Saturday, November 18, 2017

Are U.S. Special Forces Being Stretched To A Possible Breaking Point?

In this photo released by the U.S. Army on March 9, 2017, U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers observe as Nigerien armed forces service members fire their weapons with the assistance of illumination rounds during Exercise Flintlock 2017 in Diffa, Niger.

VOA: US Officials Warn Special Ops Forces Being Stretched to Possible Breaking Point

Add U.S. lawmakers to the ranks of those worried the country's special operations forces are being stretched to a possible breaking point.

Pentagon officials raised the issue months ago, telling lawmakers in May the continuous, heavy reliance on the most elite U.S. forces was threatening to erode their capabilities.

Since then, such concerns have only grown, highlighted by a series of high-profile incidents, including a probe into whether two members of the Navy's SEAL team may have been involved in the death of an Army Green Beret member in Mali this past June, and the death of four special operation soldiers in an ambush in Niger last month.

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WNU Editor: You cannot successfully fight multiple conflicts on the backs of 50,000 or 60,000 special forces (or less) that are deployed in the field. There are too many places and too few boots on the ground to make a real difference in a short period of time. The best that you can hope for is that with time, the forces that the US Special Forces are training and working with will make a difference.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There have been several versions of this article over the last dozen years or so.