Are they comparable to jtf2, delta force, sas, etc or are they more comparable to navy seals or green berets?
They don’t use the metric system like the rest of Europe?
I don’t know, but their gelato is pretty good.
Poland seems to think so: “GROM was originally modelled on NATO’s most reputable special operations units such as the British SAS, the US Army’s Delta Force, and the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six (DEVGRU).”
It doesn’t appear to be a part of any other branch of the Polish military but I don’t know. It’s currently commanded by a Colonel but has been commanded by Brigadier Generals in the past if that tells you anything.
So how do you recognize the groom at a Polish wedding?
IMHO, the difficulty with answering the question is that this unit (like similar formations in other countries) hardly ever get to put their skills into praxis (unlike the US military). So nobody knows for sure.
Yeah - High time Poland declared war on someone to make sure that their military is up to scratch and to use up all the ordnance that’s near its use-by date.
You’re Wesley Clark, shouldn’t you know?
Tripler
I thought you guys all swapped Christmas cards and pysanki.
Pretty sure GROM has been in the thick of things in both Iraq and Afghanistan and are pretty well-regarded in the special operations community.
Indeed, I wasn’t really aware of that.
→ Polish zone in Iraq - Wikipedia
→ Polish involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq - Wikipedia
→ JW GROM - Wikipedia
On re-reading the original post: “tier one” has a special meaning in the world of special forces. “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_One_(military)” redirects to “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Mission_Unit”. According to the latter article, this designation is (only?) used in the United States and in Australia:
However, the article goes on to mention only the relevant units in the US and Australia (so much for “around the world”).
There actually is an annual competition among elite special forces teams from various countries. Poland didn’t field a team in last month’s event (or in any of the previous three events). So what does that tell you? I’m sure they’d like to think that they’re such badasses that they’d embarrass the other teams if they participated.
Afghanistan sent no less than 4 teams. Makes you wonder who was left to take care of the bad guys back home.
One thing to consider is that the Tier ranking is kind of vague at best, and is primarily a US thing related to funding.
However, if the US units were to be ranked in terms of training and selectivity, I’d think they shake out like this:
1: 1st SFOD-D/CAG, DEVGRU/Seal Team 6, AFSOC operators
2: Army SF, SEALS
3: Ranger battalions
4: Airborne troops (173rd brigade, 82nd Airborne, 101st Airmobile)
The USMC special ops units are sort of outside of USSOCOM, so I’m not sure where they’d rank- I suspect the Marine Raider regiment is probably on par with the Ranger battalions, but have no idea where Force Recon might stack up.
I’d also guess that most Western nations’ highest level special operations forces are roughly equivalent to the Delta/DEVGRU types- UK/Australian SAS, Canadian Special Ops Regiment, GSG-9, GIGN, Sayeret Matkal, etc… It gets a little bit fuzzier with smaller, poorer and less martially inclined countries; e.g. is the best Italian special ops unit equivalent to DEVGRU? What about GROM?