what exactly makes special forces “special” compared to normal military?
In: 32
training, mission and equipment.
Basically, anyone not intended for the front line role or one of its direct support roles is “special” forces. These units could be infiltration and recon units, saboteurs, kidnapping, assassins, or a verity of other small unit roles that its useful to have a few of floating around in an army. Thier equipment is much more focused towards this sort of small-unit combat, with less “Big war” stuff like anti-tank weapons and more stuff specialised for the sort of fighting they do vs other infantry with small arms.
They are also trained to a much higher standard than most infantry, mostly because its too expensive and time consuming to train hundreds of thousands to people to that level (if its even possible, given the high physical requirements they ask for). They often have special training in methods of covert insertion (ie, sneaking in), stuff like swimming in form a submarine, or high attitude parachute jumps, which often require significant foot marching to reach the target (for example, parachute into a clearing in a forest then march 20 miles across a mountain range to set up a observation post to watch the enemy)
the skills that these units acquire for this “big war” role often translate well into being superb infantry in smaller conflicts, especially stuff like close quarters battle. as such, they make great “door kickers” to make precision attacks on a enemy.
for example, regular infantry might hold a checkpoint in a city, and do house clearance in defense of that checkpoint. Special forces would be used to go on a raid to find the man making the bombs, and kidnap him for trail and interrogation.
Infanty often COULD do the latter role, and often DO when the SF aren’t available, its just the SF are better at it because its part of their core role.
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