Report: Support unit for SF groups is lacking - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Report: Support unit for SF groups is lacking

A report by an experienced Special Forces officer highlights glaring shortages in special operations support personnel and warns that in some cases, “the train wreck is underway.”

Among the problems are maintenance support for Strykers fielded to the Rangers and property book personnel who are “overwhelmed.”

The report, titled “The Future of Special Operations Forces,” was written by Roger Carstens, who retired in February 2008 as a lieutenant colonel and spent most of the next year conducting research for the report as a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

The report is based on interviews and briefings Carstens conducted while visiting U.S. special ops units around the world.

“Special Forces groups, sadly, do not have a robust support unit — a common theme that arises when talking to special operators from Fort Bragg, to Afghanistan, to Iraq,” he writes.

Carstens compares the group support battalion created to sustain a Special Forces group with its conventional Army counterpart, the brigade support battalion. “The difference: the BSBs were well-designed and manned at 90 percent,” he writes. “GSBs were designed on the cheap and then manned at 50 percent.”

The 56-page report by Carstens, who testified before the House Armed Services Committee’s terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities subcommittee March 3, quotes an unnamed group support battalion officer interviewed in September in Bagram, Afghanistan.

“Bottom line: There was little to no analysis done on ‘what is the requirement,’ ” the officer says. “… My thought is that [U.S. Army Special Operations Command] would not give up personnel growth to non-trigger pullers, and so we got shorted in the support side of the house.”

Another GSB officer in Bagram is quoted as saying that “the rest of the Army is growing its logistics support elements; SOCOM is reducing.”

Although each of the five active-duty Special Forces groups is increasing in size from three SF battalions to four, the group support battalions each have only three companies, “a number that seems suboptimal,” Carstens writes. “The general thought expressed is that the GSBs need to grow to four companies, so that a company could train and deploy with a Special Forces battalion, building a habitual relationship between the supported and the supporting.”

“We are fully 10 years behind the Army,” Carstens quotes a GSB officer as saying. “The Army gets it right. We should rotate support elements every trip and those same supporting elements should align themselves with deploying units.”

Even the 75th Ranger Regiment, one of the Army’s highest-priority units, is suffering, wrote Carstens, who states that Rangers are getting 54 Stryker vehicles “but will not receive the motor pool and mechanics needed to maintain the vehicles.”

Asked whether this was true, U.S. Army Special Operations Command replied with the following statement: “The 75th Ranger Regiment maintains a robust Stryker capability to include support and maintenance that provides them with the protective mobility necessary to operate effectively in combat operations.”

Carstens also keyed on one often overlooked community: property book officers and noncommissioned officers who must track a unit’s nonexpendable items.

“[P]roperty book professionals are in short supply and overwhelmed,” Carstens writes. “Units outfitted for garrison management of property are now responsible for property books at home station, Afghanistan and combat outposts. With massive amounts of equipment being given to [special operations forces] and being registered on classified and unclassified property books, the train wreck is underway.”

Army Special Forces Command responded to detailed questions from Army Times with a statement:

“[Army special operations forces] sustainment is unquestionably challenging for several reasons, which includes [sic] aspects of force structure. It is also contextually important to appreciate that ARSOF operates in a very distributed fashion throughout entire countries vice a specific operational area. Couple that with the unique manning and equipping of our Special Forces groups and it leads to our force being stressed to meet the enduring demands of our operational missions.

“Some of the force structure inadequacies are long-standing and in need of modification (e.g., the property book and supply NCO situation),” the statement said. “We recognize that there is a need to improve our support structures and capabilities and we are committed to doing so.”