In terms of military history this is not strictly true. In past conflicts where personnel was limited and compromises had to made these types of soldiers were often given solo or special assignments and very often excelled in that environment, with more than a few of our highly decorated soldiers from WWII having served in this way.
Peace time militaries tend to get bogged down with this strict squadron type of thinking and in that context you are not at all wrong, but it is interesting that when push comes to shove, the military rediscovers that there's more than one way to win the battle.
I think it needs to be said that people who choose those careers are probably one of the worst kinds of people. They choose to use their unique, advantageous talents to murder people on command. And then you select out of those the ones that think being interviewed on YouTube about that is a good idea. They should be studied anthropologically not listened too.
I’m guessing you’ve never met any special operations people, much less folks from the SMUs. I have met many. 100% A+ people. I’m sure there are bad apples, but I’ve never met one.
> They choose to use their unique, advantageous talents to murder people on command.
Rules of engagement are a thing — a very real thing.
For those who are interested, here is an interview with a very active former Delta Force operator. There are interesting stories about selection, rules of engagement, the stresses of doing the type of work he did, and life after the military.
Do you have any other similar podcasts, videos, etc. to recommend that feature interviews with former operators?
They should be studied anthropologically not listened too.
I think it needs to be said that people who
choose those careers are probably one of the
worst kinds of people
And then you select out of those the ones
that think being interviewed on YouTube about that
is a good idea.
What specific channels would you recommend?
The majority of them also have views that I find pretty problematic.
I have watched a lot of ex-special forces guys on YT.
Needless to say, I take it all with massive grains of salt, including the claim that they were even SF in the first place.
However, they all describe the selection processes similarly. And, my educated assumption is that this part is probably too dull for them to lie about, much less lie about in unison across many accounts and years. So I have a decent level of confidence in that aspect of their tales.
Anyway, the common threads are that while they do want highly confident and confident types who are also outliers in terms of physical ability, the selection process is HIGHLY geared towards selecting intelligent team-oriented individuals. Without those two traits you are going to get you and your squadmates killed in a hurry. These missions are highly planned but due to the inherent ambiguity and difficulty the SF guys have to make a LOT of autonomous decision making on the fly when things (inevitably) deviate from the script.
You hear very similar stories from other "elite" types in the military, like combat pilots. While you have to be sort of a highly talented "alpha" type you also need to be professional and team oriented. No loose cannons allowed, either on the individual or squad level.