Angry Planet - US SpecOps Is Training to Fight Russian Tanks and Memes

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

There’s war all over these days, but it’s different. War has, in fact changed, and the operators of the future are preparing for different challenges in different theaters. The bulk of US involved conflict is happening in the Middle East and North Africa, but the Pentagon is preparing for fighting in more traditional theaters.Marty Skovlund Jr. is a veteran of 1st Ranger Battalion, the Executive Editor of Coffee or Die Magazine and a frequent guest of the show. He’s been covering military training in Europe where he witnessed America’s special operation forces training alongside their European counterparts. The threat they think they might face? It’s decidedly Russian.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. They have an entire fake intranet, I guess you would call it, but like a fake Twitter, a fake Facebook, that the military leaders were having to go on and kind of address, you know, do counterpropaganda messaging and shape the information. operations, you know, to kind of keep the locals, you know, on their side, basically. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I am your host, Matthew Galt. There's war all over these days, but it's different. War has, in fact, changed, and the operators of the future are preparing for different challenges in different theaters.

The bulk of U.S. to involve conflict today is happening in the Middle East and North Africa, but the Pentagon is preparing for fighting in more traditional theaters. Marty Scoveland Jr. is a veteran of First Ranger Battalion, the executive editor of Coffee or Die Magazine, and a frequent guest on the show. He's been covering military training in Europe, where he witnessed America's special operations forces, training alongside their European counterparts. The threat they think they might face is decidedly Russian. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Marty.

Thanks for having me on again. This is great. I always look forward to a great conversation with you guys. Excellent. Let's jump right into it. You just got back from Europe, right? Yes. So where were you?

And what did you see on this most recent trip? And is the article already out or is it forthcoming? Fourthcoming. I literally just got back two or three days ago. So the most recent exercise was called Operation Sabre Junction. and basically this is a, as opposed to Trojan footprint, which I covered earlier the summer, this exercise is a decisively conventional training exercise. So although it did involve obviously special operations units,

kind of the thing that makes this unique is that it was special operators kind of supporting the conventional fight as opposed to the other way around, which I think a lot of our military has kind of gotten used to in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this exercise this year took place in Germany. We actually flew into Prague in the Czech Republic, drove into the Bavaria region, and then we're there for about two weeks following the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the 139th Air National Guard Wing out of, I feel like I'm going to get this wrong, but I think Missouri, and then some guys from 5th Special Forces Group and the 1st of the 10th Special Forces Group.

What does it look like for special operations forces to play support? You're right. That is very different. Yeah. And I think, you know, I posed the question the same way when I was there and talking to some of the planners and the people involved. And they're very sensitive to the word support. I think that they, the way they see themselves is much more in, we're bringing a different aspect of the fight or bringing something to a different aspect of the fight. They're acting in the true, you know, the shaping force that they were meant to be when we first started standing up our, you know, the permanent special operations units back in the 50s and 60s.

You know, they're conducting reconnaissance. They're conducting intelligence operations. They're working by through and with, you know, multinational soft as well as they actually had a Lithuanian best way to describe it is like a true militia. not a national guard unit, but the guys that would actually, you know, were Russia to roll into Lithuania, these are the guys that would go underground and, you know, get their unconventional warfare on resisting, you know, the invading force. So it's kind of an interesting way to see it, but the way they see it is that they're shaping the operation for the conventional guys that will come in, rather than supporting them in a way. I think that the way, the reason that they avoid that is support sounds like your mechanics or your cooks or something like that.

And what they're doing is very – it's a shaping operation, but it's very decisive, if that makes sense. So – but it was very interesting to see them work through these training exercises, which are definitely not the counterinsurgency, counterterror, type of training exercises that they've come, you know, grown accustomed to conducting not only, you know, in combat, but also in training. And it's even more interesting, the backdrop of Honefels and the area that they were in is the whole training area is still set up as a mock Iraq or a mock Afghanistan. So it's like they're trying to set up and play conventional and fight this conventional near peer threat, aka Russia. But it's still being done in these little villages that look Iraqish. As much as you can make Bavaria, he'll look like Iraq anyways, right? So it was very interesting to see them kind of work through these problems. And the way they saw it is, hey, these are, you know, the way that we have, for them,

it's developing relationships, not only with the multinational folks, but also the conventional side. I had one special operations officer telling me that they're lucky that the commander of the 173rd that was over there was a former 275 guy. So he had a, or a second Ranger battalion guy. And so he definitely was easier to work with. knowing that, having that background in special operations, but for the majority of the people they work with, they don't know anything about special forces. They don't know what Green Berets do.

They have the same kind of misconceptions in their head that the rest of America does about what they actually do or what they can bring to the fight. And so a lot of this is kind of setting the stage for them working together, not only in this future potential war, conventional war, but in the more immediate future of, hey, if we're deploying to Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria or Africa with this same. platoon or company from the 173, we'll have those pre-existing relationships and, you know, kind of this training exercise as common ground that we can build upon in the, you know, the real world environment.

So that was all very interesting for me to kind of see that unfold and not to go off on too much of a tangent here, but I think even more interesting for somebody that, you know, look, when I was coming up in the military, it was uncommon to see a team leader without a combat deployment under his or her belt, never mind a company commander or a platoon commander or platoon sergeant. A lot of these folks, even some of the special operators, don't have a combat deployment under their belt. And so seeing them kind of work through these problems and approach this from, you know, looking at problems through the lens of somebody who hasn't been to combat yet.

It was all very, very interesting. How do you think that lack of combat experience shapes the way they're doing training and shapes their expectations? Well, I think that there's pros and cons to it. And I couldn't help but kind of mold this over for the entire two weeks I was over there. Because on the one hand, obviously you learn a lot of very hard lessons in combat. There's just there's, you tend to take things more seriously in some areas, other things less seriously. And you are, have the ability to really hone in on what's important because you know what's important, right?

but for most of the people that have been to combat over the last two decades, that is very much, you know, what's important is through the lens of what's important in a counterinsurgency or counterterrorism, right? And so I think for the guys who haven't been to combat yet, they were able to approach this training exercise with a, you know, a conventional near-peer threat much more honestly just because they don't have, maybe they don't have the bad habits or just maybe not bad habits, but they don't have the habits from fighting a counterinsurgency. And so I think that they were able to look at this a little bit more honestly and go through the thought processes and the courses of actions, you know, a little bit more. more honestly of like, well, okay, no, what would we really actually do if we don't have air superiority? If we're in an environment where there's EW president, you know, electronic warfare, we can't use radios or we can't communicate the way that we normally would and really take that seriously. Whereas I think some of the guys who maybe have been to Iraq or Afghanistan, I think it's potentially like, yeah, hey, they know what it's like to be shot at or they know what it's like

to take a piece of, you know, something that looks out of place on the side of the road. You know, they take that very seriously. But are they taking seriously? what it's like to not have radios or not be able to communicate. You know, one of the things that you saw during this training exercises is as opposed to calling up on the radio of building clear, they were having to kind of go old school and take a piece of engineer tape and a green chem light and hanging out the window to show that a building had been cleared, you know, because they didn't have radios. And so I think it's, you know, I think that the fact that you had both experiences present,

you obviously had people that had been to combat, you know, and they had, They were able to give their two cents, and then you had the people who didn't have that experience. The fact that they were coming together to solve these problems and work through these training exercises, I think probably made for about the best possible training environment from the human aspect, as you could possibly ask for, or that you could hope for as a military leader, just knowing that it wasn't one-sided on either side. What are the habits you pick up that get ingrained when you fight a counterinsertion? You know, you called them bad habits at first, but then you corrected yourself.

Yeah, right. I mean, there are two different wars, right? And not that an unconventional fight isn't present during a conventional fight. I mean, you can look at World War II. I mean, what was the French resistance? What were the Jedbergs? You know, they were all fighting an unconventional fight within a very conventional war. So it's not that those things aren't present.

And certainly we shouldn't let those skills and, and, uh, TTPs, you know, wither away. But I think for guys who, you know, if you're on, you know, rotation five, six, seven in Iraq or Afghanistan, I think, especially from the special operations perspective, you're very much in the mindset of like, okay, when I'm working by through and with a local fighter, when I'm working by through and with Eastern Europeans, I don't need to teach them basic battle drills. I don't need to teach them how to shoot an AK-47, like I do, say, with a militia in Iraq or Afghanistan, right? Like, the education level is

a lot higher. So how you approach the buy-through and with methodology is very different. When you look at, you know, when it comes to actually bad habits, it's, hey, are we up to date on, you know, using hand-and-arm

signals? How are we communicating when we can't use radios or cell phones for that matter? You know, how are we navigating without GPS? You know, what are we doing? when we have a mask hal, but we don't have air superiority to allow a medevac helicopter to land right on the street corner and pick up our wounded. You know, like, what are those processes like?

And I think for a lot of guys who are used to that Iraq, Afghanistan environment, it's kind of, you almost take those things for granted. You know, we've always had air superiority. We've always had domination as far as the ability to communicate. So for them, I think it's, you know, it's almost an eye roll of like, oh, this is just a pain in the ass training exercise where I can't use my radio or whatever. You know, like, I think that they, it took some, you know, for some guys, it was like, no, hey, this is a real thing. And, you know, for the multinational allies that they're working with, a fight with Russia is a very real and serious thing. I mean, for Sabre Junction, there were Ukrainian forces there training who were straight from the front lines in Ukraine who, just a couple weeks prior, we're being shelled by Russian forces.

You know, this is very real for them. And so you could kind of almost see that difference between, you know, how our troops were kind of approaching this and the way the Eastern Europeans were. Are there two different special operations, like generations now? And are they culturally different? Because it's so, and I'll ask, I kind of want to give a little bit of background on why I'm asking it, that question the way. because we've heard for a long time from J-Soc itself that they're stretched thin. They're the tip of the spear, but they're doing a little bit too much. They wish conventional forces would do more.

There's not enough of them. And there's also been some cultural problems that have, you know, been some major news stories lately. I'm thinking, you know, seals specifically. Sure. Right. So are they aware of that stuff? And is, are they trying, is there like, I mean, I'm sure they are. but is there a push to change?

Yeah, I think, so I would argue that there's actually three generations within the special operations community. And I would say, three, if not four at this point, geez. I mean, I kind of break the GWOT into, as far as special operations is concerned, into four big periods. You've got the 2001, you know, 9-11 until 2005-ish when the insurgency really cropped up. in Iraq, I would call that kind of phase one. And then from 2005, let's say the hunt for Zarqawi forward till 2009 when the sofa was signed in Iraq. That's like phase two, where it's still very Iraq focused. And then 2009 to 2013, we were very Afghanistan focused, some of the largest losses. And you even saw special operations units having special operations units, having to

completely change the way that they operated during that four-year period. And then you've got this 2013 forward where it's this ISIS post drawdown in Afghanistan like like everything you know Africa is a thing now it's this very muddled picture and and so you've got guys depending on when they came into the military when they came into special operations who have you know if you're a guy there's a lot of the guys that I talked to that run an ODAs who they didn't get to an ODA until 2014, 2015 and they're one of the more senior guys on their ODA at this point but they don't they don't know what those firefights were like in Afghanistan in, say, 2010, just as, you know, the more senior enlisted who were around during

the invasion of Iraq or those early days in Afghanistan, for them, the GWAT is viewed through an entirely different lens. And so I would say there's three, if not four, different generations within special operations with that warfighting experience. As far as the culture things, So there weren't any seals out there for Sabre Junction that I'm aware of. I actually did recently cover a, it was just a kind of a one-day capabilities exercise with the East Coast seals back in July or August, I think it is sometime around there. And it's, I mean, you, it definitely comes up in conversation, right? it's nothing, you know, if I ever bring anything up, you know, PAOs are definitely very quick to let me just talk and not really respond, you know, which probably good on them. But it's definitely something that everybody's aware of.

And, you know, you kind of hear sidebar conversations and stuff. And I think I think just kind of talking to people, the impression that I get is everywhere else in the military, they're very, cognizant of what their unit, you know, what they can control, right? So if you're a team sergeant, you're just very cognizant of, okay, make sure my team doesn't devolve into some of the shenanigans that we've seen coming out of the SEAL community. And I think everybody's just trying to control their piece of the pie and make sure that they don't get to that point where they're having to deal with some of the issues that are coming out of the Naval Special Warfare community. And certainly, you know, I think, you know, when you look at Rangers or special forces or some others,

basically everybody but AFSC. You know, everybody's had their issues here and there, but they just haven't been as widespread as MSWs. And I think that they're, they're kind of looking out like, okay, how do we keep it that way? We're never going to completely eliminate, you know, a bad dude, you know, slipping into the ranks or somebody getting a little bit too crazy with stuff. How do we prevent it from becoming widespread, though? And I think that's what those leaders are looking at. But honestly, I mean, I mean, this, the ODA that I was talking to, that I was with for a couple of days in Sabre Junction from the Special Forces Group, these guys are so busy. They barely have time to think about it. They just got back from

their last deployment this year. They're getting ready to go on another one next year. Their training cycle in between, you know, I had two guys, both of their sons were on the same football team, and they remarked how only, you know, they've only been to, one football game despite not being deployed. You know, and so these guys are so busy. I think it's hard for them to focus on anything outside of what's right in front of them. All right. Thank you so much.

We're in a pause here for an ad break. You're listening to War College. We're on with Marty Scoveland Jr. We're back after this. We are back on on War College. This is Marty Scovland Jr. And we are talking about special operations forces training in Europe. Marty, before the break, you mentioned.

something I kind of want to drill down on, or I want to get your perspective on, you said that there were Ukrainians that had just been at the front. What were they like and kind of what was their part in the training exercises? Yeah, so I didn't have a lot of interaction with them. They, so they were out there in the BMPs, I think, you know, the armored personnel carriers, whatever their version of that was. I don't know the specific model number, but they were driving around. But they were definitely out there bumping around in those things. And they were, you know, definitely a different way of doing things. And I heard some of the soldiers kind of joking, American soldiers joking around about kind of how intense they were.

You know, they're very quick to like, hey, let's go out and you and I fight, you know. Like, and they're kind of like, no, I don't, like, why are we going to go a fist fight? Like, what is this, you know, it was just almost. You know, definitely guys that are coming from an environment where war is not looking for IEDs and finding a car insurgency, but being shelled daily and ducking, you know, trench warfare and dodging snipers. It's almost this, you know, look, you know, the Ukraine and Russia are the two largest armies in Europe, and they're fighting each other right now. You know, I think that's lost on a lot of people. and, you know, it's kind of a stale made out there, but it very much is this war that we, I think that most Americans just kind of assume belongs in black and white footage, you know? And so for these guys coming off this to come to a training exercise, obviously I think, you know, the larger strategic or policy purpose of them being there really is Ukraine saying, hey, we're invested in cooperating with America.

and going out for these training exercises and hopefully maybe sharing some of their TTPs from fighting this near-peer threat from the East. You know, I don't know exactly how much of that was going on. Just again, like I said, I didn't spend a ton of time with them. But they definitely had, they carried themselves a different way. They definitely had that, you know, you could definitely tell they were coming from the front. That's all I can say about that is, you know, I don't have a lot of. hard facts or anything to say how long they've been there or what they were doing or anything like that.

But you could just definitely tell that these guys, there was a different level of seriousness for them coupled with a levity that only comes from men who've been to war, if that makes sense. What are the particular concerns of a European theater? Like, what exactly are you trading for? You've kind of hinted at it a little bit, but I really want to, can you elaborate a little bit. Well, I think the scenario that they had set up for Sabre Junction was kind of this deal where you look at what they, what Russia did in Ukraine, right? Where they before the, before there was the overt invasion, there was the plainclose. I think they said that, you know, they ended up saying that they were Spets andaz or whatever, coming in and kind of doing the shaping operations ahead of time and kind of setting the stage for the conventional threat. And so this Sabre Junction kind of followed that line of reasoning of, okay, we're, going to have our special operations guys come in first, you know, halo in and link up with

the militias and everything and start countering these forward forces from the east that are also, you know, kind of playing close special operations that are influencing the villages and trying to turn Germans against their Western allies, that sort of thing. And then, you know, a couple days later, we'll have, you know, the 173rd come in and do this big joint, forcible entry into the German theater and start to, you know, directly counter the conventional forces that start rolling in as armor. And I got to say, just as a side note, that the opt-for that they have set up out there in Hohenfells, it's actually a fully deployable infantry unit that's stationed out there,

but they have their own uniforms. They have these, you know, APCs that they roll around in that are modified to look kind of like BNPs. And they take it very seriously. I mean, they provide a very credible opt-for against these guys. And the day that I rolled around with the out for, they completely wiped the 173rd out. I mean, and that was going right into their mid-rotation, AR that they kind of broke to do. But, I mean, they provided a very credible opt-for. And so I think when you talk about, like, okay, what are they training for?

What are the things they're looking at? It's, it's, okay, we've got, again, you know, a special operations-esque force from Russia coming in that's doing shaping operations, trying to turn Germans. against their allies and, you know, kind of established footholds, and then a conventional force rolling in behind them. How do we stop that? How do we prevent this from turning into World War III? How are we shaping the information operations? That was one of the very interesting parts about it for me was they have an entire fake intranet, I guess you would call it, but like a fake Twitter, a fake Facebook that the military leaders were having to go on and kind of address, you know, do counterpropaganda messaging and, and shape the information operations,

you know, to kind of keep the locals, you know, on their side, basically. And I think when you look at that through the light of, hey, how did the Arab Spring start? It started on Twitter. You know, how are Ukrainians and Russians alike communicating on the Ukraine front right now? It's WhatsApp. It's Twitter. It's Facebook. There are even the Russians are even, you know, doing targeting based off of, hey, if you're popping up on Facebook or Twitter in the wrong place, you're probably going to get shelled on your location. So they're kind of introducing all these very modern elements and the things that we see from Russia, even when you look at like election meddling and things like that, of, hey,

if you're going to fight this conventional near peer threat like Russia, then you have to address the information space, the cyberspace, the social media space, because that can influence the fight just as much as the tanks on the ground or the soldiers on the battlefield. That's fascinating to me. And I think that's good. So what does that look like? Can you talk a little bit more about that? I think that's just absolutely fascinating, this kind of propaganda war that happens online.

Yeah. So, for example, one of the days that I went into take kind of a peek behind the curtain with the planning cell there, it's the special operations planning cell that they have. have local at home fells that sets up a lot of these scenarios. And they showed me a video where the commander of the 173rd kind of had to go on social media on video and address the locals of like, hey, we're coming here to support you. Do not side, you know, basically this plea to not side with the Russians. And of course, he didn't say Russia, but they had like a notional name there. But everybody knows what we're talking about here, right?

and so he kind of did this plea there and then you show like the lower level leaders you know putting out basically like good news stories of you know delivering MREs to villages that have been cut off by the fight and stuff like that it's it was really interesting of that you know there's definitely I think a lot of a lot of learning curve there especially for leaders who didn't grow up with the social media environment who are now in charge of brigades and and divisions and that sort of thing. But it was definitely a part of the scenarios. It wasn't something that you could ignore. You had to, if you were a leader, you know, outside of the very most basic tactical level, you were aware of the information threat and the propaganda threat. So, yeah, like I said, they had a complete kind of intranet set up there and fake social media sites that you could actually interact on. And the civilians on the battlefield that were there, they were all posting, like, how well you did your information. information campaign would influence whether the messages and the tweets that they were sending were, you know, favorable or not favorable.

They even had, you know, media out there with Miles Gear on and everything like that, where they would, you know, come up and confront the checkpoints and try to ask questions. And there's a daily newspaper that gets put out that covers the news of the day. I mean, this is all, they, like, it's the planning and the preparation that they put into putting this exercise on. is so impressive to me. The fact that they're putting out a actual daily newspaper, that there's an entire intranet setup, and that the opt-for has their cell phones in their tweeting and sending Facebook messages. I mean, this is for a training exercise, I think that this is about

as real as you can possibly make it in that aspect. I'm just glad to hear that they're taking, you know, quote-unquote, whatever we, you know, hybrid war, whatever we want to call it, a little bit more seriously. Tell me about, all right, you said there were Ukrainians. You've gone to a couple of these different training exercises now. What other countries and armies have we been, you said Lithuania as well. Yeah. Who also are our partners?

So, Lithuania specifically was a big part of this, just because they had their militia out there. And, you know, you look at Lithuania, Estonia, Estonia. in Latvia, they're very concerned about being the next Georgia, Ukraine, where, you know, Russia comes in and decides to repatriate ethnic Russians, right? They're very concerned about this. They've done it in the past. And so for them, this is a very real threat that they're training to fight. I was told that the Lithuanians, they can only send so many of them to this exercise every year. And so they literally fight to get on the roster to come down to this exercise.

they look forward to the training so much. And I thought that that was very interesting. They're a militia, so obviously they don't have the, they're not as professional, I guess I could say, as the full-time active duty armies that are there. But they're so eager to learn. They're so eager to train and just really good dudes to be around. I was pretty impressed with them in that regard and just their motivation to soak up as much as they could from their special forces, counterparts, and everybody. all the training that was presented. But yeah,

Romanians were there for Sabre Junction. Ukrainians were there. Those are the three that I can think of off the top of my head for Sabre Junction. Trojan footprint earlier this year, which was strictly a unconventional special operations exercise. That was Romania, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, yeah. Georgia sometimes participates, but they didn't this.

here, the UK. Yeah. A lot of those, you know, aside from the UK, are Eastern Block, former Eastern Block countries. Is there any kind of, like, what I would call maybe a Soviet hangover in terms of military ethos? I wasn't, so I was primarily with the Americans, so I don't know that I was able to observe them close enough to be able to tell that. I do know that just from my travels, outside of the military exercise, just being in, say, Prague, for example, my brother, who was also my B-CAM while I was out there, he knows a little bit of Russian. He tried to speak Russian with somebody in Prague there. And it was almost like they very hesitantly admitted that they knew a little bit of Russian.

And they were old enough to have probably grown up under the, you know, under the Iron. curtain. So going around Romanian hunger as well, and you see people who clearly want to distinguish that they are no longer under Soviet rule, that want to be their own country, they want to be a participant in Western democracy. And there's this eagerness to show that they're not Russian, that they're not Soviet. And that's just something I observed, just being out and about kind of living in the neighborhoods in an Airbnb, going to local restaurants, drinking beer with, you know, Bavaria and the Czech Republic, have some great, has some great beer. So I definitely took part in that a little bit and had some conversations with locals.

And they definitely, there's no illusion that they want to separate themselves from being seen as Russian or Soviet or being influenced by that. But as far as the military forces and kind of seeing, I mean, hell, you see that, that kind of Soviet hangover even with some of the senior leaders in Afghanistan, some of the senior leaders in the Afghan military who kind of their initial indoctrination into military life was under the Soviets. And they still have kind of some of these views that they view through a Soviet military type lens. But I just wasn't around, you know, the Romanians, Hungarians, lobby, you know, all of them, I wasn't around them enough to be able to tell if that was permeating their military culture as well.

But if they're, like I said, if they're kind of the civilian side of things is any indication, they're probably doing as much as they can to try to be as Western military as they can. Marty Scovlin, Jr., thank you so much for coming on to the show and talking with us. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Thank you so much for tuning in War College listeners. War College is me, Matthew Galt, and producer Kevin Nodell. It was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, please like and subscribe and drive. Drop us a comment.

Give us a star rating. It does help other people find the show. You can find me on Twitter at M.J. Galt and War College on Twitter at War underscore College. Kevin is at KJK. Nodale. Coming up, we are working on that Metal Gear Solid 2 episode. I promise that we've, before that we've got interesting conversations about which apocalypse is the most likely. And also, why so many people, of all political, spectrums seem to really like dictators these days.

Until then, stay safe.