Special Operations Forces in the Year 2K.

[oldschoolgm]

When T2K was published in the mid 80's the TOE's back then assigned the 5th Spec Forces Group and 1st NAVSPECWAR Group to the European theater. From reading up on everything the majority of these teams and their command elements are particularly non-existent. And I believe that it's the assumption of the game writers that these individuals have been blended into the regular line units.

In a sense though, this fly's in the face of the SOF culture as well as the best operational use of such individuals. To me it would be more likely that such units would be kept intact as possible though I could also see them becoming very blended. For example, a small squad consisting of SEAL's, Green Berets, Air Force ARES members as Marine Force Recon guys. When you compare this to current SOF operations running in Iraq and Afghanistan where this kind of blending is happening to one degree or another, this makes sense.

The purpose of this is to determine the likely hood of any of my players being able to have a SOF type character and to further redress the likelyhood of having a group of players play an entire team.

In bringing up my topic on the 2nd Marines, this opens the door to determine the possibilities of a Force Recon team being operational and how far they would have travelled in their role of gathering Strategic Reconnaissance for the Division.

Here I can easily see teams of combine SEALs and Recon, just as I can easily imagine SF teams have Rangers, AF ARES or Pararescue members, SEALs and so on in the groups. Mainly because at this point of the war SOF teams would be a valuable SR asset as well as a critical asset when Direct Action was needed to either open up a block in movement or to create more chaos by eliminating key command and supply factors.

Thoughts? Ideas?

[Webstral]

The fate of the various special operators depends a great deal on a handful of personalities. The European theater has gone to absolute bog shite. There is no precedent and no modern equivalent. How SACEUR chooses to handle the situation depends a great deal on what we believe about SACEUR and his principal advisors vis-a-vis the existing resources. For instances, if SACEUR doesn't believe he has the resources to support special operations in the manner in which they are supposed to operate, then he might not see the need to maintain a separate command. Alternatively, the various subordinate SO commands might be drastically reduced. Alternatively, the various SO commands might be maintained at the highest level possible, since they have an impact on the battlefield out of proportion to their numbers. With the USAF being grounded, SO might be the only way to go after important targets deep in the rear. Again, though, we come to the question of supporting these guys.


Webstral

[Legbreaker]

Elite forces of all nationalities may have suffered the highest casualty rates of all non-nuked units. Operating well away from any significant support, if they ran into trouble, chances are they'd get wiped out (Just look at Bravo Two Zero in 1991 for an example).
Naturally avoiding these sorts of situations is definately preferable, but after about 5 years of fighting, it's inevitable attrition would have taken a serious toll.
Training replacements may be given a high priority given these units usefulness once aircraft, satellites and other high tech intel options were gone, but my understanding is it takes years to do properly. The units may remain, but the quality of the operators is likely to decrease on average towards the latter half of the war. It's also likely in my opinion that some of the better soldiers from Infantry units, as well as specialists from other areas (signals, engineers, etc) necessary for completion of the assigned tasks would soon find themselves transfered in as replacements. A team of say 10 men may only include 2-3 prewar/fully trained SF troops with the rest filled out with semi-trained (for SF purposes) troops from elsewhere.

[HorseSoldier]

5th Group was assigned the Middle East and Africa AOR by the time RDF Sourcebook got written (and 3rd Group wasn't on the books at the time if I remember right, but 11th and 12th in the USAR were still around).

[Rockwolf66]

let us not forget that there are German and British Special Forces units wandering around and I'm sure that like today they would backchannel information and equipment to each other.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

Supporting these teams and their mission profiles as they evolve the further you get into the war I would think would be less and less resource heavy on the various command units. I feel by the time 2k arrives the remaining teams would probably be pretty self-sufficient in making sure they have what they need, and attempting to provide operational support is probably minimal at best. This probably would lead to the SOF teams only being used as needed and on missions that didn't require any operational support beyond what little the units could afford to give.

As for command, it has only recently been initiated that the SOF teams operate in the field under their own command structure, when T2K was written they operational command was handled at Corp or higher level if my memory serves me right. Though I could see that in game terms this might be taken care of at Division level by the summer of 2000.

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.

[oldschoolgm]

Originally Posted by Rockwolf66

let us not forget that there are German and British Special Forces units wandering around and I'm sure that like today they would backchannel information and equipment to each other.

I haven't forgotten, it just adds to the ambiguity of the subject as well as the difficulty of grasping an accurate picture of this subject.