Always Faithful, Always Forward

soldiered with the Communist leadership that would ultimately wrest control of the country from the Nationalists. While there, he became interested in Chinese guerilla operations against the Japanese, specifically the small-unit, “democratic” leadership model that pushed authority and responsibility down to the most junior levels in small combat un

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARINE SPECIAL OPERATIONS THE RAIDERS There are a great many Marines, active and retired—in and out of uniform—who feel that “Marine” and “special” are synonymous. Candidly, a great many of us who served, but not in the Marine Corps, feel the same way. With this in mind, the Corps can trace their special-operations history back t

Our early American military services patterned themselves after European models, and the Marine Corps was no different in this regard. During the latter half of the 1600s, European navies began to train seamen as infantrymen, albeit for naval infantry duty. But it was the British who first saw the need for a professional, onboard, at-sea fighting f

into a remote area to attack an enemy compound, or silent warriors moving room to room with night-vision goggles as they clear a building in order to capture or kill an enemy commander. It’s certainly the stuff favored by the media in their coverage of war. If the Army Special Forces mission to mobilize the northern Afghan tribes that swept the Tal

Special reconnaissance, or SR, is the mission to put “eyes on” an enemy position for a future special-operations or conventional targeting. Sometimes an SR mission is a clandestine operation prior to the commitment of a larger force. Navy SEALs conducted a multiday special reconnaissance prior to the Marine occupation of the forward operating base

Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, along with CIA paramilitary specialists and a generous dose of American airpower, mobilized an alliance of northern tribes and swept the Taliban from power, although without completely vanquishing them from the nation.

Unconventional warfare, or UW, is a somewhat ambiguous term for wresting control of a village, a province, or a nation from an unfriendly government—or an unfriendly nongovernment actor—currently in power. This can be done conventionally with armor and infantry or unconventionally by organizing and encouraging popular opposition to the established

the job of our conventional land army is to defeat enemy armies—to defeat them and to take and hold ground. When general purpose forces try to assume the mission of SOF on their own, they are usually ineffective. When special operations units try to do the conventional, they are almost always overmatched. Yet special operations teams can often be v

forces (SOF) and general purpose forces are asked to do, most notably in the increasingly important areas of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, and the disciplines that relate to these activities. That said,