My son is interested in special forces. I want him to talk to someone with firsthand knowledge, not just a recruiter. Any suggestions?

Your son will most likely not pass the selection and the course. Have him talk to a recruiter and pick a job he likes. After school he can try out for SF with no negative repercussions. If he joins on the SF 18X program, when he fails - and the majority do fail - the Army will pick his next job till he finishes his contract

As a recruiter I would completely agree with SFC (Join to see) I tell every person who walks through my doors and wants 18X that they are more than likely not going to pass. There is an extremely large number of combat arms soldiers that come from the Army that does not pass SFAS...a kid off of the street doesn’t seem to stand a chance. I’ve said multiple times, I don’t think that it should even be an enlistment option. If he really wants to go SF, I’d say go infantry and after a few years, try out then. It’s less on what your son is capable of and more on what’s expected that he just won’t know.

If you are near an Army base that has a Special Forces element, perhaps someone there can speak with your son. There are also plenty of SF personnel here on RP. He can also start here:

https://goarmysof.com/specialforces/sfrecruiting.html

The few gents I’ve known who served in SF in Vietnam were involved in Security Force Assistance,, training indigenous forces, especially Montagnards tribesmen, in the use of small arms and tactics to counter the threat of Viet Cong attack on their villages. They said it was frustrating because of language issues (the tribesmen frequently didn’t speak Vietnamese, so interpreters provided by the host nation were virtually worthless), And they felt their Army careers had not benefitted from their SF assignments because their experiences were so far outside the norm for their career field that their peers in the Regular Army looked down on them and senior officers didn’t trust them to conform to normal standards. The guys doing Direct Action, Special Reconnaissance and Counter Insurgency got the glory, but the trainers of indigenous forces seemed to burn out pretty quickly. But my info is very dated and based on a small sample of soldiers, so take it for what it’s worth.