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John Kerry says he is going to double the strength of the Special Forces. This is good.
There are currently six Special Forces groups:
1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Lewis, Washington, with a detachment in Korea 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), which is split into two elements: headquarters at Fort Carson, Colorado, and a forward element in Germany 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne), which belongs to the US Army Reserve
Each group is targeted to a specific geographic area--1st SFG(A) works Asian targets, for instance. They can't make a "general" group that covers the world because SF guys are all subject-matter experts on their regions.
Additionally, US Army Special Forces Command and Special Operations Support Command are at Fort Bragg, as is the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
A Special Forces Group consists of three Special Forces battalions plus a support element. It is essentially a combat brigade.
Now! If President Kerry intends to double the size of the Special Forces, there are two conceivable ways to do it.
The first is to just add six more Special Forces groups with the same internal structure as the ones they have now. Advantages: they already know this structure. And six new groups means they need six new bird colonels, 24 new lieutenant colonels, and a whole shitpot of new majors, captains and sergeants major. Disadvantage: you'll have two groups targeting one region, which means you'll need a very high level of cooperation between the two.
The other way to go is to stay with six groups, but change them from small brigades to small divisions. (As you will remember from my Army Org lessons, a division is a group of brigades.)
The structure of a special forces division will be as follows:
Two active-duty SF Brigades consisting of three SF Battalions plus one SF Support Battalion
One reserve-component SF Battalion created by dissolving the 20th SFG(A) and aligning its troops with the regional SF divisions. For unit identification and maintenance of SF history, the reserve SF brigades will carry "20th SF" names.
One Special Operations Division Support Command consisting of maintenance and supply elements to include medical and chemical support. The medical unit will have to be exceptionally advanced--Special Forces medics and physician's assistants are basically the same thing.
A battalion from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment flying MH-6, MH-47 and MH-60 airframes. Possibly a squadron of C-130J airlifters from the Air Force.
A signal battalion, a MI battalion and an engineer battalion. We are once again talking about very advanced troops--the SF A detachments have signal, intel and engineer troops in them. Here's the justification: you can't carry a bulldozer or a multichannel radio in your rucksack.
A headquarters staff
Advantage: maintains one element dealing with each region. This adds five new major general slots, ten new brigadier general slots, five more division command sergeant major slots, and a LOT more colonels and light-birds to the batch of officers I discussed in the ten-group plan. The disadvantage is it adds a lot of non-SF slots to the army.
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