The Crimes of SEAL Team 6 (2017)
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
The problem was that these guys were allowed to reserve a lot of C130 space - like, a LOT a lot - because they often brought personal equipment for the mission, up to and including quad ATVs, and probably beyond. Normal procurement channels often weren't fast enough to get the latest toys.
So there's definitely a temptation to leave behind the ATV, then stuff that CONEX box full of heroin for the trip home. It's not like anyone wants to check what's inside a SEAL team CONEX box. I mean, who knows what kind of security clearance you'd need for the thing, odds are you'll find the frozen corpses of Bin Laden, JFK, and Hitler, all spooning each other.
Serious talk, though. Special Forces almost always need to be dealt with very, very carefully. The temptation of creating a surgical team is very strong, the idea of winning a conflict with a killing here, a demo job there. But the funding comes from fungible budgets, and with the separate command, they will use that fungibility to justify their own existence with a separate mission set, thus risking becoming, in effect, a private army. Furthermore, their existence creams off the most intelligent and most driven soldiers from the regular formations, people that would otherwise be the core of excellence for the officer and senior NCO groups. We're feeling that very hard today in the US - our officer corps, particularly the USN surface fleet, is not doing great. In warfare with peer states - big, existential, wars - special forces historically have very frequently not proven their worth versus their direct costs, and their indirect costs are, frankly, too large to even contemplate.
Edit: thread flagged by said cult.
Thread isn't flagged.