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Comment by mmooss | Hacker News Reader

Possibly those with real abilities have the discipline to not publicise it in videos.

Also, in experience with self-organized volunteer organizations in different fields (not militias, etc.), the lack of discipline, organization, motivation, just basic thought is often shocking. The dysfunction can be overwhelming. I'm not surprised that very few have developed real capabilities.

> Navy SEAL/Delta-level

Maybe you didn't mean it literally, but that is a pretty high standard. It's like asking why you don't see local basketball players with NBA-level ability. 99.x% of military personnel, with years of training and experience, don't reach those levels.

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You bring up some interesting points. The publicizing side of things makes sense. Although given how often you hear about ex-military, police, etc, members in groups like these, I'd still expect that we'd see a handful of criminal/terrorist activities taken out by highly competent groups, even if it's unclear who it is.

But that may get back to your point about discipline, motivation, intelligence, etc.

Re SEAL/Delta-level: I guess I'm asking two distinct questions.

1) To use your basketball analogy: while NBA-level skills may be an unreasonable expectation, why do the videos seem to show middle school or JV-level competence? I'd expect that D3 college-level competence wouldn't be super difficult, but evidently that isn't a correct assumption.

2) What is the practical requirement for a world-class tactical unit (or near that level, e.g. D1 basketball or a bad pro team)? I wouldn't expect current militias to be at that level, but what about less developed nation-states?

> What is the practical requirement for a world-class tactical unit (or near that level, e.g. D1 basketball or a bad pro team)? I wouldn't expect current militias to be at that level, but what about less developed nation-states?

One common form of US military aid is training elite units in partner militaries, often in less developed countries. This has an evil history, training death squads and other war criminals, knowingly or unknowingly. It also has a cost-effective and good history, training Ukraine's elite units, for example.

(My impression is that it's a cost-effective compromise solution to a very difficult, expensive problem: The institutions of militaries are sometimes highly corrupt and incompetent; the Afghan military is an example. Fixing that problem would require building a new military, which could take 20 years at great cost and may be impossible: The corruption usually comes from the government, whose corruption comes from elites and from society-wide political problems.)

You can find some competent people and create a small, isolated organization, and train and equip them, and do it cost-effectively. The Afghan military was hopeless; their elite units were reportedly very good.

1) Opsec is synonymous with survival to elite warfighters, so again you will rarely if ever see them in PR videos. Then think about the video production resources available to actual militaries versus homegrown militia. Appearing competent on video is a different matter from actually being competent.

2) World class units require world class funding. Training and equipment are not cheap. The amount of money spent on the military by the US government is a big factor in tactical superiority, not just for the front-line units themselves, but also the massive amount of logistics it takes for them to operate at that elite level anywhere on the planet at the drop of a hat.

Brazil has some really high level militia groups. The largest ones are mainly active in Amazonas.

I think it boils down to their ability to make money as well as practice their craft. Militias in Brazil will be paid in secret by the government to fight drug traffickers and vice versa. They can be hired out by rival cartels fighting against each other too. They can have jobs to protect loggers from eco-terrorist or to protect swaths of forest from illegal logging.

There isn't much "work" for private militias in the US. Private security has demand but it's fairly small scale. Their isn't really the opportunity to field brigades with 1000s of well trained soldiers for regular off the books military action.

> There isn't much "work" for private militias in the US.

There's a great deal of work for private US militia's, China has a substantial contract with a subgroup spun off from the private contractor formerly known as Erik Prince's Blackwater.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Services_Group

TBH it's a full time investigative exercise keeping track of them all. The linked article gives a very partial overview of one arm of many and tails off after 2021.

Not sure I would classify PMC's as militias. They are operating internationally and it's more like a full time job or deployment.

There's not really much domestic demand for American PMC services. In Brazil the militias are locals that primarily have other income.

The US is paying a billion dollars to a PMC to secure the green zone in Iraq, but it's not like all those people will be militia in the US in a certain area.

However US PMC's are labelled, they are private groups, not national armies, they are as well resourced if not better than a number of national military regiments of comparable size, and the fact that they operate internationally and often for other non US nations and various transnational companies makes them of greater concern than cosplaying LARP'rs.

FWiW one general definition of militia is:

    A militia is a military or paramilitary force that comprises civilian members, as opposed to a professional standing army of regular, full-time military.

and PMC operate within and without that grey zone; a siginificant number of members are "civilians" that take on contract gigs for a period of time, then tap out to do other things.

To me the distinction is that PMC soldiers are full time. They aren't spending their days farming or being cops and lawyers or whatever. And for the most part they are officially government funded.

The militias on the other hand are more so made up of normal people moonlighting as soldiers.

In the context of the comment I replied to above:

> Militias in Brazil will be paid in secret by the government to fight drug traffickers and vice versa.

these "militias" in Brazil are not militias by your criteria.

From my PoV the described activities carried out by paramilitary groups in Brazil are similar to the activities carried out by US PMC's, and there's as much of that kind of work available to US contractors as there is for Brazilian operatives.

Note also that personnel in companies like Blackwater are usually trained by the United States Armed Forces. They are almost all ex-military.

They can only exist, because someone else paid to train their people. The training would otherwise be far too expensive.

The simplest explanation is that it’s possible, but there isn’t an obvious ROI for having a highly trained tactical team.

Highly trained tactical teams are useful for precision strikes. Most goals of a militia don’t require that much precision, if I had to guess.

Also, having that level of skill makes you valuable. You could probably earn a decent wage and therefore have more to lose and be less likely to use or want to pass on those skills for free. If you have the skill, you’re probably not desperate enough to use it. If you’re desperate enough to use those skills, you probably can’t afford to learn them.

A very good point. Also, if you are a professional, few things are more frustrating that working with amateurs. Mostly you are wasting time, trying to prevent fundamental mistakes, and failing.

The “new generation of paramilitary leaders” described by the article includes “doctors, career cops and government attorneys”. All of these would seem to have a lot to lose. If this is true, one would think that elite military operators might be even more likely to take risks for what they believe in. They’ve already made peace with the possibility of death.

But like they aren't doing anything, what implies they are making peace with death?

Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I meant that elite military forces make peace with death as part of their training. So, “having a lot to lose” would be less of a deterrent compared to those without such training.

> elite military forces make peace with death as part of their training

That seems like a narrative someone might tell, but I don't know it's true at all, or if it's part of their training. Lots of PSTD out there, even among elite soldiers. Look at the person who blew up the vehicle in Las Vegas.

I've read interviews with them saying that killing is unnatural and you never get used to it.

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