Questions regarding joining military.

To be fair, lets compare apples to apples. "There are more Rangers alone than SEALS" No not really. In the case of "true" Army Rangers you need to compare 75th Regiment and they have approximately 2,000 give or take. While many in the Army hold a Ranger Tab, that does not make them true Army Rangers in the sense of special operations like 75th. A good friend of mine that I grew up with is still in the Army (Lt Col) and he wears his "ranger" tab on his uniform and he is a medical admin type who manages clinics and hospitals. Current numbers of active SEALS come in around 2,200 or so. While some may make an argument that "Rangers" can be compared with SEALS, I would argue that while all Navy SEALS are created equal, Army Rangers (and those wearing tabs) are not.

As has already been argued, as main forces are becoming less common and smaller specialized units may be playing a larger role, these specialized training schools take time and come at a price of extended enlistment. Now if you want to call a 56 day Ranger course equivalent to SEAL training to compare Rangers to SEALS.......Again, the OP may have had these opportunities to enlist today and fight tomorrow if he joined a few years ago but in the current climate its not going to happen and we have a tendency to get into major conflicts every 10 years or so since WWII, (WWII -40's, Korea - 50's, Nam 60's into mid 70's, DS/DS - 90's, OIF/Afghanistan - early 2k until 14' and now we are the down swing again) If he enlists now and stays for a second enlistment, he may get his wish.

I was reffering to scrolls, not tabs. There are over 2000 Active in the RGT and a few more on rotation as RI's or attached to ther units.

I wasn't trying to compare them or say one is more capable than the other. Just looking from from a pure Direct Action POV, Batt boys spend more time doing that than anything else. While SEALS, MARSOC and even SF do D/A, they also have other capabilities and mission types that need to be addressed. That coupled with the training pipelines, and pure slot numbers....makes it a good choice for someone wanting to do that kind of work. If someone is set on being a SEAL or Recon/MARSOC, then by all means go for it. Just understand the pros/cons of each service.
 
without getting into the ranger vs seal argument... That's just the rangers. Add in GB, Delta, and all the auxiliary forces... Well, it isn't called big green for nothing. But the reason I posted is this, we may not get into "wars" but every 10 years or so. True, but in the last 100 years there has never been a time when someone wasn't somewhere hot. And SF is usually that someone.

With hands in their pockets, hat flipped up, a ball of dip in their lip and a whole bunch of little brown fuckers doing their bidding. :)
 
With hands in their pockets, hat flipped up, a ball of dip in their lip and a whole bunch of little brown fuckers doing their bidding. :)

true dat. hell, even as a side thing there is usually someone somewhere worth killing. I could point to Somalia as a great example. Marines showed up to hand out food. Amazing how many rounds go fired to distribute rice....
 
I know Fitzgerald, he is not so bad. He was out in the field with me when I caused one of my young HM's to go into a seizure as I was "correcting" his attitude....Those were the days:) I knew him when he was with 1st Recon Bn. He came out to help us sort out the claims of one of the HM's that he was recon this and that so Fritz came out to sit in on the SOY interview. Needless to say, that poor HM1 did not know what hit him when Fritz started in on him. Recon HM's are such a small community that its hard to lie about that one without getting caught especially when Fritz basically knew all of them.
 
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I almost didn't post this but... isn't there more to a warrior than the love of spilling blood? Being willing to do so is obviously important but i think what has people stirred t.up is the idea that he just wants to see someone bleed and this is how he can satisfy that legally. Maybe thats not what he meant. I'm all about the adrenaline junkie thing. LC. But this has devolved to gung ho bullshit. Nothing is great about war or any conflict where people have to die. We can talk all the hard shit we want about the warrior spirit and POGs and all that crap, its funny. I said it also when I was a young Marine. But it wasn't funny when my friends died. It wasn't funny when I watched people I knew and care about being medevac'd. I see from your sig that you also have seen that. Is it worth it? They all were warrior spirits also. Most Marines I know have warrior spirits and are definitely A types lol. But as an NCO and leader I understood that there was a difference between a hard charger and a psychopath. Ill take hard chargers all day, the looneys can pack shit and go home. And we all know there are some fucked up dudes around lol.


Well stated. Here is the way I look at this, there is a difference in being willing and able to kill when needed vs. a senseless want to kill and blow stuff up. Maybe it was a bad misinterpretation in what the OP was saying on my part but if we have people in our military running around wanting to go to war, blow stuff up and kill people then we are no better off than the people we are supposedly fighting against. I like to think that most of us are better caliber humans than that. Someone all crazy exhibiting chest thumping bravado like that is the last person I would want protecting my ass because they would most likely be the first to get us into trouble. Its ok to want to be courageous and junk but you have to be able to check that at the door and keep the best interest of you and your brothers in mind. It's 100% about self control. If you can't check certain things then you probably wont make it.