Comment by jamestimmins
2 years ago
This post makes me wonder why videos of militias training always look so farcical.
Practically, why are there not militia groups with Navy SEAL/Delta-level tactical abilities? Or at least near to that? Is it personnel selection effects or bc that level of training requires time/money investments that are out of the reach of non-professional organizations?
Possibly those with real abilities have the discipline to not publicise it in videos.
Also, in experience with self-organized volunteer organizations in different fields (not militias, etc.), the lack of discipline, organization, motivation, just basic thought is often shocking. The dysfunction can be overwhelming. I'm not surprised that very few have developed real capabilities.
> Navy SEAL/Delta-level
Maybe you didn't mean it literally, but that is a pretty high standard. It's like asking why you don't see local basketball players with NBA-level ability. 99.x% of military personnel, with years of training and experience, don't reach those levels.
You bring up some interesting points. The publicizing side of things makes sense. Although given how often you hear about ex-military, police, etc, members in groups like these, I'd still expect that we'd see a handful of criminal/terrorist activities taken out by highly competent groups, even if it's unclear who it is.
But that may get back to your point about discipline, motivation, intelligence, etc.
Re SEAL/Delta-level: I guess I'm asking two distinct questions.
1) To use your basketball analogy: while NBA-level skills may be an unreasonable expectation, why do the videos seem to show middle school or JV-level competence? I'd expect that D3 college-level competence wouldn't be super difficult, but evidently that isn't a correct assumption.
2) What is the practical requirement for a world-class tactical unit (or near that level, e.g. D1 basketball or a bad pro team)? I wouldn't expect current militias to be at that level, but what about less developed nation-states?
> What is the practical requirement for a world-class tactical unit (or near that level, e.g. D1 basketball or a bad pro team)? I wouldn't expect current militias to be at that level, but what about less developed nation-states?
One common form of US military aid is training elite units in partner militaries, often in less developed countries. This has an evil history, training death squads and other war criminals, knowingly or unknowingly. It also has a cost-effective and good history, training Ukraine's elite units, for example.
(My impression is that it's a cost-effective compromise solution to a very difficult, expensive problem: The institutions of militaries are sometimes highly corrupt and incompetent; the Afghan military is an example. Fixing that problem would require building a new military, which could take 20 years at great cost and may be impossible: The corruption usually comes from the government, whose corruption comes from elites and from society-wide political problems.)
You can find some competent people and create a small, isolated organization, and train and equip them, and do it cost-effectively. The Afghan military was hopeless; their elite units were reportedly very good.
1) Opsec is synonymous with survival to elite warfighters, so again you will rarely if ever see them in PR videos. Then think about the video production resources available to actual militaries versus homegrown militia. Appearing competent on video is a different matter from actually being competent.
2) World class units require world class funding. Training and equipment are not cheap. The amount of money spent on the military by the US government is a big factor in tactical superiority, not just for the front-line units themselves, but also the massive amount of logistics it takes for them to operate at that elite level anywhere on the planet at the drop of a hat.
Brazil has some really high level militia groups. The largest ones are mainly active in Amazonas.
I think it boils down to their ability to make money as well as practice their craft. Militias in Brazil will be paid in secret by the government to fight drug traffickers and vice versa. They can be hired out by rival cartels fighting against each other too. They can have jobs to protect loggers from eco-terrorist or to protect swaths of forest from illegal logging.
There isn't much "work" for private militias in the US. Private security has demand but it's fairly small scale. Their isn't really the opportunity to field brigades with 1000s of well trained soldiers for regular off the books military action.
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The simplest explanation is that it’s possible, but there isn’t an obvious ROI for having a highly trained tactical team.
Highly trained tactical teams are useful for precision strikes. Most goals of a militia don’t require that much precision, if I had to guess.
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My two bit understanding is that militias are mostly LARPing (in a very open sense)? And it’s not like they have a giant candidate pool
Probably important to consider that everything you know about SEALs etc are filtered through a massive PR system anyways. So you might not be comparing the same level of quality of video either. Good editing can do wonders.
> everything you know about SEALs etc are filtered through a massive PR system anyways.
I saw a joke about Navy Seals awhile ago that went something like:
A Navy Seal and a Delta Force operator are chatting in a bar. The Navy Seal immediately starts talking and bragging for hours about all the amazing things he and other Seals have done. The entire time the Delta Force operator smiles and nods.
In think it's personnel selection.
I think the militias don't get the top-of-the-line retired military people. They get the wannabes, the people who love the trappings of being tough and deadly, without the actual skills or training. Putting on my amateur psychologist's hat, I'd guess that the militia types mostly washed out in the military, but are still looking for what they went into the military to try to find - a sense of belonging and identity.
The real SEAL/Delta level people don't go into a militia to try to find that - they found it for real in the real military.
The love of military-style vests (and of the word 'tactical') seems like a signal.
More often plate carriers and body armor, mag holders and other “operator” gear than just military syyle vests. “tacticool” is the ironic label given to overtly “tactical” gear.
> seems like a signal
Also “mil-spec”, and in a totally different context i.e. big box retail, “contractor grade”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grade
During the pandemic, I was wondering why I never saw "military grade" or "tactical" masks.
I guess not enough of an overlap between anyone anti-mask and any convenient promotional memes.
This is a good point, and the emphasis on belonging aligns with the article.
A trope of many action/thriller movies is groups of top-notch professionals becoming disenchanted with democracy and forming terrorist organizations. While movies aren't reality, it's striking that even watered-down versions almost never seem to happen. Maybe the military is just that good at filtering out those types during psychological testing, or maybe belonging is far more important than ideology.
>>Maybe the military is just that good at filtering out those types during psychological testing, or maybe belonging is far more important than ideology.
The more mundane reason is probably because it's more appealing to use those skills to enter law enforcement or become a private military contractor than knowingly and overtly breaking away from society to form and maintain an organization that uses violence to achieve specific political aims.
What you write sounds plausible at first, but then there’s this example from the German KSK:
„In 2018, the German Federal Criminal Police Office uncovered a plot involving unknown KSK soldiers to murder prominent German politicians such as Claudia Roth, Heiko Maas and Joachim Gauck among others, and carry out attacks against immigrants living in Germany.[7] Also, earlier that same year in a separate investigation, the State prosecutors in the city of Tübingen investigated whether neo-Nazi symbols were used at a "farewell" event involving members of KSK.[8][9]
In June 2020, German defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced that the unit would be partially disbanded due to growing far-right extremism within the ranks.[10] The KSK had become partially independent from the chain of command, with a toxic leadership culture. One of the force's four companies where extremism is said to be the most rife was to be dissolved and not replaced.[11]“
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommando_Spezialkr%C3%A4fte
> why are there not militia groups with Navy SEAL/Delta-level tactical abilities?
Let's set aside talent, access to experience trainers, facilities and equipment and just look at time on task: real special forces operators spend 30-60 hours per week, 48 weeks a year (assuming 4 weeks of leave) working on their craft. Finding people that can put that kind of time in would be rare.
When you look at the other factors, the gap widens.
So if the militia doesn't hold a candle to the SEALs the why do they matter? Because of modern point and shoot repeating and guided weapons. We're seeing that in how the Russians are taking people off the streets and out of prisons, giving 1-3 week of training and throwing them at the Ukrainians. We saw that with the Ukrainians when they stopped huge Russian armored columns with man-portable anti-tank missiles. Bullets, grenades, ATGMs and drones really don't care about the experience level of their target. Artillery, even portable stuff like a pack mortar or repeating grenade launcher takes out any Spetznaz or Rangers in the general area you aim at just like it does any other soldier. The age of the super-proficient ended with the US Civil war: the revolver, repeating rifle and machine gun level skill gaps pretty quickly..
A large part of the FBI's job is to shut these militias down. You can't grow a resistance movement without making some noise, and the US government is obviously very keen on maintaining the status quo.
Examples from the past are easy to come by (COINTELPRO), but a recent example would be the failed 2020 kidnapping plot of Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan at the time.
Thirteen arrests were announced, and the FBI has admitted to using three informants and two special agents. The defense argued that there were at least twelve.
Using the official number as a conservative guess, that's still 5 feds for 13 arrests (a 38% ratio!)
Now imagine if instead of 13 dudes trying to kidnap a governor, it was a local militia trying to arm and train hundreds or thousands of people. The full power of the US government to crush opposition is terrifying.
> Using the official number as a conservative guess, that's still 5 feds for 13 arrests (a 38% ratio!)
FYI an informant is not a fed.
The cost of training "special forces" personnel is likely beyond the financial capabilities of militia type organizations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_SEAL_sele...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Boat_Service#Recruit...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_School
Exactly. And defense against tyranny is a legitimate thing. Militia's are not really special. It's unclear what it even means given many things are legal in the US.
I knew some of these guys when I lived in a rural area, calling them Gravy Seals is more accurate than tongue in cheek. They are well armed though.
> Practically, why are there not militia groups with Navy SEAL/Delta-level tactical abilities?
Because SEAL/Delta units are made up of statistical outliers who can keep their cortisol levels low under conditions that 99% of us absolutely cannot.
In addition to the prohibitive cost and effort to setup and maintain such a program, I believe all 50 states have laws on the books that make it illegal to organize and train in military tactics without prior authorization from the state.[1]
[1] https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites...
The law doesn't say that at all. They're not allowed to perform law enforcement _functions_. There's nothing that prevents them from /training/ to do so.
A “paramilitary organization” is “an organization of two or more persons who engage or conspire to engage in military instruction or training in warfare or sabotage for the purpose of unlawfully causing physical injury to any person or unlawfully damaging the property of any person.” N.Y. Mil. Law § 240(6)(b)(i).
Perhaps, but do you think these groups would NOT train just because of some state law?
It feels like the "no scammers" thing you see on Craigslist ads; as if some scammer would say, "Darn, and I was really hoping to cash in on THIS one; I guess I'm out."
>>[...]but do you think these groups would NOT train just because of some state law?
To your point, the groups will likely continue to train (seemingly illegally), but the quality of the groups will definitely be degraded due to the more limited pool of qualified trainers driven by the presumably high-deterrence of state laws. The original comment above asked why we don't see high(er) performing militia groups, and these types of state laws seem like a strong contributing factor.
Ah yes, the law… sworn enemy of the militia.
It's a volunteer organization. They all have the exact same problem because they don't actively select their members.
because if you have the mentality and resolve to produce SEAL-levels of ability, you don't end up in loser militias, you become a SEAL
And when you’re done being a SEAL, you use your skills in organization, focus, and motivation to succeed in business and having a normal life. Not cosplaying your old job with a bunch of dudes that suck.
> This post makes me wonder why videos of militias training always look so farcical.
This exactly - a few 300-pound dudes taking a break from their McDonalds to look like they really mean it by firing long barrelled weapons at some cardboard target. All this escape and evasion training, with all the wilderness stuff too - it's nonsense, little guys playing soldier is all.
this is that guy bringing his tactical knife to the forest and putting wax in a can to light a fire for a "bushcraft/survivalist" YouTube video, but in group