elite forces

The South African Recces were supposed to be very good, certainly up there with the best, I don't know how they compare these days though.

 

Toast'

In the Desert in WWII. The S.A Recce Reg's were only outclassed by two other Allied Recce units (IMHO). The 11th Hussars & The 2nd Derbyshire Yeomanry.

Ooops Sorry, just noticed this is Non WWII.

 

well i think the american special forces are very bad only because of the big hollywood production everybody thinks they are top but if you take a close look on real missions that became public they fucked up a lot in iran (eagle claw) in lebanon and in pananma the great navy seals were spottet and haltet by a panamesian harbour guard
and in my eyes the best millitary special force is the British SAS
and the best Police Force is the german gsg-9
but also the israeli forces are very good too but there is not su much known about them

 

first of all you are talking about old events that have no relationship to todays spec op forces and were and are still classic exampls of how not to do it. both were the result of meddling by leaders that did not know how to use spec op forces. eagle claw was not really even a true spec op force. it was a pick up group of forces that had never worked together before and were handicaped by the wrong equiptment, a poor plan, and bad luck. in panama the seals were tasked [ wrongly] with capturing an airplane. once again the plan was misguided and poorly thought out by the command structure high above the spec op level. any plan that required troops to advance across vast open blacktop runways and aprons leaves a lot to be desired. that they were spotted should come as no suprise. however they did manage to complete the mission in spite of opposition.

you might wish to ask the ex rulers in afganistan how bad the US spec ops forces are. they were able to overpower a country that stopped both russian and british forces cold for years and did it in a very short time with only small forces. you seem to like older examples so go ask any surviving VC about the men with green faces and see if they think the seals were all just hollywood.

the forces you named are very good and i have no problem with you thinking they are among the best but i detect a certain amount of anti yankee thinking in your post and i would suggest that you check your facts a little closer before you dismiss the US spec op forces as nothing but hollywood. history and battlefield performance show you to be mistaken.

 

They managed to stop a 19th Century British army...
But aside from silly nit-picking, good post.

 

I doughted there not large enough , I don't think seperate units have their own special forces, Canada has JTF-2 , it's like Delta force but better.

 

well as far as i know the sas and gsg-9 offered help to the us in lebanon and iran but the us rejects the outcome is known.

 

inside dope is lacking

ok guys, i don't want this thread to become a mine is bigger than yours fight. first of all i doubt there is a single one of us that has enought inside info to really make a good judgement as to the quility of any of the elite forces anywhere. lacking that info lets just try to come up with a list of active top shelf units and not get into a pointless bickering match
second- i suspect the spec op forces of any of the larger militaries have about the same caliber of men and the only real differences are in equiptment, support, and training budgets.
third- some of the units mentioned have had almost no public combat experence and without that we really have nothing to judge them on
fourth- the spec ops world is full of under the table and back alley deals that end up having one unit help another. we seldom hear anything about those and many that we do hear about never happened.
fifth- yes i did comment about the coast guard jumpers because i though thay were kind of unusual and not because i though they were the best in the world although i have heard them mentioned as being so.
i just wondered what units there were out there that i'd never heard of.

 

The Brits disavowed the NZ SAS in Biafra - so they ate their enemies dead body' :kill: s (lightly grilled) .

 

Delta force equiped the SAS with stinger missiles during the Falklands

 

Like the less-than-stellar performance of the SAS in Gulf War 1 - not that they did a bad job, but that they could have done a much better job had they been properly used.

 

they werent given GPS systems and were given the radio frequencies and like Ricky said if they were used properly

 

I think the SAS got one stinger launcher. Unfortunately the one man trained to use it and the instruction manual were lost in a helecopter accident. I think they managed to shoot down one fighter with it though.

 

yeh they did shoot 1 down but i think they got a couple of stingers and yeh that acciedent was tragic

 

hey dont be wrong i dont underestimate the u.s. if you check out my top 10 armed forces of the world ranking you will be suprised