AllaSnackbah
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Pretty impressive losing your cct and leaving him on a mountaintop to die alone and then actively trying to block his posthumous moh.
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Navy "intelligence"
- Thread starter VTski4x4
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Pretty impressive losing your cct and leaving him on a mountaintop to die alone and then actively trying to block his posthumous moh.
I wouldn’t say it was an Army gap. Blue, littoral, ship-based stuff, amphibious, those are all solidly the Navy and USMC wheel house.
If I were king, I absolutely wouldn’t hesitate to use SEALs for that stuff. But they use bravado and self image to overcompensate for a dearth of tactical land warfare skill sets. Operation Red Wings is a classic example. Task Unit Bruiser is another. Those are the publicly known examples. There are plenty of other non-public examples. As Picton mentioned, I know a good number of conventional Army and USMC elements who I’d trust to execute land operations more than SEALs.
It’s not an individual SEAL deficiency, just a cultural/organizational one. But it’s not supposed to be their bread and butter. And they are good at their bread and butter.
Part of it was them wanting a piece of the action in fighting AQ. Part of it was there being too much work for Delta. That’s also why SF started the CIF companies.
ST6 has gotten a lot better at the CT mission. But I don’t agree that they weren’t meant to be door kickers. A lot of the concepts of high risk VBSS translate.
The Corps toyed with the UW mission tasks with the original Raiders, but ultimately disbanded them, and sending their members to the Infantry battalions of the 4th Marine Regiment.
This led (in part) to an increase in UW mission tasks for the fledgling UDTs.
This trend continued and allowed the SEALs to become what they are today.
I'm less informed on the development of SF and the Rangers, but I believe that they both had love/hate relationship with the big Army, stifling the assumption of the UW mission tasks, and leaving a void for UDT/SEALs to take advantage of.
Maybe you or @cams can set me straight?
Modern Rangers got their start as LRS units in Korea and Vietnam; various regiments had Ranger companies assigned as recon elements, then they formed the 75th Regt to accommodate them later. Their DNA is "super-competent infantrymen who are very aggressive."
Delta got its start after Desert One, as a copy of the SAS. They do that job well, but they are small and ST6 (or whatever they call it now) has horned in on that turf. Their DNA is "door-kicking MFers who shoot people, ninja-style."
SF was JFK's attempt at asymmetrical warfare; they go behind enemy lines, link up with local partisans, and start insurgencies. The OSS is usually spoken of as the predecessors of the CIA, but in reality the OSS' WWII mission is what the Green Berets do now, doctrinally. Their DNA is "create a mystique of invulnerability while collecting TDY."
Nobody really had SOF capabilities during the 1950s, which was the operational gap the SEALs evolved into.
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ChevyGuy91
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Probably an E-4 in his at sea cabin.
Kinda/Not quite true.
There is a long lineage of UW in the U.S. military history. But modern UW got its start for us in WWII with the OSS, First Special Service Force, Merrill’s Marauders, and the Raiders.
There was a lull between wars as there often is, but Army Special Forces got their start in the early 1950s and first fought in Korea, originally training North Korean anti-communities guerrillas.
The UDT/SEALs filled a littoral/amphibious gap, not a UW gap.
There was some tension between the conventional Army and SF from their start through Vietnam. It was seen as a career killer to go SF, because it wasn’t its own MOS for a long time. But nowadays there isn’t much tension.
The only tension with Ranger Regiment and the conventional Army is just that they’re kind of isolationist.
There is more tension between conventional Army and Navy/USMC SOF because they would frequently not communicate their presence to the Army AO owners when conducting missions during GWOT.
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Local guy from Malden was involved in that with the OSS as a young guy. Actually during Jap retreat in Burma he set up a chair on a bank and picked off Japs with his Kachin fighters as they floated downstream in an attempt to escape their defeat. He went on to other stuff like formulating and implementing the Phoenix Program and went out on missions with them initially, although old. Later he went into triathlons in his 70's. His bro told me about 10 years ago how after WW2 when they both came home and saw each other, they had a race around their house balancing on their hands. He said their neighbor was watching with his jaw dropped lol. Crazy old cousins
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Wasn’t always the case.
Admiral Willis Lee won 7 Olympic medals (5 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze), in shooting events.
He commanded the battleship Washington. During the naval battles of Quadalcanal in December 1942, in what is called “The third battle of the Solomon Seas” Washington sank the 36,000 ton IJN battleship Kirishima. Kirishima was hit by at least twenty primary and seventeen secondary battery projectiles
Washington was the only American battleship during World War II to sink an enemy battleship in a "one on one" gunfight.
Admiral Willis Lee won 7 Olympic medals (5 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze), in shooting events.
He commanded the battleship Washington. During the naval battles of Quadalcanal in December 1942, in what is called “The third battle of the Solomon Seas” Washington sank the 36,000 ton IJN battleship Kirishima. Kirishima was hit by at least twenty primary and seventeen secondary battery projectiles
Washington was the only American battleship during World War II to sink an enemy battleship in a "one on one" gunfight.
Almost as soon as Plymouth was settled, picked men were sent out to “range” the countryside by Captain John Smith.
U. S. Army Rangers date their lineage back to the mixed force of native and European fighters commanded by Benjamin Church. During King Phillip’s War, they entered a swamp to capture and kill Metacomet.
The First Ranger Battalion was trained by British Commandos in Scotland. The Second Ranger Battalion was trained in the U.S. The Sixth Ranger Battalion was formed from a mule team Artillery unit (98th Artillery Battalion) and rescued the Bataan POW’s.
The mules and mule skinners from the 98th were transferred to Burma to become part of Merrill’s Marauders.
U. S. Army Rangers date their lineage back to the mixed force of native and European fighters commanded by Benjamin Church. During King Phillip’s War, they entered a swamp to capture and kill Metacomet.
The First Ranger Battalion was trained by British Commandos in Scotland. The Second Ranger Battalion was trained in the U.S. The Sixth Ranger Battalion was formed from a mule team Artillery unit (98th Artillery Battalion) and rescued the Bataan POW’s.
The mules and mule skinners from the 98th were transferred to Burma to become part of Merrill’s Marauders.
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pastera
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Someone in the radio room connecting a low band feed to a TV has nothing to do with a hull penetration.
That's also not going to emit unlike a satellite link. So nothing to hear off hull.
E/O/IR signature is big thing anything that increases vulnerability is unwanted and many 'interesting' capabilities are turned down because of their signature.
Again, I'm talking about the strategic boats - fast attack has a completely different mission (but they are also very careful with their signatures)
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To add to that, there was a Ranger Unit formed out of Methuen, Mass known as "Roger's Rangers" This was during the "French-Indian War". This was the unit that was left high and dry at Fort #4 (Charlestown, NH) When they were late coming in and the British left with all the resupplies.
Basically, just the situation where the Army and the Marines didn't step into a mission set that left room for the development of the UDT/SEALs and the early resistance of both services to embrace UW roles.
Not sure what time period is being discussed, I’m seeing people post history from the 1600’s to the 50’s to present day, but I’ll fill in what I think you’re asking.
IMO most services don’t really want (or don’t appreciate) their SpecOps units. They cost a fortune to train, equip and deploy, and it’s not unusual to lose multiple men to training deaths during any RF01 cycle. Big army doesn’t like any of that and is run more like a 9-5, kind of casual business atmosphere that has no choice but to put up with very aggressive, well trained and mostly untouchable units who soak up money (beans and bullets) and won’t kiss their ass. I can only imagine that disdain is even more prevalent when one unit starts running missions in a battlespace controlled by a completely different service, and doesn’t answer to them, so some big brained desk hump decided it’s best to each have their own to give them a little more control over all the things above.
(*There was also some push years back to downsize the .mil and create smaller more specialized and better trained units. How that worked out is I guess a matter of opinion for those that experienced it.)
The senior leadership (unit commanders not CoS) generally dislike them (JSOC) because they have no real control over them, they look at them like cowboys, and have always had a general disdain for them, some simply because they never really did anything to test themselves and they’re already senior O’s.
(see: Shinseki and the Black Beret fiasco). That MF’r sent over 3Million dollars to communist China just to have enough black berets to issue to big army by the birthday of that year. Even though regulations stated that each piece of individual equipment must be made in the US. We fought against that at the time and got several of those contracts cancelled. What do you expect from a Clinton appointee. f***ing leg.
Lot of people who never served kind of view the entire military as this huge fighting force where everyone is trained the same, and don’t realize that a large portion of it is kind of (IMO) about as well trained as your neighborhood police dept, which is to say they’re all f***ed up and again it's just a regular business day for them. Very low standards.
Battlespace has always been an issue between services because they don’t think they need to report to other units who own the space, what their actions are going to be in any particular AO, whether that’s due to opsec, prepping for a larger mission that will include multiple regular units and that only special ops may have knowledge of at that point, or just a generally poor attitude of some leg O who hates these type of warriors.
I’ve trained in scenarios that used SEAL teams and Rangers (75th) together, and wasn’t all that far from Patilla Airfield (someone mentioned it earlier) when that went down (I was in Rio Hato at the time), we lost 5, they lost 4, both accounts IMO were due to leadership failures and bad intel).
But anyway from what we saw they’re great on/in the water, but once patrolling woods, mountains, deserts, they were visibly less confident, their land nav was weak, and their arrogance was muffled. Mind you this was during my time of the 80’s / 90’s. We used to shit on them for being so Hollywood with all their workout videos and f***ing hair gel and sunglasses on the beach type of bs. But that was just general unit to unit ball busting. Never anything more serious than that as we kept a professional respect for our meat and potato’s duties.
There may be some t-shirts out there with our Regimental Crest and the letters N.S.R.T. (Navy SEAL Rescue Team) above it. Just ball busting on each other but with a mutual love for being hard men doing hard things.
Regiment was, as @Picton said earlier, very isolationist. To the point now that they don’t even rely on big army intel and stood up their own Ranger Intelligence Bn. Their compounds are completely fenced off and still to this day is run in a very spartan-esque existence. It’s a very hard unit to survive the daily grind in and the only unit in the army I believe that has the ability to remove a man simply for RFS (Released For Standards) at the whim of even the squad leader (Sgt E-5). Here one day, packed, signed out, room emptied and gone within 3-5 days. We called it “getting sent outside the fence” or “down the road” to some RA unit. If you were lucky you could ask 1st Group to take you in to spare you from big army.
Other guys would also head over to 1st Group down the street from us after their first few years because it was considered a nice break for your body. Group is run much differently than Regiment.
In those days (my time) Regiment was used frequently as perimeter security for the DBoys on multiple missions. Mogadishu is a good example of that. As is Operation Acid Gambit to rescue Kurt Muse from the Modelo Prison in Panama. Rangers fast rope in, secure the area surrounding the target and allow Delta to conduct their mission. Both operations also had birds from the 160th shot down.
That all changed during the GWOT, Regiment quickly went from being a spec ops QRF for Delta/SEAL and became a go to force for many different types of missions themselves outside of their historical mission set. They were/are the only DA (Direct Action) unit in the army.
As far as leaving a vacuum for SEAL’s to take more land missions I can’t rightfully say, that’s above my pay grade and probably evolved over several decades. They’ve (75th) always had their own tier 01 contingent in their ranks, the RRT’s (Ranger Reconnaissance Teams).
The Regiment was also the only unit in the military to have feet on the ground during GWOT for the entirety of the war. 20 yrs, one Regiment, they always had at a minimum a company sized element in action every single day of the war, sometimes multiple missions every single night, so it may just be (the vacuum) that there was so much happening over such a large and rough countryside in multiple countries at the same time, chasing and fighting small guerilla type units, that the other US units were needed and used due to their excellent abilities to adapt and get the job done.
Sorry if I’m all over the place with this reply. lol Lot of memories come up and maybe just rolling things together here.
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The Ranger Handcook contains Rogers Standing Orders, which you were required to learn at Ranger School. This is from the 1980 version.
Because he was an alcoholic who fought for the British during the War Of Independence (and hung Nathan Hale), he is now an historical aside. The Continental Congress formed eight companies of Rangers, Those officers including Israel Putnam, Francis Marion, Ethan Allen and John Stark.
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