Who has the best Special Forces ?, page 9
Pages: <<  6    7    8    9    10    11    12  >>
ATS Members have flagged this thread 0 times


reply posted on 7-10-2004 @ 10:47 AM by cargo
Originally posted by mad scientist
I doubt it was a shot aimed at the individual, more likely a missed shot at the engine block of the vehicle.


From here


The two-man Canadian team, outfitted with British desert fatigues and an array of equipment from all over the world, killed an al-Qaeda fighter from 2,430 metres on the second shot.

The first blew a bag from the hand of their target, who was walking on a road.

"He didn't even flinch," said Bill, who spoke on condition that his real name not be used. "We made a correction and the next round hit exactly where we wanted it to. Well, a bit to the right."


So it seems the guy wasn't driving at the time. Sounds kinda comical, bag blowing out of his hand.


reply posted on 7-10-2004 @ 01:26 PM by tobermory
If we ignore specialised training and go down the pure hard pyscho route, the French Foreign Legion deserve a mention:

The training there is brutal you learn to survive everything short of a nuclear holocaust, on forced marches in the jungle they are used to having a couple of members incapacitated to severe injuries every trip. Do they stop and airlift them, no they have the remaining men stretcher them for the rest of the route! (Plus they have to build the stretcher from natural materials in the jungle! )

I remember seeing a documentry on their training down in French Guana, They have an assault course in the jungle for which the record for a squad of Legionaires is about 2hrs, the green berets had a go and it took them well over 24hrs to complete!!

Although as the narrator pointed out the whole point of the course was to work as a team to complete it (As it was virtually impossible to do otherwise) the Green Beret's gung-ho tactics of trying to out-do each other may have hindered them!

In reality this debate could go on ad infinitum as everyone has their personal favourite - I'm British so i'd plump for the SAS and SBS it's a known fact they train most of the world's SF.
But hey horses for courses, the only true way to settle this would be to put a squad of each in the most diverse enviroment on earth and see who eventually walks outs...which would all be a rather pointless waste of life to settle a forum posting!

On a more humanitarian viewpoint:
Every soldier has a part to play in a war, however heroic, the infantry in WWI that survived the horrendous conditions in the trenches for months on end are special forces if you think about it realistically they are just not the high profile glamour boys, remember the hardest part about being a solider is having to kill a complete stranger when all he has done is be on the other side of a religious/political/insert reason decided by a few people in command to stop the opponent doing it to your own people and living with the knowledge of what you have done. It doesn't matter how many ways you know to kill them. And in that way i suppose any special forces are a good thing if employed right, to achieve a result whilst minimising the impact to other people of both sides.

Would a better thread be 'The Special operatives with the worst/most horrific record of action'? (At least the patriotism towards your own country's forces would subside.)

[edit on 7-10-2004 by tobermory]

[edit on 7-10-2004 by tobermory]


reply posted on 8-10-2004 @ 12:17 AM by cargo
Originally posted by quiver
Basically the Australians are too decent and have too much soul to be the very best fighters.imho


You have obviously never stumbled out of a pub at Friday night closing time in downtown Sydney. I appreciate the kind words though.

There was one Australian SAS operative allowed to talk (without identity concealment) to 60 Minutes Australia about their operations in Afghanistan. I watched that interview and can tell you that the guy spoke with what seemed like no emotion (even while recounting a time when he thought he was going to die), never hesitated in his speech, never made an error, stumbled or overplayed the events.

One quote from him regarding Al Qaeda I won't forget --

SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: "These guys were definitely committed and they were there to fight to the death - and we accommodated them."


And this is what Lt. Gen. Frank Hagenbeck (US Military), Coalition Commander in Afghanistan, had to say about the Australian SAS during "Operation Anaconda" --


LT GEN FRANK HAGENBECK: You had to have someone there on the ground that could see and hear and smell and pick up the sense of the battlefield of what was going on and we were very much dependent upon the Aussies, certainly in that part of the battlefield.



LT GEN FRANK HAGENBECK: I tell you, I would not have wanted to do that operation without the Australian SAS's folks on that ridge line. I mean, they made it happen that day.


And finally:


LT GEN FRANK HAGENBECK, COALITION COMMANDER, AFGHANISTAN: The Australian SAS displayed those kinds of things that make them the elite, in my view, of small unit infantry men throughout the world. And that's autonomy, independence, tenacity that they will never ever be defeated.


The Elite, in his view, of small unit infantry men throughout the world.

You can read a transcript of the whole story
here



reply posted on 8-10-2004 @ 12:39 AM by cargo
Sorry for posting more (you can thank me for the points anytime Scientist ) but this is my favourite bit.


SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: It's not very good odds. It's about the same odds as the Australians faced in Long Tan. Basically, they got on to the western ridge, which meant that they were behind us, so the guys who were shooting at the Al Qaeda on the eastern ridge were now taking rounds in the back.

LT COL ROWAN TINK: I was left under no misapprehension at all that there was a possibility that these guys were not going to get out.

ROSS COULTHART: The SAS Commander, Colonel Rowan Tink, was listening to radio reports from the Australians as Al Qaeda fighters closed in.

LT COL ROWAN TINK: There is no doubt that they thought they could win. They had proven that against the Russians on at least two occasions and given the Russians a bloody nose when they tried to take the valley.

SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: I was just thinking about how I'm going to get out of here. I'm not going to bloody die in this valley.

ROSS COULTHART: Did you have your doubts?

SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: Yeah, certainly. I thought we were done for on many occasions during the day, yeah.

ROSS COULTHART: A mortar bomb landed two metres from the Australians. Wouldn't a mortar going off two metres away normally kill you?

SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: Well, at this stage we managed to dig a little bit of a shell scrape, so we were slightly below the ground.

ROSS COULTHART: So you were just digging into the ground as close as you could get?

SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: Yeah, basically, with a knife or our hands, or whatever we could get.

ROSS COULTHART: The attackers then targeted the only mortar weapon the Americans had.

SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: I was just lying there, watching them out of the corner of my eye and about five or six of them disappeared in a puff of grey smoke. It was basically a direct hit on the American mortar from the Al Qaeda mortar.

ROSS COULTHART: How badly injured were those men?

SIGNALMAN MARTIN WALLACE: Um, we had guys with chest injuries, there was open fractures, basically fragmentation wounds, some over their entire bodies.

ROSS COULTHART: Signalman Wallace won a bravery award for what he did next.

LT COL ROWAN TINK: He saw there was a need there to go out and pull some of those guys to safety and dress their wounds and he put himself in harm's way, under fire moved out, collected some of these wounded and dragged them back in to safety into the ditch they were in.


I think that speaks for itself.
Pages: <<  6    7    8    9    10    11    12  >>    ^^TOP^^



Israeli Company Has FAA Permission to Fly Drones in U.S. Airspace
  Posted 10 days ago with 6 member flags
Colt Commander, finally failed
  Posted 5 days ago with 5 member flags
Laser Firearms
  Posted 16 days ago with 4 member flags
US Army Launches Phase II of competition to replace M4
  Posted 17 days ago with 3 member flags
America\'s Next Bomber: Unmanned, Unlimited Range, Aimed At China
  Posted 18 days ago with 3 member flags