US Special Ops Are Starting To Look A Lot Less Special

[CountDeMoney]

Lol great avatar and sig, Syt.

I had some Galactica nostalgia recently. And Cain was one of my childhood heroes.

That was a 2 week episode.  Absolute murder to be 9 years old and having to wait a week for that one:)

[grumbler]

Sadly I think this may be a problem that can't be avoided simply by dissolving commands. This sounds a lot like how various regiments of the British army strive to demonstrate their continuing relevance (and, thus, continued funding) by fighting political battles in London to get deployed. So you then get odd decisions like sending in the paras, designed as an airmobile shock force, to do tough first-wave counter-insurgency in Helmand, or deploying the damn cavalry to Afghanistan.

What you describe is a different problem:  "London" allowing the assets, not the users, to decide where assets get deployed.  In the US system, it is the Unified Commanders that use the assets that get to decide what is used, unless you set up asset-based unified commands like SOCCOM, in which case the US has exactly the problem you describe. Getting rid of the asset-based UCs largely gets rid of the problem, I think.