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Timely medical and psychological rehabilitation contributes to the preservation of mental health and the success of further service of the Ministry of internal Affairs of Russia - police special forces, who served in combat, as evidenced by the results of clinical and catamnestic studies.

This paper argues that new interpretations of “eating bitterness” ([Formula: see text], chiku) have firmly entered the landscape of China's social organisation. Whereas the bitterness eaten by heroic types in China's revolutionary past was directed towards serving others, now the aim of eating bitterness is self-awareness. Furthermore, bitterness-eating, which once pertained to rural-urban migrant workers as opposed to discourses of urban “quality” ([Formula: see text], suzhi), has now also been taken up by the urban middle classes. A new cultural distinction, therefore, adds dignity to migrant workers while potentially marginalising a wide range of unproductive people, both urban and rural. This distinction ultimately mitigates risk to the Chinese regime because the regime makes sure to reward those who eat bitterness. This paper is based on ethnographic data gathered in Anshan, from the rural areas surrounding Chengdu, and our analysis of a TV show about a peasant boy who becomes a Special Forces soldier.

The article surveys didactic conditions of trainingofficers of Special Forces of RF Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) as part of their vocational on-duty training. The aim of the article is content-analysis of vocational on-duty training and prospects of organizingservice and operational training for officers of MIA. The relevance of the article is determined by establishingthe need to strengthen scientific component of all kinds of professional training of officers of MIA Special Forces.Service and operational training is considered a key factor of increasing professional competence of Special Forces officers, and of maintaining high level of personnel readiness for action in complex operational situations as well as the basis for successful solving of operational tasks. Moreover, the article includes propositions on didactic optimisation of MIA Special Forces officers� vocational on-duty training on the whole and service and operational training in particular.

Did participants in small wars in the period 1775–1831 learn from previous or contemporary examples? While this is difficult to prove for participants who left no written records, there is considerable evidence in existing publications by practitioners that they did indeed draw out lessons from recent insurgencies, either from their own experience or from events elsewhere which they studied from afar, especially the Spanish Guerrilla, which had already become legendary. Most authors showed an interest in how to stage insurgencies rather than in how to quell them. Even then, transfer did not come in a package of tactics-cum-values, but in each case in different configurations.

When twentieth-century authors wrote about ‘partisan warfare’, they usually meant an insurgency or asymmetric military operations conducted against a superior force by small bands of ideologically driven irregular fighters. By contrast, originally (i.e. before the French Revolution) ‘partisan’ in French, English, and German referred only to the leader of a detachment of special forces (party, partie, Parthey, detachement) which the major European powers used to conduct special operations alongside their regular forces. Such special operations were the classic definition of ‘small war’ (petite guerre) in the late seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries. The Spanish word ‘la guerrilla’, meaning nothing other than ‘small war’, only acquired an association with rebellion with the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon. Even after this, however, armies throughout the world have continued to employ special forces. In the late nineteenth century, their operations have still been referred to as prosecut...

This article examines the impact that Operation Spring of Youth, carried out by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on 10 April 1973 had on Lebanon. IDF Special Forces infiltrated the heart of Beirut and eliminated three senior members of the Black September organization, perpetrator of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. While Israelis celebrated the successful military operation, the Lebanese mourned. Following the Israeli raid, the Lebanese government resigned, and an armed conflict erupted between the Lebanese army and the Palestinian organizations, leading to both domestic and inter-Arab crises. When these clashes ended, the Lebanese government had been unable to enforce its authority over Palestinian organizations, and Lebanon's weakness was publicly exposed.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United Kingdom embarked upon a policy of rapid demobilisation, reducing its armed forces from a wartime high of 5 million in 1945 to just 375,000 by 1963. Yet in these same years it faced conflict in Palestine, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Cyprus, Oman, Aden, and Egypt, to name just a few trouble spots where British soldiers were sent. To account for the shortfall between the availability of soldiers and the need, the armed forces turned in part to Special Force units, particularly the army's Special Air Service (SAS). As British formal control receded throughout the world, so the SAS became ever more active. In so doing, it played an integral - if often misunderstood - role in contemporary British history. This paper examines the rebirth of the Special Air Service in post-war Britain and re-evaluates its role from 1950–80.

In a Christian context, the eternal change of identity from death to life through Jesus Christ becomes all-encompassing. Yet, other ephemeral identities also shape individuals. Using a range of theoretical ideas evident within disability studies and sports discourse, this essay attempts to contextualize and reflect upon the life of a disabled person who became a “born again” Christian in the aftermath (and amidst the tensions) of physical impairment. Reflections are provided on the interactions between the following identities: ex-solider (including Special Forces); ex-lorry driver; ex-nondisabled person; ex-Paralympic athlete (1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain); ex-sports development officer (for disabled people); disability activist; Christian; and academic. It is argued that the constructs of disability studies and disability sport need to be considered in terms of their relationship to the Christian faith. This area requires further research because within disability studies Christianity is largely ig...

Is there a British way in covert action? This is the main question driving Rory Cormac’s new book Disrupt and Deny: Spies, Special Forces and the secret pursuit of British Foreign policy. According...

This study assessed predictors of successful selection in the very challenging and stressful United States Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) course among 800 Soldiers. A battery of measures were collected during the course and their ability to predict selection were assessed using logistic regression and chi-square tests. Physical performance measures were most predictive, including road march times, land navigation coordinates found, run times, fitness test score, obstacle course score, and pull-ups (p .05). Soldiers that were officers or 18× enlisted (fast-tracked to SFAS), had1 year of active duty, ≥ bachelor degree, no children, were not married, and were Ranger school graduates were more likely to be selected (p .05). Several psychological measures were predictive, including intelligence quotient, grade level equivalents, resilience score, military aptitude score, and grit (p .05). Basal serum physiological markers weakly predicted selection and were weakly associated with behavioral assessments. Lower C-reactive protein (9.5 nmol/L) and higher cortisol and sex-hormone binding globulin (SHBG) predicted selection (p .05). Higher C-reactive protein (≥ 9.5 nmol/L) was associated with lower fitness test scores and slower road march time (p .05). Cortisol was correlated with higher grit and resilience scores (p .05). SHBG correlated with higher grade level equivalents and better performance on pull-ups, land navigation, obstacle course, and the fitness test (p .05). Testosterone was correlated with faster run and road march times (p .05). Dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEA-S) correlated with lower resilience scores, and DHEA-S, epinephrine, and norepinephrine correlated with worse performance on several physical events (p .05). These findings suggest measures that could be targeted in interventions to monitor and enhance performance and resilience.

Entry to specialist police tactical teams is governed by performance on a physically intense and psychologically demanding selection course. The aim of this study was to determine the attributes associated with completion of a specialist police selection course. Data pertaining to 18 candidates was obtained including 1 min push-ups, loaded pull-ups, loaded 30 m crawl, agility run, 1.2 km run and multi-stage fitness assessment. Comparisons from those who did and did not complete the selection week were performed and a hierarchical multiple regression performed. Eleven candidates finished, with significant difference found in those who completed the course in push-ups (+9.1 reps), loaded pull-ups (+2.9 reps), 1.2 km run (&minus, 16 s), loaded crawl (&minus, 6.3 s), agility (&minus, 0.67 s) and VO2max (+4.8 mL/kg/min). In combination, the fitness assessments pull-ups, 30 m loaded crawl and agility time were found to predict 70% of the variability in course completion (adjusted R2 = 0.70, F (3,14) = 14.373, p = 0.001). When assessed independently, push-ups, 1.2 km run and VO2max results only predicted a non-significant 0.02%, 0.29% and 0.12%, respectively, of course completion. Completion was influenced by aerobic fitness, upper limb strength and endurance and agility. These variables appear to be predictive of course success.

Focusing on contemporary Special Forces (SOF/SF), this article analyses expanding SF developments in the context of conducting rapidly proliferating multi-functional operations during an overall era of globalised strategic risk. This is while SF simultaneously have to negotiate the not necessarily reconcilable challenge of wider national-to-global-impacting defence transformation and military cuts, which include extending to closely impacting on SF support units. When examining the optimisation of the command of special operations, including better developing Special Operations Commands (SOCOMs) or closest nearest equivalents, and when evaluating the attendant advancement of what can be best characterised as the improved strategic direction and use of SF, several helpful operational-to-strategic and structural-to-cultural lessons soon emerge. For both now and for differently ranging futures, further consideration of these noteworthy lessons is warranted.

As a consequence of US border policies that funnel migrants through the harsh Sonoran Desert, migrants since the 1990s have been crossing and dying in large num- bers on Tohono O'odham lands. This article examines the spiritual and political journey of Mike Wilson, a tribal member of the Tohono O'odham Nation, who puts water out for migrants against the wishes of his tribal council. Wilson's road to human rights activism was a winding one. In the 1980s, he was a member of the US Army Special Forces stationed in El Salvador; politically, he was, in his words, "to the right of Attila the Hun." How did a Green Beret become an outspoken human rights activist? This ar- ticle argues that religion provided the material and cultural conditions of possibility for Wilson's conversions and was an important source of "friction" that both enabled and constrained his prophetic style of activism. On a hot summer Arizona day in 2004, Mike Wilson drove his truck down a road outside of Tucson, on the land of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Wilson was waved down by a hobbling Mexican man, one of thousands of migrants who at- tempt to cross the Sonoran Desert in hopes of fi nding work in the United States. This man had been walking for two days and could barely stand. His paid guide, or coyote, and fellow travelers left him behind when his blistered feet made him too slow. Carrying a jug of brackish brown water that he had drawn from a cattle pond, the man was tired and thirsty. When he encountered this border crosser, Wilson was refi lling the water stations he has maintained since 2001, when he was a Presbyterian lay pastor in Sells, Arizona. Wilson gave the man a bottle of fresh water and asked him to sit on the ground so that he could treat the man's wounded feet. As he applied iodine to the migrant's blistered feet, he explained in Spanish: "I am a member of this tribe and I have permission, even if the tribe does not like it, to put out water. They say if I put out water, more migrants will come" (Wilson, in Levine and Van Soest 2005; my translation). 1

Few studies have examined rates of mental health problems among special duty military personnel, who often have frequent deployments and high exposure to operational stressors and trauma. The curre...

The article considers the benefits of using the cyclic model loop “OODA” in joint operations of special forces and information operations forces.

The article examines the 2009–2010 Zumalai ‘ninja’ scare, in which the deaths of a child and a young woman had triggered rumours of shadowy ninjas being at work, which in turn led to a massive operation by police special forces. The article traces the history of the ninja phenomenon in Timor-Leste and Indonesia. It then examines the case from three different vantage points: the politics of rumour surrounding the case; the securitisation of the scare; and as a clash of competing masculinities. Through these approaches, not only some of the long-lasting legacies of Indonesian occupation and of the resistance become visible, but also some of the profound societal changes since independence.

Elite forces raised for especially difficult missions are as old as armies themselves. The British in the Second World War created an eclectic menagerie of units to operate behind enemy lines, incl...

The “Global War on Terror” came to dominate US foreign policy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The effort served as a guiding light for how the United States interacted with friends, allies, and adversaries and deeply influenced US priorities around the globe, in general, and in the wider Middle East, in particular. While it will likely never be announced as concluded, the Global War on Terror is effectively over, due to four separate but related reasons: the killing of Osama bin Laden, the perceived failure of counterinsurgency as an effective policy instrument, the significant costs of the effort, and the Arab Awakening. This does not mean, however, that the United States will no longer pursue counterterrorists. Drones and special forces have emerged as the key tools in US counterterrorism, and the United States is likely to continue pursuing terrorist cells and high-value targets aggressively across the globe for decades to come using these means. However, this practice should be viewed as one of many defense efforts that the United States carries out on a regular basis in order to guard the full range of US interests. Elements of the emerging US counterterrorism effort remain problematic, but the end of the Global War on Terror nevertheless presents Washington with a window of opportunity to reorder its relations with the nations and peoples of the Middle East and North Africa and frees up resources for the United States to tackle other emerging strategic priorities, such as the shift of global power to the Pacific, the revival of the US economy, and security challenges such as energy security and cyber defense.

The dominant trend in international security over the past decade has been a move towards ‘remote control’: the increasing use of special forces, private military and security companies and remote systems at the expense of the engagement of large forces. Paul Rogers analyses how this trend has developed, and asks whether it can really provide an appropriate response to the likely threats against global security in the coming years.

The concept of framing is critical to the study of leadership and sensemaking across organizations. This paper examines framing from the unique military context of American Special Forces leading indigenous people of developing countries in combat. Specifically, I identify several deficiencies in the extant leadership literature that remains insufficient for understanding the unique context of indigenous leadership. I explain how the process of framing helps with sensemaking for both American and indigenous forces to include how framing can be understood as a vehicle for conserving, generating and transforming current indigenous leadership practices. I conclude with a theoretical framing construct that suggests how framing indigenous leadership using follower-centric models can help transform American leadership into micro-level social movements capable of creating collective identity.

Over the last 100 years, strong state actors have struggled to achieve policy goals when involved in conflicts with weaker actors. Irregular Warfare has become the tool of choice for weak opponents to wage war against strong actors such as the United States. Weak actors are achieving more frequent success against powerful opponents by using indirect strategies. This thesis examines the conflict interaction between weak and strong actors. For the strong actor, this thesis identifies that when there is limited political maneuver space, limited resources, and the importance of the objective is less than vital to national security interests, an indirect strategy becomes the most practical approach to combat a weaker opponent using an indirect approach. Using the aforementioned methodology, this thesis concludes that U.S. Army Special Forces have a comparative advantage over conventional forces to provide the National Command Authorities with a means to address indirect threats from weaker actors. http://archive.org/details/strategicchoiceu1094553031 Major, United States Army Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

In 2011 William Hague, then British Foreign Secretary, authorized a Special Forces team to enter Libya and attempt to contact rebels opposed to Muammar Gaddafi in the unfolding civil war. However, its members were detained by the rebels, questioned and ejected from the country. This article puts the literature on public policy failures into dialogue with that on covert action as a tool of foreign policy. It asks: why did this not develop into a fully-fledged policy fiasco when journalists and politicians alike judged it to have been a major error of judgement on Hague’s part? Using narrative analysis of the contemporary reporting of this incident, we argue that the government – possessing the advantage of information asymmetry accruing from operational secrecy – was ultimately able to win the battle of narratives in a frame contestation process. The study of information asymmetry can enhance the recently revivified research into foreign policy failures.

This thesis examines the collaboration of Anglosphere allies, Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the US-led Indochina War and in particular, the Secret War in Laos 1954-1975. Though called the Vietnam War, and the American War by the opposing side, it was a regional war that affected all neighbouring countries. The war affected these Anglosphere allies too, whilst undermining their democratic institutions. The history of this collaboration has been largely ignored or denied, as the hitherto scarce literature showed. Most of the literature about the war has been written by US authors, or focuses on what the US did in promulgating the war. The actions of SEATO allies, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have been largely overlooked. This gap in the historical record needs closer examination. Three aspects of this collaboration have been selected to demonstrate its extent and depth. The thesis examines the building of the Operation Crown airfield near Leong Nok Tha and the Post Crown Works road networks in Thailand over the 1962-68 period, and the rotation of many engineer units and support services from Britain, Australia and New Zealand. This infrastructure was part of the US-led SEATO military build-up in Thailand. Crown was also used for commando incursions into Laos across the Mekong River. Participation in the SEATO alliance included staffing of the SEATO Headquarters in Bangkok; planning of an invasion, occupation and partition of Laos; and planning and participating in major SEATO exercises designed to rehearse the intended invasion. The plans also involved Britain contributing nuclear weapons. The invasion was eventually abandoned due to the divergent views, limited commitment of SEATO allies, and the US failure to consult. The study also describes Britain and Australia’s provision of counterinsurgency warfare advisers and how these individuals worked with special forces, mercenaries, and ethnic minorities to carry out covert warfare. These Anglosphere advisers also provided the US with strategic advice based on Britain’s experience in Kenya and Malaya. These counterinsurgency activities included ‘Hearts and Minds’ projects, but also the coercive removal of civilians from their traditional ancestral farming land. They set up strategic hamlets and refugee camps, destroyed food, crops, domestic animals, homes and property, and carried out the interrogation of prisoners. Eventually, advisers from Britain and Australia joined the leadership of the Phoenix Program, which assassinated 20,000 to 30,000 suspected communist sympathisers in South Việt Nam. The third aspect of Anglosphere involvement in the war detailed here is the process of invention and development, and eventually manufacture of defoliants – including Agent Orange – that were of great importance to counterinsurgency warfare. The destruction of food crops was as central to the US Ranch Hand program as the removal of forest canopy to reveal the disposition of their ii adversaries. Defoliants were used to coerce civilians to vacate their homes and farms, turning these areas into free-fire zones. The toxicity and teratogenic nature of these chemicals caused aborted foetuses and unviable deformed babies. Eventually, the US government was obliged to phase out defoliant use, beginning with the immediate ending of crop destruction in 1971. The British, Australian and New Zealand contributions to the war were a whole of government undertaking. There were connections between the ‘big’ conventional war that included massive bombing and invasion plans, as well as the ‘small’ covert unconventional guerrilla counterinsurgency wars in Laos and throughout Indochina that were part of the regional war of resistance to decolonisation. The war, predicated on the fears of the Domino Theory, ended with none of the predicted outcomes. The foreign forces withdrew and the local nationalist-communist victors in Laos, Cambodia, and Việt Nam set about reconstruction with varying degrees of success and largely without assistance from the Anglosphere countries which had invested so heavily in the war. US forces left Thailand in 1975-76 at the request of Thai authorities. SEATO was disbanded in 1977. Australia’s forward defence doctrine was quietly forgotten.

In this chapter the need for talent management is outlined within Special Forces of a small state. The constantly changing environment, conflict context, and technology development raise the requirements of Special Operations Forces personnel, especially since they are expected to embody top-of-the-line competencies in a broad range of areas, without exceeding the limited economic resources within the small state context. One accepted SOF truth is that training is a highly prioritized activity with the purpose to maintain and learn new skills. The chapter reviews how SWESOF talent management has evolved since the unit’s formation in the mid-1990s until the present day and what challenges will possibly arise in the future.

The second chapter, Swedish Special Operations Forces: How It All Started, presents the history of SWESOF. The author displays constraints and possibilities that affect the development of a complex military capability in a small state. Further, the chapter entails a discussion of why, relatively speaking, it took so long for Sweden to develop an instrument for special operations and what consequences followed. The author also describes the challenge of balancing between staying small and innovative or expanding and the risk of gradually becoming conventional similar to the rest of the Armed Forces. Where is the tipping point, where for financial reasons you no longer are lean enough to be equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and thereby maintain the edge? The gap between the Special Forces, the tip of the spear, and the conventional forces will inevitably become narrower.

We developed a standardized laboratory treadmill protocol for assessing physiological responses to a simulated backpack load-carriage task in trained soldiers, and assessed the efficacy of blood lactate thresholds (LTs) and economy in predicting future backpack running success over an 8-mile course in field conditions. LTs and corresponding physiological responses were determined in 17 elite British soldiers who completed an incremental treadmill walk/run protocol to exhaustion carrying 20 kg backpack load. Treadmill velocity at the breakpoint (r = −0.85) and Δ 1 mmol l−1 (r = −0.80)LTs, and relative VO2 at 4 mmol l−1 (r = 0.76) and treadmill walk/run velocities of 6.4 (r = 0.76), 7.4 (r = 0.80), 11.4 (r = 0.66) and 12.4 (r = 0.65) km h−1 were significantly associated with field test completion time. We report for the first time that LTs and backpack walk/run economy are major determinants of backpack load-carriage performance in trained soldiers.

Henriksen describes how President Clinton embarked on a disengagement cycle by his “focus like a laser” on the American economy, health care, education, and drug problems. His backing the Congressional passage of North American Free Trade Agreement was based on its assessed positive economic impact. The “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, which recorded the death of several special forces troops in Mogadishu, snuffed out Clinton’s already low interest in military incursions abroad. His reluctance for overseas ventures caused him to ignore calls by his own party for armed intervention into Haiti to restore an elected president until politically forced. Likewise, Clinton dismissed pleas to rescue Rwanda from interethnic genocide contributing to the deaths of nearly a million people. He tried to head off North Korea’s nuclear ambitions with the controversial Agreed Framework deal rather than a conflict.

The chapter examines how local police supported by the British Army (particularly its Special Forces) fronted a security effort in countering a sophisticated terrorist insurgency that defines Northern Ireland’s conflict (1969–98). The main focus is on the dedicated police intelligence agency (Special Branch (SB)) from 1983 to 1998 when security was at its most effective. The aim is to illustrate that policing in an armed conflict and policing in peacetime conditions are entirely different. This is a basic distinction lacking in most contemporary views about how policing operated during Northern Ireland’s conflict and has been similarly absent in Police professionalisation programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The argument presented is that security was a crucial factor in ending Northern Ireland’s conflict. Not until the last few years when unambiguous military defeat was inevitable – an outcome that would have been politically catastrophic for the insurgent network because it publicly exposed the utter futility of their terrorist campaign – did insurgents lean genuinely towards peace. Up to then, they were as uninterested in peace as the Islamic State in Iraq is today. The lessons learned from a Whole of Government strategy successfully employed in Northern Ireland (of which security was a crucial component) were not used in subsequent conflicts a few years later in Iraq or Afghanistan. A major impediment to the knowledge transfer was failing to frame the correct context in examining how peace was brought about in Northern Ireland, which helps to explain why the West failed in Iraq and seems destined to fail in Afghanistan.

Статья поступила в редакцию 26.06.2017. Received on 26 June, 2017. Статья посвящена вопросам формирования и деятельности Частей особого назначения Екатеринбургского уезда в 1919–1923 гг., анализируемых на основании малоизученных региональных архивных материалов. Автор выделяет этапы формирования ЧОН в регионе, подробно рассматривая особенности каждого из них. Большое внимание уделено функциям Частей особого назначения, их штатной структуре, уровню подготовки кадров, вооружению и вопросам снабжения. В начальный период существования (1919–1922) екатеринбургские Части особого назначения не могли выполнять возложенные на них обязанности. Это было связано с «милиционной» системой комплектования, следствием чего являлся низкий уровень дисциплины, недостатком обмундирования и вооружения. Только к 1922 г. ЧОН становятся организованной, вооруженной и достаточно обученной силой, выполняя в том числе функции по охране железных дорог и допризывной подготовки молодежи. К концу 1924 г. Части особого назначения из некогда мелких неорганизованных отрядов превратились в мощную военно-политическую силу, способную жестко подавить любые выступления противников новой власти. В то же время упрочение позиций правящей власти сделало деятельность ЧОНов на большей части советской территории ненужной, что привело к их упразднению. This article is devoted to issues connected with the formation and activity of special units in Yekaterinburg Region between 1919 and 1923. The analysis is based on a large number of archival materials. The author singles out three stages of the formation of special units in the region, and closely examines their features, paying close attention to the functions of special units, their personnel structure, level of training, armament, and logistics. Initially (between 1919 and 1922), the Yekaterinburg special units could not perform their functions. It was due to the “militia” recruiting system, resulting in low levels of discipline, lack of uniforms, and armament. Only by 1922, special units became organised, well-armed and properly trained forces, performing additional functions of railway protection, and training of youth prior to their conscription. By the end of 1924, from small irregular forces, special units turned into a powerful military and political force capable of brutally suppressing any action against the new government. At the same time, strengthening the position of the ruling power made the work of special units unrequired across most of the Soviet territory, which led to their abolition.

There is an unwritten rule in the Army: “If you think you have it bad, there is always someone somewhere that has it worse.” Usually, that person in the army has a combat arms background (infantry, armor, Special Forces). Most of these volunteers love what they do and would have it no other way. It was and still is an honor to support them medically, and I have the utmost respect for these front-line fighters; they have earned it a hundred times over in the last 15 years. I certainly don’t mean to belittle them in the text that follows nor do I wish to make light of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq or those that came home with physical or mental wounds they will carry for the remainder of their lives. But I tend to see humor as a great defense or coping mechanism when dealing with stress and in doing so, believe it builds resilience. There is a saying that war is 90 % boredom and 10 % sheer terror. I think those that closely served with me in a Combat Support Hospital during this deployment would agree that our ratio was closer to 70 % boredom, and 30 % humor, even during those brief times of terror secondary to mostly rocket or mortar attacks. Humor helped to cope with the boredom, frustration, and suffering and, in my opinion, was the glue that held us together as a team. This chapter covers the weeks leading up to deployment into Iraq, from Fort Hood, Texas, to Camp Victory in Kuwait, to the 4-day convoy to Balad, Iraq, about 40 miles North of Baghdad.

The United States, Great Britain and France toppled the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in about 8 months with the bombings carried out under the mantle of NATO, the participation of al-Qa’ida militants and the special forces of Qatar and other countries. Unlike Libya, it would have been hard to believe that the protests in Syria, which began on January 26, 2011, almost at the same time as the uprising in Benghazi and presented by the international media as peaceful demonstrations, would have transformed into an insurgency by March in four regions of Syria simultaneously, and that the armed struggle would continue for more than a year despite the harsh and bloody repression by the Bashar al-Assad government. But as Polonius remarked on Hamlet’s behavior, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

High-risk operational personnel engage in physically and psychologically demanding missions involving critical and sensitive national security concerns under conditions of extreme threat with no or very limited logistical and tactical support, and dire consequences for failure. Examples of some personnel who fit this conceptualization include Special Operations Forces (SOF) such as US Navy SEALs, US Army Special Forces, as well as other “paramilitary” personnel such as special operations law enforcement personnel, to name but a few. Such personnel are typically specially selected for these jobs and must complete physically and psychologically rigorous assessment and selection (A&S) programs that test aptitude for the job, tolerance for hardship, perseverance, and sustained performance under stress. Attrition rates are high (upwards of 50%) and only the most resilient generally make it through. This chapter discusses the methods used to assess military personnel for potential success in high-risk, high stress nonroutine missions, and identifies some of the major issues in conceptualizing and measuring psychological suitability for these jobs.