Go Officer or Enlisted Special Forces

“I want to go SF and I’m trying to decide between Officer and Enlisted. I heard…”

It’s always a variation of team team, wasting a degree, being one of the boys, etc.

So, if you want max team time, and that’s your priority, then you don’t want to be an officer.

A few realities to help frame this:

The fastest way to become a GB is 18X. You’ll get a contract that ‘guarantees’ your slot, loads of specific prep, and an instant community of like-minded guys. But it’s not without its issues (see my post about 18Xs).

Lots of 18Xs have degrees; I think it’s upwards of 50% have Bachelors. But it’s not really a direct connection to the degree. Lots of GBs don’t have a degree and aren’t really interested in getting one. I’m not aware of any requirement to have one and if there is a requirement I’m not certain that’s a good idea. Higher Education is a cesspool of effete liberals and narcissistic self-indulgent weirdos. It’s bad enough that we make all officers do it. You can be perfectly successful and spectacularly competent without a degree, just as you can with one. So this isn’t really a super relevant factor in your O vs E decision, it’s really more about your operational timeline.

As an SF officer you can expect to get 24 months of team time. You could extend that by getting a second team, but that’s not really team time as those second teams are manned and employed differently for different missions. You could also go on to serve in a SMU, but that’s an incredibly small percentage (SMUs typically select at a 5-10% rate).

But there is a whole life beyond team time to consider. Everyone always defaults to ‘staff time’, but not all staff jobs are created equal. Your worst day in staff in an SF unit is better than your best day in staff in a conventional unit. Plus, there are all sorts of jobs that are ‘branch immaterial’ or ‘combat arms immaterial’ that you can access and lots of them are badass. As an SF guy you’ll be immediately competitive and uniquely qualified for them. Everything from intelligence, to operations, to advising, to teaching, to embassy work. You name it, it’s out there. These usually aren’t jobs available to NCOs.

Speaking from personal experience I stayed deployed and active doing SF stuff for years after I left a team. I was exposed to all sorts of stuff from working with industry (I was hobnobbing with Mark LaRue and testing his kit before he was Mark LaRue), to chasing drug runners off the coast of Belize with my own helicopter task force and HN SWAT team (I had far more restrictive RoE during my traditional SF deployments), to planning $150M SOF shoot houses and range facilities, to planning multimillion dollar international exercises. I personally know guys that took their families on amazing Embassy assignments to awesome posts, pursued advanced degrees, taught at Ivy League schools, developed weapons and gear, and many others. Stuff that makes team time seem quaint and boring to some.

There is the Warrant Officer option which can get you an additional 6-8 years of team time, but you can only access this once you get to SF, so it’s not a primary planning consideration at this point.

And I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t talk about the financials. As an SF NCO you do get some additional allowances, but you’re still making significantly less than your Officer counterparts. In fact, over a normal 20 year career and subsequent retirement you can expect to make half as much. For most of us, it’s not about the money, but the difference is significant.

I’ve had more than a few guys (surprisingly) talk about pressure from friends or family to go Officer because it’s more honorable? Let me just put that to rest definitively. Service is service and there is no difference in honor between O and E. That’s some outdated and misinformed narrative of a time long gone. You may associate some level of prestige as an officer, but you better put that shit on a shelf real quick. You serve at the convenience of your men. Without them you are a hooker with no pimp or John. You walk into an SF unit with that attitude and the first guys to kick to your ass will be the other officers, while the NCOs get hydrated and warmed up.

As an officer, during your team time you’ll have all of the opportunities to train and attend the same schools that your guys do. You have the additional burden of training management and administration to distract you, but you are ‘in the stack’ just the same. In my experience, the Os are expected to represent the full suite of SF skills to an even higher degree. How can you expect to lead men that can out-shoot, out-fight, out-ruck, out-run, and out-smart you? You’ve only got to keep up the pace for 2 years Captain, get after it.

But you don’t necessarily get to be one of the boys. You’re the Detachment Commander. You Command. You’ll blow the froth off of many a cold one and have your back against the wall along side them often enough. But you have the burden of leadership. You might have to make life and death decisions about these guys. You can’t forget that. You can’t outsource that responsibility.

So, the decision between Officer or Enlisted is entirely personal. You need to decide what your pathway is. There is no right or wrong answer and only you can decide. But that’s just my perspective, I’d welcome some other GBs to chime in and share their thoughts.