05-22-2016, 10:44 PM
When I had read about the SEALs in the 1990's, they had a policy of personal choice between weapons, where realistic to do. In other words, they had their M-4 armory, but also had the freedom to have non-standard rifles they personally preferred over the Mattel toy.
According to Richard Marcinko in the book he wrote about forming Seal Team Six and the later adventures they had playing 'Red Cell' operations against the US Government? At the time they formed, their ammunition training allotment to come online as the initial US Counter-terror team (Well, aside from Delta at around the same time) was greater than the annual allowance of the United States Marine Corps as a WHOLE.
I think the United States HAS, past tense, enjoyed the most highly trained, fine tuned and well maintained military in the history of the world. However, that has been a force maintained at great expense of training, training, and more training. Training went down the crapper with sequestration, which Obama wrote into the budget deal clear back in the first actions of his Presidency. Compared to Social Security and Medi- programs? Military training is "discretionary" spending. Those entitlement programs are called that because they *WILL* be funded, by law, no matter WHAT. Defense, or most of it, does NOT fall under that category of protection. So sequestration killed little things like the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels training in the earliest days I recall...and ended up with training shortages of basic ammunition.
We've also had a FEW missions now where hostages were killed by or in concert with Delta and/or SEAL teams trying to rescue them.
When Jimmy Carter and his people asked the founder of Delta Force (in relation to the Iran hostage rescue mission which was being planned then) what ratio of losses Delta could expect for hostages in a fluid and dynamic rescue? (This is in more than one book on the founding of Delta, by the way) The reply was something else..and it was classic American. "We do not lose Hostages, sir.". As I recall it written....
Until recently ... Until recent years .... America had held that record, to my knowledge, in near perfection too. How? Are Americans Supermen that Canadians or Germans or Russians aren't?? Hell no ...
More training ammunition allotted to ONE TEAM than to the entirety of the US Marine Corps...is how they could confidently say, with margins to spare "We DO NOT lose hostages".
.......when the little crap slides, the big stuff follows ..and little stuff has been sliding since 2009, anyway.
According to Richard Marcinko in the book he wrote about forming Seal Team Six and the later adventures they had playing 'Red Cell' operations against the US Government? At the time they formed, their ammunition training allotment to come online as the initial US Counter-terror team (Well, aside from Delta at around the same time) was greater than the annual allowance of the United States Marine Corps as a WHOLE.
I think the United States HAS, past tense, enjoyed the most highly trained, fine tuned and well maintained military in the history of the world. However, that has been a force maintained at great expense of training, training, and more training. Training went down the crapper with sequestration, which Obama wrote into the budget deal clear back in the first actions of his Presidency. Compared to Social Security and Medi- programs? Military training is "discretionary" spending. Those entitlement programs are called that because they *WILL* be funded, by law, no matter WHAT. Defense, or most of it, does NOT fall under that category of protection. So sequestration killed little things like the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels training in the earliest days I recall...and ended up with training shortages of basic ammunition.
We've also had a FEW missions now where hostages were killed by or in concert with Delta and/or SEAL teams trying to rescue them.
When Jimmy Carter and his people asked the founder of Delta Force (in relation to the Iran hostage rescue mission which was being planned then) what ratio of losses Delta could expect for hostages in a fluid and dynamic rescue? (This is in more than one book on the founding of Delta, by the way) The reply was something else..and it was classic American. "We do not lose Hostages, sir.". As I recall it written....
Until recently ... Until recent years .... America had held that record, to my knowledge, in near perfection too. How? Are Americans Supermen that Canadians or Germans or Russians aren't?? Hell no ...
More training ammunition allotted to ONE TEAM than to the entirety of the US Marine Corps...is how they could confidently say, with margins to spare "We DO NOT lose hostages".
.......when the little crap slides, the big stuff follows ..and little stuff has been sliding since 2009, anyway.