Training for Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Operations from El Salvador to Afghanistan

Transforming War

by Frank Kenneth Sobchak, Lee Goettl (narrator)

One of the most difficult security challenges of the post-Cold War era has been stabilizing failing states in an era of irregular warfare. A component of the strategy to address this problem has been security force assistance where outside powers train and advise the host nation's military. Despite billions spent, thousands of advisors, and innumerable casualties, the American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq failed. Among those colossal military disasters were pockets of success.

Frank K. Sobchak explores security force assistance across five case studies, examining what factors were most critical for U.S. Special Forces units to build capable partners. The book assesses the impact of five components of Special Forces advisory language training and cultural awareness; the partner force-to-advisor ratio; the advisors' ability to organize host-nation forces; whether advisors are permitted to guide in combat; and the consistency in advisor pairing.

Sobchak argues that the most crucial factors in producing combat-effective partners are consistency in advisor pairing and maintaining a partner force-to-advisor ratio of twelve special forces soldiers advising a company-sized force or smaller. Many of these findings could be used to improve the odds of success for larger security-force assistance missions.

Genres: Military Fiction, History

Audible Audio

First published November 15, 2024

Reviews

[Robert Ellis]

A short but sweet study on security force assistance, a look into the Green Berets and one of their primary mission sets. I thought the structure of his book and the how he framed the case studies (El Salvador, Philippines, Columbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan) were quite enjoyable to read and gave a good insider's view into the characteristics of this process. I think the pressure on language versus cultural understanding, and my own opinion on Imperial (American) English as its on stand-alone disciplinary requirement, is an interesting sidebar. The need to fight alongside host-nation forces seems to depend upon the warrior culture of the particular group, Columbia's case study was very enlightening and unexpected, while the capacity to create a consistent continuity of group advisors to build generational rapport and shortcut starting from scratch - the requirement to rearrange the current model seems to be an active problem worth solving (I do have my own thesis), and I agree with the author's policy recommendations at the conclusion. If you are interested on the topic, I strongly recommend this book. What was missing that I would have liked expansion upon was the strategic perspective from headquarters beyond the essential logistics mentioned, in particular the vision to craft those organizations from a leader's practicing perspective.

[Josh Noles]

A review of SOF training strategies used across multiple different countries and 4 decades. Gets dry, not for everyone.