U.S Special Forces Advisory Operations from El Salvador to Afghanistan
Naval Institute Press, 2024, 315 pp
ISBN: 9781682471333
Author: Frank K Sobchak
Reviewed by: Travis Peet
In early 2014, large parts of the Iraqi Army fled as the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria advanced rapidly across Northern Iraq. Despite years of training and billions of US dollars spent on training and equipment, most Iraqi Army units wilted in the face of a determined enemy. One exception was the Iraqi Counter Terrorist Service, which mounted stiff resistance and arguably prevented the collapse of the entire Iraqi government. Similar scenes unfolded in 2021 as the Afghan National Army disintegrated before a resurgent Taliban offensive, with the elite units of Afghan commandos among the last units fighting. To understand why units like these remained combat effective while others fled and failed, Frank Sobchak, a retired US Army Special Forces colonel, has undertaken a detailed study of partner forces across several modern military campaigns. In Training for Victory he explores the key factors in their training that underpinned their success.
In taking on this study, Sobchak embarked on an immense challenge. In the post-Cold War era, Western militaries have undertaken numerous security force assistance missions, in different countries and in different contexts. Such was the length of some of these campaigns (Iraq and Afghanistan, for example) that even within these conflicts there is large variance in the experiences of—and lessons for security force assistance based on—the different phases of the conflict. For example, the Afghan militias that the US partnered with in the early 2000s were vastly different to the hardened Afghan commandos of 20 years later. These same Afghan commandos were trained by personnel from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, many European nations and multiple US units over the course of the war, making it difficult to deduce what led to their combat effectiveness.
To make his study manageable, Sobchak has focused his efforts on the experiences of US Army Special Forces, more commonly known as the ‘Green Berets’, a force specifically selected and trained for security force assistance missions. The study is further narrowed by focusing exclusively on US Special Forces training of elite partner nation units. Across five case studies, in five separate chapters (on El Salvador, Colombia, the Philippines, Iraq and Afghanistan), Sobchak provides a background to each conflict, presents an overview of US partnering/training efforts, and analyses what he assesses to be the five key elements of the US approach in each campaign. These elements include language and cultural training, advisor-to-partner ratio, ability to organise partner forces, combat accompaniment, and consistency in advisor pairing.
In the final section of Training for Victory, Sobchak provides a substantial and substantive conclusion wherein he assesses the combat effectiveness of each partner nation’s respective forces. As acknowledged by Sobchak himself, this assessment is somewhat subjective. However, he utilises a consistent logic with the key determinant being battlefield performance, particularly the ability to fight during the night. Using the five elements described previously, Sobchak assesses which of them are linked to combat effectiveness, and hence which are the most important when developing a plan to ‘train for victory’. While Sobchak notes that all partner forces in his analysis were combat effective, the success of Colombian and Iraqi partner forces leads him to conclude that advisor ratios and consistency in pairing are the most critical factors for building effective partner forces. This assessment challenges common assumptions that cultural awareness and language training during pre-deployment training are the most important considerations. Given the approach that Sobchak has taken, and the subjectivity of his assessment of combat effectiveness, this conclusion is open to challenge. His points are nevertheless well argued and thought-provoking.
By narrowing his approach to focus specifically on US Army Special Forces case studies—and only their partnerships with elite partner nation forces—Sobchak somewhat limits the utility of his study. For example, one of his key conclusions is tailored to optimising the doctrine of the US Army, recommending that special forces teams should be paired with companies rather than battalion-size formations. Comparisons with other nations’ approaches to security force assistance missions (such as the British with Afghan commandos, or ‘non-elite’ partner force examples) could have added further nuance to Sobchak’s conclusions and helped further validate his findings. Furthermore, his attempt to summarise the combat effectiveness of complex partner units over extended periods risks oversimplification. This is not a criticism of Sobchak’s work but rather a reminder of the inherent tension between analytical clarity and operational complexity. Provided that Sobchak’s conclusions are acknowledged as applying predominantly to the future development of US Army Special Forces, his analysis has considerable merit.
For Australian Army readers, there is value in both Sobchak’s case studies and the results of his analysis. Campaigns in Central and South America will be unfamiliar territory for many readers from Australia. However, lessons concerning jungle and urban terrain can be readily applied to the Indo-Pacific region. The case study concerning the Philippines provides valuable background understanding for those supporting the Joint Australian Training Team—Philippines (JATT-P) or any other of the increasing number of exercises the Australian Army is undertaking with its Philippines partners. The Iraq and Afghanistan chapters provide different experiences and perspectives on security force assistance missions that were undertaken by the Australian Army during the Global War on Terror. With the Australian Army’s Task Group 632 also training the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service during this same time period, Sobchak’s analysis provides the opportunity to conduct a direct comparison between US and Australian approaches to security force assistance missions.
In Training for Victory, Sobchak has completed a well-researched study on US Army Special Forces campaigns, with the purpose of informing the future development of US Army Special Forces. Despite this relatively limited focus, contained within this book are insights that have far broader application. Sobchak’s work forces readers to consider what factors are truly linked to combat effectiveness in security force assistance missions, while also providing a strong foundation for the history of such missions. By concluding that ratios and consistency are key determinants of success, Sobchak challenges the relevance of strategic and operational constraints related to personnel caps and personnel rotations. He also undermines conventional views that language/cultural training and the practice of accompanying partners into combat are critical to success. Whether or not the Australian Army agrees with these conclusions, Training for Victory encourages critical reflection in the field of security force assistance missions.