User talk:Shizz4553

Army SF Strength
I've been doing a little bit of research and I was wondering if the book Chosen Soldier by Dick Couch would be a reliable source as to how many men make up the Special Forces Groups? I'll give you some direct quotes from the book and you can let me know what you think.

"A Special Forces Group will have an authorized strength of about 1,400 personnel, of which some 650 soldiers make up the operational detachments, the ODAs."

"As of this writing, we have something on the order of forty-five hundred Green Berets to carry this fight to the enemy."

Furthermore, he breaks the Groups down like this: 12 men per ODA, 6 ODA's per SF Company, 3 SF Companies per Battalion, 3 Battalions per SF Group. I did the math and it comes to 648 SF Warriors per SF Group.

One last thing, he was writing the book in late 2004 and it was published sometime in 2007. So just let me know what you think. If it's no good, then that's fine with me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shizz4553 (talk • contribs) 02:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's a bad book, but I'd first go to Army reference manuals for the table of organization. The current operations manual is FM 31-20.


 * There's more infrastructure than ODA's. IIRC, there's an ODB to every 3 ODA's, but there may be local differences. Also, not so much in the UW but in the DA and SR roles, ODAs may split into two 6-man detachments, although either an ODA or split A could be augmented with a SOT-A four-man SIGINT team, a two-man HUMINT/CI team, or both. I don't want to trust to memory, but as you move up the food chain, you start having more support units (e.g., parachute riggers, strategic comms). There are going to be SF staff in JSOTFs, as well as in SOCOM components at UCC level. There's the Special Warfare Center for schools, doctrinal development, etc. A certain number of qualified SF personnel are going to be on non-SF assignments, such as staff and war colleges for officers, staff duty at DA/JCS (and UCC not in a SF role).


 * Rumsfeld has been calling for massive increases in SF, although I'm not sure it's possible to increase by a third or more and maintain quality, at least for the several years to get a fully qualified team.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 03:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)