United States Army Special Forces > Related Articles
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Parent topics
- Special operations [r]: Military or paramilitary operations that differ from conventional operations in degree of physical and political risk, operational techniques, mode of employment, independence from friendly support, and dependence on detailed operational intelligence and indigenous assets; they are often controlled at a national or strategic level of command [e]
- United States Army [r]: Branch of the United States Armed Forces with the principal responsibility of conducting large-scale ground combat [e]
- United States Special Operations Command [r]: A U.S. Unified Combatant Command with both functional and operational responsibilities, both to prepare special operations forces for the geographic commands, and to execute strategic special operations, typically under national orders and high security classification [e]
Subtopics
Doctrine and missions
- Unconventional warfare (United States doctrine) [r]: The United States' doctrinal term for the way the Department of Defense sees its forces operating in the more global context of insurgency. [e]
- Foreign internal defense [r]: The United States military doctrine for assisting Host Nations in their counterinsurgency programs [e]
- Direct action (military) [r]: Military attacks, usually by special operations forces on land, against specific, well-defined targets, often behind enemy lines. [e]
- Information operations [r]: The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security. [e]
- Special reconnaissance [r]: Also known as SR, missions deep in denied areas, conducted by special operations personnel. They may be in or out of uniform. While SR units may direct air, missile, or artillery strikes, they strive to stay undetected. [e]
- Combat search and rescue [r]: The location and rescue of military and civilian personnel in hostile areas, such that a military operation is necessary to retrieve them [e]
Organizations
- Army Special Operations Command [r]: A command that trains and prepares U.S. Army special operations personnel, including United States Army Special Forces, and serves as the land forces component of United States Special Operations Command [e]
- Fort Bragg [r]: A large U.S. Army base in North Carolina, with major resident units being the XVIII Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, Army Special Operations Command and the school and center for United States Army Special Forces [e]
- 3rd Special Forces Group [r]: Add brief definition or description
- 5th Special Forces Group [r]: One of the older United States Army Special Forces groups first serving in Vietnam, the unit now supports United States Central Command in the Middle East, Central Asia and Horn of Africa [e]
- 10th Special Forces Group [r]: United States Army Special Forces group with an area of responsibility matching United States European Command [e]
- 20th Special Forces Group [r]: Add brief definition or description
- MACV-SOG [r]: The U.S. organization responsible for covert operations against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, as well as related cross-border operations from South Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War; the abbreviation had an unclassified cover meaning, but was actually the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Special Operations Group [e]
Leaders
- Aaron Bank [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Charles Beckwith [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Francis Kelly [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Robert Rheault [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Harley Davis [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Jesse Johnson [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Wayne Downing [r]: Add brief definition or description
- John Mulholland [r]: Since 2008, a lieutenant general commanding U.S. Army Special Forces; he commanded the 5th Special Forces Group in combat in the Afghanistan War (2001-) and Iraq War [e]
- Michael Repass [r]: Commanding general of United States Army Special Forces Command as of 2007 [e]
Deployments
- Europe [r]: Sixth largest continent; area 10,000,000 km2; pop. 720,000,000 [e]
- Vietnam War [r]: A post-colonial independence/Cold War conflict between communist North Vietnam against South Vietnam, assisted by the United States (1955-1975), to unify Vietnam; won by North Vietnam in 1975. [e]
- Civilian Irregular Defense Group [r]: Light and irregular infantry units in the Republic of Vietnam, typically defending their local area, and trained and led by United States Army Special Forces personnel, and sometimes by their Army of the Republic of Viet Nam counterparts in the Nha Ky Thuat [e]
- Military Assistance Command, Vietnam [r]: Headquarters for most U.S. combat and support units assisting the Republic of Vietnam [e]
- Nha Ky Thuat [r]: The most common Vietnamese term for a Republic of Vietnam organization for special operations, clandestine human-source intelligence, and, at one point, paramilitary operations against protesters in the Buddhist crisis of 1963; U.S. counterpart organizations included MACV-SOG and United States Army Special Forces [e]
- Gulf War [r]: The conflict started by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and ended with the liberation of Kuwait and major damage to Iraqi forces, by a US-led UN coalition in 1991. [e]
- Operation DESERT SHIELD [r]: That part of the Gulf War following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, beginning with the acceptance of Coalition support by Saudi Arabia, and ending with the start of the air campaign, Operation DESERT STORM. [e]
- Operation DESERT STORM [r]: That part of the Gulf War, beginning with the first air strikes at 02:00 local time, 17 January 1991, until the main ground assault into Kuwait, Operation DESERT SABRE [e]
- Afghanistan War (2001-) [r]: Beginning on October 7, 2001, in response to the 9-11 attacks, military operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda by United States and NATO forces [e]
- Afghanistan War (2001-), major combat phase [r]: During the Afghanistan War (2001-), the period of combat by Afghan ground forces, with U.S. and British air & special operations support, which drove the Taliban and al-Qaeda from their bases, in October through December 2001 [e]
- Afghan and Pakistani local forces [r]: In Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially within Pashtun culture, tribes will raise local forces variously as akarbai (community police), lashkar (fighters for a common threat) and paid militias [e]
- Northern Alliance [r]: A military alliance against the Taliban in Afghanistan's civil war, which, with U.S. assistance, drove it from power in the Afghanistan War (2001-) [e]
- Hamid Karzai [r]: President of Afghanistan, who took interim office in 2002, was reelected to a full five-year term in 2004, and faces a new election in August 2009; Pashtun of the Durrani tribe [e]
- Battle of Tora Bora [r]: A battle of the Afghanistan War (2001-), in which allied special operations forces, principally using Afghan troops, attempted to kill or capture an escaping Osama bin Laden [e]
- Iraq War [r]: Invasion of Iraq by a coalition of countries, led by the United States, in 2003, and subsequent occupation [e]
Equipment
- PRD-13 [r]: A man-portable tactical signals intelligence collection system, originally developed for United States Army Special Forces [e]
- Intra-squad radio [r]: Short-range radios, of varying levels of capability, intended to be issued to every infantry soldier and used for communication among members of a squad; newer versions provide real-time location information as well as hands-free voice [e]
- Joint Tactical Radio System [r]: A wide-ranging replacement of conventional military radio and communications security equipment with software-defined radio [e]
Other related topics
- 75th Ranger Regiment [r]: Assigned to the Army Special Operations Command of the United States Special Operations Command, a highly skilled, parachute-qualified light infantry unit that conducts raids in uniform (e.g., seizing airfields or destroying strategic targets), and provides perimeter security during direct action by other special operators [e]
- Air Force Special Operations Command [r]: The Air Component of United States Special Operations Command; lineage includes Air Commando units in the Vietnam War [e]
- Joint Special Operations Command [r]: A major subordinate unit of the United States Special Operations Command, which takes on the most sensitive covert military operations, usually working unacknowledged within the geographic area of a Unified Combatant Command [e]
- Office of Strategic Services [r]: The United States' first unified agency for clandestine intelligence collection, all-source intelligence analysis and covert action [e]
- Operation Jedburgh [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Operational Groups [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Donald Blackburn [r]: (1916 - 2008) A U.S. Army officer specializing in insurgency, counterinsurgency and special operations before they were recognized as specialties. [e]
Bot-suggested topics
Auto-populated based on Special:WhatLinksHere/United States Army Special Forces. Needs checking by a human.
- Ali Mohamed [r]: A former Egyptian Army officer, who served in the U.S. Army, and then worked for al-Khifa; probably an al-Qaeda member [e]
- CIA activities in Asia-Pacific [r]: This is a regional-level subpage dealing with CIA intelligence and operations pertaining to the Asia-Pacific area. Large topics may be in subordinate pages. [e]
- CIA activities in Cuba [r]: Add brief definition or description
- CIA activities in Europe and Russia [r]: Add brief definition or description
- CIA activities in Iraq [r]: Add brief definition or description
- CIA activities in Vietnam [r]: Add brief definition or description
- Can Tho City [r]: The current capital of Can Tho Province in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, which traditionally was the capital of the Mekong region [e]
- Central Intelligence Agency [r]: The principal civilian intelligence organization of the United States, specializing in all-source intelligence analysis, clandestine human-source intelligence, and covert action. [e]
- Clandestine cell system [r]: A method for organizing a group in such a way that it can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization. [e]
- Clandestine human-source intelligence and covert action [r]: Intelligence and military special operations functions that either should be completely secret (i.e., clandestine: the existence of which is not known outside the relevant government circles), or simply cannot be linked to the sponsor (i.e., covert: it is known that sabotage is taking place, but its sponsor is unknown). [e]
- Combat engineer [r]: Ground combat troops trained and equipped to improve the mobility of one's own side by breaching enemy obstacles, building bridges, etc.; blocking enemy mobility with barriers, demolition, mine warfare, etc. [e]
- Covert action [r]: Any of a range of activities, intended to affect the behavior of a target nation or non-national actor, where the fact of the action is known, but the responsibility for the action cannot be proven. [e]
- Delta Force [r]: A generally covert U.S. Army unit in Joint Special Operations Command, specializing in hostage rescue and combat search and rescue, direct action, special reconnaissance, and counterterrorism. [e]
- Human-source intelligence [r]: (HUMINT); the practice of acquiring information through interactions with people who can disclose relevant information, including but not limited to espionage, interrogation, debriefing and elicitation [e]
- Intelligence interrogation, U.S. [r]: Policies, techniques and practices of United States interrogation in a national intelligence-gathering context. (See Intelligence interrogation, U.S., George W. Bush Administration for recent detailed discussions) [e]
- Joint warfare in South Vietnam 1964-1968 [r]: The period of the Vietnam War in which large numbers of foreign ground troops, primarily but not exclusively U.S., allied with the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam against the People's Army of Viet Nam and the Viet Cong [e]
- Lac Luong Dac Biet [r]: Special Forces of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam; a paramilitary organization reporting to the office of President Ngo Dinh Diem before his overthrow, then a combination of a counterpart to United States Army Special Forces and a clandestine human-source intelligence and covert action organization, and eventually a pure counterpart organization. [e]
- Marine Special Operations Command [r]: The Marine component of United States Special Operations Command, this unit absorbed the existing Marine special reconnaissance "Force Recon" companies (but not battalions), but also added a support organization, school, and a system of developing training teams for foreign internal defense and other special operations missions [e]
- Montagnard [r]: A general name for a group of tribal societies traditionally in the highlands of Southeast Asia, primarily in Vietnam but also Laos and Cambodia [e]
- Naval infantry [r]: Personnel assigned to naval ships, who are qualified to engage in combat using individual weapons, against enemy personnel on land or on ships that were boarded [e]
- Ngo Dinh Diem [r]: President of the Republic of Vietnam from shortly after its creation, to his overthrow and death in the Vietnam War, Buddhist crisis and military coup of 1963. He was of the Catholic minority, ascetic and autocratic, and strongly anti-Communist [e]
- Operation EAGLE CLAW [r]: A failed U.S. military hostage rescue operation, in April 1980, intended to recover the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in Teheran in 1979 [e]
- Operation PROVIDE COMFORT [r]: Humanitarian assistance and civil affairs operation in Iraqi Kurdistan after the Gulf War [e]
- Pacification in South Vietnam [r]: Sometimes called the "other war" in the Vietnam War, involving counterinsurgency and local development [e]
- SS-1 SCUD [r]: A Soviet-designed short range and inaccurate ballistic missile, a near-copy of the Second World War V-2 missile, that was widely exported, copied, employed as a base for new development, and used in combat by Iraq [e]
- Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities [r]: In the 1960s and 1970s, an officer who had responsibility for advising the Chairman of he Joint Chiefs of Staff on counterinsurgency and covert operations, the latter including military support to Central Intelligence Agency operations [e]
- Squad (land forces) [r]: The basic unit of infantry military tactics, composed of 7-13 soldiers, and subdivided into two or more fire teams [e]
- Taliban [r]: Salafist Islamic militia, governing Afghanistan 1996–2001; still fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan. [e]
- U.S. Intelligence and terrorism in the 1990s [r]: Tracking and actions against terrorism by the United States intelligence community in the 1990s [e]
- U.S. advisers in the Vietnam War [r]: U.S. military personnel who trained and assisted Army of the Republic of Viet Nam troops, originally in noncombat roles only but eventually side-by-side in battle [e]
- Unified Combatant Command [r]: Operational line-of-commands for United States military groups. [e]
- United States Navy SEAL [r]: [under]sea-air-land special operations organization of the United States Navy, specializing in direct action, special reconnaissance, combat search and rescue and counterterrorism [e]
