what exactly makes special forces “special” compared to normal military?
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Special forces need to meet strict criteria performance criteria, often with a history of service in more minor units, with expectational record. They must pass selection courses that push them very far. After selection courses they undergo rigorous training in a variety of disciplines. They have a lot of money invested in them in terms of training and equipment to make them as well prepared for combat as possible.
The big difference is that regular soldiers are expected to follow orders and special forces are expected to show initiative to adapt to local conditions.
From an admin point of view, the UK special forces only recruit from existing military – you can’t join direct (unless you’re applying to the reserves).
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.
So special forces typically are differentiated from regular forces in that they have:
1. Higher acceptance criteria, in the military I served at, most special forces typically require only a higher degree of fitness and endurance tests although some elite unites also require high aptitude test scores.
2. They have a much longer and more rigorous training routine.
3. They are used differently, so regular forces typically operate in large teams for grand operations like taking over some region, whilst special forces operate on more concrete tasks with smaller unit sizes, typically just a few people, and they’re mostly used for precision operations like rescuing someone, kidnapping an important figure head, etc…
Source: served in the military
I think other people here have covered correctly what makes these forces special, which they usually are. The name special forces though as I understand it isn’t really referring to them being special, rather that they are the forces used for special operations, I.e not ‘normal’ warfare. In terms of the name it’s the missions they do which are special or unusual, but obviously you do usually need special soldiers to complete these mission.
They are trained and equipped to deal with specific tasks that are complex and specialised enough to need extra effort to train people to do them specially instead of as part of general training, and common enough that it makes sense to maintain a force in being to handle them.
A lot of other people have answered, but I think there is a more general answer. They are special because they are chosen, trained, and equipped for niche and focused tasks. What’s often forgotten is that this often makes them perform poorly if they are used outside their focus areas. For example, the US sent SEALs to capture an airfield in Panama in the 1980s. It didn’t go well, because SEALs aren’t trained, equipped, or organized to work with that many people at once.
It depends. People who might be designated as “special operations forces” in the United States military might not meet the British definition of “special forces,” for example. The US Navy has its own weird definition of “special operations” which seems to include everyone whose job is to go for a swim. Divers and rescue swimmers, for example.
They have a much higher training budget. Any particularly high-speed guy in a conventional light infantry unit like the 82nd Airborne can meet the standards of a SOF unit that acts like conventional troops like the 75th Ranger Regiment. The difference is that they have the training budget to keep practicing special stuff and make sure that their skills stay sharp always. In a conventional unit, there will be times when you don’t have anything to do and they don’t always have the budget to practice all of the cool stuff. In these cases, Sergeant Major will find something for you to do, to keep your janitorial skills sharp.
There are also a few special missions that they are trained for that aren’t necessarily what the conventional troops do. With the Rangers, the big thing unique to themis airfield seizure. If you want to parachute a few hundred guys to take over an airfield and hold it until the Air Force can land more troops to take over, that’s the job of a Ranger battalion, not a battalion from a conventional airborne unit. Their higher standards of training mean that they can also do basically everything that a conventional light infantry unit does, just doing it better (although they might not have as much practice at holding or defending positions because this is a waste of their abilities). Other special missions include reconnaissance (conventional reconnaissance typically doesn’t go farther than the range of friendly artillery), hunting specific people, unconventional warfare and foreign international defense (guerrilla warfare and training foreign troops to deal with guerrillas), and some other stuff. Most of these missions besides the ones that Rangers focus on are ones that are done with significantly smaller units. Even Rangers don’t deploy in the same numbers as conventional infantry despite having roughly the same structure. In a conventional unit, there are platoons of roughly 30 guys, four platoons to a company, and four companies of infantry (plus a company of support troops) to a battalion. Conventional units never deploy smaller than battalion size, but Ranger units often do. In the Green Berets, the basic unit (equivalent to a platoon in the organizational structure, but led by a captain who would be leading a company in the conventional force) is the A-Team (officially called an Operational Detachment Alpha) which consists of twelve guys: a captain, warrant officer (#2 guy), the team sergeant, intelligence sergeant, and two specialists each in communications, engineering, medical, and weapons. A few ODAs and an ODB (which acts as a headquarters to coordinate the ODAs) make up a company. Obviously while the individual guys might be more capable than a light infantry company, having a lot fewer guys makes it so they have stuff that they can’t do.
These special missions mean that they also get special equipment for those missions and the training to use them. The SEALs are famously all qualified as divers and specialize in stuff that involves water (a SEAL Team is a unit of 150-200 or so guys divided up into smaller units to do this stuff). While they’re all qualified to do standard military parachuting, some of them across the various SOF have special qualifications to do high-altitude parachuting. For a conventional unit, it would be pointless to train an entire battalion in high-altitude parachuting because inserting that many people takes away the surprise, and it would be too expensive to train a few hundred guys for something that they’d never do. However, you can find a lot of reasons to insert an ODA of 12 guys via HALO or HAHO parachuting.
how is this question allowed? surely it breaks Rule 2?
Ex-military here. There are a few things.
One of the biggest hurdles to gain entrance is physical. The physical fitness requirements have higher minimum scores.
There is also a mental factor. In their initial training, they may only get a few hours of sleep per night, for MANY nights.
These two factors weed out much of the undesired applicants
Once they’re through the initial training, they train much harder and more often. They cross-train to other jobs. Then they train harder again. Meanwhile, the “regular Army” is put on “battalion cleanup” and are sweeping roads, raking rocks, picking up cigarette buts, mowing, pulling weeds from fence rows, mopping concrete slabs, pretending to wash their HMMWV, or any number of mind-numbing tasks.
Specific example – when the “regular military” goes to a shooting range, their only goal is to get good enough to qualify (minimum standards). When special forces go to the shooting range, they try to perfect their craft.
Same thing with all facets of training.
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