It would seem that the special forces are used more and more with less success. Look at Ascrackastand they drop bombs all over friendly troops and can't find a handful of terrorist leaders. Somalia was yet another debacle.

What is your opinion or idea?

My take is...


Keep the fucking politicians out of the mix!

I do not think it is the SF troopers - I think it is the C2CO's at the top of the chain.  These are the same type of officer who hung Charlie Beckwith out to dry after acting ENTIRELY correctly at Desert One...

What our main problem is is the simple fact that the people at the top don't want to take the blame for anything anymore - they are too worried about "career track" to do what the Armed Forces are SUPPOSED to do - break things and kill people.

To-day's Special Forces are no less motivated than they were 40 years ago - the officers, however, are mainly afraid to take charge and get the job DONE.  This started with the "tour" in combat areas (rather than "for the duration") where we rotate officers in and out of a combat area.  Combat duty became a ticket punch, and leading men INTO combat ceased to be an Honour - it became a resume filler.  This useless little trend got its start in Korea, but became the pervasive shit it is in Vietnam.  I don't count Desert Storm - it wasn't long enough to really matter.

Also, we have no institutional warfighting memory left at the top.  For most of our history, we averaged a war about every twenty years.  We would have the "retreads" from the last war to teach the wet-behind-the-sack FNG kids and officers about the care and feeding of grunts, and how to bring them back home.

Training - for line troops - is also mainly shit.  Officers don't want to spend money, they don't want anything (kill house, weapons, etc.) to get worn or broken (that would cost money to fix,) they don't want to risk injuries or deaths in their units.  Why?  It would wreck their careers...

It's threads like this that make me wish I could go back in - this time as an officer.  We are lacking in Mustangs - and they are exactly what we need!

FFZ

The campaign in Afganistan was very much special operations forces oriented.

In addition to U.S units there were units from several other nations providing manpower there.

They have succesfully conducted operations and i believe in the process killed a shitload of the opposition.

PS. Somalia as a whole operation might have been a debacle, but the special operations units performed well. If you are referring to October 3rd 1993, they conducted the operations [b]succesfully[/b] despite heavier than expected casualties.

To the contrary, Afghanistan has been a HUGE success for SF. What we've seen there is the wave of the future.

If ascrackastand was a huge success why don't we have bin hidin's head on a plate for the world to see.

If Somalia was so great why didn't we have Adid[sp] on that day?

There are more to mention like the airfield mess and that hostage rescue that Jimmy Carter ran.

SF are not used to rack up a body count. Bombers do that.

I feel the best blame is on the "brass" as freefire points out and therefore has lost its sting. Personal "Hollywood" misteek aside the record has been less than stellar in many fields of operations.

Ask Mullah Omar how successful specops troops are these days.




If you can find him. (hint- he ain't in the Afghan presidential palace)

easy fix.
if you want send people to fight you must have infantry combat experience.

Were you ever in the military?

I wasn't, but I've paid attention enough to know that you have no fucking idea what you are talking about. [rolleyes]

An if you have served, it still wouldn't surprise me, there are plenty that have and still have no fucking idea what they are talking about.

You do realize that a country that sent the Brits and later the Russians home with their tails between their legs was taken in a very short time frame. SF played a large part as a go between in organizing the Northern Alliance and, of course, directing laser designators on anything of value to the enemy for our combat aircraft. It couldn't have been done without them. As I said, a HUGE success.

If you call "succes" with the recent attempt on the stand in presidents life "succes" the hell you are right great job but hell the did save him.

Attman
I won't even reply to your little dribble because you make no stand {surprize} much less sence. Silly boy.

Because he's buried in a cave somewhere.



Because Aidid wasn't the target...if your knowledge was as big as your attitude you would know that already.  The targets were his lieutenants and they were successfully brought in.

[whacko]