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The Special Forces Mission



I will use this site to try to explain the Mission of Special Forces at the time I was an "A" Team Commander.
  • When I first became involved with Special Forces, the following basic "table of organization" was in effect.

    All Special Forces Groups were part of the 1st Special Forces (Airborne). There were several "active" groups at the time. (Please forgive me if I miss a couple, it has been 28 years) The 6th Special Forces Group (ABN) was at Ft. Bragg when I entered it. The 7th SFGA was also based at Bragg. The 5th SFGA was out of Okinawa but had detachments in Vietnam. Their were several others at that time but I can not recall all right now.

    Each Group was commanded by a Colonel and was divided into several "C" Teams. These "C" Teams were run by Lt. Colonels. Each "C" Teams was divided into "B" Teams commanded by Majors and these were divided into "A" Teams commanded by Captains.

    "A" Teams consisted of 12 men, a team commander (Captain) and executive officer (Lieutenant) and 10 enlistedmen. Each enlistedman was a specialist in one of the following military fields; operations, weapons, communications, medical and engineer/demolitions. There were usually 2 men per specialty and all were cross trained in each others area. This allowed the team to split into two equal teams if the need arose. All enlisted members were from Master Sergeant (E-8) to Sergeant (E-5).

    The officers received lesser training in all specialties so as to have operational knowledge of all team members and their functions. All recieved some language training depending on the area of the world that the teams might deploy to.

    The mission of the "A" Team was two fold, depending on the type of operation and where deployed. In Vietnam the mission was to train the South Vietnamese military in ways to defend their country from what were called "insurgents" or guerilla forces. The second mission was just the reverse, to go into an enemy nation to find, recruit and train forces that would work to overthrow the government. An "A" Team was capable of training, suppling and controling several hundred guerilla forces.

    The "A" Teams were controlled by the "B" Teams. In normal military terms an "A" Team was like a platoon, the "B" Team like a company and the "C" Team like a battalion. The "C" and "B" teams provided basic staff support to it's deployed units. Each had it's command staff to include S-1 personnel; S-2 intelligence, S-3 operations and S-4 supply.

  • I first joined Special Forces at Ft. Bragg, NC in Jan. 1971. I was a 1st Lieutenant at the time. I had not yet attended Airborne School or the Special Forces Officer Course. As a result I was assigned to Signal Company, 6th Special Forces Group (Abn) at Ft. Bragg. My principal job was to oversee the operations of the communications sections. This unit provided the communications links between units in the field and group headquarters. We ran a communications facility at Bragg, as well as operating commo vans in the field.

    These vans were equiped with high speed morse code machines call "coded burst". The operators would incript messages an a punch tape, then run it thru a high speed transmitter. This enabled them to send long messages in mere seconds. The vans had high speed recorders that could recieve "burst" transmission from teams in the field or headquarters, then slow it down so the operator could decode it.

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