Z.18: 'So you need something?'

This post isn’t about data, and was drafted for another outlet. I worked with their editorial team but we came to an impasse on ‘Steal It’. It could have easily just been one of those darlings I should have killed, but for me it was the truth, and I couldn’t sterilize it. I bear the outlet no ill will. Journals serve a political role. But I still think it was a piece worth sharing, so I hope you’ll indulge me by posting it here.

I graduated from the Q-course in the spring of 2008, and after a brief road-trip across America, signed into 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis. Three weeks later I climbed out of the back of a humvee as the executive officer (XO) for AOB 1320 at FOB Warhorse in Diyala, Iraq.¹ My experience was far from unique; a lot of us found ourselves in combat zones less than a month after we first donned our green berets.

I’ve heard plenty of operators claim that you need a vetted and experienced captain to be an AOB XO, especially in combat. While I’m certain there’s benefits to it, I’d argue that the XO billet is a great segue to detachment command. Especially when you’re under the tutelage of great mentors like my company commander and sergeant major.²

Everyone has to get experience from somewhere, and my time as the XO gave me plenty. I quickly learned about OPFUNDs and mission essential letters (MELs), and how to coordinate and control surveillance drones.³ I also started to learn the culture of special forces. But the most critical thing I learned as an XO was how wrong I was about which detachment I wanted to go to.

I grew up as a swimmer, then played water polo in college, and proudly told my battalion commander that I wanted to go to a dive team. I had wanted to go to scuba school since first hearing about it as a cadet in ROTC, and now years later a dive team would give me my chance.

Over the course of the deployment’s first month, I slowly got out to each of the team houses, mostly to inventory all the deployed property. Along the way I got to meet each of the detachments and get a sense of each’s unique team culture. Things like what they prioritized and what they didn’t; how they improved their team houses and how they worked with their partners. It didn’t take long out at the dive team’s site to figure out they weren’t the right fit for me.

ODA 1323 (formerly and now again 183), the boat team, was the last team I visited. They were the team I knew the least about before visiting them; they didn’t reach out to the B-team much. When I delivered a shipment of construction supplies, I found out why.

The first thing you saw as you entered their headquarters was a single sheet of paper hanging on the wall with the words above written on it.

When I got back to FOB Warhorse, I walked into my commander’s office and told him, 'Sir, I want to go to 1323'.

I had thought the detachment I wanted to join was all about their specialty. I wanted to get a badge, to get a marker for being elite. But just that first glimpse of 1323 showed me something else I wanted more. I wanted to be on a team where unconventional warfare (UW) wasn’t a mission, it was a way of life.

1323 didn’t talk a lot about UW in the same way fish don’t talk much about water. UW underpinned everything they did. It didn’t matter if we were on a JCET to Cambodia or executing Village Stability in Afghanistan, doing an mountain training in the Olympic Peninsula or our pre-deployment training at Fort William Henry Harrison, Montana.⁴ For 1323 everything had a UW angle, one they exercised whenever they could. I knew that a team with this sort of attitude was going to be successful in any mission, and my 27 months commanding 1323 showed me that culture trumps everything. 16 years and multiple commands later, that team, its leadership and its culture, still echoes with me.

I still remember that sign hanging in the TOC, and I think about it often. What's great is how it encapsulates the essence of what it really means to be special forces. It starts with relationships, which are critical to special operations, in particular unconventional and irregular warfare.

Always your first step. ‘Borrow it’ gets you the thing you need at no cost and it helps build relationships with someone else. When you’re a small team on your own, often the most valuable thing you can collect is favors. Favors are more valuable than gold. Favors were what my company sergeant major told us to hoard when we hit the ground there at FOB Warhorse. ‘Go become everyone’s best friend and fixer’.

Trade for it

Not as good as borrowing, because you’re going to have to give something up. But trading still helps build relationships. Barter reduces cost, plus it helps you build the trust a relationship needs get to one where you can borrow. Trade favors first; but be willing to part with your own stuff in the interest of longer-term gains. Team coins and T-shirts can go a very very long way.

This costs you both time and resources. But green berets are at their best when they are self-reliant (trained to live off nature’s land…). If you make it all by yourself, you don’t get new relationships, so don’t overlook the opportunity in having someone show you how or help you make it.

This one is certainly going to be the most controversial. Every general officer from SWC to the Chief of Staff of the Army is going to have a visceral reaction to those two words.⁵ This is due to a not unearned reputation for illegal behavior across special operations. SOCOM conducted a review in 2021 in an attempt to answer for such failings.

‘Battlefield recovery’ is certainly a more sanitized way to get what you need, but it’s not the only means. In fact, even outside SOF, confiscation and seizure are expressly permitted under the Law of Armed Conflict. The truth is ‘procurement’ has been an art since armies first marched. Peloponnesian soldiers held up the example of the spartan boy with his fox as a virtue to be emulated. The film The Green Berets has SGT Petersen’s character for a reason.

As soldiers we can legally kill. As green berets, we are expected to bend and break governance systems. The critical ingredient is we are entrusted to know when and where we can and cannot take these actions. While ‘We operate in the gray’ is a special forces staple, it can also be the most toxic thing a green beret says if it’s not underpinned by a clear understanding of the authorities, the risks, and the potential second and third order consequences of our actions.

‘Steal it’ represents a step change in flow chart. This is because stealing comes with a lot of risks. Not just physical ones, but operational ones. Stealing can irrevocably sour relationships. It can hurt the local populace in unplanned ways, both in the loss of a key piece of equipment, and in the retributive response of an oppressive government. This is why even more important than not getting caught, know who you are stealing from. Take from your enemy, never from a friend. Take for the mission, never for yourself.

Buy it

No, those steps aren’t out of order. 1323 knew buying things comes with the biggest costs to resources, and not just in money. It can also come with a lot of paperwork to justify why you need to pay for it. MELs take time to get signatures and legal reviews. Time is always running against you in UW. Also, OPFUND is not unlimited. In Afghanistan and Iraq we got used to being able to get more money, but in UW you don’t know when you’re getting another resupply.

However, the relationship costs are lower than getting caught stealing. So, when you must buy something, your goal should be to move whomever you’re purchasing from up the partnership ladder. You want them to become people with whom you can trade or borrow from in the future.

Live without it

Do you really, really need it? Or do you just want it? By the end of the Global War on Terror, a lot of teams thought they couldn’t do an operation without two orbits of close air support on station, seven days of drone stare, and a flight of helicopters packed with a company of commandos — all to catch three guys in flip flops.

You won’t have any of that in the First Island Chain. Welcome to the Land of Mission Command, where there’s no Golden Hour but no 40 slide CONOPS either.

If you absolutely can’t do any of the above…

RFS the B-team

For 1323, RFSing the b-team was almost like admitting we failed. Which is ok. We all fail sometimes. Hell, the whole Q-Course was ‘failure-based learning’. And the B-team is staffed with soldiers whose whole job is to help the teams. But it shouldn’t be a detachments principal means of solving problems.

During that Iraq deployment, ODA 1323 went a week without reliable water before finally RFSing support from the commander. They made absolutely sure they couldn’t solve their problem themselves first. In today’s world of cheap sensors and cheap strike, every time you key the mike you risk calling in fire on your own position. That risk better be worth whatever it is you’re asking for.

We hold the SOF truths to be timeless. They transcend the changes in tools and different conflicts, serving as a touchstone for our community that defines how we operate. 1323’s TOC memo is another SOF Truth for me. Something I encountered at the start of my special forces career that I still hearken back to here at the end of it.

‘Steal it’ is certainly controversial. If you found it, or any of the other lines sparking ideas, please share them below.

1. AOB - Advanced Operating Base. An SF company when it’s deployed. Also called a ‘B-Team’.
FOB - Forward Operating Base. Pronounced like a key-fob, these are generally a combat base large enough to have a chow hall. Smaller than that we called typically them COPs, or combat outposts.

2. Colonel (Ret.) Joe McGraw stands out in a long line of great mentors I’ve had. His reach is truly unmatched, and I’ve stopped being surprised when I meet someone new and discover he had the same impact on their careers. He continues to teach and mentor at the Naval War College today.

3. OPFUND - Operational Funds. Money teams draw to help them purchases goods and services they cannot acquire through other means.

4. Joint Combined Exchange Training, which is a clunky name for when Special Forces go to foreign countries to train with foreign forces.

5. The US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS) is where all Army SF is trained. It also has the worst acronym in the Army, which is why we just call is SWC for short.