Posted on Mar 3, 2017
A Green Beret’s Ode to Big Army’s New Security Force Assistance Brigades
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Special Forces Special Operations
Posted 7 y ago
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Fantastic read! Thanks for sharing. I must agree that training conventional partner forces on BRM and 7-8 is less fun every trip. Having a conventional unit to augment SFA/FID will be a welcome change!
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1SG(P) (Join to see)
I recently had this to say to an old friend:
'- SF guys train foreign forces. That doesn't make them "trainers". Training alone isn't the mission. It's a critical aspect of it. Any NCO in the Army can run an M16 range. That doesn't make them an 18B.
- The general purpose force has long had training and advisory missions that paralleled USSF. The Vietnamese Airborne Advisors immediately come to mind. Norman Schwarzkopf was one. That didn't make him a Green Beret.
- The sheer numbers of this undertaking may doom it. USSF can afford to be selective. So it screens candidates for attributes, some of which are conducive to working in multilateral environments. USSF's also all volunteer. Will this program be the same? As an amusing leg in 1st ID once said to me, "Sarge, the difference between us and the 82nd is none of us volunteered to be here!"'
'- SF guys train foreign forces. That doesn't make them "trainers". Training alone isn't the mission. It's a critical aspect of it. Any NCO in the Army can run an M16 range. That doesn't make them an 18B.
- The general purpose force has long had training and advisory missions that paralleled USSF. The Vietnamese Airborne Advisors immediately come to mind. Norman Schwarzkopf was one. That didn't make him a Green Beret.
- The sheer numbers of this undertaking may doom it. USSF can afford to be selective. So it screens candidates for attributes, some of which are conducive to working in multilateral environments. USSF's also all volunteer. Will this program be the same? As an amusing leg in 1st ID once said to me, "Sarge, the difference between us and the 82nd is none of us volunteered to be here!"'
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MSG (Join to see)
1SG(P) (Join to see) - I suppose we will see what happens. Thanks for the perspective.
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Thank you for the great share and excellent ode to the Brigades.
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I remember the days when SF had little to no money and did mainly busywork. SOF at the time was being asked do training MTT which was beyond it’s scope. It took a lot of “you are asking the wrong people” to get SF out of the Team Rooms and do something. However the wars in the litter boxes changed everything. Big Army decided give SF and SOF every dirty job that Big Army didn’t want to fail at. Damn good article.
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