[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by oldschoolgm

To a degree, I have to agree with Leg in that the casualty rate after 4+ years of war for the SOF groups will probably be high. I suspect this would be especially true of the Navy Seals. They have the longest training time being at 2 years or so in the 80's and expanded to almost 3 years in the 90's. They also have a mission configuration that puts them directly in harms way in a much more significant manner than the other units.

The bigger threat to SEAL units is their pretty notorious reputation for poor decision making/mission planning, biting off more than they can chew, and lapses in professionalism leading to a pretty nasty casualty rate compared to other SOF units.

As for the Air Force units, I really see them becoming almost non-existent by 1999 due to lack of aircraft and the fact that these teams have the fewest numbers of any of others.

The lack of airpower would tend to cripple all SOF units. Lack of aircraft for infil/exfil, lack of airpower to support isolated SOF teams in contact, etc., all kind of impair the ability of special units to do a lot of special stuff.

Now here is where I have to start really considering a lot of factors. For the Special Forces, I think that the teams that were tasked with Direct Actions mission types their numbers would have definitely been depleted. But the Special Forces employs a number of different kinds of teams. The training teams as well as the teams with mission profiles more oriented with working with local populations would in my opinion have suffered less casualties. I believe this in that I would think they would go 'native' and blend into local populace and work to develop a significant guerilla type situation or even work towards the overall survival of the community they are in.

SF team specialization is largely notional in a lot of cases today, and did not exist in the Twilight War timeline to anywhere near the degree it does today. If the balloon went up in Europe, the main mission sets that were on the table back then all focused on covert insertion of teams behind the bad guys lines for whatever purposes (SR, UW, atomic demolitions). FID in the European theater just wouldn't exist.

As for Force Recon, it becomes a two fold issue as well I believe. Force Recon has two different types of teams. The units that do all the forwards scouting for the regiment and the teams that work for the higher command on gathering more significant strategic intelligence. The regimental recon teams I feel would have look just like what your outlining Leg, in that they are probably a combination more experienced and fully trained personnel and those that have been brought up on the fly due to battlefield needs. As for the Recon teams that operate more independently and I just not sure how severe the attrition rate would be given that they are more apt through mission directives to avoid combat.

Recon Marines are not all Force Recon, which, as the name suggests, were a recce asset for a Marine Amphibious Force. Battalion STA platoon guys and such weren't FR.

A thought to consider here, SOF teams operated round the clock in Vietnam with a significantly lower attrition rate than the line units deployed there.

I think it's probably more accurate to say that American casualties were lower among SOF units, but if you factor in the indigenous forces involved in Mike Forces, CIDG units, SOG recon teams and whatever else and it's a bit murkier, statistically.