What would it cost to be a civilian Green Beret?
What would it cost to be a civilian Green Beret? What sort of training could I do on my own? What schools/certificates/degrees would prep me most to be a good team guy?
So, we’ve seen this sort of question posted a few times and I’ve had more than a few DMs about this sort of thing so I thought I’d pour a cocktail and do a little combat math. I’m not putting this out there as a definitive answer, more of a fun thought experiment and a way of generating some general awareness. If you have a different answer than mine, then you are both wrong and incorrect. This is the Internet, and I am never wrong, That being said, not every guy on every team has the same experiences so I’m using some generalities in most cases. I’m not endorsing the cited courses but I tried to vet them a little and some are run by SOF guys so it’s not some schlub making shit up…usually.
Let’s use the baseline of shoot, move, and communicate to get us started (maybe I’ll do another post for more advanced stuff).
You get almost no firearms instruction in the Q course so almost everything is team based. Some teams are CQB focused and fairly high-end, like the artist formerly known as the CIF (then CRF, now HTD), but even line companies have SOT teams and even Mk1 Mod 0 DA teams can get pretty sporty. So, let’s use SFAUC as a start point and focus on pistol and rifle. A basic pistol course will run you about $575, an intermediate one another $575. But that’s only 4 days and a mere 1500 rounds of ammo. A decent CMMS run at SFAUC is over a week and a few thousand rounds so let’s just double the cost we already threw down, call it an even $2300. Your rifle training is even more intense. Let’s go with a basic at $700 and an intermediate course at $2,000 and let’s throw in some limited visibility stuff for another $2,000. And don’t forget yourshotty for another $850. This doesn’t really get you any of the team-based stuff but gets you a few weeks of skills-based marksmanship. And it only set you back about a month and a few grand…plus ammo and kit and travel. Throw in a little explosive breaching for $1,250, some long range stuff at $2,000 and you’re starting to get rounded out and we’ve only spent 2 months and $11+ grand. But this just gets you trained up so you should expect to do this all year to help iron sharpen iron.
Having addressed the shoot lets continue to the move. A fundamental component of being a special operator is physical fitness. You must think of yourself as a professional tactical athlete. It’s tough to quantify how much this might cost, but SF has invested a significant amount in equipment, training, recovery, and nutrition. So let’s just use a reputable tactical athlete course at $600 and a year access at a decent gym with the sort of equipment you might expect at Group at about $700. I don’t think this really gives you sort of placement and access that you get from THOR3, but it’s a start. For S&G we need to add these at $14.99, but if you come to Bragg you can get them at the factory for even less
Let’s keep moving and look at some mobility training at $500 a day. You should plan on a week so do the math. This covers defensive driving and off-road stuff but not any ATV stuff so add that if you’re so inclined. If you’re afreefall guy it’s going to run you about $5,000, but you’ve got to finish static line first at a couple of hundred bucks. If you want to really test your mettle you’ll earn your bubble. This one is really hard to find a facsimile for so thisis the best I could come up with at $1,500. But you could easily double that when you consider getting to certification level. Nobody wants the bubble without maintaining quals. Of course you have to maintain all these skills so your costs are re-occurring. Expect to spend these amounts every few months. Let’s assume a normal quarterly training schedule and triple these costs for a year of maintenance training.
Finally, lets cover communicate. We should balance this out with a bit of practical and a little theory. Every Green Beret learns a foreign language, so this will set you back $10K. GBs work at the strategic level and even our junior guys interact at the executive level, so earmark another $5,500. We haven’t even touched the 18E communicate stuff which would go into the $20-30K range with training and certs. But let’s leave that to another post.
Of course none of this addresses the assessment, selection, Q course, and day to day team life experiences. You just can’t put a dollar amount on that stuff and much of being a Green Beret is building a cohesive effective fighting unit and deploying to a remote non-permissive environment and making shit happen. Priceless.
So, here is my rough estimate:
Shoot Pistol- $2,300
Rifle- $4,700
Shotgun- $850
Long Range- $2,000
Demo- $1,250
Move Tactical Athlete- $1,300
Freefall- $5,000
Combat Dive- $1,500
Mobility- $2,500
Communicate Language – $10,000
Executive Comms – $5,500
Skills maintenance for a year (base cost x 3) $36,900 x 3 = $110,700…for a year. Every year. Forever.
When you throw in the costs of gear, travel, ammo, etc you could easily double this. And we haven’t even covered the advanced skills, planning, or MOS specific stuff. So, when you guys ask these types of questions about what it costs or what you should do the answer is really hard to give. The truth is that you should do all of the stuff and spend all of the money. There’s a reason why we have a high barrier to entry and we take it seriously.
For future budgeting:
18B- Tactics, Armorer, Heavy Weapons
18C- Engineering, Construction, Improvised Explosives
18D- TCCC, Clinical, Veterinary
18E- Networking, Security, Radio and traditional comms Planning Tradecraft Gear
If you’re independently wealthy I’m available to serve as your personal Team Leader. For a fee I’ll even throw together a team of appropriately salty NCOs to commiserate with. If you’re a producer and you have funding, I’ll take a year of sabbatical and build you a killer Netflix series. I’ll bring my own Ranger Panties.
