How many in Special Forces?

The Army knows, of course, how many soldiers it has at any one time in Career Management Field 18, Special Forces, and how many soldiers are in each Group and even on each team. These numbers are, of necessity, secret, as they provide a hint to national capabilities and perhaps even intentions. But the question I ask myself is: how many have there been, total? And this turns out to be no secret but a considerably more difficult number to catch hold of, than the secret one is. 

A clue came across my desk recently, in a note that said Friday's SFQC class was the 231st graduating class; that tells me that the total number of qualified Special Forces soldiers that ever were, can probably be constrained to a range between about 12,000 and about 45,000 men. These numbers seem extremely large, until you realize that SF has existed for over fifty years (since 1952), and many millions of eligible have cycled through the Army in that span of time. 

Of that quantity, nearly a thousand have been slain in combat or died of other causes while in combat zones. It is a hazardous undertaking. 

Methodology

Knowing that there have been 231 classes, you can estimate numbers by estimating the mean class size. Because you want to know the total, the right average is the mean, and not the more usual (when working with populations) median. It's probably between fifty and one hundred, which would yield 11,550 and 23,100 qualified Special Forces men respectively. If the mean graduates per class is nearer 200, you might have 46,200 graduates total, which I suggest may be an upper bound for a reasonable estimate. While class sizes regularly exceed that number in wartime, some peacetime graduating classes are extremely small.

Constraints

There are limits using SFQC as a marker. The course expands and contracts as demand and resources wax and wane. The largest classes came through in wartime, and in times when SF was expanded. During Vietnam, production was accelerated by running more, and more frequent, small classes, rather than staying with a fixed schedule and expanding the classes. During the Reagan-era buildup the class sizes grew. 

Also, the first Special Forces men, and some of those that followed them, didn't attend the formal Special Forces Qualification Course at Fort Bragg. Instead, they were qualified by their individual groups or teams in a highly decentralized system, so records of the early years are not consolidated. (That said, it is easy for insiders to discover whether a specific individual qualified or not -- as Mayor Levy of Atlantic City recently learned. Wannabees beware). 

The Reserve Components had an available part-time system which involved correspondence courses (nowadays we'd call it "distance learning!"), two or more on-site training sessions at Fort Bragg, and completion of training exercises with a team while in a probationary status. This system existed on paper until the mid-1980s but had long been in decline. This was called the "paper flash," and even the reserve units sent most of their people to the formal course at Bragg: "paper flash" graduates always have an asterisk on their qualifications, figuratively speaking. While some of those men proved themselves, enough others did not that the entire system is tainted. The paper flash SF soldiers don't show up in a count of SF men, but with rare exceptions, they probably shouldn't. 

Politics and SF Numbers

Because SF expansion and contraction depends on political will and appropriated resources, activist administrations like those of Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 tend to expand SF. Leaders with a timid foreign policy, such as Carter, Ford, Bush 42 and Clinton tend to shrink SF. (Most recently, the Clinton Administration tried to eliminate four Special Forces Groups but settled for the elimination of two, organizations and men which could have been put to good use in the present hostilities. My personal opinion is that a Clinton restoration would lead again to a decline and diminution of SF and its worldwide capability, given the presence of such anti-SF figures as Berger, Clarke and Holbrooke on Clinton's national security team).

Associations as a Crosscheck

The Special Forces Association has had, in its history, approximately ten thousand members. The Special Operations Association has had approximately three thousand, but it is constrained to combat veterans of particular operations -- it excludes SF soldiers who served only in peacetime and SF soldiers who served in many, many combat positions including all the Vietnam A-Camps. The SOA also admits special operations veterans of other units and other services. Both organizations have associate memberships for nonqualified individuals, and both organizations are under constant parasitic attack by phonies and wannabees seeking membership under false pretenses -- occasionally, and usually briefly, one of these impostors succeeds in embedding himself in the organization. Finally, and perhaps most usefully as a clue: not all eligible soldiers join these veterans' fraternal organizations. Soldiers actively serving usually don't bother until they retire. 

These numbers indicate that the total number of qualified Special Forces soldiers is probably higher than the low-end constraint. The SFA has had wide penetration in the SF community, but perhaps not more than half -- making the total around the middle estimate of 23,100 soldiers. 

The Future of SF Headcount

The number is growing rapidly as the demand for SF men is relentless. This allows the command to expand (they have announced plans to increase each operational group's manpower and count of deployable SFODAs by about one quarter) and to replace those who move on to other governmental or civilian employment. (SF men are selected for demonstrated abilities that make them rather useful to many kinds of employers, all of whom can outbid the military if it's a question of dollars. The biggest reason that SFers drop out, though, is probably family stress, which is keyed to optempo). Former SF soldiers tend to distinguish themselves further in civilian life, due to the same personal qualities for which SF selected them, and which SF service further developed in them.

The casualties, 71 so far in the GWOT, are not a significant factor in the numbers and not a significant factor in morale, although each loss reverberates through such a small community.

No matter how much SF grows, it will remain a small and select fraternity within the already small, self-selected minority group of the volunteer Army. And it will exercise an influence out of all proportion to its minuscule numbers.