The US Army has announced the final three bases for its new Security Force Assistance Brigades. The 3rd SFAB at Fort Hood, TX; the 4th SFAB at Fort Carson, CO, and 5th SFAB at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA. Tgese john n the 1st at Ft Benning and 2nd at Ft Bragg. SFABs are specialized units whose core mission is to conduct advise-and-assist operations with allied and partner nations.
Tags: SFAB
What a waste of time and money these units are. The value of training foreign forces and building the relationship with that foreign power is insurmountable. These SFAB guys or girls will be laughed out of country as they do not have the qualifications to teach anyone and they don’t understand what other integral parts go with FID/COIN
It is purely big army trying to make themselves relevant in a world that has long passed them
Conventional units have been doing the majority of conventional training for allied forces for almost two decades. Heck, 90% of the forces dedicated to Iraq and Syria to train and fight ISIS have been conventional. Haven’t heard any laughing. There are plenty of examples of conventional units training our allies for well over 100 years.
There is plenty of training to be done. No one is threatening SF who haven’t been able to meet the demand and have many more capabilities than training conventional forces in another country.
BTW, who do you think trains the overwhelming number of troops that become special forces before they go to the Q course?
Kirk has more of answer to this perspective below.
Ok what training before the Q course? Have you seen the standard of soldier these days? You ha e dudes right out of basic failing abn Pt test and then Their is the guys who can’t pass a rifle qualification, their was even the scandal of the instructors at basic having to do the rifle qualification for the studs. So don’t preach to me about how good the regular army is. If the regular army was so good you would not have let this happen.
As for your battle buddy’s comment Keith or Kevin or whatever his name was, so in WW2 the regular army was going behind enemy lines and training up foreign armies where they? Nothing to do with the OSS. (The oss was disbanded), In fact in the Korean War the regular army was paired up one
for one with ROK soldiers under general ridgeway.
Yes you have trained units but as i stated in my original post, what qualifications do you have to teach? To understand the difference between monkeying the grip of a rifle or pistol and breathing control, or what type of charge to use on a steel door vs a wooden door.. you mention driving a tank or type of APC. How many us soldiers know how to drive a Russian t54 let alone will have a commander that will allow them to drive one? As for a apc, I drove a Nigerian brdm how many us soldiers have done that. And believe me. It’s not hard. I have no training on any US infantry fighting vehicles. Ok Iraq and Afghanistan have been given some of our kit. But do we really want them proficient in our equipment. Yeah maybe you guys do have a place in training…..
You’ve got no training on any US infantry fighting vehicles, but you feel qualified to train other countries on systems like the T-54 and BRDM? Just out of curiosity, because I must have missed it, but when exactly did they add tank gunnery to the Q-course, again?
I think you’re a bit out of your area of expertise; running a mech company, battalion, or brigade is not in the wheelhouse for the SF community, and outside of basic soldiering skills, I think you guys have got very little to offer. Where are the SF master gunners for tanks? For IFVs? Your maintenance officers and logistics people?
I’ve got the utmost respect for SF when it comes to running unconventional operations, but I think you’ve got an entirely deranged idea of how qualified you are as an SF soldier to be doing conventional training.
Light infantry, counter-insurgency, and commando operations are probably where SF has the best skills and where they need to focus. Running a conventional mech unit? You don’t know what you don’t know–It is a much different skill set and culture. Driving a T-54 is not the only thing that goes into such things–You have to have a massively different skill set than the usual SF unit even has time to keep up with, like vehicle recovery and maintenance.
In short, SF should stay in its unconventional lane, and leave conventional ops to the guys who know how to do them, including training others. We don’t send foreign military officers we’re training solely to JFK because they’re foreign–They go to the specific branch training schools for their positions. There’s a reason for that…
I think we’re demonstrating a bit of a union labor concept here–“You can’t train foreigners unless you’re SF…”, which I’m afraid sounds a lot like hearing the union guy tell me I can’t unplug my computer and move it because I’m not a member of Local 355… Even if I’ve got a fucking degree in electrical engineering and my journeyman’s license as an electrician.
Andidog,
Kirk and Will are right. If you are a team guy then you should know better than to confuse enthusiasm with capability.
SF can do some great things in extremis working with anyone. We did a lot of that during the Cold War and are still doing it today in some places. But we are not well suited – nor are we trained to stand up conventional army units.
We learned that lesson the hard way after the first 16-18 months or so in Afghanistan trying to stand up the ANA. It was way too big and much too complex a task for our basic unit of action – the ODA – to handle. So we passed the mission off to conventional US and NATO forces. Later we picked up the Afghan SOF mission starting with the Commandos.
We did not even try to take on the conventional FID mission in Iraq. In fact we had to fight off the mission because some of the US leaders wanted to tag us with it. Again, later we took on the appropriate FID role with the ISOF Brigade and regional SWAT units.
I know all of that to be true because I was in both places when those dramas were happening. SF is like a leatherman tool. We can do a lot in a pinch, but we are not necessarily the best tool for every FID job. I fully expect that the SFABs will be much better suited to the conventional FID mission.
TLB
Terry,Kirk. You both have points but seriously you think that this program is the future? Instead of just making our ncos better and cutting the red tape and online training? Terry you have obviously been around along time and it sounds like you have lost your way in knowing what the oda’s are in need of. I mean we went from the start of Afghanistan, a 1 page con op to a 17 page con op and it takes 48-72 hours for anything to even happen. So terry if you want to throw your experiance around I can too. I have been to these shit holes as well. Done a lot of the same things if your not a support guy or admin guy who from what I gather seems to prefer the administration side rather than going out and making it happen. Which is why we now have such micro management issues. These new team leaders are too afraid to make a decision without asking higher. , yes this is a tangent. But you started it with your comments about your Iraq experiences. Bottom line. SFAB waste of money my opinion. This money should be used to make the regular army more streamlined and better trained and less red tape. Also less risk adverse.
Out
Andidog,
You “gather” that I prefer the administration side? Based on what? We were not talking about what ODAs need or don’t need. And I made no comment about what I think ODAs need.
We were talking about FID. I simply pointed out that ODAs are not always the answer to every tactical or operational problem in the world.
FID is a specified mission for SF, but it is not now nor has it ever been a mission exclusive to SF. And, as any graduate of the Q-Course knows, we train candidates to conduct the core SF UW mission – not FID.I will say it again. UW is NOT FID.
It just so happens that many of the skills involved in UW are applicable to FID. For some reason, you seem to be convinced that conventional NCOs and Officers cannot be trained to conduct effective FID.
That is your opinion and you are welcome to it. But the evidence does not support your position. Most of the FID that has been conducted by the US Military throughout our history has been conducted by conventional soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines – NOT SWCS graduates. That is simply a fact.
You do not seem to have an appreciation for history. Even UW a.k.a. guerrilla warfare has more often been conducted by conventional soldiers rather than SOF. Soldiers like Russell Volckmann and Robert Laphap who organized, trained and led thousands of Pilipino guerrillas successfully against the Japanese. They learned UW on the job.
Volckmann wrote the book on guerrilla warfare after WWII and established the blueprint for SF and the Q-Course POI. Or guys like Ben Malcom, a cherry conventional infantry officer, who organized, trained and led South Korean guerrillas on raids behind enemy lines during the Korean War. He too had to learn UW on the job.
Imagine what they could have done if they had received some relevant training beforehand. There are a lot more example that you seem to be unaware of. You might want to take time to open your aperture a little wider.
The SFAB is intended to fill a gap in capability. It is designed to meet the conventional FID mission with NCOs and Officers trained to conduct FID. Thereby not overburdening SF or other SOF with a mission conventional soldiers can do.
And likewise not standing down a conventional Brigade by striping away the necessary officers and NCOs – which is what has been going on to date. That process decimates the readiness of that Brigade for about 3 years all told.
The SFAB concept is sound. I myself have doubts that it will be possible to find the quality and quantity necessary to stand up 6 SFABs and sustain them long term. But I also know FID is not rocket surgery and conventional soldiers can adapt to the mission.
TLB
Ok I did not say I trained them on IFV I drove their vehicles because why not. So stop assuming. And calm down. Yes you guys have the conventional army training but we can also go to one of those schools if we choose. Or we have guys who have passed selection and the q course from a mos that has that particular skill set. And vehicle recovery, got it dude you know how to hook a winch up quicker than I do. It’s not that hard. If you use your brain you can figure it out. As for the tactics of maneuvering on the battle field with a tank or IFV, they have not changed since WW2 so any one can read up on them and put them into use. Just like we used gunvees to bait taliban into our traps over the tops of mountains and through passes to kill them. Working with vehicles does take practice. But you don’t need to just be a cavalry guy. We read books from Rommel and Montgomery to use the vechiles and terrain to our advantage. So yes I’m quite confident that I could train a mech unit in tactics.
Yes you guys did train the Iraqis and Ana regular army. And how has that turned out? From my recollection it has not done well. You are all missing the point. The point is that these sfab’s Are a waste of money and resources, especially when We can’t even get our own regular army to train correctly or enough ammo to shoot on a regular basis. You and terry below both mention how it takes away the only good NCO’s left in units as well. Would it not be better to have that good NCo train that unit so they can then try and train the foreign armies? We have the regionally aligned units with the groups, so if that nco had stayed and used the resources that the army is wasting on sfab to train his guys up it would have been better for America. As that’s the goal. You always want what’s best for America when you do these things. It’s a 51-49 in America favor
Andidog,
You are way over simplifying. So you can read a book and “poof” you have mastered a complex skill? Nonsense! If that were true we would not need ranges – we could read books on shooting and become instant expert snipers.
Or conventional guys could just read books on SF and we would not need to send them to the Q-Course – just hand them the berets.
You are sounding like all the conventional guys in Afghanistan and Iraq who told me that because they were doing FIB they were just like SF. They did not have a clue.
If you think you can read something on Rommel and you “get” mounted tactics you are mistaken. Maneuvering a handful of GMVs is not the equivalent of maneuvering a mech/armor battalion task force. Nor does it require the kind of synchronized maintenance and logistics effort involved in that kind of maneuver warfare.
Going to a school does not make you an expert either. A guy who gets through the Q-Course has accomplished a great deal. But at that point he is still only trained at the entry level. It takes years of additional training and experience before he approaches the “expert” level.
Do not kid yourself, the same is true of complex conventional skill sets as it is for SOF. I will give you one example. After Desert Storm someone had the bright idea that 5th Group needed to train the Kuwaiti Army on the M1 tanks they had just agree to buy.
So the Group sent a bunch of NCOs – mostly SFCs – to Ft Knox to the Armor Master Gunners Course. That included two guys from my ODA. After about 3 weeks I decided to drive up there and see how it was going.
By that time, all the SF guys had learned how to load and fire the tank gun, drive it and do PMCS type maintenance checks. I asked one of the Armor Master Sergeants how they were doing.
I said, “are they going to be ready to be tank commanders when they are done?” The answer was “fuck no, they know about as much right now as a PV2 graduating from armor AIT. It takes years to make a decent tank commander and about a year for that guy to get his crew trained for standard gunnery.”
So I asked the MSG how he would like to go to Kuwait. And that is why 5th Group partnered with the Armor School after Desert Storm and ended up taking several of their cadre with us to meet that FID mission.
Let us be realistic. If some country needs helicopter flight training I do not send some SF guy to Ft Rucker or start reading flight manuals. It is simple, check ego and use the right tool for the right job.
TLB
I cannot express how glad I am to hear someone acknowledge that set of facts, Terry.
From observation, the one thing I think that SF lost when they created their own MOS structure was a connection with the conventional army–I don’t think I’d have ever heard the old-school guys who were still coming out to the regular BNCOC/ANCOC courses in their “home” MOS speak so derisively of their non-SF peers. Mostly because they had a damn good idea of what the hell they were not doing as SF soldiers, in terms of experience and development. You don’t pick up the skills to fight a tank successfully as a tank commander in a weekend’s reading, nor do you somehow metamorphosize into a maneuver branch expert via some kind of osmosis just because you’ve suddenly got the vehicles assigned to you.
It’s kinda funny… The same guys yammering about respect due their skills as SF soldiers are also the same ones who have no respect for the specialized skills of their conventional peers, and discount the complexities of running a conventional force. I’d never have the audacity to tell an SF guy how to do unconventional ops, but somehow, it’s just fine for folks like Andidog to denigrate people on the conventional side and claim that they can do the jobs we spend years learning.
It’s also a truth to acknowledge that you can’t laterally move into a MOS and expect to function effectively as a leader without having done the time between recruit and that leadership slot in that MOS or skill field. It’s damn hard to do, even between closely-connected MOS fields like 11B and 11C, but it’s damn near impossible to do between something like a 19K and a 12B, where there’s little if any connection, experience-wise. Especially if you’re, say, a 12B who only has Airborne or light infantry assignments…
Kirk,
It is true that we lost a little connectivity with the big Army by establishing a separate career field. However, we gained a great deal more time by not splitting a guy’s training and professional development more-or-less equally between two tracks – SF and conventional. I would have to say the trade off was well worth it.
The SEALs came to the same conclusion and – while the basic MOSs are conventional – it is the long-service skill identifier guys in the Ranger Regiment that have always been the professional core of that SOF unit. Similarly, personnel associated with Army and AFSOC aviation assets / SOF missions are generally managed separately from their conventional counterparts.
MARSOC is the only SOF unit that has not adopted that model. And I will tell you that it hurts them just like it used to hurt Army SF. Just about the time one of their “operators” gets proficient he gets sent back to the FMF to get the “SOF” beat back out of him. I am not in the loop like I used to be, but I expect that will change eventually – if it hasn’t started to already.
As far as the rest, we can debate the details. However, a little professional courtesy between SOF and conventional outfits and individuals goes a long way – and works best if it goes BOTH ways.
TLB
This bloke sounds like a troll to me. Just to ruffle your feathers boys. But after reading it. There are some good points made by most of you. I have 3 times worked with ODA’s in Afghanistan and always been very pleased with what I had seen. We had the US marines and US Army and British army work as blockforces for us a many times. The British where not very good, mixed results on the uS army boys. But the marines we had only one or two bad platoons the rest, magic. Training armies is a great way to shine or sink, it’s how you will. E remembered and pretty much the face of your army. So whatever
way any of here units go. Make sure they are good to go mate.
MARSOC has had its own MOS for years, the only ones that have to rotate out to other jobs are the officers, and most of them stay within the SOF arena.
I’m late to the party and am not going to dog pile but to make the observation that every organization has its blemishes and as they grow bureaucracy/culture. The result, a misunderstanding and sometimes arrogance of other organization’s capabilities.
By the way, Large bonuses and the latest cool guy gear doesn’t make you a expert
It’s a shame Ft Knox couldn’t pick up some new blood. Plenty of training area / MOUT sites etc not heavily used anymore. Be nice to bring the base and local area back again.
But not a lot of decent civilian jobs/professional employment in the area for spouses, or quality schools for kids. Long past time for the Army to say NO to sending families to some of the backwater, near Third-world dumps of the rural South that have been our traditional posts.
Uhm… Yeah. And, just what do we do about the training constraints we have at those posts where we have all that stuff…?
Lewis/McChord already has lost a lot of its value as a training base due to civilian encroachment and reduced training opportunities. What are you going to do, when you station your troops near all the family-friendly things you’re mentioning, and then it’s virtually impossible to do good training at those sites…?
The Army is stuck with a Hobson’s Choice situation, here: Use basing rights we have at locations where we can do training, or station people where the training restrictions are such that you can’t really do good training in the first place…
FT Knox just had a huge CSTX that ran for a couple of months. By the looks of things, the OPFOR must have been at the PX, the Shopettes, and Taco Johns LOL.
Honestly though, Knox could use another Infantry or Stryker BDE.
JBLM still has Yakima which is basically in the middle of nowhere and is part of the Joint Base. Plus as far as cool guy training they have plenty of state parks and mountains around to do training. I just did some mountain training in the Snoqualmie pass and on Mt. Rainier so if in small teams and given the right type of training there are oppoturinities at JBLM (i.e. real big mountains >10,000ft) not far from base.
During my first assignment to what is now JBLM, back during the 1980s, we were still able to live-fire MICLIC systems at the main post, and blasting down at Range 99 was still a doable thing. Maneuver training in South Rainier Training Area was still realistic.
Now? Baby, saddle up for Yak if you’re going to do anything, and if the fuel to get there ain’t in your budget, too bad. The noise restrictions and the restrictions on flight corridors have exponentially reduced the training possibilities over the years due to encroachment. So much so that there was some talk of opening up Yak to full-time use as a sub-base of Fort Lewis, and actually assigning units over there full-time.
The point that I was making with this is that the Army has a choice: Either we use bases where we can do real, effective training like Fort Polk, or we base near where there are good facilities for families and decent job opportunities, for which read “Urban areas”. The places where there are good prospects for the family members are almost all going to be useless for effective training–And, I would submit that any time you need to plan for a 150-mile movement as part of your training process to just get to a maneuver area, well… That’s not an ideal situation for training.
6th SFAB was also started up for the Florida Army National Guard. They have already been asking for soldier’s for a while.
Florida has a Cavalry Squadron in Gainesville and Infantry Battalion in Lakeland from the 54th SFAB. The SFAB HQ is located in Indiana and other elements of the National Guard SFAB will be sourced across 6 states and will be regionally aligned with SOUTHCOM.
The army is considering bringing up many more brigades for the SFABs. The plan is to eventually generate up to 2 divisions worth. I wouldn’t count FT Knox out entirely yet. 1SFAB has only just gotten its initial fielding and deployment and 2SFAB is only just now standing up. If the concept and units prove their mettle then it’s likely there will be SFAB battalions dotting the map everywhere.
We have five active brigades identified and there is one in the guard. Six brigades pretty much make up two divisions.
@Andidog,
You do realize that the SF model for foreign assistance is kinda, y’know… New-ish? And, that we used to do things like the Military Assistance Advisory Groups with mostly conventional forces?
SF is unconventional by definition; expecting them to train already organized military formations is a bit off-kilter, as the current way we recruit and train those guys is not conducive to the skills needed for that sort of thing. How many SF guys are experts at operating tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, for example…?
I’m not saying that SF isn’t suited for this work, but the skill set prevalent in most of their units ain’t exactly suited for training up and helping professionalize conventional foreign military forces. For that, you need a different set of people and skills, which I think this SFAB concept is trying to create. We used to do this kind of thing with conventional forces, going back to the Greek Civil War in the post-WWII era. And, given the paucity of SF teams available, plus the need to use them elsewhere, it may be advisable to build up our capability in this area with conventional forces providing the manpower.
I think we’ve gotten way too used to doing foreign military assistance with SF; there are reasons we have done that, and I think you can make the case that doing so may no longer be appropriate. If you’re trying to organize Montagnards to do guerrilla warfare in the high country of Vietnam, SF is probably the tool. Training the Iraqi Army on how to run a tank brigade…? Not so much. The SFAB idea appears to derive from that, and should help free up the SF guys for missions more in their bailiwick.
Of course, the next question is, how many SFAB units do we really need…? And, can we afford to tie up personnel in them vs. keeping them in normal conventional formations?
Y’know, I just realized something with all this: Just how many of these SFAB units can we really afford to stand up, given how many high-quality and experienced NCOs and officers are going to be sucked up into them…?
Maybe we ought to look at a model where we progress conventional units through a life-cycle where we stand them up, run them through an Initial Entry Training cycle to a point where we can deploy them, and then after the mass of the junior enlisted have their contracts run out, repurpose the formation as something like an SFAB?
There are only so many of the high-quality people out there; you pull all your above-average leaders into the SFAB pipeline, and where the hell does that leave the rest of the Army…? We’ve had these arguments against establishment of elites before, and eventual decision was against their creation. Why we’re reinventing the wheel in this case is something that we may need to re-think.
We always run the risk of hurting the conventional side when we bleed it of its best talent.
It’s a big Army and unlike SF branch the troops in SFAB’s eventually return to the force. They also have a secondary role of being plussed up with junior enlisted and becoming conventional infantry brigades…
Don’t think your model creates six brigades at any one time and would be a manning nightmare (It’s much more than just the Infantry side) .
So long as they don’t let the whole thing grow out of control, I suppose it will work out…
Unfortunately, my beloved Army has this minor tendency to completely overdo things in almost every regard.
Don’t forget, a Generation in the the Army is about 5 years. What’s the “half-life” of all of that painfully earned combat experience and institutional knowledge after the shooting slows down and the politicians want to cash in that “peace dividend”? In just the blink of an eye, maybe 50% of the wearers of fresh combat patches are gone, ETS, Retirement, etc. Think about Task Force Smith as an example of the rapid decay of the US Army, just 5 years after winning WWII.
Without a continuing of intake of fresh combat experience, very soon, these SFAB Brigades will be manned by fresh-faced innocents.
Task Force Smith wasn’t really caused by a loss of all that combat experience. It was caused more by a complete devaluation of conventional military forces, and the resultant inattention to readiness and conventional arms–They all thought they’d be nuking their way out of conventional wars.
Also, the demobilization from WWII and the Doolittle Boards did tremendous damage to readiness. Nobody really wanted to have an established Army that could deploy at a moment’s notice, and the whole mentality was quite different than today. The model back then was still sort of the pre-superpower one, where the skeleton force active forces would be supplemented and supplanted by a mass conscription army in case of war–And, we were trying to do that with a conscripted force that only hung around for a max of a couple of years.
Lots of other things went into creating the conditions for Task Force Smith, although that is a damn good model for “how not to do things” even now…
Does anyone know what unit that “dice patch” belongs to at 0.07? Never seen that before.