In Focus with Curtis Fox: Rethinking the SFOD-A

Editor’s Note: Welcome back to our weekly column with former Green Beret Curtis Fox, where we explore the evolving role of Special Forces. This week, Curtis explores the evolution, structure, and limitations of the 12-man Special Forces Operational Detachment Alphas (SFOD-A), arguing that while it remains a versatile unit for unconventional warfare, modern operational demands may require smaller specialized teams and better integration with enabler support and Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs).

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The 12-man SFOD-A has proven to be one of the most enduring unit structures of modern special operations. In 1942, the Army established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a wartime intelligence service that reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The OSS had two primary missions: 1) Collect, Analyze, and Disseminate Intelligence; 2) Conduct Unconventional Warfare. The Special Operations (SO) branch and Operational Group Command (OGC) branch were created to support Unconventional Warfare.

SO branch was staffed by non-uniformed personnel that were proficient in foreign languages and had cultural expertise. They were tasked with pilot team functions, making initial contact with local partisans behind enemy lines, organizing them, and reporting vital ground intelligence back up the OSS chain. They mobilized indigenous partners, facilitating sabotage and assassination actions—anything to disrupt the enemy and deny him safe-haven. They relied on security through obscurity, utilizing a small footprint and close working relationship with the locals to achieve their goals. Once they had fully mobilized indigenous partners, SO branch personnel served as command-and-control, advising their partners alongside company or battalion command staff and coordinating offensive activities alongside conventional forces.

OGC branch was staffed with uniformed Army personnel that were trained in light infantry tactics. Recruitment prioritized individuals with foreign language and cultural expertise, but OG Teams were tasked with infiltrating behind enemy lines to engage in kinetic actions in the enemy rear. They were expected to work with their SO cousins to mobilize local partisans (guerillas) as force multipliers to fight the occupations in France, Norway, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, Burma, and China. In practice, the OG Teams were employed in almost identical fashion to the British SAS, conducting deep reconnaissance and attacking sensitive enemy installations and targets of opportunity with overwhelming firepower before they disappeared back into the bush.

The OG Teams were sophisticated 30-man infantry platoons led by a Captain. In practice, they were usually divided into two 15-man squads, each led by a 1st Lieutenant. The squad’s command element included a Sergeant First Class (second in command), medic, and RTO. Then there were two subordinate fire teams with four riflemen and a squad leader each. A second RTO floated between the fire teams.

In 1952, Army planners copied the old OG Team structure, using it as the basis for the early SFOD-As. In fact, many of the early Special Forces instructors were former OSS men from the SO and OGC branches, and they trained the men that would eventually take up residence in Bad Tolz Germany under 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). This basic unit of Special Forces has undergone reconfigurations and transformations in 1943, 1952, 1958, 1963, 1971, and 1984.

The current structure of the SFOD-A was established in 1984, and includes a Captain (18A), Warrant Officer (180A), Team Sergeant (18Z), Intelligence Sergeant (18F), two weapons and operations NCOs (18B), two demolitions and supply sergeants (18C), two medics (18D), and two communications sergeants (18E).

In the modern era, Title 50 peacetime missions require low-visibility and diplomatic awareness (especially those of the sensitive variety), and the traditional SFOD-A can have a large footprint. Many of these missions are better served by 6-man or even 3-man teams. The use of small configurations of special troops for low-visibility missions in hostile or denied environments was pioneered by the OSS SO branch, and it should theoretically already be in Special Forces’ DNA.

At present, each Special Forces Group has a special troops battalion (4th battalion). The 4th Battalions are staffed with a variety specially trained small teams called SFOD-Es and SFOD-Gs that meet the Regiment’s responsibilities for preparation of the environment and advanced force operations.

SFOD-Es, also known as Regional Support Elements, are 6-man Special Forces detachments that have extensive cultural and linguistic expertise regarding a specific region (much more than a typical SFOD-A). They deploy and redeploy to their respective regions of expertise, providing specialists to coordinate with the State Department and interagency in conducting preparation of the environment taskings.

SFOD-Gs, also known as Jedburgh Teams, are 3-man Special Forces detachments that are capable of conducting full-spectrum special operations. They frequently conduct special reconnaissance taskings to support preparation of the environment and advanced force operations, and they have been used to disrupt enemy networks.

These boutique units have not only proven their value conducting sensitive activities, but many SFOD-Gs have been deployed to conduct low-visibility FID missions.

U.S. Embassies prize these small units, not only for their bespoke mission-sets and exquisite capabilities but because they can deliver much of the training capacities of a traditional SFOD-A while operating with a much smaller profile. They can fly into country on commercial airlines without military transport and pallets of heavy equipment, they can live in small Embassy apartment housing rather than a large walled compound, and their personnel tend to be senior and experienced. This allows U.S. Embassies to support host-nation requests for Special Forces training packages with a great deal less headache, reduced counter-intelligence threats, and a smaller mission footprint.

Alternatively, in a Title 10 environment where traditional SFOD-As are primarily conducting direct action and reconnaissance missions facilitated by local partisans (similar to the OSS OG Teams), Special Forces Groups struggle to provide mission-tailored enabler packages to better facilitate SFOD-A actions downrange. Typical enabler attachments to the SFOD-A may include dog-handlers, cyber specialists, EOD, SOT-As, debriefers, EW, CBRNE, etc.

To be clear, Special Forces Groups all have a Group Support Battalion with these kinds of enablers, but both MARSOC and NSW place a much higher priority on providing tailored enabler packages for MSOTs and SEAL platoons respectively. In fact, almost half of MARSOC’s deployable personnel are enablers. Additionally, USASOC has made it clear that enablers will be cut in order to accommodate the Army’s force reduction mandate (3,000 personnel billets).

The Special Forces Regiment is moving in the wrong direction regarding enablers, and given that an SFOD-A is doctrinally supposed to be capable of running a mission cycle independent from higher support, the loss of enablers to gather intelligence and support the prosecution of targets is nothing less than catastrophic.

Some proposals have been made to create new 18-series identifiers for UXV/drone operators, cyber specialists, SIGINT/EW specialists, 3D-Printing specialists, etc. The idea is that some SFOD-As will run heavy. There can either be a company of 18-man SFOD-As in each battalion, or perhaps two 18-man SFOD-As per company. There have even been proposals for a 30-man SFOD-A—essentially a Special Forces platoon with robust combat capabilities.

The problems with this absurd approach are legion, but it essentially compromises the Special Forces doctrinal mission of UW by creating a unit that is designed to maneuver in the manner of a Ranger or SEAL platoon. Such a formation would be capable of conducting direct action missions or raids; however, its size would make it cumbersome and clumsy in a hostile or denied environment where maintaining a low signature is key to survival and limited local resources are the only means of resupply and sustainment.

Using support specialists for these boutique skills and leveraging the Army’s existing training pipelines makes much more sense.

One thing the OG Teams, on which the modern SFOD-A is based, did not do was cover battalion staff functions for their indigenous partners. Those tasks were covered by SO branch personnel, and it’s not clear that modern SFOD-As are really versatile enough to do both effectively.

The SFOD-A was designed to include all of the general staff functions typical of a battalion HQ (operations, supply, intelligence, comms, personnel, etc.) and was intended to have supply requirements met through local auxiliaries or airborne resupply drops. This was optimal in 1952 because SFOD-As of 10th Special Forces Group (the first Special Forces Group) were intended to stay behind in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany. They would collaborate with local partisans to blow up railroads, powerlines, and telephone cables, and harass the Soviet rear in order to buy NATO forces time.

Unfortunately, while the 12-man SFOD-A has proven to be a lasting and versatile formation, it is becoming threadbare. Most Green Berets can give anecdotal stories about a time when an SFOD-A ran an indigenous battalion in Vietnam, but looking closer to present at Afghanistan or Iraq, that’s not what the Regiment was really doing. Big Army and Marines focused on trained and managed indigenous conventional forces. Special Forces trained units like the Afghan Commandos, Afghan Special Forces, and Iraqi Special Forces.

As I stated earlier, the NCOs that run most of the activity on SFOD-As are taught how to be the team internal S-1, S-2, S-3, S-4, S-6. None of the NCOs are trained in providing those staff functions for a full battalion. In fact, the only individual on the SFOD-A who has any formal training in how a full battalion actually works is the 18A.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, SFOD-As proved to be extremely proficient at training indigenous personnel on tactics and leading them in combat. But long-term support functions, command-and-control, logistics and supply were all performed on an ad hoc basis to the detriment of forward progress. This is why Special Forces should coordinate deployments with the SFABs. These battalion staff training tasks could also be covered by Special Forces officers that are on permanent station in the theater, already have a rolodex of indigenous contacts, intimate relations with the U.S. Embassy, and perfect proficiency in the local language.

If indigenous battalion HQ staff are being trained and managed outside or above the SFOD-A, then Special Forces should reduce a double training requirement. Young Green Berets train both as an Ops NCO and armorer (18B), Supply NCO and demolitions expert (18C), Medic and personnel manager (18D), Comms NCO and digital network specialist (18E).

At minimum, the SFOD-A should consider these as strictly internal support functions that enable autonomous employment with minimal higher assistance over extended periods of time. But is it heresy to ask if these staff functions could be better covered by a more robust company HQ? Afterall, that’s essentially what MARSOC and the SEALs do.

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Stay tuned for next week’s continuation of “Practice of Unconventional Warfare,” where Fox explores restructuring the Special Forces company to reduce administrative burdens on SFOD-As, improve training, and enhance operational efficiency by incorporating smaller specialized teams and expanding support staff.

You can read the previous column here.