4 ms·

What I found most surprising was the number of people involved. 60000 people involved in clandestine special ops ? The entire FBI only employs 35000.

• ARandomerDude 5y ago
  Define "involved" though. Military operations have extremely long logistics tails compared to civilian law enforcement, thus inflating the personnel on the books.
  • MichaelMcG 5y ago
    To add to this, the article mentions that half of the alleged 60k are SOF (~30k). This includes units like the 75th Ranger Regiment, most likely the largest SOF organization. According to a quick glance at their Wiki task org, 14 of the 27 COs exist in either a support, command, or training capacity. This roughly breaks down to 50% of the entire Regiment, and the 75th should (in theory) have the highest ratio of trigger pullers to support personnel within the SOF world. Additionally, most of these SOF organizations have other (more conventional) mission sets they would be supporting at the same time. It can also be assumed that less than half of an organization's personnel are deployed at any given time, while the remaining personnel remain stateside retraining and preparing for their rotation--leaving a relatively small percentage of the alleged 30k SOF personnel actively participating in clandestine operations.
    • ARandomerDude 5y ago
      Very informed comment – wish I could upvote twice. Well done!