To get on a Tier 1 team for any of the services you have to make Tier 2 and then you try out again to get Tier 1 (ie. SEALs have to try out for SEAL Team 6)
Naval carrier groups use fighter attack aircraft, primarily F-18’s to project some power in the initial stages, and Marine pilots operate off of the carrier decks as well. Fighter attack aircraft are multi role swiss army knives that can do air to air as well. They also host other aircraft, but the primary workhorses are the F-18’s from a ground support perspective. The Navy pilots often hit ground targets, but they are separate from the Marine assets so solve the prioritization problem. Navy pilots will prioritize fleet protection, whereas Marine aircraft answer to Marine command. So if the fleet is under attack but your Marine force is under heavy seige, the Marines don’t have to worry about their entire air support being pulled. The Marine’s have also lobbied consistently for their own air assets because honestly at the end of the day they just trust themselves to have their own backs.
The airforce on the other hand carries out air superiority and support of army forces. So while the army does have attack aircraft (primarily helicopters) most of their air support is through the larger air force. Part of this is due to the fact that the army is so huge that their air support is so huge, and it just made sense to split the logistics. It’s also tied to the fact that all the heavy bombers and strategic bombing functions require a heavier land based airbase. As does all of the equipment transport aircraft and many of the higher end purebred air superiority aircraft. For instance, the Marines, Navy, and Air force will all have their own varient of the F-35 that comes with tradeoffs. The Navy one adapts for carrier takeoffs and landing, the marine one can fucntion as a jump jet, and the airforce one foregoes the jumpjet capability for some better range and payload. In addition, the Airforce is the only branch with the F-22 which is our current pinnacel air superiority fighter as it cannot do carrier landings or takeoff. The airforce also manages aerial refueling which is obviously essenetial to the transport and strategic bomber roles as well as satelite activity. The point is, the airforce is much larger with many more specialized aircraft. WIthout it, our capability would be greatly reduced. While you see the carrier based aircraft more in footage in the news, we have massive air force bases throughout the middle east that actually carry out the majority of the strikes and heavy lifting at all stages in the assaults.
On a side note, most invasions follow a predictable strategic blueprint. For the most part, the US plays its strategy pretty conservative and is risk averse as it knows its got the inherent advantage in most cases. So most mid-tier nations have some form of integrated air defense which functions much like a network of nodes and synapses. In the first days you’ll hear of cruise missile strikes. Those are to weaken the network and create key access corridores, like fractures. Now the situation has been prepped and the stealth bombers (air force) will typically carry out missions over the next few days flying trans global with midair refueling (we don’t typically keep our stealth bombers on overseas bases) and further hit nodes near those dark corridores to essentially remove the “integrated” from the integrated air defense system. At that point, is when the carrier based bombing will begin, which allows a faster tempo of operations with E/A18/s offering jamming and support.
The PJs are something else. If you haven’t read The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger, you should, if only for his description of PJ school.
He noted, for example, that members of special forces from the other branches of the US military will occasionally attend PJ school. The one big difference, however, is that if, say, a Navy SEAL fails PJ school, he goes back to being a Navy SEAL; of a PJ candidate fails PJ school, he goes home.
A typical weeding-out exercise at the end of a day is for the drill instructor to toss his whistle into the pool: whichever recruit brings the whistle to the surface is done for the day. This is repeated until there are only two recruits left, all of the others having finished for the day. For the last two, whichever one brings the whistle to the surface is done for the day; the other is done.
I know PJs. I have trained at the school there at Lackland/Medina annex. They are a good group. But the real badasses are the CCT guys in the 24th at Pope. PJs train really hard and then sit around waiting for some plane to go down. In general CCTs HALO or HAHO into a combat zone before any other DoD guys and then setup a landingfield to call in the coordinates to the C130 full of rangers or whatever after he takes out any resistors.
Thanks for the discussion of the Air Force roles. As I was writing, I figured that the Air Force presumably supports the Army’s ground troops, particularly when they are far inland, but I remembered that the Army has helicopters and presumably some planes as well, so I wasn’t sure. I also thought maybe the Marines provided air support for the Army (which I believe was the case in Desert Storm), so I found myself confused as to who did what.
There is wayy too much wrong information on this thread.
Rangers are elite SOF, as elite as SF and SEALs, their primary role is direct action, and serve as the premier light infantry. SF are another elite unit, but separate from Rangers, their primary roles are to serve as trainers and instructors for foreign internal defense and unconventional warfare missions, with a secondary focus on DA, although they’ve done more and more DA. Other well known Army unit is the SOAR aviation regiment, Intelligence Support etc.
SEALs were in the past a maritime unit, but that’s not really true anymore, most observers believe their maritime skills have receded as they’ve been called upon to do the same missions that Rangers and SF do - aka land based DA raids among other things. For example SEALs were training Filipino military in COIN, which is historically a SF mission.
Marines originally didn’t have SOF capability, but have since developed them (only because they don’t want to miss the party). It used to be Marine Force Recon, but that is no longer the main SOF unit, SOF capabilities were put under MARSOC, which is entirely separate (wtf?) and they are now called “Raiders”.
AF has many SOF units, including PJs, Combat Controllers, Combat Weathermen, not to mention the Special Tactics Squadron. Although I don’t think any of them are involved in DA, which is what most people think of as “special forces”.
Tier 1, Tier 2 are mainly funding tiers. They can only spend so much money to spend on training for HRT, CQB etc, so Tier 1 units get priority on resources etc.
In my view its quite simple really whoever gets exposed to more combat will get to train better and after 3 years be more of a BADASS.I can train in a fantasy world all I want but having fighting experience is what really counts.
Could you highlight some of what you mean? I saw mild things like you pointing out that the seals are not as much water based but I was simply highlighting the traditional differences since the poster was asking for an overview. Even that is a pretty mild sticking point and still holds a large amount of truth. I have a friend in the rangers, he deploys with body full armor and an armored helmet nearly every time. While none of my friends are in the seals, my understanding is that they still deploy without a hard hat more often than not given the nature of their missions. That in and of itself says a lot. Other than that I really didn’t find too much differences between the two posts other than a bit of detail. I guess the part about greeen berets and SF, I don’t know, I just realized halfway through this post that I don’t care anymore.
The results of conflicts between even inexperienced professional militaries and al qaeda / isis regulars in direct combat would tell a different story.
Tier 1 = Navy Seal Team 6, Army Green Berets, USAF 24th Special Tactics Yes, they do have different funding tiers (JSOC), but Tier 1 is best of the best.
