Family story was my dad was in WW2 special ops … training. Kicked out of the program after losing his temper and slugging an officer. So the story went. In any case mostly served as infantry. Yiddish fluency allowed him to manage as translator also. Some version of being in charge over an occupied town at some point but I never heard much of that story.
I believe the story. It tracked with what else I knew of who he had been at that point in his life.
My last few years on Active Duty, as EOD, I was fortunate to build working connections with certain ‘communities.’ While they’re protective of their nomenclature, there is an understanding that wanna-bes exist, and eye-rolling does ensue.
Both statements are true. “Special Operations” and “Operator” gets thrown around kinda liberally, even by well-meaning folks that had been attached in direct support of SOF, but who are not, in-and-of themselves, SOF.
Not all Rangers are Special Ops–just because you earn a tab doesn’t make you an Operator. The 75th Ranger Regiment is a Special Mission Unit meaning they are sometimes tasked with undertaking Special Operations, but sometimes aren’t considered SOF. My understanding is that they are specialized for forced entry, but are are less “Special” than Delta, SAG, DEVGRU, or any of the Green Beret Groups.
Yeah, I need to see this in context. As well-trained as they are to accompany SOF (dive & jump trained), current US Navy EOD is not Special Operations, no matter how much hair gel they deploy with.
ETA: OP, trust your gut. You don’t need to work in a delicatessen to see what bologna the OP’s “friend” is slicin’.
Tripler
Retired EOD, with friends in the community, but only my Mom and cat think I’m “Special.”
I don’t talk about it because even the traumatic parts are an underwhelming bore.
Yes they are. Navy EOD. Are indisputably spec ops within the Navy.
See: U.S. Navy Special Operations Careers | Navy.com
(Navy.com, unlike military.com, actually is a DOD-run website).
That recruiting website is misleading.
While Navy EOD performs ‘special’ operatons (as in ‘specialized’ operations), they are not a part of Naval Special Warfare Command, are not “Special Operators”, nor are Special Operations Forces. US Navy EOD is organized under Naval Expeditionary Combat Command, (follow “Organization > Operational Forces > EOD” for Groups 1 & 2) which includes SeaBees, and used to (as of 2011) include Salvage Divers (from recollection of past discussion w/the COs of EODMU3 & EODMU6).
While there are EOD techs assigned to SOF units (there are SEALs w/EOD backgrounds), rank and file US Navy EOD is not inherently SOF.
While pulling up some of the links for this post, I reflected on the apparent size of the Navy bureaucracy, and recalled something I heard that @What_Exit is probably gonna give me a ribbing about: “The US Navy: 229 years of tradition unhampered by modern progress!” :: D&R :: 
Tripler
Deployed to a Navy Bn Staff, with an AF EOD Flight & Army EOD Company, all in support of a Marine Corps battlespace.
Tripler, I’m sure your correct. You were in much more recently and much longer than I. I was 4 and out and happy to be out.
But by some definitions, both Rangers and EOD at least during Vietnam were listed with Special Ops. I didn’t mean for this to blow up into anything more. Hell, if you want to stretch the definition of Special Ops, you can make an argument the entire US Marine Corps is the largest Special Ops force in the world.
I don’t think I’ve known actual SEALs. I knew a few guys that didn’t make the cut in training and ended up regular Navy. EOD is far from SEAL Team 6 work but damn, that is some extra stuff they did during Vietnam.
As stated, I ended up a simple Electrician during the end of the Cold War in Reagan’s 600 ship Navy. I was technically Nuclear Waste, but by my choice. I refused to sign the 2 year extension after they made me an EM instead of an ET. So I shipped out to the Ranger as an E3 instead of to a Nuke as an E4 {if I even made it through all the extra training involved}. So I was pretty far removed from Special OPs other than driving past the SEAL training base in San Diego. 
They did an exercise to take the USS Ranger in port. We were lucky enough to have one Sponson Watch give the alert on the sound powered phones* so that DC Central at least was able to secure itself using casualty power cables and some Bullshit. So we were complimented in foiling the SEALs from meeting all their objectives. I do know a few months earlier, they did take the Connie. (USS Constellation).
* Who says Boatswain Mates are useless?
Yeah, I will throttle back . . . I didn’t intend for this to turn that direction. I believe you.
I admittedly get a little defensive, strangely enough for a moniker/title I’ve never earned. But I reckon that of the 3rd & 5th SFG and DEVGRU folks I still know (and bump into at work sometimes), if they’re kind enough to trust me enough to invite me into their “secret lairs” on business, I will at a minimum, be wildly respectful of the privileges they’ve earned, just as they are of me and what I bring to the conversation.
Outside of those encounters, though, I suffer no fools–especially chowderheads that intentionally blur lines or omit details for their own self-inflation. . . It just strikes a nerve.
Tripler
Standing down. . .
Well, coming out of 14 years in the Navy, including Officer accessions work at USNA, I am not so sure. Particularly as I backed up my personal and more recent experience with an actual cite.
But I get it. It’s a common trend: the more recent experience of younger veterans counts for less than that of older veterans.
Always.
I’ll also say that “special ops” has been the sexy part of DoD for the last ~30 years. It’s also been the budget darling and headcount growth area. It used to be a much quieter almost-ignored backwater. Still bad-ass, but bad-ass in tiny numbers.
The magic word “special” is being sprinkled on a lot of stuff that didn’t used to be all that special. With just a hint of cynicism / sarcasm I’ll claim that we’re fast approaching the era when anything in the Army except plain old infantry, artillery, and armor is “special”. Navy has their big ships, SSNs, and SSBNs; the rest is “special”. USAF has fighters, bombers, transports, and “specials”.
My first job out of USAF pilot training wasn’t considered “special” then (1982-1985). The closest corresponding job now is officially “special”. The label changed far more than the reality of the work did.
IMO it’s far more marketing than it is force structure. And as DoD pivots from fighting e.g. Taliban to prepping to fight “near-peer adversaries” again, the pendulum will swing the other way.
Earlier in the scene, Robert De Niro’s character uses the word “bloke”. I might be wrong, but that doesn’t feel like a typical American word - to my British ears it stuck out. I think that the writers included that to make the point that he’s familiar with British idioms and is deliberately mispronouncing Hereford to see what Sean Bean will do. But then, I do tend to overthink these things.
On the OP, I was once at a wedding and I got chatting to one of the other guests. I asked him what he did for a living and got a reply of “I’m in the military”. It was polite in an “I’m not going to talk about this” kind of way, and we chatted about other stuff. I was told by the groom later on that he was in the SAS.
@ASL_v2.0 and @What_Exit, I owe you an apology.
Specifically, in my haste, I missed the point, and I apologize.
Trip
No problem.
No need to apologize, really. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive on such matters. I attribute that to my misspent youth on the now defunct military.com forums where I would find myself, among other things, being talked down to (vet-splained, if you will) by a moderator who had spent a grand total of two years in the Navy, as a radioman, having himself deployed exactly once, to the Mediterranean, in peacetime, aboard a long since decommissioned destroyer. For example, I once noted (based on my much more extensive and recent experience) that the weapons clearing procedure had changed since he was in, now making use of clearing barrels and without actually pulling the trigger (though I understand the Army retains that step). He then mocked it as one of “these new JO ideas” that showed the modern Navy was nothing but an extension of “the nanny state.”
He also more than once either insinuated or outright said the modern military (in the middle of what would become the longest war in US history, and on the backs of an all volunteer force) lacked the toughness of his (again, exclusively peacetime, with shorter enlistments and draftees on top of that) generation.
Just an couple examples of many.
Anyway… I suppose, to the OP, the best answer to the question is with another: spec ops according to who? (whom?) Because just as the term “special forces” has a very precise definition in the Army that might not fit the colloquial use, the term “special operations” as a community designator has a similarly precise definition in the Navy that might, again, not match the colloquial use (though, here, it might arguably be over-inclusive as opposed to under-inclusive, hence the recent disagreement).