33 Replies to ““Special””

  1. Typical MAIN STREET MEDIA….and by extension Hollyweird.
    Arrogant in their deep pit of Ignorance.

    Whith a war being fought with massed artillery and masses of tanks Ala Kursk…special forces have ZERO need nor would EVER Want to be involved.

    Not being one intimately familiar with Spec Ops, but I know enough, that they rely on subterfuge and remaining unseen in a theatre of war…insurgency style…not as regular armoured ground troops.

    The NYT article is truly a joke and put out there for some sort of “RaH Rah” BS…nothing else.

    Laughable in fact.

    When it comes to TV type acting, about the closest thing you’ll see is “Seal Team” …who have as one of their actors an actual Seal Team member as part of their cast. As realistic as it gets and a damned good show. IMO.

    1. Steak
      I have 2 friends who are X special ops, and worked with a 3rd for a bit. That NYT schiff is stupid in over drive.

      1. You’re confused again, “special needs” and “special forces” are not the same thing.

    2. Special forces have been operating in Ukraine from day 1. Russian special forces indeed got decimated typically by territorial defense units. But when used properly SF units can be very effective. Ukrainian SF have been operating in nominally controlled by Siberians areas, merging with partisans, targeting infrastructure and command chain, providing recon, dropping Warmates on unsuspecting Siberians etc. They’re a force multiplier by the very virtue that enemy needs to deploy significant amount of forces to hunt them. forces that otherwise would be deployed at the front.

      1. It’s true! My sources are CNN, BBC, WaPo, MSNBC, NYT, the State Department and of course Vicki Nuland. No WEF Globohomo propaganda there. I’m way too smart for that!

        Orange man bad! Pooooooooooooooooooooooooooteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        1. Achmed/doug/default/Angel/ray, I see, you’re back and whoring for attention again?

          1. Don’t know Whoring.

            AOC said Sex Work was Real Work.

            So if you mock Whoring you are probably against Climate Change… Probably…

  2. go to hollyweird to learn to tell a lie, and all military garbage that comes out of hollyweird is a lie! Ask mikey fatso, he knows!

  3. I met many Canadian Airborne Regiment soldiers back in the day. They were as close to special forces as we had at the time. If there was a war those were the guys I’d want around me. They were muscled, as tough as nails, and didn’t acknowledge pain. They were sure taught to fight conventional war plus a whole lot of other crap.

    2. Sure, but modern HE weapons systems grind exposed infantry to hamburger meat in mere minutes. The problem with “airborne forces” is that they represent a very expensive, exposed and risky way to deliver under-gunned light infantry into what ought to be a mechanised infantry warzone.

      The size of a soldier’s muscles, and the hunger for blood that he may have, are only useful in urban skirmishing, or in hit-and-run attacks against people like the Taliban. Being heavy infantry in fullscale modern war is closer to being a factory worker in a plant with a really crappy safety record, than to the fantasy version of “special forces” pumped so frequently by Hollywood and the gaming industry.

      In my view, modern “special forces” are nowhere near specialised enough for deployment to a modern combined arms “heavy brigade”. They need to be a jack of all trades, but a master of none.

      You deploy your special forces. I’ll deploy 1st Guards Shock Army. We’ll see who is still operational after first week. Note, I said “operational” … Not tactical.

      Sources like Larry Johnson, amd about 2-3 dozen more, were easily available since day 2 of the SMO for anyone who bothered to look past the typical BBC/CNN media W⚓

        1. Was on a A team, 7th Group. Once a year we got the company together and did basic platoon assault drills. We knew if the Army wanted us a common leg grunts, they’d use us as common infantry. No one is “special” to the needs of the Army.

          In Ukraine, SF units make the Russian rear insecure. Teams roaming ten miles behind lines attack resting units, report traffic, attack small repair and supply sites. A couple good SF guys can shepard adventurous souls.

          Back in my day you couldn’t be in SF unless you served in a regular unit. We had tankers, artillery, engineering sergeants. I had one engineer sergeant who I thought went awol. Didn’t see him for a couple months. Then he was in hallway with Major oak leaves. I told him to get them off but he laughed. Showed me his ID as a new Major. I asked him and he said he was sick of being a Sergeant, had a Master’s degree in mining from the Colorado School of Mines, called the Corps of Engineers in DC and they said come on up. All checked out and they offered him Major on the spot.

          1. What was your specialty in the A Team? And your second language? As I recall from reading back then there was a 1st, 5th, 7th and 10th SFG and they added more since then.

          2. I actually doubt the level effectiveness claimed of Ukrainian SF right now. I suspect the Russian SF’s are more impactful on actual operational outcomes. Why? Who gets to maneuver, and who gets to sit tight and try to survive constant bombardment leading to WW1 style shellshock? So Russian ops seem undegraded, and Ukrainian ops massively degraded.

            Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics.

            Mass and widespread use of drones has rendered modern SF somewhat less able to penetrate on deep ops than they were late in the Cold War when I served (in COIN ops and intel. Heck, what we could have done with the kind of drone coverage the RF has today!)

            BBC writes about how Russian AD and EW is significantly degrading Ukrainian drone coverage, to the point it is becoming marginal at best. That suggests to me such degradation is material and widespread.

            Now Ukrainian SF are moving blind (1980s style) while RF SF have drone “top cover” as eyes and ears, and to aid in targeting.

            Sure, Ukraine has some capability with SF. Is it doing much to slow the Russians? Nowhere near as much as 8 years of digging in, prepping under NATO guidance, training and funding has. On this point, I defer to the Larry Johnson and Moon of Alabama types, and others similar. They have gallons more cred on the topic of NATO involvement and preparations in Ukraine than any of the usual goof troop around here.

          3. “I actually doubt the level effectiveness claimed of Ukrainian SF right now. I suspect the Russian SF’s are more impactful on actual operational outcomes.”

            But of course you do, every time you flap your gums you explain how russia is the greatest.

            As for situational awareness, Ukrainian is, of course, order of magnitude better. They are receiving regular NATO intel that goes much deeper beyond front lines that Siberian. This has been demonstrated repeatedly. One of the reasons they are managing to hold off the orc horde is their recon and effective used of drones and SF to co-ordinate artillery strikes. They are outgunned and outnumbered and keep punching above their weight because Siberians are firing blind. Another reason is of course is that Siberians still haven’t managed to overcome Ukrainian air defenses.

            Siberians tried maneuver warfare, failed in a spectacular manner and decided to revert to most primitive tactic of recon by fire. It was already explained to you. They are now trying recon with small units up to company size moving in blind until ambushed. And then try to drop arty on where they think Ukrainians are. They’re moving slowly based on sheer numbers and are suffering disproportionate loses (although nowhere near as disproportionate as in initial stages).

            When it finally occurred to them to stop using unencrypted comms, they tried jamming Ukrainian communications and it turned out they were jamming themselves as much as they were jamming Ukrainians. So that went largely through the window.

            So again and again, what you’re saying is again exactly opposite to reality. I could go on, but there is little reason to do so, since you keep flipping every fact upside down to argue that orcs rule. This is Pravda level propaganda devoid of a single original thought.

          4. Bill.
            There was no 1st then. JFKIMA, though.
            91S. I was a platoon medic in the 82nd( 3/4th ADA ) and applied, and went through MedLab/Q.
            Spanish. So I went to Liberia( they had the first of many coups ), then Panama. After, I contracted in Honduras in support of the Contras.

            We had a yearly tune up on full blown Europe War. Supposedly we were to be all dropped/salted over Eastern Europe and, I guess, watch our incoming nukes.

            Re, Ukraine. Outside the toe to toe Donbass, SF-ish stay behind local territorial units are putting the hurt on thin, separated Russian units.

            Remember, 8 out of 10 any army are once a year to the rifle range rear echelon service. Easy targets. Afraid of the deep woods, the dark, huddled in nasty weather. That was our preference. The worse the better.

    3. ” … plus a whole lot of other crap.”

      Yup. They sure did a hell of a job on an unarmed Somali kid.

        1. And they had quit soldiering and turned into something less than human.

          1. Killing is human. Hate to break it to you.

            You are the product of billions of years of male killers.
            If anyone in the last few thousand years of that billion years chain wasn’t a killer,but a killed. You would not be here. Nature doesn’t care about your albiet pleasant notions.

  4. Ukraine is mostly a conventional war of taking and occupying territory, something that Special Forces, the Air Force, and many others cannot do.

    They can through irregular attacks deny it to the enemy, at least temporarily.

    1. I agree. Firing artillery with pinpoint accuracy while dodging return fire seems to be the most valuable asset right now.

      Don’t need JTF-2 for that.

      1. It is interesting that war has not changed that much in 200 years, when it comes to slugging it out toe to toe with a peer enemy. There are frequent deviations from script, but modern conventional war that actually has victory over the adversary as its strategic goal (something NATO is mostly unfamiliar with) is surprisingly mean-reverting. Borodino has much in common with the fight for Donbass: line ’em up, blast away, and the guy with the better ability to withstand the opponent’s artillery, holds the field at sunset. In today’s terms that means who can replenish – and deliver on target – the ammunition fastest ant most accurately. Also, as Napoleon learned at Borodino, sometimes more numbers doesn’t lead to victory, if they cannot be effectively and accurately brought to bear.

        I find NATO way, way too obsessed with SF activities, based on bazillions of defence white papers written after 9/11 amd Yugoslavia, and few in NATO today (if any) understand the finer points of running and winning a meatgrinder campaign.

        Can anyone tell me what the NATO strategy for victory in Ukraine is? Apparently, a 1 million man Ukrainian army is going to liberate Donbass and Crimea any day now. But what is the strategy for this offensive? Who is in command? Which units will spearhead, on which axes, and who is in reserve? Where arenthe supply and ammunition depots? The fuel? It was as much failure to keep fuel moving up to the Panzer units, as it was Allied actions that finally halted the 1944 Bulge offensive. The Wehrmacht failed to capture key Allied fuel depots, which wrecked the entire operation in the end!

        And these Ukrainian brigades are going to be better trained and equipped than the elite brigades that were decimated in Donbass and Mariupol? Where are all these elite Ukrainian forces coming from? Ukraine has no “Siberian Reserve” to draw on. Ukraine’s economy is wrecked now. So who is paying for all this? With what money?

        Modern positional warfare is unglamorous, far less rewarding of thrilling tactical victories than basic operational competence in execution, and as Sun Tzu so eloquently pointed out:

        “Strategy without tactics is the slow way to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”

        I can’t think of a better precis of Russia vs Ukraine in Donbass.

        1. “The fuel? It was as much failure to keep fuel moving up to the Panzer units, as it was Allied actions that finally halted the 1944 Bulge offensive. The Wehrmacht failed to capture key Allied fuel depots, which wrecked the entire operation in the end!”

          If the operational plan for resupply involves capturing as you go then you have probably already failed.

          And this is just getting enough POL.

          Apart from 9mmP there were next to no German weapons that took Allied ammo.

        2. “Can anyone tell me what the NATO strategy for victory in Ukraine is? Apparently, a 1 million man Ukrainian army is going to liberate Donbass and Crimea any day now. ”

          A stupid question followed by a strawman. NATO does not have a strategy for Ukraine. NATO never expected Ukraine to hold on for that long. Days after the war started, they offered to get Ukrainian leadership out of Ukraine to which Zelenski famously replied “I need ammo not a ride”. None, neither NATO, nor Siberians expected Ukraine to last anywhere near as long as they did. The current NATO objective is to help Ukraine to hold on to as much as possible and to bleed Siberians as much as possible.

          Your entire assertion about war, not changing and about russians picking up the optimal strategy is nonsense. It is making up excuses after the embarrassing initial failures. You may as well claim that Siberians really wanted to lose Moskva and really wanted NATO to expand.

          Entire russian doctrine of deep battle, massive armor sweeps and extensive use of special forces has failed. They haven’t picked up an optimal strategy. After a massive fail they resigned themselves to a strategy that is the least bad and the least embarrassing for them. So far Ukrainian response to the change in strategy has been underwhelming. Again, they seem not to be very good a large unit manouver warfare. Neither are Siberians. The reality is that initially Ukrainians fought an order of magnitude beyond rational expectations and Siberians fought at an order of magnitude below rational expectations. Now the this situation has changed and although Siberian loses are still higher it is not good enough for Ukraine, given massive numerical heavy equipment advantage that Siberians have.

  5. Government secrecy is the big problem with the proliferation of special operations forces.

    New York Times said just the other day that Canada has guys in Ukraine, do they have to tell Parliament? Nope.

    Regular troops go in with flags flying and are sent by a duly elected government that should justify combat to the electorate, ideally.

    1. Which is why I believe the Russians will have no issue treating such men as illegal combatants and militants. Doesn’t matter what you or I think. They will argue if the Canadian Parliament didn’t know, then they weren’t actually there. They were private citizens passing by who decided to jump into an existing street brawl, and got effed up as a result. Hey, just telling you what the Russians will say, and what 75% of the planet’s population representing 60% of global GDP will agree with.

  6. If you have not been using your Special Forces, then you end up in a conventional war.

    As far as lacking equipment goes, I guess they do not sell piano wire anymore at the PX. You can buy civilian tomahawks, though.

    1. Ha! I like this. But it DOES put them in a terrible bind if captured or wounded!

  7. Yes/No.

    Yes there is a LOT of Hollywood associated with ‘Special Forces’. It has basically become Hollywood shorthand for ‘Secret Military Team that do… secret… stuff…’ and are either evil or angels depending on what the plot needs them to be.

    As for the real world? Well… first Your Nation WILL Vary. A lot of what they do vs what they are called will depend on your nation’s view on how they expect to wage warfare and by extension what sort of troops they believe they will need to fill those roles.

    ‘Light Infantry’ – could mean a number of things depending on what your nation expects from them. Paras are sometimes described as Light Infantry and, given they are equipped differently from ‘Line Infantry’ (for want of a better term) they technically ARE Light Infantry… BUT… they are also part of the Parachute Regiment with all the associated history and unit pride.

    SAS in Australia is regarded as THE ELITE. One of their roles is deep recon. They are trained and equipped to go deep beyond the nominal front line and, well, recon. Does this have a role in ‘conventional warfare’? Yes. Is this a ‘Special Forces’ team… ummm… well they are not one of the conventional Regiments.

    Basically we are playing with words and also playing with the command level of the combat. At tactical squad level do you need a ‘Special Forces’ team to take out a small garrison (15 troops) at a cross roads. Maybe. A conventional infantry platoon could probably do the same. So are Special Forces useful in this ‘conventional warfare’ role? Yeah probably.

    What about a company level assault? Do Special Forces bring anything new to the table? Probably not.

    Battalion level group? Probably not.

    Brigade level operation? Well… probably yes, because once you get up to that level you are now big enough in numbers that the small specialist team doing deep recon or rear areas interdiction is a useful part of the overall operational objective.

    The other thing to muse over is again Your Nation WILL Vary and is based on a nations overall culture. It occurred to me several years ago when considering WW2 combat that only the Commonwealth and oddly the Italians were culturally able to successfully create REALLY ‘special’ combat units. (stick with me here). German troops were trained to show a lot of low level tactical initiative. They were encouraged to think and act on the fly and act more based on what the end objective was rather than the ‘how’ of the attack.

    American troops were typically of a greater education standard relative to many of the other nations. If you were an intelligent person there was a culture of allowing them to BE intelligent within their existing unit. If someone had a better way of doing things the American ‘Can Do’ mind set encouraged them at a cultural level to be creative.

    The other factor is that for the most part during the phases of the war where ‘special’ units could have been formed both the Germans and Americans were mostly successful in their campaigns. Regular troops got it done. Why form ‘special’ units?

    British however had a long tradition of the Regimental System of doing things the ‘proper way’. They also had the tradition of the mild eccentric (remember, Bog Snorkelling is a British ‘sport’ – Brits be weird). So if you were a bit of an eccentric and insisted on not playing the game, old boy, for long enough then eventually they would just give you enough rope and tell you to go off and try their ideas… somewhere else. Under the ‘British’ system this was a bit of a win/win. The regular units got rid of the trouble makers and the trouble makers went off and either became VERY successful or allowed combat evolution to thin out the flawed ideas.

    To me the British was able to do this because their regular troops actively discouraged people trying to make change from the bottom up. In the German and American systems being a creative soldier was almost expected. So if you had new ideas you were rewarded within your existing unit. Hence there was no cultural system to ‘kick out troublemakers’.

    Soviets? Ummm… Party Line and all that. You did what you were told and tried not to become too successful least you were seen as being unpatriotic (aka – a threat to the ruling elite).

    Japanese? They had the more rigid ‘tradition based’ culture of the British, but lacked the acceptance of the ‘eccentric’ as a cultural subgroup. They also had a more dominant ‘honour’ system. You find few examples of units becoming ‘special’ in the sense they re-wrote their own manuals. Trained ‘assault’ type units did exist, but they were more ‘I need you to crash land on a US airbase and destroy as many US aircraft as you can. PS – there is not extraction plan.’

    Oddly the Italians seemed to be the only other really successful users of Special Forces units in WW2. This is the nation that played around with ‘human torpedoes’ to allow frogmen to enter British harbours. In the desert they came closest to matching the LRDG type patrols. Why? Probably because so much of the rest of the Italian military were largely apathetic (and also poorly equipped to fight) and aggressive war.

    ‘Please go to Libya and risk your life over featureless desert’
    ‘Ummm… how about… No? How about I be very pragmatic about this and not pointlessly die just to make a point’

    Since for the most part none of their immediate families lived in featureless African deserts there was little motivation to get better in the ‘regular’ units. So anyone who DID have motivation, ideas and a willingness to think unconventionally would have either cried into their ration packs each night in frustration or drifted towards the more ‘elite’ units that ended up being formed. There is also that consideration that unlike the regular German and American regulars, the Italian regulars were NOT getting the job done and there was a need to find unconventional methods to fill their objectives.

    Probably.

    In my eyes at least.

    Don’t quote me in your final exam 😛

    1. Excellent post, thank you. Very nicely summarized and double points for noticing the spectacular successes of Italian SF, their operations in Alexandria, Malta and Gibraltar are legendary. British were very lucky that they magnitude of Italian success in Alexandria could be concealed as both Valiant and Queen Elizabeth did not capsize and sat straight at the bottom thus appearing undamaged (at least not critically) to high altitude aerial recon.

      An excellent account of Italian SF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=335p0U_XY6U

      I am not sure if it was you who has indicated that you dislike the source or was it someone else, so if it was you then sorry.

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