SFQC

What Happens Next at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg?

Opinion: The Special Warfare Center, specifically the JFKSWC at Ft. Bragg, NC, which trains the Green Berets, Psyops and Civil Affairs soldiers has been in a state of flux for the past two years. And the news that broke late last week won’t lessen it at all in the coming months.

Breitbart News’ Kristina Wong broke the story that the JFKSWC’s commander Major General Kurt Sonntag is being forced to retire after reports of his conduct being investigated by the Pentagon for ruining the careers of several Special Forces officers and NCOs for speaking out against the softening and lowering of standards. Wong wrote last week:

They alleged Sonntag wrongfully retaliated against instructors who expressed concern over his lowering of standards for the Special Forces Qualification Course, punished instructors seen as too tough on students, and is a toxic leader who created a climate of fear at SWCS.

Where the story, the center, and schoolhouse for Green Berets go from here is unclear. But there will be no easy answers and/or solutions for the school, the training cadre or the incoming commander.

Wong was originally the one who broke the story that Sonntag was being investigated after several current and former Green Beret instructors voiced their concerns over Sonntag’s policies were levied.

Sonntag completed a two-year tour at SWC and asked for a one-year extension. That was denied and he was given no further General Officer assignment, which ostensibly means that the general is being forced to retire.

When Sonntag took over the SWC in 2017, he faced many problems, not the least of which the school wasn’t graduating enough Green Berets to fully field the force. The toll of unending wars and an unsustainable OPTEMPO has left Special Forces without enough soldiers across the board.

Sonntag immediately began to formulate plans to streamline and shorten the pipeline for Special Forces Green Berets to be trained. He finished it up in the fall of 2018. Copies of the slides he used were leaked to us and we contacted the School and although we didn’t speak with the General himself, the PAO Officer answered our questions.

We wrote about the changes that Sonntag had spelled out here: They answered our questions to the shortening of the course as follows.

“1st Special Forces Command outlined the individual tasks required for each MOS to meet their operational needs. Instead of adding collective tasks into MOS, this concept focuses solely on individual tasks and incorporates application through historical vignettes (lessons-learned). The practical application at a team level will come in tactical skills. Currently, the course orientation and history phase is six weeks. This concept incorporates the introductory individual tasks into MOS training and the collective tasks into tactical skills. History modules and other tasks now taught in course orientation will be taught throughout all phases of the course. This concept found efficiencies in training by reorganizing where we teach certain tasks, which provides opportunities to combine complimentary tasks in a logical manner.”

Sonntag’s policies were met by charges by the training cadre of the school that the standards were being lowered. Now, it should be mentioned, that those charges are nothing new to the SF school. Every generation has heard that and we have to deal with it. I heard it when I went thru the SFQC, and I heard it several years later when assigned to SWC at SFAS.

However, what transpired next was anything but usual with the resultant “night letter” and the search for the authors of such. Which brings us to where we are today. Sonntag is being forced to retire and a new commander is coming in. Maj. Gen. Patrick B. Roberson is slated to be the next SWC commander. Roberson is coming from Special Operations Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and is slated to change command this summer.

In Wong’s report, she credited a source who told her that Roberson was the second choice for the new SWC commander. Her source told her that MG Miguel A. Correa was first chosen to take over for Sonntag, but Correa supposedly turned down the SWC assignment because he “didn’t want to take on the s**t show that Sonntag created.”

Roberson has to still face the same daunting tasks that Sonntag did but now has to do so with a training cadre that will view him (whether the allegations of Sonntag are all true or not), with a level of distrust. And hanging over Roberson’s head, unfairly or not is the fate of the two SF NCOs who were singled out for punishment by Sonntag and are scheduled for termination of service. Green Berets Sergeant First Class Micah Robertson, 33, and Sergeant First Class Michael Squires, 31, are both looking at the end of their careers by the end of the month. Their fates will be decided long before Roberson takes command.

However, the Army could do the school and Roberson a tremendous service by keeping both of those NCOs on active duty until the investigation they’re conducting is complete. There are also several other cases of careers being ruined that should be looked at before those NCOs and Officers are lost to the service. It would go a long way in re-establishing trust between the command and the incoming commander. Then let the chips fall where they may. Will this happen? It is doubtful at this point.

Which takes us back to square one, what happens with the courses, SFAS (Special Forces Assessment and Selection), and the SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course)? One of Special Operations core “Truths” from 1988 is #3 “Special Operations Forces can’t be mass produced.”

The incoming commander MG Roberson certainly understands it. The training cadre in charge of producing the next group of Green Berets for the Regiment certainly understands it better than most. They know when their tour at SWC is up, they’ll return to the Regiment. And the troops that they assess, train, and graduate this year will be the teammates of the same cadre when they return to the Regiment.

That responsibility isn’t lost on them and they take it seriously. One hopes that the next commander MG Roberson and his entire school staff find a way to work together to produce the best Special Forces operators that have ever come thru the pipeline.

All eyes will be watching what transpires the schoolhouse for the foreseeable future. No one wants that. But it is what it is…

“May you live in interesting times.”

Photo of then BG Kurt Sonntag: USASOC

Pentagon To Look Into General Officer’s Retaliation Against Special Forces NCOs?

In one of the most damning pieces of the story that has been on-going for upwards of two years, Kristina Wong of Breitbart News absolutely skewered MG Kurt Sontag of the US Army’s JFK SWC (Special Warfare Center and School) over the case of the now infamous “night letter.”

Many Special Forces NCOs who are assigned as cadre to the schoolhouse at the SWC have been concerned that the standards have been lowering for the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) since Sontag took over command of SWC in May of 2017.

What transpired was a toxic command climate where NCOs who voiced concerns over the decreased standards of the SFQC were singled out for retribution. It began where candidates were given multiple chances to pass especially for not passing a physical standard or test. Before Sontag took command, failing to pass two separate times would have resulted in being relieved from the course. But to the consternation of the cadre members, candidates were being passed by a relief board or the training group commander after the cadre recommended relief from the course.

And when any NCOs spoke out about how they were losing their power to properly evaluate potential SF candidates. Wong quoted one SF cadre member as saying, “It’s like Game of Thrones around here,” he said. “Who’s going to be next?”

Why? Because if any of the Green Beret instructors spoke out about the lowering of standards either officially or thru the “town hall meetings” where there is supposed to be a free clearing of the air for instructors and the command, they were either ridiculed for speaking out or had their names marked down for retribution from Sontag himself.

Things reached a head in late 2017. A Green Beret instructor wrote a 6400-word scathing anonymous email that was addressed to the other soldiers in the command, that one Green Beret forwarded to NEWSREP where it was published.

We wrote our own piece on the standards flap here last fall where the charges by the Special Forces NCOs seemed to strike home. One SF sergeant major admitted that SWC had pushed substandard Green Berets onto the operational groups and that it was up to them (the SF Groups), to weed out the unfit.

“‘We push some of these issues forward [to the Regiment] because we believe that the Groups can succeed in fixing those problem graduates when they arrive. That is an amount of risk we willingly accept because after all, it’s much easier to get a tab removed at Group if he doesn’t pan out, than to risk relieving what’s basically a fully qualified student who might have been able to fix himself and become a solid Green Beret.’”

The resultant firestorm from the piece from Jack Murphy about the email had the opposite effect than to fix what was wrong. The SWC command, under Sontag, didn’t seek to remedy the situation but to find the authors of said email and retaliate against them. He did this even though he promised the command thru a letter that he’d look into the allegations brought forward and attempt to fix them.

Several days later, according to Wong, Sontag called a formation of SFQC instructors, both military and civilian and went off the rails.

According to several witnesses, he took off his Army combat uniform top and challenged those who disagreed with him to step forward and fight him.“He took his top off,” one witness said. “He said, ‘If anybody had any problem with me … my rank just came off, I will fight you guys one-on-one.’”

According to another witness, Sonntag also said the email author could be punishable by “death.”

Such actions are hardly the ones you would expect of a general officer.

After a fruitless search for the author, he began a general officer investigation. After dismissing all students and cadre one day at 1400 hrs, Green Berets watched as Army MPs went into the building and began to confiscate computers.

He narrowed down the search to seven possible suspects and had them all flagged for investigation which suspended their security clearances. What followed was a plethora of non-judicial punishments, administrative and reassignment moves and the move to revoke Special Forces tabs from those who, in his mind had crossed the line.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, before his resignation, was behind the cadre members in this flap which has damaged the school’s reputation. The Deputy Army Secretary made a visit to Ft. Bragg over this fiasco and spoke to the cadre of SWC but thus far, nothing more has been heard over this.

Morale is low at the schoolhouse with nearly 43 percent of the cadre saying they were dissatisfied with their job. Wong captured the climate of the schoolhouse with the following comments during her investigation.

One current instructor told Breitbart News that Sonntag was “one of the most toxic commanders I’ve ever had.”

“He keeps order by threats. He’s a hundred percent toxic. He leads by threats and intimidation. He’s ruining people’s careers because he can. He needs to retire out of this job,” the instructor said.

One former instructor said, “Guys — they’re getting out [of the Army] at eight, 10, 12 years. They’re like, ‘Screw this, I’m getting out.’ Why? Because they don’t care about us. And it shows.”

Several Green Beret NCOs and officers have had their careers ended in this purge over at SWC. And things aren’t getting any better it appears. The case of the standards being lowered is one that has been going on since Special Forces has begun its courses of instruction. But in this case, the command and instructors aren’t working together to solve the problem.

Again, what I wrote last year still applies, I don’t know whether what the charges that the NCOs wrote last year were absolutely true or not. I don’t work there anymore and haven’t been there for some time. But if so many of them feel that way, then I trust their judgment as fellow SF brothers that there was an issue that needed fixing.

They are guys on the ground doing the heavy lifting and see the students every day, unlike the command who looks at things from afar and are too occupied with meeting number quotas than turning out qualified Green Berets. The command shouldn’t ever punish those instructors who are only looking to maintain the high standards of the Regiment.

Photo: US Army

SF Instructors Slated For Discharge After Pushback on Standards Email

Opinion: The Special Forces community continues to be in the news and for the Green Berets, it isn’t very welcome. The SF community, long known as the “Quiet Professionals” are finding themselves increasingly in the spotlight and for the wrong reasons.

But if the news on that broke on Tuesday is anywhere close to the truth, then two senior NCOs who are instructors at the Special Forces Qualification Course [SFQC] are being singled out for no good reason as the command lashes out at what was a scathing email that decried the lowering of standards in the SFQC.

The two Green Beret instructors, Sergeant First Class Micah J. Robertson, 33, and Sergeant First Class Michael Squires, 31, are being discharged, they say, for no reason other than the association with and beliefs that the writer of the email was correct.

The story that was first reported by “a news service” reported that when an email that was written by a concerned SF NCO late in 2017, it sent shock waves thru the community. These type of complaints are nothing new, instructors were complaining about lack of standards before I went to the SFQC, while I was at the SFQC, and my fellow instructors and cadre members, including myself, complained about the standards when I worked in the schoolhouse at SFAS.

But those things were kept in-house because there were no social media sites around back in the day to blow things up and make them viral. This one instructor (or perhaps many) excoriated the chain of command citing “moral cowardice” among other things.

“[The SFQC] has devolved into a cesspool of toxic, exploitive, biased and self-serving senior officers who are bolstered by submissive, sycophantic, and just-as-culpable enlisted leaders,” the NCO said. “They have doggedly succeeded in two things; furthering their careers, and ensuring that Special Forces [are] more prolific but dangerously less capable than ever before.”

One of the biggest charges against the command was that once a prospective candidate passed Selection [SFAS], the command removed all physical barriers that could hold a candidate back from passing the SFQC.

As it was reported on Tuesday,” It was then published by a news site started by former special operations forces”, which was SOFREP/NEWSREP, as if Breitbart [oops] didn’t know who it was, when one SF instructor sent it over. MG Sontag felt strongly enough about the email and what was said that he actually answered the charges levied in the email.

“If SFAS is correct, and we believe it is, the SFQC is not a place where high attrition rates should occur. Instead, the mission of the SFQC cadre is to train to standards,” he said at the time. Sonntag also said no “fundamental SF standard” has been “removed.”

One CSM that answered the charges admitted in an astounding statement, that the school fostered substandard Green Berets onto the Regiment and it was up to them to fix it, which itself gave credence to the email in the first place.

“‘We push some of these issues forward [to the Regiment] because we believe that the Groups can succeed in fixing those problem graduates when they arrive. That is an amount of risk we willingly accept because after all, it’s much easier to get a tab removed at Group if he doesn’t pan out than to risk relieving what’s basically a fully qualified student who might have been able to fix himself and become a solid Green Beret.’”

But those issues notwithstanding, what does this have to do with SFCs Robertson and Squires? Nothing. Except that the command believed that they were involved with this email chain in the first place. And they were looking for blood.

The company commander of the soldiers thought to be the guilty parties was given the lowest grade possible on his annual Officer Evaluation Report [OER] basically ending any chance he has of a military career.

Both NCOs were given Article 15s as was the alleged author of the email. Article 15 is non-judicial punishment under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice [UCMJ], getting one of those as a low ranking member of the military is generally not a big deal. For a senior NCO that is the kiss of the death for one’s career.

Both SFers declined to accept it, which is their right and chose to proceed with a General Court Martial. The two were charged with the email as well as creating an App which the command stated violated the instructor ethical code by using their position for financial gain.

The instructors claimed BS and claim they were singled out with no evidence for the email because both had spoken during open “town halls” with the command over concerns of the standards dropping.

MG Sontag dropped the Article 15s and declined to press forward with a Court Martial he could not win. However, he issued both a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand [GOMOR].

A General Officer Memorandum (or letter) of Reprimand (GOMOR) is a memorandum written to a soldier by a General Officer reprimanding the soldier for bad behavior. It’s essentially an ass-chewing by a General.
However, The significance of a GOMOR is that it can become part of one of your military files. It can be filed “locally”, which means in your Military Personnel Record Jacket [MPRJ], or in your “permanent” file, which means in your Official Military Personnel File (OMPF). A GOMOR filed locally will be removed eventually
[usually when a soldier PCS]. A GOMOR filed in your permanent file will very likely stay there forever.

This too can be a kiss of death for any senior NCO. It is unknown if the NCOs sent in a letter of rebuttal for this letter which is their right to do so. It does seem that the soldiers are facing an uphill battle in this.

Now they are being told that both are being discharged from the Army. Both want to know…for what? And that is a very legitimate question. Why are these two NCOs being singled out for discharge? Do they have a series of unfavorable NCOERs in the files, stating they were doing a substandard job? Something tells me that isn’t the case or they wouldn’t be SFQC instructors.

Robertson has 13 and a half years of service, Squires with more than 12.

U.S. Army Special Operations Command’s Director of Public Affairs Lt. Col. Loren Bymer said in a statement:

Army Special Operations Command is predicated on high standards and character attributes that define a Soldier’s service. There was not an all-inclusive investigation launched, but all allegations of misconduct were handled by commanders at the appropriate levels and adjudicated accordingly. The Special Warfare Center and School has a responsibility to ensure each soldier attending training is prepared to meet the needs of the nation now and in the future. This includes ensuring professional instruction, consistently strenuous mental and physical standards, inclusive training, and upholding the expectation that cadre and candidates demonstrate the Army Special Operations attributes at all times.

When this story broke, many of us here who have been in the Regiment were talking about this very subject. And we all feared, and now it has been proved rightly so, that the command would be more interested in finding and punishing the parties who sent the message rather than fix the issues that the email addressed.

This is sadly exactly what is happening. There is no proof that these two did anything wrong whatsoever, besides trying to protect the force that they serve in by doing the best job that they can as instructors? Isn’t that what we expect, or actually DEMAND from our cadre?

This is a witch hunt plain and simple. Those of us saw this coming and unfortunately, especially for Robertson and Squires, it has become a reality.

Back in the day before social media blew up the way we converse, there were a couple of “underground” Special Forces newspapers that were immensely popular with the troops and very unpopular with the brass.

One at the JFK SWC was “The Resister” it was marvelously written and called out all of the BS that one would encounter at the schoolhouse. The Resister was an equal opportunity paper, they called out General Officers down to the lowest NCOs if need be. It was so well written that the wonderful ladies who ran the library at the SWC kept copies of the Resister on file.

The command eventually seized all of the copies from the library like some sort of housecleaning like ridding the community of blight or subversiveness when the works of Mao, Lenin, Stalin, and Marx were all there for all to read.

In Panama, the 3/7 SFG had their own paper, “The Bend-Over Daily”. The BOD was a much more irreverent, hysterically funny, but equally well-written piece. Again it would poke fun at the chickenshit antics of some NCOs or Officers and everyone looked forward to the next issue.

Like when SGM Ivanov insisted on planting banana trees on the island in front of 3/7 buildings, every night someone would go out and cut them down. It got so ridiculous, Ivanov put the staff duty runner and NCO outside on the porch. Eventually, the poor private had to piss, and watching from the barracks was the perp. Ivanov was livid.

Of course, the next BOD wanted to know “Who is the Night Whacker???” We all knew who it was, or at least we think we do….

Later the Bn Cdr would make the rounds with the SGM and inspect the buildings once in a blue moon. The BOD warned the troops, “Beware of the dirtbag and the douchebag.” That battalion commander didn’t freak, speaking to an assembled group on NCOs, he said, “I sure hope that I’m the dirtbag!”

Stop the nonsense, reinstate Robertson and Squires and fix the damn courses. DOL

Photo: DOD

Changes Are Coming For the Special Forces Qualification Course

Course Is to Be Shortened to 24 Weeks

We’ve been expecting change to the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) for some time now. The course is and pretty much has always been a constantly evolving training vehicle to get the best trained Special Forces troops on the ground and to the operational groups. The missions evolve as the world around us and the threats our nation faces change. The outstanding SF troops from Vietnam were training for and fighting a much different war than the men are today in Syria or Afghanistan.

But with the breaking story from a year ago with several SF instructors being concerned with the standards of the course being compromised, we knew changes were bound to happen. Which is nothing new. Cadre at the SFQC in every generation are always worried about the standards and keeping them at a high level. In this case, those concerns from the cadre made into the social media platforms. And many civilians who don’t understand how things work in the military got the wrong impressions

Well, the changes weren’t long in coming. MG Sonntag had been meeting with the people at the JFKSWCS (Special Warfare Center School) and there are big changes coming down the pipeline for the SFQC, Civil Affairs, and PSYOPs Courses. They are attempting to streamline all of the courses to better improve their product.

NEWSREP’s Jack Murphy was given a copy of the email sent out by MG Sonntag to the command that stated the SFQC was going to be streamlined to a total of 24 weeks from the beginning of SFOC to RFF (Regimental First Formation). Below is a copy of that message:

From: Sonntag Kurt L MG (USAJFKSWCS) [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2018 6:02 PM
To:
Subject: SFQC Optimization Update

SWCS Team,

In August, I met with all of you to discuss our way ahead. The question I asked was: How do we transform the enterprise and organization structure to ensure doctrine and training prepares Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations and Special Forces personnel through their careers to effectively operate in the current and future environments given operational requirements and institutional constraints?

The answer to that question resulted in five new lines of effort for the command. Today, I was briefed by the 1st Special Warfare Training Group (A) Command on their way forward on one part of LOE 2, the optimization of the Special Forces Qualification Course. The Training Group staff, in coordination with the SF Commandant efforts, took a hard look at the course from start to finish and has recommended a course of action that will:

– Leverage the best of the SFQC training modules to enhance the overall training environment.

– Reduce the total training time from the start of the SFQC to RFF to 24 weeks, thereby enhancing 1st SFC(A)’s readiness.

– Introduces students to resistance and ODA operations and reinforces their importance throughout the entirety of the SFQC.

– Sets the conditions for touch points throughout the course for interaction between SF, CA and PSYOP.

– Transitions the SFQC to a four-start production model that will maximize resources while still providing sufficient training capacity.

– Focuses on individual MOS skill development and collective training, while moving to a coach, teach, mentor environment where training the individual is a priority.

– Collective training is executed in an ODA construct within the Pineland Training Scenario. This construct enhances the learning environment while increasing the understanding and comprehension of SF missions.

This is the first step in our optimization. Over the next several months many of you will be involved in this process, with a projected transition starting in June 2019. This is a big step forward, but it cannot stop here. As the SFQC cadre and staff work through this process, leaders throughout the command will look at all SWCS training in an effort to make comprehensive changes that will better prepare our Army Special Operations Forces’ ability to operate successfully in complex, dynamic environments throughout the world – now and into the future.

v/r,

KLS

MG Kurt L. Sonntag

Commanding General

USJFKSWCS/US Army SOCoE

NIPR: [email protected]

SIPR: [email protected]

Office: 910-432-4404

BB: 910-568-9273

SFQC Optimization approved concept 18OCT18 (2)

Obviously, (above), we also had been given copies of the slides that the General had briefed off of and we had some questions about how the training would be conducted, what was being cut or shortened.

We reached out to the USASOC, SOCOM PAO Office for some clarification and they asked for the questions in writing so that they could answer them in a timely, complete manner which is completely understandable.

So in regard to the portions of the course that were being either shortened or cut entirely, the command answered that. Their response:

“1st Special Forces Command outlined the individual tasks required for each MOS to meet their operational needs. Instead of adding collective tasks into MOS, this concept focuses solely on individual tasks and incorporates application through historical vignettes (lessons-learned). The practical application at a team level will come in tactical skills. Currently, the course orientation and history phase is six weeks. This concept incorporates the introductory individual tasks into MOS training and the collective tasks into tactical skills. History modules and other tasks now taught in course orientation will be taught throughout all phases of the course. This concept found efficiencies in training by reorganizing where we teach certain tasks, which provides opportunities to combine complimentary tasks in a logical manner.”

We asked about changes to cut out MFF and if any of these changes that were taking place in the SFQC would affect the SFAS course.

Military Free Fall is not being cut out. It is actually included on the far right of the first slide. There has been no proposal to alter Special Forces Assessment and Selection at this time, but Cadre are constantly looking for efficiencies and best-practices to enhance training. The optimization of the Special Forces pipeline is only the first step in enhancing MOS qualification training across all three Regiments trained at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.

The final questions we had were about what one of the SF Groups were conducting for newly graduated Green Berets entering into the 3rd Special Forces Group SFG(A). We had heard thru our sources there that 3rd SFG was running a Green Platoon training for new SFers called “Entry Level Operator Training Course.”

Given the flap that hit the schoolhouse last year around this time, our questions were blunt. Is the 3rd SFG conducting this training in response to what we heard about a year ago? And more importantly, is this action by the Group a sign that they aren’t happy with the level of training that the troops are receiving in the SFQC? USASOC responded to that as well.

Each installation has unique requirements for planning and executing training events. The Entry Level Operator’s Course is provided to new members of 3rd SFG(A) to equip them with the required certifications they will need to conduct training on Fort Bragg. During the course, an operator can expect to receive their military driver’s license, their ammunition handler’s card, and their range safety certifications, as well as information to make them successful as they facilitate training on the installation.

This makes total sense and is quite practical. Fort Bragg, like any big Army training base has a ton of rules that have to be followed and to conduct any training it is always advisable to have every SF troop as qualified as possible to conduct training on post.

However, we did hear back from our source(s) in 3rd SFG, and while those admin tasks that USASOC mentioned were indeed part of the initial training as part of the Entry Level Operator’s Course, but they also said there was a tactical portion of the course that covered basic “includes how to shoot, move, communicate, and medicate. Other parts deal with combatives and mobility.”

This again doesn’t necessarily mean that the Group is unhappy with the training conducted by the “Q” Course. It could mean that the 3rd SFG(A) is simply wanting all of their personnel to conduct a standard of SOPs that will be uniform throughout the Group. That way, everyone regardless of A-Team, Company or Battalion will be operating virtually the same. With the Operational Tempo the Groups are currently dealing with, it would make sense to do this collectively before the new guys make their way down to the teams. We haven’t been able to confirm that yet.

If we learn anything new, we’ll be happy to update and share. Until then, the course is changing again. For the cadre. For the prospective SF candidate, he’ll be seeing it for the first time (hopefully) anyway and won’t notice the difference. The tempo may be increased a bit.

DOL, “Don’t be late, don’t be light, don’t be out of uniform.”

Photo: US Army

Robin Sage Begins June 9th, Time For the SF Students to Step Up

The Special Forces rite of passage is about to begin for the next class of SF candidates. The final training in Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) for prospective SF soldiers is the Unconventional Warfare (UW) exercise “Robin Sage”, which we went over in detail in an earlier post, that you can read here:

The prospective Green Berets put all their training together and infiltrate into the fictional country of Pineland via an airborne operation. The SF candidates must raise and train a guerrilla force that will fight the enemy government troops and attempt to restore the friendly Pineland government.

The exercise’s notional country of Pineland encompasses Alamance, Anson, Cabarrus, Chatham, Cumberland, Davidson, Davie Guilford, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Scotland, Stanly, and Union counties. Throughout the exercise, Special Forces candidates and Robin Sage role-players not only conduct training missions such as controlled assaults and key-leader engagements but also live, eat and sleep in these civilian areas.

Robin Sage, derives its name from the town of Robbins, N.C., a central area of operations for the exercise, and former Army Colonel Jerry Sage, a World War II veteran and an Office of Strategic Services, or OSS officer who taught unconventional warfare tactics. Steve McQueen’s character Hilts in the film “The Great Escape” was based off Sage.

This current version of the UW exercise has been in use with only slight changes since 1974. To succeed, the prospective SF troops need to accomplish a few key tasks.

Build Popular Support with the Civilian Populace
Make Rapport with the target audience (Guerrilla Force)
Be an effective teacher and train the resistance force

Building Popular Support with the Civilian Populace: What makes Robin Sage so realistic? The civilian community in “Pineland” is nearly totally immersed in the operation. Not only have the citizens of the operational area given their support for the exercise, they’ve become deeply involved.

Many of the role players have been involved with the course for several years and they pass along to their children the drive to carry on and to take over the role of underground or auxiliary in the exercise. And they have proven time and again just how important having popular support in the UW area of operations is to mission success.

These role players help to ferry supplies and equipment, move troops in covered trailers around the operational area as well as provide an early warning network for the guerrilla force. As it is with all people who live in the country, nothing happens out there without all of them knowing about it and they invariably warned the good guys.

And make no mistake, the Special Forces students are the “good guys” in this exercise. It strikes home how important having popular support is when either helping or countering a resistance movement. It is a lesson all SF troops need to learn. No one can make a move in the operational area without the civilians knowing about it. And if they are for you, they will prove invaluable. If the team loses popular support, they are likely done.

Make Rapport With the G-Force: Building rapport with the locals that the SF team will train with, by and through is, among the most important tasks they will encounter. The ability to build rapport both with their foreign partners and with their team members is essentially the difference between Special Forces and all of the others. Alone, an SF team is just 12 men, but working with their foreign partners, they become force multipliers.

SF candidates will quickly learn that learning to communicate and respect the ways of the target audience, obeying their social graces as it is imperative. That is just the first step. Learning to make rapport with the local forces isn’t easy to teach and it is even harder to learn. Some guys are naturals at it and should always be out front, especially during the early “feeling out” process.

The ability to build a solid base of trust is one of the key skills learned by Special Forces troops in complex, austere environments. It can’t be massed produced or pushed thru a shake and bake course. Having troops just show up on the doorstep in the middle of a third world country and have them fall at your feet isn’t realistic and doesn’t happen.

Rapport building begins with checking your ego at the door and operating instinctively. Many times there won’t be a right or wrong answer and frequently the SF candidates will be forced to make difficult and complex decisions. The hallmarks of a successful Special Forces soldier is a mature, versatile and flexible operator in any environment. Being able to adapt to cultures other than our own is the true mark of building trust and reliability that our by, with and through the local forces that will mark a successful operation.

The interaction with host nation troops, both soldiers and leaders require a need for tact and diplomacy. Hammering home the message to the lower rank and file of the guerrilla force is quite different than that to a Colonel or politician/tribal elder that you’ll encounter. A career diplomat once told me the art of diplomacy is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in a way that they’ll enjoy the trip.

One of the best team sergeants I ever knew and a man I consider a tremendous mentor said, the best way to make rapport sometimes is to just shut up and listen. For the SF candidates, there is a time for talking and a time for listening. And when it is time to listen, they need to do so as if their collective lives depend on it. Because they do.

Be An Effective Teacher, Training the G-Force: As we’ve said here numerous times, teaching is an art in Special Forces. Unfortunately teaching and training a guerrilla force isn’t as sexy as taking down a target on a DA (Direct Action) mission and no one wants to see that…right? People want to see a video of guys “doing operator shit” with plenty of cool toys complete with heavy metal music overdubbed while the bad guys bite the dust.

While DA missions are linear and much easier to judge the success or failure of, the true art of a Special Forces A-team lies in their ability to teach an allied soldier or guerrilla fighter to do those same Direct Action missions. Setting up intelligence early warning networks or leading a dedicated guerrilla force to succeed in the Unconventional Warfare (UW) environment isn’t as tangible, nor as sexy. But it is the difference between winning and losing in the UW environment.

We all remember our time in Robin Sage as it was the final test before joining the Regiment, where the real learning begins in earnest. And my primary instructor at Robin Sage, Paul W. not only knew his subject matter extremely well, he knew the operational area as well as the locals and we as a team soaked up his lessons like a sponge. He would always answer questions framed around a question of his own and said frequently that “this is a thinking man’s game.” At the time, we didn’t completely get it but he was right.

And everything centered around the three primary tasks listed above. They were all interdependent on one another. Of course, there are several other things that the students will have to accomplish, but these three are keys to getting a successful operation conducted in Robin Sage and walking across the stage and becoming part of the best Regiment in the military.

Photo: US Army

Robin Sage, Prospective SF Students Should Study Up on Pineland

“Free Pineland!” This is the cry many a prospective Special Forces student will hear during their final phase of the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) that culminates in the premiere Unconventional Warfare (UW) exercise in the military, Robin Sage.

After many months of training, in some cases over a year, prospective Green Berets put all that training to the test by parachuting into the fictional country of Pineland. The former government of Pineland was a friendly one to the United States.

Following a coup that deposes the legitimate government, the SF students work with an eclectic mix of role players, former SF soldiers and soft skill MOS soldiers to raise and train a guerrilla force that will fight the enemy government troops and attempt to restore the Pineland government. They’ll teach them the basics of patrolling, raids and ambushes, communications, and medical training.

The fictional country of Pineland encompasses 15 counties in North Carolina including Alamance, Anson, Cabarrus, Chatham, Davidson, Guilford, Hoke, Montgomery, Moore, Randolph, Richmond, Rowan, Scotland, Stanly, and Union counties.

This unique training and unconventional warfare, or UW, training environment allow instructors to stress the candidates, assessing their ability to think on their feet and accomplish their team’s assigned missions. The political instability of the area, coupled with working alongside guerrillas who may act (and frequently do) outside of the rules of warfare while engaged in open warfare will place the teams in frequently faced “real-world” situations.

The enemy soldiers or OPFOR (Opposing Forces) for the exercise are generally members of the 82^nd Airborne Division from Ft. Bragg. They provide a good test for the SF candidates to take on. They’re well trained and motivated to make things as interesting as possible. We’ll delve more deeply into the civilian role players in a follow-on post.

Other units from Bragg supply the soldiers for the guerrilla force or “G-Force” that the teams will work with. They are frequently what I referred to earlier as soft-skill MOS’ or non-tactical soldiers. Finance clerks, typists, truck drivers, mechanics etc. They know their own jobs extremely well but as for sleeping on the ground under a poncho hooch, going on an ambush or a raid, doing a recon of a target and moving as a unit tactically thru the Uwharrie Forest, especially at night…never. That’s the built-in factor that makes it more difficult. The SWC (Special Warfare Center) isn’t going to give the student A-teams a platoon plus of hard-charging airborne infantry types from the 82^nd as a G-Force.

SF student medics treat one of the members of the guerrilla force during Robin Sage. (US Army photo)

The guerrillas will take their cues from the G-Force commander, a retired SF operator who will be a difficult guy to win over, as one would be in the real world. Of course, the events are sequenced faster than they would be in the real world because of time constraints in the course. But this is a very challenging part of the exercise and a deal breaker for some.

The students are formed into ODAs (Operations Detachment Alpha, popularly known as A-Teams) – along with similar lines with weapons, engineers, medics and communications sergeants as well as a Team sergeant and an Operations and Intelligence Sergeant to real Special Forces A-Teams. Depending on the number of students in the class, the candidate’s detachments may have 3-4 rather than two officers and up to 15 enlisted men.

During their final instruction in Unconventional Warfare prior to infiltration of Pineland, the SF candidates will study guerrilla warfare, sabotage, intelligence, and subversion. The detachment enters “isolation” which is a planning and preparation phase. They conduct mission analysis and plan their infiltration, linkup plan, and subsequent activities.

No one is allowed in or out without being mission cleared during isolation. At the end of isolation, the team presents a brief back to the command element to show that they’re ready to complete the mission. It is in no way like the Operations Orders given by conventional units prior to an operation as each team member will take part.

The teams will infiltrate the denied area of Pineland usually by an airborne operation, but sometimes by helicopter or truck movement if the weather does not cooperate. After infiltration, there is always a long foot movement over rough terrain to test navigational skills and moving under a heavy load. The team will have to move hard and fast to make the time arranged to contact the guerrilla band.

Using their contact plan developed while in isolation, the students must affect link up with the G-Force. Once that has been accomplished, they proceed to establish rapport with the guerrilla band leaders that we referenced above, which was referenced above.

The student A-Teams must assess the overall security of the operational area and the guerilla basecamp, assess the training and support requirements of the resistance, and then… usually, after a brief and awkward ceremony welcoming them to the resistance, proceed with training and employment of the resistance group.

The training requirements are often challenging. In a real-world resistance movement, the guerillas would no doubt be hardened and used to living on the ground. The guerrillas assigned for the exercise usually have to be taught much of the basics that field soldiers take for granted. Many have never carried a rucksack other than a time or two in basic training. This is a great time to build a real rapport with the G-Force.

In my experience, most of our 45-man G-Force came from one unit, all were clerk typists, finance clerks and similar MOS’. But their leaders bought in right away, and the young soldiers, although completely out of their element became very willing and motivated participants. It made our job much easier and more enjoyable. One of the young men, had his eyes opened, he eventually re-enlisted to get reclassified and go thru SF. Some of the other student detachments weren’t so fortunate.

As the training progresses with the guerrillas, they’ll be tasked with a few softer DA (Direct Action) targets. Raids, ambushes, and some reconnaissance. The missions get harder as the timing gets accelerated. There will frequently be a couple of missions on-going at any given time. Each of the students will rotate through a leadership position of the team and will be evaluated under the stress of leading a half-trained guerrilla band.

Upon completion of Robin Sage, the students give back to the communities in the area by doing a day of Civic Action work. It may be as simple as cutting and stacking firewood for some of the families, adding a porch or in our case, repairing a roof as well as a host of other activities. Those small gestures of goodwill make for the continuing work the SF community has in the area such a success.

Normally the team will work with not only the guerrillas, the armed band of the resistance but the auxiliary and the underground, which are key components to the resistance and very valuable tools for the prospective SF soldiers.

Special Forces’ bread and butter is the working with and building rapport with indigenous forces. Nearly every other mission that SF is tasked with will have that as a key component. Therefore, language and cross-cultural communications are very important. Robin Sage is the culmination of the entire Special Forces Qualification Course as it prepares the prospective Special Forces operator for a variety of missions and most importantly how to work with indigenous forces.

Everything they will face in Robin Sage will be just the tip of the iceberg that they’ll face in the real world. Special Forces is the premiere UW fighting force in the world. The lessons the soldiers are learning go all the way back to the hard-earned and difficult days of WWII and the OSS. Upon completion, it is back to Ft. Bragg where they’ll join the regiment and don the Green Beret for the first time.

Free Pineland.

Photo courtesy US Army

Free Pineland! Next Robin Sage Takes Place 11-24 March

In just a few days, Special Forces candidates will descend upon 15 North Carolina counties to take part in “Robin Sage”, the final test of the Special Forces Qualification Course.

Special Forces candidates will attempt to free the fictional country of Pineland by entering the area of operations, linking up with a guerrilla force and helping them conduct UW operations and overthrow the government.

Ft. Bragg soldiers will take part playing the part of opposing forces as well as friendly guerrilla freedom fighters also known as the Pineland resistance movement.

The exercise’s fictional country of Pineland spans Rowan, Alamance, Anson, Cabarrus, Chatham, Davidson, Guilford, Hoke, Montgomery, Moore, Randolph, Richmond, Scotland, Stanly, and Union counties.
Throughout the exercise, Special Forces candidates and Robin Sage role players not only conduct training missions such as controlled assaults and key-leader engagements but also live, eat and sleep in civilian areas.
All Robin Sage movements have been coordinated with public safety officials in the towns and counties hosting the training. Residents may hear blank gunfire and see occasional flares. Controls are in place to ensure no risk to people or property.
Residents with concerns should contact local law enforcement officials, who will then contact exercise control officials.

Robin Sage is the final rite of passage for Green Berets and has been since 1974. Civilians from the area take an active role in the operations and act as role players throughout the exercise. Many know the area of operations and can navigate without the use of a map across large areas in the exercise. Their dedication and assistance is invaluable to the Special Forces candidates and provides a valuable lesson for future SF operators.

Upon the successful completion of Robin Sage, soldiers will graduate the Special Forces Qualification Course, don their Green Berets for the first time and move on to their initial assignments in the Special Forces Regiment.

To read the entire article from Salisbury Post, click here:

Photo courtesy DOD