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Why do Navy SEALs hate the SCAR?

For many of us from the conventional side of the military (or who never served at all) the FN Scar tends to carry with it a certain appeal. As a rifle designed specifically for Special Operations troops (SCAR actually stands for Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle), it’s hard not to look at the jagged angles of the rifle and bulky 7.62×51 magazines with a sense of envy. There we were carrying around our M4s (or often in my era, M16 A4s) chambered solely in 5.56, baby faced and feeling awfully standard issue, when a group of Special Operations bubbas came strolling by with slung SCARs and the sort of beards that could intimidate a bear. In our minds, everything about that life just seemed better. Better training, better grooming standards, and of course, better guns.

But maybe that’s not the case after all. If you’ve spent some time rolling rounds through a SCAR, you might have responded like I did my first few times firing one: by assuming your issues with the platform must have been operator error. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get to liking the SCAR chambered in 7.62 or 5.56, but because I’d seen it in the hands of so many prolific war fighters, I figured any issues I had with the platform must have been a result on my lack of familiarity with it. Sure, it occasionally misfeeds, it’s loud enough to hurt your ears through cheap ear protection at an indoor range, and I would hate to try to clear a house with such a long weapon (standard barrel)… but it’s hard to shake the assumption that it’s not the rifle that’s the problem, it’s got to be the shooter.

Over the years, I’ve spoken to a fair number of special operations veterans that shared my distaste for the SCAR (but with operational experience to pull from, rather than just being a range cowboy with it like I was), and I came to appreciate that despite lacking in the high speed training allotted to SOCOM’s best, a bad feed is still a bad feed, and provided you’re not putting pressure on the magazine or otherwise mishandling the weapon, the fault tends to fall squarely on the platform, not the shooter, when it tries to cram two rounds into the chamber at once.

So, maybe that’s why I enjoyed this video from Vigilance Elite so much — because it features shooters more qualified than myself nit picking the SCAR in much the same way I have in the past. In the video, former SEALs Shawn Ryan and Jeff Reid put a SCAR through its paces, discuss some of its strengths, and then break down exactly why they do not like the platform. Reid goes into detail about his experiences on deployment with the SCAR and how he (as well as many other SEALs) suffered through repeated malfunctions until he finally decided to switch back to the M4 despite often finding himself in 1,000 meter engagements. In his mind, the added range and accuracy of the 7.62 chambered SCAR simply wasn’t worth the headaches.

Check out the video below:

Feature image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons

Where does the term ‘operator’ come from?

Operator – someone who operates.

In the civilian world, that could be someone operating an excavator, a wheeled tractor, and other similar heavy equipment. Historically, the term applied to people who worked in the old-school telephone centers and operated the manual telephone switchboards that were necessary in order from someone to call another number.

In the military, conversely, the term operator has come to be associated with troops serving in Special Operations Forces (SOF). A Navy SEAL operator, a Special Forces operator, a Marine Raider operator has become standard nomenclature, even in official communique and statements.

But what’s the actual origin of the term? For many in the spec ops community, an operator is someone who is serving or has served in one of the Joint Special Operations Command’s (JSOC) Special Mission Units (SMU). This would apply to members of the Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, also known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), 24^th Special Tactics Squadron (24^th STS), Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), or one of the other smaller, blacker SMUs.

The office of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) historian, however, posits that the term originated from with the Green Beret community. In support of this claim, there is a document from the late 1950s. Dated April 2, 1959, the document’s headline reads: “The Code For the Special Forces Operator.” It includes 10 provisions to which a Green Beret must abide to. They range from the volunteer and highly dangerous nature of Special Forces – during the Cold War, Special Forces Operational Detachment Alphas (SFODAs) were designed to remain behind enemy lines once the Soviet mechanized onslaught had been unleashed on Western Europe; their role, as it is today, was to organize, train, and lead indigenous forces in waging an Unconventional Warfare (UW) campaign against the Communists – to superb physical fitness, soldiership, and professionalism, among other things.

“I realize,” the document’s sixth provision states, “it is my responsibility as a Special Forces Operator to undergo more intense and more rugged training than is required of the average soldier of the United States Army.”

The document was signed by Captain Albert Clement, 1^st Company, 77^th Special Forces Group (SFG), and witnessed by John Hanretty. The 77^this one of the original Special Forces Groups and the predecessor of the modern-day 7^thSFG.

So, there it is. According to the existing historical evidence, it is the Green Berets who have the claim over the term “Operator.” Does a title matter, though? Not to those who operate.

This article was written by Stavros Atlamazoglou at NEWSREP

Feature image courtesy of the U.S. Navy

The glaring problem with your plan to defend your home

It’s not at all uncommon to find articles breaking down the proper techniques you should employ when clearing your home, just like it’s easy to find articles discussing and debating what the best possible firearms are for that specific (and dangerous) set of circumstances. I love reading these pieces and participating in the dialogue they encourage, but all too often, I’m left with the uneasy feeling that the debate is going on between a strange combination of experienced veterans, well trained amateurs… and idiots that fancy themselves cowboys. Of course, not all idiots are bad guys, some are just woefully inexperienced, under-trained, and overconfident. In a lot of ways, you could use those same three adjectives to describe me doing just about anything half the time I’m doing it. Being an idiot only becomes really dangerous when you don’t realize you’re doing it.

And that’s where home defense comes in. It’s become apparent to me that most home defense strategies are predicated on the idea that you’ll have ready access to your firearm and the advantage of knowing your home when an intruder breaks in. From there, many articles suggest that it’s just a matter of slicing the pie through doorways and careful execution of your room clearing plan (that would optimally already be worked out) until you’ve neutralized all the bad guys and can call it a night. After all, that’s what John Wick would do.

The truth of the matter is, if the extent of your tactical training comes from watching YouTube videos and occasionally going through the motions in your house with your kid’s Nerf gun, clearing your home during a break in is an absolutely terrible idea. You have no idea how many opponents you’ll be facing, what they’re armed with, what sort of training or equipment they may have, or where exactly they’ll be coming from (assuming your house, like most, has multiple entrances). Your home-field advantage dissipates quickly the minute you find yourself creeping through the kitchen and realize there are bad guys both in front of and behind you.

As for firepower, three guns almost always beats one, even if you’ve got a very expensive boomstick you’ve been itching to try out. While you’re engaging one target, you often leave yourself exposed to be hit by the others. There’s a reason the U.S. military doesn’t use the one-man Rambo approach to house clearing even when sending in highly trained special operators: numbers matter. The more support you have, the more likely you are to survive an encounter. With no support and an unknown number of assailants, your effort to “clear the house” is really just putting you in harm’s way.

There’s a reason the military trains to clear houses as a team: because it’s too dangerous to do alone unless you absolutely must. (US Marines)

So, what do you do when you hear a break in? I won’t lie to you — I’ve had a break in and I took off after the sound of broken glass with my pistol in hand and hate in my heart. In hindsight, I was lucky. Our house was broken into by a young punk with a head full of drugs and a healthy fear of his Marine neighbor carrying a 9mm. If it had been an armed assailant with more than my X-box on his mind, I could have been riddled with holes before I cleared the stairwell.

Sometimes you’ll have no choice but to move from one room to another during a break in: You’ll need to get to your family and your firearm. Once you’ve got both, don’t bother moving through the house like Solid Snake trying to take down the bad guys one by one. Instead, put yourself in a solidly defensible position, keep your family around the corner, out of sight, and behind whatever cover you can find. Call the police and keep them on the line. Then, if need be, open fire to keep the home intruders from entering the room you’re all hiding in. The best place for you to take cover is somewhere that allows you as clear a line of sight of their approach as possible, while allowing for as little exposure to your opponents as possible. Stake out your house ahead of time and identify spots like that so you can more easily locate them when the adrenaline starts pumping.

With no support, every angle is your responsibility and there’s no one there to watch your back. (US Marines)

Remember, drywall doesn’t stop bullets, and neither will your kitchen table, couch, or mattress. Real cover needs to be legitimately solid (steel, concrete, a stack of logs) — so if you’re lacking in real cover, do your best with staying low and keeping the intruders back until help arrives.

Stay on the line with the police, even if you have to drop the phone to defend yourself. Keeping the line open will help them to understand what’s going on in the room for when the responding officers arrive. Remember, in this defensive position, you really are fighting for your life and the lives of your family. Most intruders will run rather than get shot or arrested, so anyone that’s willing to exchange gunfire with you to get into your bedroom likely has something worse in mind than stealing your wife’s jewelry.

If you’ve got the training and the confidence, clear your house the way you’ve been taught. But if you’re a normal mortal with a gun, your best bet is finding a defensible position and waiting for backup. It could save your life.

Feature image: Courtesy of InformedMag.com via Flickr

Watch: After crashing in the wilderness, pilot films his efforts to get rescued

On July 27, pilot Matt Lehtinen found himself living his worst nightmare. While flying alone in his single-prop aircraft over the remote Quebec wilderness, the plane suffered a mechanical failure that put it into an unrecoverable descent. After crashing into the dense forest (using parachutes to slow his fall), some people might have taken a moment to lament their luck — but Lehtinen instead pulled out a camera and set to work putting on a clinic on how exactly to get rescued.

“I’m just going to take this vlog so people can learn from this experience, so something good can come out of it,” Lehtinen says in the video after showing the aircraft embedded in the trees. For bush pilots and those who regularly travel over remote wilderness, surviving the crash is often the least of their worries. With so much ground to cover, even large scale search efforts often yield no signs of lost aircraft or their crews.

Lehtinen’s level-headedness and quick thinking, however, helped secure his rescue in just a matter of hours. First, he sent out an SOS distress call, then immediately set to work trying to locate his First Aid kit and signal flares. Then, he started a fire to mark his location with smoke. It’s worth noting that he started the fire using a Bic lighter he had in the console of the aircraft. All too often, people tend to overthink fire in a survival situation, opting to carry and use elaborate fire-starting gear while utterly forgetting about readily available sources of fire we often have handy.

The most important part of his effort, however, came by way of his satellite communicator (he used a Garmin inReach), which he was able to use to communicate with his family and coordinate a rescue response.

Before long, a low flying C-130 swoops in overhead, confirming for Lehtinen that help is indeed on its way. Within five hours after the crash, a rescue helicopter arrives, and Lehtinen is on his way home. He concludes his video by thanking the Canadian Royal Air Force, Mounted Police, Search and Rescue, Air Traffic Control and local law enforcement for their combined efforts in finding and rescuing him. He signs off, “You are my heroes, and you saved my life. Sincerely, a grateful American.”

This video offers a number of important lessons, like the value of carrying a satellite communicator — but unlike so many guide books, how-to’s, and pamphlets, it shows how keeping your head and relying on your training can help get you through an actual bad situation. Lehtinen didn’t offer up hypothetical solutions, he got to work and made his own luck. More often than not, that’s exactly what it takes to survive.

WATCH: How to pass Special Forces Assessment and Selection

The journey to becoming a Special Forces soldier won’t be easy. Special Forces training is rigorous and highly selective, but the courage and strength you will gain as a candidate will stay with you your entire life.

In addition to Basic Combat Training, soldiers must have completed Advanced Individual Training and U.S. Army Airborne School to be eligible for Special Forces training. To learn more about training requirements, visit the qualifications page.

Special Forces Training Modules

Special Operations Preparation Course (SOPC)

This two-week course, held at Fort Bragg, N.C., prepares prospective Green Berets for Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS). This course focuses heavily on physical fitness, but candidates are also expected to demonstrate a proficiency in land navigation, one of the most important skills of a Special Forces soldier.

Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS)

Special Forces Assessment and Selection is designed to test your survival skills, and places an even stronger emphasis on intense physical and mental training. This is considered the first proper phase of Special Forces training. Phases II-VI continue during the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC).

Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC)

Qualification consists of five phases (II-VI), lasting approximately 61 weeks. Each phase is designed to foster an expertise in the following areas: small unit tactics, advanced Special Forces tactics, survival skills, language and cultural training, unconventional warfare, survival, escape, resistance and evasion and advanced combat survival tactics.

Small Unit Tactics

The tactics phase, which lasts 9 weeks, drills candidates in advanced marksmanship, counterinsurgency, urban operations, live fire maneuvers sensitive site exploitation and other Special Forces skills. Soldiers will also take part in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) exercises.

MOS Training

During the MOS Qualification Phase (III), you will receive training for your newly assigned Special Forces Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). Training for this phase lasts about 16 weeks, and covers additional language training, Special Forces common tasks, Advanced Special Operations Techniques (ASOT) and interagency operations.

Collective Training (ROBIN SAGE)

Robin Sage (Phase IV) is the training phase that serves as the litmus test for Soldiers hoping to earn the Green Beret. Candidates are organized into squads and inserted into a fictional country, known as Pineland, which is made up of several counties spanning North Carolina. Pineland is rife with political turmoil, and candidates must navigate the region and complete a specified mission.

Language And Culture

During this 25-week phase (Phase V), candidates will fine-tune their skills in the language to which they have been assigned. Languages include French, Indonesian-Bahasa, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese-Mandarin, Czech, Dari, Hungarian, Korean, Pashto, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Russian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish and Urdu.

Graduation

All of the major work and training is completed by phase VI, the graduation phase, which involves a week of out-processing. Candidates will finally don their Green Berets as Special Forces soldiers.

Feature image courtesy of the U.S. Army

Op-Ed: ‘Call of Duty’ peddles us some more amoral nihilism about ‘Modern Warfare’

Editor’s note: This piece was written by NEWSREP Editor-in-Chief and Special Operations veteran, Jack Murphy. You can purchase his new memoir, “Murhpy’s Law,” here.

The “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” video game series has always included scenes that are intentionally controversial. In “Modern Warfare 2,” one level sees the protagonist acting as an undercover operative in a Russian terrorist cell that raids an airport terminal and murders hundreds of civilians. The protagonist, played by the player of the game from the first-person perspective, is forced to participate in the slaughter. The first time I played the game, I turned my weapon on the terrorists I was undercover with and started shooting them. The game was interrupted by a forced cut scene in which my character was gunned down by the terrorists.

This wasn’t a game like “Deus Ex” in which you find yourself put in morally gray areas and have to choose one of many ambiguous options. “Call of Duty” has a narrative to advance about modern warfare, one which informs us that we must default to the level of savagery of our adversaries in order to win. The game forces you to murder people; it is the only way to win.

When the trailer for the latest edition of the “Modern Warfare” series was released this week, I clicked on it wondering if the series has evolved. Surprise, it hasn’t. You can check out the trailer for yourself, but from the outset we are informed there is a fine line between right and wrong, and that our highly stylized Special Operators are sent into the shadows to find that line. It is an incredibly romanticized view of war and what modern counter-terrorism operations actually are. Or as one of my Special Forces friends might describe it, “You’re just looking in the mirror while jerking yourself off.”

The narrator of the game tells the player, “We get dirty and the world stays clean, that’s the mission.” Our heroes bloody their hands in our names so that the free world remains free. The visuals of the game tap into familiar scenes reminiscent of the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan and Marines patrolling a Middle Eastern city. Another scene appears to show the White Helmets in Syria, while others seem to reflect recent terrorist attacks in European cities. According to one article, there is even a scene in the game where operators raid a target and gun down unarmed women, ostensibly because they are a part of a terrorist cell. We are even told that a part of the game allows you to play as an Arab soldier, so hooray for #inclusivity, I suppose.

Oddly enough, the game romanticizes Special Operations while also advancing an incredibly nihilistic narrative. In the “Call of Duty” games, you won’t find a lot of jingoism or hyper-nationalism. The operators (and the players) are not fighting for God or country. The thing is, you don’t really know what you’re fighting for. “Call of Duty 2” repeatedly told us the winners write the history books, so in other words, perception is reality. Infinity Ward’s new addition to the franchise seems to continue this trend with plot hooks and catchy quotes straight from the worst bro-vet memes on the internet. “You need me on that wall. Strong men stand ready to do violence on your behalf,”…or something.

The “or something” is the difficult part, because while the player in “Call of Duty” will sweep into enemy compounds on Little Bird helicopters, do HALO jumps, and engage in firefights with the enemy (things I did myself during my military service), you find yourself asking the question why, or what is the point? When the Global War on Terror kicked off, we were fighting for freedom, to prevent another 9/11 type attack, to deny the terrorists behind it a safe haven from which to operate. Seventeen years later and we are not even interested in the reasons why we are fighting in a dozen different countries.

As George Orwell wrote, “We have always been at war with Eurasia.” What this has spawned is a form of amoral nihilism in a certain segment of our youth and our soldiers who now see modern warfare as fighting simply for the sake of fighting. Talk to them and they will even tell you they are part of America’s warrior class. Modern day Spartan warriors we are told, fighting because that is what fighters do.

It pains me to say this as a former soldier and as someone who is now a pro-military veteran. I support many of our counter-terrorism missions abroad, but I hope we are actually trying to accomplish something with them, not just stroking ourselves off with our cool guns and flashy go-to-war gear. Killing is sometimes necessary and is a socially legitimate tool to use to protect your country and culture, but not if we are just killing for fun.

The immediate rebuttal to this opinion will be for people to say, “But Jack, it’s just a video game!” Yes, that’s true and there is nothing wrong with playing a video game and being entertained by it. However, we also can’t underestimate the influence that movies and video games have on our culture. Millions of young people will play “Call of Duty.” Very few will read the many available books that provide a more nuanced understanding of conflict, be it historical or contemporary.

Sure, it is just entertainment, but Infinity Ward is never going to make a game about veterans cracking up with PTSD in clinics around the country because they gunned down unarmed women. There will never be a “Call of Duty” game about Chief Eddie Gallagher and the drama he and his family have gone through as we lead up to his court-martial proceedings in which he is accused of war crimes in Iraq. “Call of Duty” shows us the alpha male bros with their cools guns and gear but strips away the actual costs of war while simultaneously glamorizing it as the price the operators pay, sacrificing themselves for the greater good. It all gets woven into a superficial sheep dog narrative.

I’m able to write all of this with hindsight, having joined the Army in 2002 and then having left in 2010. I’ve been a civilian for nine years now, covering Special Operations as a journalist. I was one of the lucky ones, but now I have to wonder what is going through some kid’s head when he plays a game like “Call of Duty” and how little the narrative will resemble what he finds when deployed to combat. Except the nihilism, except for that.

That he’ll find in spades.

Feature image courtesy of Infinity Ward