The Special Forces Soldier

The FIRST special operations personnel able to employ their capabilities by Land, Air, or Sea.

Unquestionably the world’s finest unconventional warfare expert. Often (and wrongly) compared to Navy SEALs, the Special Forces Soldier is much more than a warrior of uncommon physical and mental caliber, he is also a skilled teacher.

Special Forces Soldiers are the Army’s cutting edge. Only the most technically proficient and highly-motivated Soldiers will ever wear the Special Forces tab. Special Forces demands a tremendous amount of inventiveness and self-reliance. As its name implies, it deals with special combat situations you won’t find in most textbooks.

A Special Forces Soldier is capable of thinking “outside the box” – ignoring the often inept conventional mentality to find intelligent solutions to unconventional situations. This is what makes the Special Forces what it is.

Special Forces sergeants must be experts in their individual MOS plus other related duties and specialties important to their far-reaching missions. The Special Forces Soldier must also be able to teach these same skills to the people with whom he works.

Besides the individual skills of operations and intelligence, communications, medical aid, engineering and weapons, each Special Forces Soldier is taught to train, advise, and assist host-nation military or paramilitary forces. Special Forces Soldiers are highly skilled operators, trainers, and teachers. These SF Soldiers are area-oriented, and specially trained in their area’s native language and culture.

The operators of 3/20SFG(A) portray a wide and varied cross section of civilian professionals. The very fabric of Special Forces is based on a diverse pool of skilled civilian operators (just like the OSS of WW II), and a National Guard SF unit provides just that.

By every definition, the men of 3/20SFG(A) offer a seasoned pool of operators. Most members have over 10 years of SF experience and hold civilian jobs such as: Paramedics, Police, Federal Agents, Firefighters, Attorneys, Building Contractors, SCUBA Instructors, Teachers, Language Instructors, Security Consultants, Business Managers, Physical Therapists, Physician Assistants, Engineers, and yes, even a Rocket Scientist or two.

The merging of these civilian job skills with Special Forces skills makes for a very effective and capable force.

Such a wealth of experience further enhances the capability to fulfill the unconventional missions of Special Forces.

Life in a National Guard SF unit sometimes exacts a great toll on the unit members- held to the exact same standard as their active duty counterparts, the Guard SF Soldiers have to deal with finding time from their civilian jobs to attend mandatory schools, some of which can last nearly a year. Deployments are another consideration- the Guard SF Soldier operates way outside the normal “one weekend a month – two weeks a year” of regular National Guard duty. The monthly drills and yearly deployments are nearly twice as long as the normal Guard requirements.

Of course this is not mandatory, all one has to do is transfer! But their dedication to SF and their desire to remain SF operators will not allow them to leave.