Supposedly going “to Mosul.” These must be special guys, trained for this posting, or damn close, for some time, I would think.
In addition to “general training,” probably tactical specialties were called for relevant to the most recent facts on the ground. So do we reach into another grab-bag of troops?
From The Military Times, “A senior defense official added that the 615 troops would joining existing forces ‘in the coming weeks,’ but would not give a harder timeline for when those forces could arrive, nor say what units are being assigned to the fight.”
Thanks for the cite. Of course the only cite necessary was to quote anyone with half a brain (more than me, apparently) saying: “are you out of your effing mind? If I or anyone knew, you think they’d tell you?”
Although this part is still somewhat answerable, isn’t it?
You always hear (or you used to, depending on your age) “send in the Marines,” so my first thought is it’s guys from this service also.
Isn’t the Pentagon more equipped/finds it efficient/culturally driven to keep such small-scale, incremental mission (mission creep, perhaps) within one service?
Which begs the question, for me, about what the unified command level of Special Forces is. I’ll take two Rangers, a Seal, and a Delta?
Not only are they not necessarily SF or Marines, they are most like not SF or Marines. Most likely, it’s more logistical support (Iraqi Army still needs a lot of help logistically), maybe some Artillery support, likely some intelligence support, probably some UAV pilots, but no ultimately no direct combat units.
There are already 4500 troops on the ground in Iraq. Well over 3000 of them are Army. So, regardless of who is sent, it’s not like they’re the tip of the spear or anything. The last group of Marines who were sent in this past year were there for logistical support and facility construction. Hardly what you’re imagining.
All special operations forces fall under the unified command of United States Special Operations Command, aka USSOCOM or simply SOCOM.
From the statement by the Secretary of Defense, “The troops, in close coordination with the government of Iraq, will provide specific capabilities including logistics and maintenance support; train, advise and assist teams for Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga for the upcoming Mosul operation; and expanded intelligence resources to help disrupt ISIL’s terrorist network in Iraq and beyond.”
It’s hard to dig too deep from open source especially when there’s not much traction for the story in the media.
Very likely these aren’t from SOCOM. If we just call them advisors (there have been many recent terms culminating in the latest “advise and assist”, they’ve been used heavily during the COIN campaigns in Iraq and Afghan. They were an important part of operations in Vietnam. Most of those advisors came from conventional forces. Generally you are looking at experienced leaders (it’s easier to advise if you actually have experience in the role yourself;) ) with some pre-deployment preparation for the specific role.
Foreign Internal Defense is one of the core activities of SOCOM (JP 3-05 Special Operations). When things get busy, the usual practice is that they’ve been supplemented with conventional forces in the role.
Things are busy. We’ve got active operations against IS by the special operations community on the ground in both Libya and Syria. There’s clearly a SOCOM presence in Iraq for doing the things they do better than conventional forces since two of our three KIA come from SOCOM. In fact if you look at this story about the latest KIA, they reference SECDEF saying US Forces are engaged in “direct action” against ISIS. Direct action is another one of those core special operations activities. It’s about what it sounds like - the raid to kill UBL was an example of direct action. The generally busy nature of SOCOM doing things we think of as special, makes me think these are likely conventional troops task organized to fill the role.