Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
There's a special level of reverence for the Seals in the Special Forces Community. The individual Seal is lavishly trained and equip and can work well as an individual or in a group. They have the sea based component that puts them above all.
Their primary goal is usually intelligence gathering and reconnaissance, securing beach heads, clearing mines in landing zones. They're also well versed in building to building fighting, snatch and grabs, sniping and pretty well anything else.
They have a far more stringent filtering program in training and it is an exclusive company. Take the training for Seals that you see in the movies and ramp up the intensity by multiple factors.
I have tremendous respect for JTF-2, they've done some amazing things and some things that are stuff of the special forces community legends. But they're not as well rounded as the Seals, they don't have the intelligence backing that the Seals have. I'd probably say that the biggest difference is at the Senior NCO level in the Seals.
People put a lot of weight behind the sane Seal Team 6, but at the end of the day the other available groups are every bit as competent.
JTF-2 can hold its own with the other special forces units around the world, I don't question that, but there are two groups that stand out in my head and one of them is the Seals, the other is Israel's
Sayeret Matkal
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To add more that I learned in class/research (and maybe CC can confirm that it's true)
The US Special Forces community is huge compared to Canada's. Each branch of the military in the US has their own special warefare groups. All of this is unified under the umbrella of Joint Special Operations Command and led by a 4 star general at the top. Because of the funding and the man power, the make up of a special forces are much larger than Canada.
within the Seals designation, there are 6 teams (Seal team 1-6). 1-5 represents the area that they are deployed based on where the 5 carriers are located in the world. 6 is the special one that takes on current counter-terrorism operations. I'm not sure, but there is either a rotation between the teams to make up the roster for 6, or individual members apply for 6.
Within each team, there are somewhere between 50-100 members, divided into boat crews or units of 8-12. The men that make up the unit are all cross trained but specialize in a specific discipline (demo, long range, comms, intel, recon..etc) and led by an officer and a senior NCO. The units are rotated between active duty abroad or training standby at home (or on base). It is the unit level that goes into operations, with the number of units dependent on the complexity of the mission. From the sounds of the raid, 2 unit or boat crews of Seal Team 6 went in to Pakistan. 1 team was on standbye while the primary team breached the compound.
This level of organization is based on the grandfather of all special forces, the British SAS. They have 4 Squadrons/Wings of about 60 men. Each wing is divided into 4 troops of 16 men each. Within each Troop, that is further divided into a patrol group of 4 as the most basic SAS fighting unit. Now, each Wing has 4 troops. Those troops specialize in one of the 4 areas: Boat (naval), Air (paratrooper), mobility (desert and mechanical), and Mountain (alpine/winter). Each patrol will eventually have stints in each of the troop areas.
Lastly, The Wings actively rotate to make up the special counter-revoluntary wing, the main counter terrorism arm of the SAS. On this rotation, Each troop spends time in a state of permenant readiness to respond to an incident in the UK or abroad, while the rest spend their time training exclusively on anti terrorism tactics. After a period, the whole wing resumes their normal activities, and the next wing starts the rotation.
Anyways, to bring this to a close. The Canadians JTF2 does not have the size or the orientation of the US. However, they model their training and command structure of the US and British forces. One thing that makes JTF-2 unique is that each individual member of JTF-2 is trained in absolutely every discipline.