Special Forces
By Bernard Dy

Article Type: Book Review
Article Date: September 05, 2002


Tom Clancy, known popularly for his series of Jack Ryan techno thrillers, isn't just a famous author. He's practically a commodity now, with he and his writer farm pumping out new books seemingly every month. There are also the movies based on the Ryan character, and Red Storm Entertainment, Clancy's computer game company and the force behind the Rainbow Six titles. Clancy writes in the introduction to Special Forces that this look at America's elite Green Berets is the last in a non-fiction series that toured branches of the US military. Don't believe it; unless Special Forces is a sales dog, Clancy will find a way to get comparable books out, even if they aren't officially a part of his tour series. In the meantime, Special Forces is an illuminating overview of the Army's contribution to US Special Forces. It's also the driest Clancy book I've read.

Special Forces book cover

If you thought Clancy's descriptions of nuclear physics in The Sum of All Fears were tough to get through, steel yourself for the middle section of Special Forces. The beginning and the end are fortunately better reading. Special Forces opens with an overview of the Special Forces, an interview with General Henry H. Shelton, and a review of the Special Forces recruiting and initial training process.

Clancy discusses how Special Forces units differ from conventional troops, in regard to their history, tool sets, and even personalities. The media's and Hollywood's concept of Special Forces are guys that wear camouflage gear, always endorse some evil government agenda, and solve the world's problems with blazing guns. While it is true that all the Army Special Forces teams stock good fighters, the most important point the book makes is that combat is but one of their many proficiencies. Clancy informs us that Special Forces troops are as proud of being "quiet professionals" that use communication and teaching to help stabilize areas of unrest as they are of being warriors. Education is a slower but better weapon than firearms when solving most problems and Special Forces fosters appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes.

“The media's and Hollywood's concept of Special Forces are guys that wear camouflage gear, always endorse some evil government agenda, and solve the world's problems with blazing guns.”

The world is an imperfect place, and we don't have to look farther than everyday headlines to see signs of political instability. In Indonesia legal authorities are struggling to establish control and show the citizens that even the son of former dictator Suharto is subject to the law. US officials consider the overall situation in Indonesia serious enough that they have pledged help in the form of training, counter-insurgency support, and humanitarian aid, all of which mean a Special Forces presence. Corruption is also wreaking havoc in Columbia, and even as new president Alvaro Uribe was sworn in, rebel forces launched a rocket attack on the capital, but one of the countless acts of violence taking lives from the country each year. We also read daily about the Middle East where tensions between the United States and Iraq continue to escalate. The threat to the Western civilizations of terrorism and nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) warfare seems more frightening with each passing moment.

Tackling these concerns without resorting to a full-scale conventional war is the duty of the Special Forces. The Army's Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets (though they, as Clancy discovers, prefer not to be called Green Berets), rotate on deployments into trouble spots. They do their best to win the favor of the locals, who provide an excellent barometer of the emotional state of the citizens and may prove instrumental during any military actions in country. "Winning friends and influencing people" may sound like a philosophy from a business school rather than a war college, but its value cannot be understated. Look only at recent action in Afghanistan, where US troops supplemented indigenous fighters. It's a cost-effective way to meet objectives without alienating the locals. Should war become a reality, Special Forces troops are skilled in several military missions that make them valuable resources in combination with conventional forces. They can perform special reconnaissance, sniper, demolitions, hostage rescue, and even psychological warfare missions.

Clancy reveals that, interestingly, the men filling this role of Special Forces "advisor" are not Rambo types. They are often loners or possess modest dispositions. They do not hound glory, they do not covet medals, and few would seem to be the careerist types, willing to expend lives for personal gain. They are intelligent, voracious readers, technology savvy but not technology dependent. They are, again, quiet professionals whose greatest acts are often void of gunplay. Clancy iterates a heartbreaking story about a Special Forces soldier that came across a young boy in Ecuador suffering from severe burns. He arranged special medical attention for the boy, earning friends of America in the process.

Clancy looks also at Special Forces equipment and arms, including the ancillary assets such as the helicopter teams specializing in supporting Special Forces missions. Then, however, comes the stretch where Clancy explains the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and Army Special Forces organizations. Although it sports useful charts and notes, it is also filled with a numbing amount of abbreviations and jargon, and suffers from slow pacing. The text, of course, contains some solid educational material. We learn about the numbers of teams, their areas of jurisdiction, and how they're designed so each twelve man detachment can be split into smaller six man groups with little loss in capability because of cross-training and redundancy in special skills.

“…each twelve man detachment can be split into smaller six man groups with little loss in capability because of cross-training and redundancy in special skills.”

These chapters are a form of diary, as Clancy and his assistant, John Gresham, tour and observe various readiness training exercises and wargames, and as they visit selected Special Forces teams in the field. The chapters alternate between doing a good job of showing us exactly what dangers preside in various parts of the world and how Special Forces teams work to train indigenous forces in addressing them, and boring us to tears. Superfluous rambling pads the text with mention of hot meals, long car rides, and coffee breaks during the Clancy/Gresham travels, including such winners as this quote:

Saturday, October 10th - Fort Polk I slept until noon.

Some may find such details interesting, but I'm betting most would have preferred a more concise summary of the activities. The Fort Polk visit, for example, had Clancy observing a sniper team at work. Others show additional training beyond combat. Special Forces troops are also skilled in medical tasks, crowd control, negotiations, public relations, and police work such as vehicle searches.

Things pick up again as Clancy closes with musings on where Special Forces will be in the future. He identifies serious recruiting challenges and also the operational hot spots that lie ahead. The book ends with a fiction segment that Clancy regulars will see as a little reward for forging through the rest of the tome. If there are arguments that Clancy is less a writer than he is a storyteller, Special Forces doesn't work to dispel them, but it's clear after reading the book that he's astute about world issues. The same mind that captured the world's interest in The Hunt for Red October and got US military officials concerned after reading Red Storm Rising is still at work in Special Forces. The fiction piece, Operation Merdeka, ponders unrest in Indonesia, and in other sections Clancy mentions Osama bin Laden. Special Forces was published in February 2001, months before September 11^th, and long before the current news about Indonesia.


Relevance to Combat Simulations
Several computer games model Special Forces, although most do so only superficially. The success of the first-person shooter makes it a natural platform for games about small team combat. Obviously Clancy's own Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchises are two. Operation Flashpoint is another. Soon to come are Black Hawk Down from NovaLogic and the next in the Hidden & Dangerous series. From the archives, you can check out Zombie's SpecOps and SpecOps II, and the Zombie/NovaLogic corroboration, Delta Force: Task Force Dagger, all of which showcase some of the weapons and missions common to Special Forces teams, though none of the three are particularly great games.

Even deeper in the archives is Seal Team from Electronic Arts, a nice game for its time. Just out is America's Army, which will likely have some Special Forces influence. Although using a fictional premise, Sir-Tech's strategy/RPG blend, Jagged Alliance 2, is good game for illustrating some Special Forces concepts because it's not just about combat, it's also about balancing skill sets of team members and performing missions to win morale of an indigenous population. Special Forces, the book, reinforces an understanding about some of the missions players run in all of the above computer games, but it also makes it obvious how little of the true story they tell.

Special Forces bears the Berkley publishing label, 2001, ISBN 0-425-17268-6. It is available at most retail outlets including Amazon.com.

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