I’ve never been in the military, and I’ve only known a handful of people who served in the special forces. So most of my knowledge comes from those people and whatever books or documentaries I’ve seen.
However, you’d assume a person drawn to the Green Berets would probably be different than a person drawn to the Rangers since the operations are different.
As an example, I was watching a documentary about navy SEAL training and saw there were either no or very few blacks or latinos in the SEALs, despite them making up about 25% of the recruits in the military. Is that the same in other forces like Marine Recon or the Army Rangers where it is almost all white, or are more non-whites drawn to the SEALs but weren’t in that docuementary?
The SEALs, from what little I know of them from books and documentaries, seem like dogmatic hardasses whereas the handful of Rangers I’ve known didn’t have that. Then again, those were documentaries about training to become SEALs whereas the Rangers I knew were experienced or had already left their units and gotten into civilian life. It is definately not a scientific poll, but Marcus Luttrell (who was a SEAL and wrote ‘lone survivor’) and his brother were nothing like Pat Tillman and his brother who were Rangers. Then again Jesse Ventura isn’t very dogmatic despite being in the SEALs.
So is there a general difference among issues like race and personality among members of various special forces units (air force commandos, green berets, recon, rangers, SEALs, etc)?
A key thing about special forces members is that they need to be smart, able to think on their feet and adapt quickly. The rest of the military tends to encourage a groupthink mentality and the ability to follow orders without question.
Getting into special forces units, especially the very elite ones like Delta, SEAL Team 6, Red Cell, ISA, etc, is very, very, very difficult. Besides the insane physical and tactical requirements (in most cases, you need a 100% accuracy rate in every type of firing test whereas 80% is considered exceptional in any other context), there are plenty of psychological and mental focus tests. Perhaps the psychology of these types of servicemen are similar in that they are all focused enough to pass all these tests. The concept of a ragtag group of army gruffs doesn’t apply when everybody must be extraordinarily skilled.
As for whether different special forces teams each have a different psychology, which I think was the question, I’d say probably. Every unit has its own specific function with its own required mentality. As far as I know, SEALs and Delta types are more likely to be working on their own, whereas Rangers more often work in groups, so naturally one would promote a hardened “lone wolf” mentality while the other would garner a more team-oriented mindset.
My research is mostly limited to high level, JSOC units like Delta, Team 6, and ISA, however. I don’t know much about SEALS or Rangers in general.
I went through OCS with 3 SEALS. One was an easy-going, low-key kinda guy - apart from his incredible physical shape, you’d have never guessed he was one of the elite. Another for some reason was not memorable at all. The third, however, was a real piece of work. If I had to pick one word to describe him, it would be goofy. He had a goofy sense of humor, he liked to party, and he was always smiling. I expect he was all business when he had to be.
But within the context of OCS, they seemed like any one of us… except for maxing out the PT tests.