Pick Up Your Paddle
Is Special Forces in Crisis?
No, not even close. SF is in transition, like it has always been, and will likely always be.
A letter, and several videos commentating on the letter making the claim that SF is in crisis have asked us to be honest brokers and just admit that the Special Forces Regiment is in peril, rudderless, and not positioned to meet the needs of the Nation. So, I wanted to be an honest broker and chime in. My honest broker assessment? Knock it off. Your arguments are void of evidence, logic, and merit. And you sound like a bitch.
These arguments about SF losing its edge are nothing new. They aren’t even limited to just SF. Every service and nearly every specialty has one of these moments every once in a while. The last one that SF had was the infamous Night Letter in 2017. What the pundits failed to cover in that incident was far more elucidating than what the letter authors claimed. Those claims, by the way, were well-investigated and found baseless. But these sorts of things happen regularly, and I think that they are a sign of a healthy organization that has the viability to spend such efforts on nonsensical bullshit. In this recent screed, only one key performance indicator suggests an issue, and that issue is being addressed. The rest of the claims are simply nonsense. Let me explain.
The author writes that the SF Regiment culture is “rudderless”. My reply to this claim is, “who the fuck is in the boat? The answer is that the people in the boat are the same people complaining that the boat isn’t going anywhere. Except that’s not how organizational culture works. Culture isn’t something that happens to an organization. Culture is a byproduct, a consequence, of the organization. If your boat isn’t going anywhere, then put your fucking paddle in the water and start stroking. If anything, stay out of the ship’s logs where you just complain about everything. “But I’m not in a leadership position!”, they impotently cry. There is far more to leadership culture than being a commander. Stop making excuses and start leading.
As evidence of this rudderless leadership environment full of out-of-touch careerists, the author cites three particular key indicators. He says that cancelling training for Change of Command ceremonies, requiring risk assessments, and demands for language competency are canaries in the coal mine. Mind you, these are the hard evidence that the author cites. I’m not cherry picking them. It’s his argument, he sat down, thought about it, and finger pecked at the keyboard these ideas into existence. So let’s examine them as presented and see if they hold up under a little light argumentation and scrutiny. Let’s start with the Change of Command ceremonies.
Let’s give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has high-priority training scheduled that just so happened to align perfectly in conflict with some superfluous change of Command ceremonies. Groups change command every 2 years, Battalions similarly, and likely Companies as well. But let’s be gracious and say that the Company changes every year. So in a two-year window we are talking about a maximum of four Changes of Command. Maximum. That’s one every six months. What are the chances that these four rare events fell exactly on the dates that the author had previously scheduled high-priority training? What are the chances that none of these ceremonies landed during a deployment cycle or a support cycle? Is it reasonable to make this conclusion? I would struggle to calculate the odds that the author planned, coordinated, and resourced even two, much less three or four high-priority training events that some callous senior leader then demanded he cancel just so he could stand in a Change of Command ceremony. Is your training management so poor that you can’t deconflict a single day, maybe two days with some rehearsals, ceremony? Does any reasonable person believe this? In my nearly three decades of SF experience, I’ve never seen it. It could happen, sure. But is this the sort of common occurrence that you would build your platform on? Brother, put your paddle in the water. We are not off to a good start here…
What about the risk assessments? The complaint, the evidence of a rudderless ship, is that some wayward command team has denied training because a risk assessment had some spelling errors. That does sound pedantic, but let’s unpack that. For the uninitiated that sounds extreme, right? It’s just a minor grammatical error. But for those in the know, it’s an indicator. The way these things work is that a risk assessment is produced for every training event. This little spreadsheet documents all of the anticipated factors that might make a training event dangerous. You then list all of the things that you are going to do to mitigate that risk. Are you concerned about high winds for an Airborne operation? Then you list the equipment and procedures employed by the DZSO to track and report high winds. Are you worried about hearing loss from a day at the range? Then you list that all personnel will be required to wear approved hearing protection. It’s not difficult.
But here is the thing. I stated earlier that a ‘risk assessment is produced’, but that’s not entirely accurate. The risk assessment already existed. It has already been written. It was probably written years ago. It was written, edited, massaged, rewritten, and perfected by generations of Green Berets before you. That thing has been perfected. It was then stored on a hard drive or team server or some portal page for you to access it. All you had to do was download it, change the date and update a few minor particulars and then save it. That’s it. And if there were spelling errors the computer shows you exactly what they are. The computer automatically puts a squiggly red line under the error and if you are skilled enough to right click on the identified error it will even give you suggested correct spellings. Amazing.
So if you can’t be fucking bothered to properly edit…to click and clack a few updates…then how can I trust you to actually do the stuff that will actually mitigate risk? You’re too fucking lazy to type something correctly. Somebody wrote it for you, the computer edited it for you, and you’re confused about why the leadership is “demanding” that you make minor corrections? Really? This is your marker for a rudderless environment? Bro, put your fucking paddle in the water and make the edits. I would conservatively estimate that it should take about ten minutes to produce a completed risk assessment. 98% of the work is done. Can you manage the final 2%, please? The argument is not strong so far…
What about the language proficiency argument? The author claims that leaders were threatening to revoke their tabs if they failed to maintain a language proficiency. But is that too extreme? I would never make that threat, but humans respond to incentive and that is certainly an incentive. But I’m not certain that it’s extreme. Being language trained is a basic Green Beret qualification. It’s literally cooked into the Q course. Q stands for Qualification. We sent you to language school for six months. We Qualified you. Your only job was to learn a language. Is it too much to ask that you maintain a bare minimum rating in your assigned language? Bare minimum? Not be a linguist. Is the bare minimum too much? Are you elite? Are you a professional? Will you do all that your nation requires of you? Or will you complain about this relatively minor basic qualification requirement?
Can you prepare a list of all of the people who had their tab revoked for not maintaining language proficiency? Do you know a single person who had this happen to them? The author cited this as a credible threat. This was presented as evidence that the ship was rudderless. The leadership was out of touch. The Regiment is in crisis…because you can’t maintain your language proficiency. That’s your argument? Oh, you have a lot of competing requirements? You have to manage a bunch of priorities? It’s not just one thing; it’s a bunch of little things? You’re an elite warrior, right? A steely-eyed, barrel-chested, flat-bellied freedom fighter, correct? You can’t really be distracted by a foreign language requirement. Except you just told us that you can’t be bothered to properly write (edit really) a document in English. We’re talking about spelling errors that you are too fucking elite to correct.
So, you can’t properly communicate in English, you for damn certain can’t properly communicate in your assigned foreign language, you can’t manage your training calendar, you can’t forecast one conflicting ceremony once every 6-8 months, and you can’t be bothered to do inventories and account for your equipment. What is it that makes you so elite? Why should I extend any special privileges to you? Why am I supposed to hold you in high regard?
But you didn’t sign up for this stuff, right? You signed up to do backflips off the ramp of the C-130 with your Patagucci kit. You wanted to do endless HVT Kill/Capture missions. You wanted to Freefall behind enemy lines and get a book deal. You wanted to race around the desert in your dirt bikes and dune buggies. You wanted to shoot steel plates and entertain gun bunnies. You should have a batman who fills out your paperwork and carries your ruck for you. It sort of seems like you didn’t want to be a Green Beret. You wanted to be an Instagram account.
So yes, you have to do some paperwork. Yes, you have to attend a few ceremonies. And yes, you have to do inventories and book-keeping. It’s not fun, and it doesn’t look good on social media regardless of the filter that you use, but there is administrata in every walk of life. You complain about the “culture” that everyone else understands is absolutely normal stuff. But you cry about it like a fucking prima donna bitch who thinks he is above the fray. Don’t complain about the results that you don’t get from the work that you refuse to do. The culture that you are creating is the culture of an entitled whining little bitch. Knock it off. You’re not just refusing to paddle; you’re dragging your paddle. It’s not that the ship is rudderless, it’s that you don’t agree with the direction the captain set, so you think it’s okay to malinger. That’s fucking mutiny.
You convinced yourself that you were going to be an action hero. I don’t recall many recruiting ads making that promise, so this is a fantasy that you created. You thought that glimpse of that ODA, with their non-standard headgear, cool guy beards, and devil may care attitude was the norm. You thought that the surge in the GWOT was the standard practice. Nobody promised you that, you just made it up. But why can’t the National Defense algorithm change to meet your very specific, and anomalous, a priori criteria?!? You can carry a really heavy ruck very fast so your “selfless” service should be catered to you, right? Do you understand how fucking dumb that argument is? You are essentially saying that you are easily fooled. You signed up to be a Green Beret and you didn’t really learn about what a Green Beret really is.
But there is more. As further evidence that the Regiment is in crisis, the author cites plummeting retention rates. Finally, some empirical data that goes beyond the authors distaste for paperwork. Here is something that we can finally measure and offer as real evidence of the rudderless ship. The author claims, and the videos confirm from their own personal experience, that it’s impossible to keep guys in. They are abandoning the rudderless ship for greener pastures. This is a clear indicator of a sick organization.
Except it’s not true. The USASOC Commander, LTG Braga, testified in front of congress just last month that “retention has never been higher”. But he’s probably one of those blind careerists who is just lying to get his next star, right? Fucking officers. But the Congressional Research Service published a report in November of 2024 that confirms this. Our retention rate, particularly at the mid and senior level, the exact positions that our ‘experts’ said was in a freefall, is between 113% and 123% of retention goals. Are guys getting out? Sure. Is there a retention crisis? Not even close. And the retention rates are actually improving year over year. Maybe they have access to some compartmented data that I don’t that tells a different story. Or maybe they haven’t recognized that narrative is the least valuable level of evidential certainty. The data doesn’t lie.
This is what happens when you make an argument from emotion. Do we have small teams? Yes, in some cases. Should we ghost teams? Probably. Do you know when we have had ghost teams in the past? Always. It’s the historical norm. The enduring position of SF is FID, ghost teams, and mastery of the basics. Stop calling it a crisis when we ask you to fill out some paperwork. We didn’t change our recruiting tactics, we didn’t alter the pipeline production model, and we didn’t change our personnel management and career timeline requirements. But we added a 4th Battalion to every Group and un-ghosted a bunch of teams (all done during the storied tenure of the “crisis” author) and you are somehow caught unaware of the consequences? I think I see why we struggle with training management. What the fuck did you think the outcome would be?
As a solution, the author offers up downsizing. In particular he thinks that eliminating the 18X program will solve some issues. You might be able to phase it out over a decade or so, but not unless you fix the recruiting and production issues. This sounds like another emotional response, not a reasoned conclusion driven by analysis, critical thinking, and empirical data. These are not strong arguments and with even the slightest examination they fall apart grossly. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
When the 18X program was reinitiated in the early 2000s in anticipation of a greater need for Green Berets, the thinking was that we could fill the shortfalls with these new, less mature, less-experienced, street-to-seat commandos at about a 30% rate on the ODAs. The teams could inculcate these new guys and mitigate the risk. But now, 18Xs make up nearly 50% of the force. So you can’t cut 50% of the force without some significant detriment to the force. Even if it was the right thing to do (it isn’t), you still couldn’t do it. Your recruitment sucks. You have battling narratives of warrior-diplomat vs dirt bike desert rats. But that’s not the real issue. Plenty of guys want to be Green Berets. Your problem is that they can’t.
Well, the numbers here aren’t much better, and they are getting worse. We have a requirement to produce 560 Active Duty Enlisted every year. In 2022 we produced ~330, or 59%. In 2023 we produced ~310, or 55%. And in 2024 we produced ~295, or 51%. The FY 25 numbers are similarly trending. We simply can’t make enough Green Berets, unless…
77% of Americans between 18-24 years of age are ineligible for military service. They are too fat, too dumb, too sick, or too unlawful. And that’s just for standard military service, let alone becoming a commando. That number is up from 70% in 2018, so the problem is getting worse. Even within the military the disqualifications are staggering. A full 68% of active-duty military is overweight or obese. Over ¾ of the civilian population can’t serve and over 2/3 of our ‘warriors” are too fat. And we see this play out among our 18X recruits. Remember, these are the guys that had to meet elevated, harder criteria to earn the coveted contract.
I’ve written pretty extensively on the 18X population, and my predictions have always panned out. SWCS and the MCoE don’t publish these numbers publicly, but you might be shocked to learn that nearly 50% of 18X contracts can’t maintain those contracts through the completion of OSUT. Here are some recent metrics, again unofficial:
A cohort from Spring 2023:
~180 18X report to OSUT
~80 18X report to SFPC
~20 18x get Selected
~10 earn the Beret
A cohort from Fall 2023:
~190 18X report to OSUT
~90 18X report to SFPC
~25 18x get Selected
~12 earn the Beret
A cohort from Spring 2024:
~175 18X report to OSUT
~65 18X report to SFPC
~20 18x get Selected
TBD earn the Beret
Most of these drops are basic fitness failures. Some are recycles. The fitness regimen at OSUT is embarrassing. There are multiple reports of some companies only running once a week. No ability groups. No progression. Run in formation once a week. At Infantry OSUT. What about rucking? That seems to be a low barrier to entry, right? Well, they do 20-minute miles. With 35 pounds. At graduation. At Infantry OSUT. Do you know what the most failed event at SFAS is? Land Navigation. But don’t worry, I’m certain that our young recruits can get some excellent land nav training at Infantry OSUT, right? Nope. THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT FOR A TRAINEE TO PASS INDIVIDUAL LAND NAVIGATION TO GRADUATE. There are 18Xs who show up to Fort Bragg having never passed land navigation. Never done night land nav. Never done solo land nav. What the fuck are our NCOs doing?
It’s worse in the operational force. I wrote a story last year about the abysmal state of land navigation training. In that story I highlighted a career NCO, and 8-year SSG, who had never once in his entire career found a land nav point. Eight fucking years. A squad leader. In charge of Soldiers. Never found a single fucking point. Granted, he was a soft skills guy, but what the fuck? I guess that I shouldn’t be too surprised though, we can’t get Special Forces NCOs to spellcheck risk assessments, so what should we expect?
But back to SFAS. This is a topic near and dear to me. I study it carefully and I defend both the process and the processors, the Cadre, vehemently. But you simply cannot ignore the data. We historically select SF candidates at about at a 36% rate. Some years it’s a bit higher, some years it’s a bit lower. But 36% is the historical average. In the last few years that number has dropped to about 25%. We actually had classes at a 10% select rate last year. 10%. That’s special mission unit level, not SFAS. Am I to believe that a class just happened to have a bunch of shitbags and less than the already historically low numbers were worthy of being Selected? Or is there something more at play?
Retention is at historic highs. Recruitment is going up overall, but the quality of incoming candidates is low. Society is full of fat, dumb, lazy and sick slobs. Our institutions are failing us. OSUT is a shell. They can’t train PT, they can’t teach land nav, and they just send their problems to the next unit. Our NCO Corps is either blind or deliberately sabotaging the process. It’s easy to blame careerist officers. But I’ve been told – and I have always seen until now – that NCOs are the backbone of the Army. Be, Know, Do.
No one is more professional than I. Except when I get to write anonymous whiny letters. I am a noncommissioned officer, a leader of Soldiers. Except if it involves paperwork. I will strive to remain technically and tactically proficient. Except for land navigation, ain’t nobody got time for that. Officers of my unit will have maximum time to accomplish their duties; they will not have to accomplish mine. Except for training management, that’s too hard. I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders. Except for putting my paddle in the water and getting to work. I’d rather complain, without evidence, about how hard I have it. Boo-fucking-hoo. Rudderless indeed.
And the other suggestions? Upgrade everyone to a TS clearance? To what end. How does that right the ship? Extending leadership assignments? I thought the argument was about talent management? Aren’t you aware that we have an entire DA Pam that outlines how leadership timelines integrate with the talent management cycle? You did know that this stuff existed right? Extending timelines only exacerbates issues, it doesn’t solve them. You complain about the guys in leadership, and you want them there longer? Nice logic! And the idea that JSOC is the only guys doing UW is ludicrous. It tells me that you don’t really know what JSOC does. But you haven’t let your lack of knowledge stop you from sharing your ideas thus far, so why stop now?
And if you think, as your commentary has demonstrated, that FID is ‘just teaching infantry stuff to the same guys again and again’ then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what you should be doing when you go on a FID mission. If you really think this is the case, then your leadership certainly has failed you. If you think that an SFAB or a re-tasked Field Artillery unit can do this mission properly then you deserve to get your training cancelled. This is a fundamental failure in your understanding of your own capabilities, authorities, and responsibilities. But you can’t be bothered to pass an OPI, so I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. This is even more embarrassing than your public complaining.
And I’ll close with the idea that nothing ever changes. That’s bullshit. Whenever someone tries to change anything, you complain. We get Night Letters and accusations of malfeasance. We get anonymous letters about SF in crisis, and we get an endless parade of influencers giving us their hot takes. Do you know about the recent changes to SFAS? Do you know that SWCS senior leadership is meeting with leaders at the MCoE? Do you know that SFAS went so far as to create a Social Media campaign to meet our recruits where they are and inform of the realities of the culture (some of you know, because you complained about that too)?
So I didn’t intend for this message to be a tirade about the state of the NCO Corps. Nobody has taught me more about leadership and accountability than the NCOs that I have personally served with. I didn’t intend for this to be a manifesto about how fat, dumb, lazy, and lawless the average American has become. But the data doesn’t lie. I didn’t intend for this to be a defense of the bureaucracy. But the arguments about a rudderless culture are so vapid that the defense was apparent.
Maybe spend less time complaining about having to do the bare minimum amount of administration, meet the lowest possible qualification criteria, and having to do your fucking jobs. You can’t be an alpha-male meat-eater apex-predator commando bad-ass while crying about the lowest common denominator stuff. It’s the opposite of professional. It’s the antithesis of elite. Stop complaining about the rudderless culture, pick up your fucking paddle, and get to work. You aren’t a victim of the culture; you are the culture. Start acting like it.
