“Our nation will require answers without even knowing
the questions—but answer you will.”
Command Sgt. Maj. Dave Waldo, addressing a graduating Special Forces Regimental First Formation in 202401
Introduction
Over the past year, a public debate has emerged over the Special Forces Regiment’s identity: who Green Berets are, what missions define us, and how we remain relevant in great-power competition. The conversation is occurring beyond official channels in LinkedIn® posts, podcasts, and professional journals—an indicator that the community is wrestling with foundational questions.
In 2020, during his senior service college fellowship at Duke University, retired Colonel Ed Croot surveyed active-duty Green Berets to capture how they saw their missions and identity. He publicized his findings upon completion of the fellowship, appearing on multiple podcasts with the endorsement of 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne)—including a joint interview alongside then-commanding general Maj. Gen. John Brennan, who expressed support for his conclusions.
02 Despite this initial publicity, and the obvious relevance to the Special Forces Regiment, the results were never addressed openly through Special Forces professional forums. Four years later, Croot’s research reemerged in his 2024 Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) monograph
There Is an Identity Crisis in Special Forces, which contends that Special Forces drifted from its foundational mission, producing three competing sub-identities and a measurable decline in commitment to unconventional warfare.
03 The JSOU publication prompted three written replies in less than a year’s time.
The identity conversation in Special Forces is less about choosing sides in the debate than about sustaining a professional discourse on who we are and what we contribute in service to the nation. That discourse should be inclusive, drawing on voices from across the Special Forces community, and vigorous, welcoming professional disagreement. This article offers three considerations to help frame it in ways that are both productive and relevant to today’s challenges.
An identity crisis: A literature review
Croot’s study used law, doctrine, and policy to generate 27 archetypes for Green Berets—a series of traits, skills and tasks, which he converted into survey questions. Croot found that respondents fit into three categories: a modern category, where respondents broadly agreed with all the archetypes; a direct action category, where Green Berets saw the greatest value in unilateral missions versus partnered ones; and a legacy category with an alignment toward pre-9/11 missions and lesser interest in contributing to either deterrence or competition. Croot found that 46% of the survey respondents fit the modern category, with 26% and 28% fitting the direct-action and legacy categories, respectively.
04
Croot argued that this dissonance over mission implied a broken system of socialization, internal to the Regiment. As Special Forces recruits enter the Regiment, either from the civilian world or from the Army, they undergo a socialization process that conditions their expectations toward their role as Green Berets. Broad disagreement across experiences in recruiting, training, and operational phases blurs organizational purpose and produces what Croot calls an identity crisis.
Retired Sgt. Maj. David Shell argues that Croot broadly fails to substantiate the existence of an identity crisis. Shell argues that Croot assumes Special Forces culture to be monolithic when, in reality, each Special Forces group’s culturally-distinct area of operation and different set of missions allowed for significant variation across the Regiment.
05 However, a deep reading of Croot’s paper shows that he does account for Special Forces Group membership, and that the ‘identity crisis’ that Croot was measuring was present
within all five Regular Army Special Forces Groups, and not just between them.
06 Finally, even if deep-seated disagreement about purpose exists, Shell argues that Croot does not provide support for his linkage between an identity crisis and ethical and moral failings by members of the Regiment.
07
Retired Col. Greg Metzgar situates today’s argument in a much longer arc, showing that doctrinal ambiguity and role shifts have followed every major strategic transition since the Cold War.
08 Dr. Siamak Naficy and Chief Warrant Officer 5 Maurice DuClos add yet another frame: that Special Forces’ problem is not “mission creep” but “meaning creep”—a slow erosion of the shared culture centered around a common definition of unconventional warfare that once unified the Regiment.
09 All three broadly concur with Croot that Special Forces must re-center on unconventional warfare to unify its culture. For Metzgar this means clear doctrine for the sake of both high-performance standards and the ability to communicate the value of Special Forces to key decision makers. For Naficy and DuClos culture itself is the immediate objective, and creating a unified regimental culture with unconventional warfare at its center will ensure Special Forces’ continued viability.
Adding a sharper edge to this critique, retired Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sal Artiaga warns in a series of LinkedIn® posts that, due to the influence of Joint Special Operations Command alumni in leadership positions, Special Forces is drifting toward a different operational model that privileges high-tech solutions such as AI, robotics, cyber capabilities, and rapid direct action over the slower, relationship-based, and traditionally Special Forces work in the human domain. Unlike the doctrinal framing of Metzgar or the cultural lens of Naficy and Duclos, Artiaga’s intervention is rooted in first-hand concern that these priorities, if left unchecked, will erode the Regiment’s comparative advantage in influence and access.
10
Though they may not agree on the particulars, Metzgar, Naficy, and Duclos are in broad agreement that Special Forces is confronting a cultural crisis. While Shell contests specifics of Croot’s design and findings, both he and Artiaga identify the prevalence of other SOF-alumnus leadership as a threat to what they see as core Special Forces culture. Taken together, these perspectives show that today’s dispute is not just about doctrine or culture in the abstract, but is about which skills, missions, and attributes define a Green Beret. While their conclusions differ, all agree that the stakes are high, and more introspection is required. What follows are three considerations—drawn from these authors’ work, past Special Forces debates, and my own review of
Special Warfare Journal archives—for both Special Forces senior leaders and the broader community.
1. Historical precedent: The Special Forces Regiment has faced identity crises before
A 1960s recruiting poster highlights the 12-solider Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA). (Image provided by USASOC History office, Veritas 2022)
Whether today’s disagreements mark a true “crisis” or simply a period of doctrinal recalibration depends on perspective, but the debate is not unprecedented. Metzgar traces how Special Forces, born in the Cold War as a strategic unconventional warfare force, repeatedly adapted to shifting strategic conditions and demands from senior leaders. The post-Cold War drawdown of the 1990s triggered sustained internal debates over whether unconventional warfare remained relevant without a great-power adversary.
Those debates were neither brief nor peripheral. “Our force has lost sight of its purpose,” wrote the 3rd Special Forces Group commander in 1999. “Our teams today are more comfortable conducting a long-range surveillance mission (disguised as special reconnaissance) or a Ranger-platoon raid (disguised as direct action) than they are of assessing and developing a unconventional warfare operational area and creating havoc in a denied area.”
11
While the post-Vietnam experience is often used as a parallel for the challenge that today’s military confronts, a better analogy might be the 1990s Special Forces community. The end of the Cold War stripped the U.S. military of its immediate purpose. Civil wars in Somalia, the Balkans, and Colombia demonstrated that conflict was not going anywhere, but clarity of purpose for Special Forces was fleeting. Issues of
Special Warfare Journal up until 9/11 are replete with articles debating how deeply Special Forces should invest in unconventional warfare, and whether the mission was even relevant in an era without a great power adversary. The parallels to Croot’s allegations of ‘mission drift’ are hard to miss—and should remind us that today’s sense of uncertainty is not unique.
However, the 1990s fault lines over Special Forces’ core purpose were never truly resolved. Instead, 9/11 papered over any differences, handing the Regiment two regimes to topple and 20 years of counterinsurgency to fight. As those wars have finally receded, the unresolved questions of the 1990s have resurfaced again.
The implication: Identity debates seem to surface cyclically after major strategic shifts. Leaders should view them not as aberrations but as predictable inflection points, moments that deserve doctrinal clarity and conscious stewardship. While we can disagree with Croot’s conclusions, his survey data is extensive and we must recognize that there is considerable disagreement over Special Forces’ purpose, even if some of that disagreement coheres to each Special Forces Group’s cultural norms.
2. Encouraging internal debate and diverse voices
In the 1990s,
Special Warfare Journal regularly published attributional articles and letters to the editor questioning the branch’s direction. This openness reflected either a command climate that welcomed dissent or the personal courage of contributors—or both. One of the key elements of the current debate described above is that it is occurring outside the purview of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and away from traditional branch channels. While platforms like LinkedIn® or JSOU Press might increase candor, they are unlikely to broaden participation within the Regiment. As Naficy and Duclos note, fragmentation of meaning accelerates when there is no shared forum for storytelling, mythmaking, and identity reinforcement.
12 Without official channels for constructive debate, the conversation risks becoming narrow and disconnected from the Regiment’s multigenerational ranks.
Croot’s paper was not the first to raise concerns about the appropriateness of unconventional warfare as Special Forces’ principal mission or about how the Regiment interpreted that mission. During the latter stages of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), articles on these themes appeared in multiple non-official outlets.
13 Yet Croot’s work was distinctive in moving beyond anecdote, providing systematic insight into how a broad cross-section of active members of the Regiment perceived its role. While
Special Warfare Journal carried multiple articles debating definitions of unconventional warfare in the first quarter of the 21st century, it did not host challenges to the command’s vision in the way external outlets did. Even after Croot’s 2020 paper revealed what appeared to be deep internal disagreements, the branch journal remained silent, and senior leaders declined to invite debate. Those subsequent debates unfolded outside official venues and diminished the influence of USASOC leadership in shaping the conversation. Had they occurred in
Special Warfare Journal, leaders could have signaled support for dialogue and nudged it to serve the Regiment’s broader interest.
The identity of the recent contributors to this debate is also important. Croot is notable in publicizing his original paper as a junior colonel in 2020, at significant professional risk. Other than Naficy, who is a civilian professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, the contributors to the recent debate are either long-retired (Metzgar), recently retired (Artiaga and Shell), or soon-to-retire (DuClos and Artiaga’s anonymous command sergeant major) Green Berets. This implies that authors with more to lose professionally are less likely to contribute to public discourse that questions either the status quo or the direction of the Regiment. The choice of publishing venues and the profile of the authors should be a concern to leadership. If only those insulated from career risk are contributing, we risk mistaking a partial picture for the whole.
The
Special Warfare Journal archives suggest the journal’s heyday was in the 1990s, when each year issues carried active and retired voices openly challenging the Regiment’s direction. By the mid-2000s, such pieces had largely disappeared, replaced by safer, topical articles that informed but rarely questioned the broader status quo. This retreat into caution was laid bare in 2020: even as Croot’s survey findings sparked discussion,
Special Warfare Journal carried no response, and soon afterward the branch journal stopped publishing. There was no correlation—
Special Warfare Journal did not cease publishing to avoid Croot’s study. However, as a publication in decline, producing increasingly sparse issues on an irregular basis, inviting debate over Croot’s article might have revitalized the branch journal in 2020.
The implication: Senior leaders must actively cultivate forums, whether in Special Warfare Journal or elsewhere, where Special Forces members of all ranks and experiences can engage in sustained, professional dialogue about the Regiment’s future. The return of Special Warfare Journal to regularly producing content as part of the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Harding Project provides an opportunity to reframe debate as positively contributing to the fabric of our Regiment’s culture. Even if senior leaders themselves do not heed the content of the debate, they can clearly signal that debate is healthy, encouraged, and comes without professional consequence to the participants.
3. Recognizing distinct generations within Special Forces
Image depicts the Special Forces Patch from the different generations of the force. (Image provided by USASOC History office, Veritas Vol.3 No 3)
There are multiple generations within the broader Special Forces community, each bringing distinct perspectives to this debate. The “White Beards” are the earliest generation, who spent the bulk of their active careers before 9/11. The “Gray Beards” knew the pre-9/11 Army only as junior enlisted or company-grade officers. The “Black Beards” came of age during the GWOT, with those campaigns defining their formative years. The “Beardless” may have entered after 9/11, but Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Syria played only fleeting roles in their careers.
These groups map loosely onto American generational cohorts—Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z—yet their shared Special Forces experiences diverge sharply. White Beards are long retired, and Gray Beards fill the senior leadership roles. Both can recall a pre-9/11 Regiment and for these generations, the legacy of Special Forces is paramount. By contrast, the Black Beards and Beardless see little resonance in pre-9/11 references. For the Black Beards, there is only the GWOT and the post-GWOT. They knew the highs of extraordinary autonomy and purpose in the Middle East, and the lows of realizing the war could not be “won,” however great their personal effort. For the Beardless, the war was something they missed—sometimes regretfully, especially for those who joined expecting to fight in Afghanistan, and sometimes indifferently, as background rather than motivation.
Croot opens his paper with a survey response that underscores this divide: “At the heart of the Green Berets’ identity crisis… is a generation only knowing the GWOT, with the next generation recruited on the promise of door-kicking raids, dynamic entries, and kill/capture methodologies.” Yet his analysis never fully engages with the generational dynamics that quote makes plain. None of the solutions offered by Metzgar, DuClos, or Maficy are inherently objectionable, but any attempt to rebuild a monolithic Special Forces culture must speak across both unit and generational lines. The generational divide is not just about perspective but also about which missions and experiences are seen as defining what it means to be a Green Beret.
The implication: Bridging generational and subcultural divides requires more than revising doctrine. It demands deliberate efforts that expose members to the full spectrum of Special Forces’ missions. Furthermore, senior leaders must cultivate cross-generational trust. One way to help build this is to carve out space in institutional mediums like Special Warfare Journal, and to demonstrate that their voices are heard and their perspectives valued.
Conclusion
Debates over Special Forces' identity are not signs of decline, but they are signs of a profession wrestling with its future.
Special Warfare Journal editions from less than 30 years ago demonstrate that puzzling over our purpose is nothing new—on the contrary, it is likely a sign of organizational health. These past debates remind us that identity crises and questions over modernization are cyclical. They also show us that open and accessible forums only strengthen the Regiment. Just as the 1990s branch was shaped by Green Berets representing Vietnam, post-Vietnam, and post-Cold War generations, tomorrow’s Special Forces regiment will be shaped by generations reconciling their experiences with the GWOT. Current debates over missions, culture, and technology are not separate threads of the same underlying question:
What does it mean to be a Green Beret in the 21st century?
Future debate might carry forward some questions that the authors cited here opened: How might Special Forces strike a balance between adopting more complex technical capabilities without losing a focus on the human domain? How do differences in Special Forces Group culture influence the orientation toward, and execution of, Special Forces missions? What are the consequences—positive and negative—of other SOF-alumni in leadership across echelons?
Senior Special Forces leaders must cultivate the quality of our internal discourse, the breadth of participation, and our ability to bridge generational divides. However, leaders cannot carry this burden alone. The Regiment must speak–everyone from our junior-most enlisted and company-grade officers to those long retired. Silence cedes the narrative, and if we do not define ourselves, others will. Leaders should throw down the gauntlet, but the community’s response will decide the future. Our nation will continue to challenge us by demanding answers from Special Forces, even when the questions are unclear. Whether or not we rise to that challenge will define not just the Regiment’s relevance, but our very identity.
Author’s Note: Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Richmond is a Regular Army Special Forces Officer who served in 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne). Currently assigned to the Army's Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program (ASP3), he is a graduate student in political science at UC San Diego.
References
01 U.S. Army Special Operations Command (Director). (2025, January 23).
Iron sharpens Iron. [Video recording].
02 Granieri, R. (2020, August 4).
The Turmoil of Identity Crisis: Special Forces Organizational Culture (No. 220) [Podcast].
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/podcasts/sfcom-culture/
03 Croot, E. C. (2024).
There is an Identity Crisis in Special Forces: Who are the Green Berets Supposed to Be? (JSOU Report 24-5). Joint Special Operations University.
04 Croot, E. C. (2024), 33-34.
05 Shell, D. (2025).
Special Forces Does Not Have an Identity Crisis. SOF Has a Special Forces Identity Problem: A Response to Colonel Croot (JSOU Report 25-11). Joint Special Operations University.
06 Croot, E. C. (2024), 35, 38-39.
07 Shell, D. (2025).
08 Metzgar (2025)
09 Naficy, S. T., & DuClos, M. K. (2025).
Mission or Meaning? Rethinking the Identity Crisis in U.S. Army Special Forces (JSOU Report 25-17).
10 Artiaga, S. (2025, August 9).
The Drift from the Human Domain: How JSOC Thinking is Reshaping USASOC | LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/drift-from-human-domain-how-jsoc-thinking-reshaping-usasoc-artiaga-mbmyc/?trackingId=As0Bk6OqynhJ9%2BLZh5vkZw%3D%3D and an anonymous SF CSM, posting via Artiaga, S. (2025, July 26).
A Response from an SF CSM in the Regiment | LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/response-from-sf-csm-regiment-sal-artiaga-byrfc/.
11 Jones, G. M., & Tone, C. (1999). Unconventional Warfare: Core Purpose of Special Forces.
Special Warfare,
Summer 1999, 4–15.
12 Naficy & DuClos (2025).
13 See Livermore, D. (2017, October 6). It’s time for special operations to dump “unconventional warfare.”
War on the Rocks.
https://warontherocks.com/2017/10/its-time-for-special-operations-to-dump-unconventional-warfare/ and Walton, D. & Long, J. (2019, February 8). Green Berets: Rebuilding the guerrilla leader identity.
Small Wars Journal.
https://archive.smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/green-berets-rebuilding-guerrilla-leader-identity for examples.