperienced sailor and makes them better too. It just boils down to the time thats spent training. Also that 46 days that you mentioned is pure hell for some. The SEALs have to train longer to get rid of the numbnuts wheras they Army has already done that for the most part beofre they show up at FT. Bragg. |
| A few other things. There are probaly 50 Times as many Sf guys out there then seals. One of the coolest things i read was that Special operaters were in control of aprox 1/4 of iraq 6 months before the War even started. Seals are not doing as dangerous work. Its alot easier to covertly take over a oil refinery then have 12 guys take out platoon and company sized targets. The SF is basicaly looking for any combat arms to go to SF school. Beacuse the 19th/20th SF group is in my state, they are asking MDARNG to go through SF insead of regular deployment. There is also a SF program for enlistments. Its called 18C i think. They go to basic, then to 11b school, then Airborne and air assaul. Then they got all the SF shit like SERE and what not. |
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airborne_trooper is spot on. The SF Q Course is just a preliminary evaluation course to see if individuals have some basic skills, attributes, and attitudes to qualify them for further SF training. Defensorfortis is slightly off in that Army SF guys do not exclusively come from combat arms backgrounds. I was in military intelligence units the entire time I was active duty and saw plenty of people from military intel, maintenance, and communications career fields go off to the Q course and futher 18 series MOS schooling. |
Yep. A hell of a lot more SF guys died in Vietnam than SEALs as well. There are just more of them and besides that, they do more work on land (or at least they do for the most part...in Afghanistan, the SEALs are doing a lot of groundpounding.) |