The Utah Army National Guard runs a two-week course for 19th Special Forces Group’s support troops called the Special Forces Basic Combat Course – Support (SFBCC-S). Other, similar courses have sprung up for other SOF Enablers since the war began. However, I don’t of any others that are firing mortars.
Tom S. came up with this concept when he was 2/7SFG HHC Cdr, after Jessica Lynch was captured. It was a basic course in Infantry battle drills. React to ambush, secure a building, etc. Several 18s were tasked as cadre, myself included during red cycle. Our Bn was getting ready to go to AFG and support personnel were regularly going on resupply runs out to FBs.
Mortars are always awesome but seems to be missing the point unless this is base defense training. Then my question is FDC training?
During the Vietnam-era, many support guys were trained as light weapons leaders. It wasn’t an MOS producing school, so the Q course was much more flexible and could support the Groups more effectively.
Same with 1SFG, We started it around 2005-2006. 18’s and former 11B/C were cadre.
00:32 with a Walther MPK?
Yes & MP5SD at 00:49.
1-1 SFG (A) was running a similar program on and off before 2003, it always hinged on who the HSC 1SG was, and who their Ops NCO was. I’ve seen it done to support BDOC operations, all the way to creating QRF capability for OCO.
There was also once a push to make this a must pass event like RIP / ROPE / RASP for soft skills with “S” identifiers.
Back when SFODAs did annual certification training (done away with late 90’s) like this was commonplace, but never standardized across all Groups or even Battalions within Groups.
This has been needed for a long time. You could argue that the occasional use of support folks to stand-in for a G Force during training, running them through a small unit tactics train-up, had a similar effect. But the reality is that aside from maybe SOT-As, there aren’t a whole lot of support troops on the SF side who’re going to be exposed to missions the way, for example, Ranger support troops are.
I’ve taken support troops on every combat mission I’ve ever been on in SF, drivers, gunners, gun teams comprised of mechanics, commo guys, etc.