From my reading and research, there may be way more soldiers in the US Army with Ranger Tabs than there are Rangers in Ranger units. Ranger School seems to be a major way of developing leadership potential in soldiers of all combat arms.
In several of Harold Coyle's novels, I got the impression that completing Ranger School was, if not required, definately advantageous to getting promoted if you were an officer.
As the war went on, it is possible that troops with Ranger Tabs formed the core of LRRPs etc.
For other armies, simlar institutions may exist (I'm not sure), I do know that in British Regiments there are individual platoons or companies that train for specific missions, there are for instance, platoon traine as paratroopers (often called Pegasus Companies), jungle fighters (Chindit Companies) and other specific missions. This is supposed to garuntee that any given regiment has a cadre of trained troops should the unit be tasked with that type of mission.
It's not inconcievable that other armies do the same.
As for playing SF types, when I began playing FtoF Twilight, the role of SF was just coming into the popular conciousness and nearly everyone wanted to play SF types. Later we explored other roles and enjoyed playing line troopers.
Sometimes there is the temptation to kick back and play an action hero style SF member, but Twilight isn't really the system for that because, quite frankly the difference between SF careers and normal ones isn't that great.
Still, one day I'd love to run my munchkin character, but it probably wouldn't be as much fun as I think it would be.
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