Tag: Special Forces

It’s not likely the original members of the OSS and the Intelligence Community would have passed today’s background checks and standards. They did, however, perform and get things done.

Between 2007 and 2014, the number of Special Forces training missions tripled from 12 JCETs training 560 foreign personnel, to 36 JCETs training 2,300.

Nate Boyer, former Army SF and pro football player, has written what I consider the finest article to come out of the Colin Kaepernick drama.

This is a large development. Just last year reports emerged that SOF, as a whole, was going to or had rejected women in SOF. However, political marching orders did not sway, and women were to be enveloped into operational roles.

The role of combat controller is one of the most fascinating special operations career fields around. But info on the job is hard to find.

Ankara views the YPG as a threat because of its close links to Kurdish militants waging a three-decade-old insurgency on its own soil. It has been alarmed by the YPG’s gains in northern Syria since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, fearing it could extend Kurdish control along Turkish borders and fuel the ambitions of Kurdish insurgents in Turkey.

As a soldier and as a special operations assaulter, the only acceptable standard of care with a weapon is error-free.

The operation was targeting both Daesh and the Kurdish YPG militia, whose gains in northern Syria have alarmed Turkey.

With all of the intensity of the job, it’s easy to forget we’re talking about young women, who are dealing with complex situations and who carry the heavy burden of responsibility on their shoulders. Only few others their age have to handle such responsibility every day. They try to also lead normal lives—with families, friends, dating, and fun—but it’s not always possible.

We had to build everything from scratch, and nothing was easy. Our infiltration to the site took over ten hours, during which we traveled just over six miles, because of the snow and the mountainous terrain. But a senior officer briefed General David Petraeus, who had assumed command of the Afghanistan theatre, that we would be in place before the snow thawed and the Taliban, who were likely living it up on vacation in Pakistan, re-entered.

It’s important to remember that – you’re still a cog in the wheel. It’s easy to become lost in your sense of entitlement because someone has deemed you worthy of selection, before others. But, to get through you have to go all the way, which is further than most.

In the life cycle of an SF soldier’s career, it is typical to serve a tour of duty at SWCS. When you’re an instructor at SWCS, you take the ITC as your qualifying course to instruct the students, or ‘studs.’ This particular SERE is a part of the SWCS, ITC was a pre-requisite, meaning you must have taught in a similar environment before.