Special Operations Forces

by

Christopher J. Lamb, Shane Bilsborough

• LAST REVIEWED: 24 July 2013
• LAST MODIFIED: 24 July 2013
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791279-0131

Introduction

This Oxford Bibliographies article covers professional and popular literature on military forces that are raised, trained, and equipped to conduct special operations. In some countries these units are called “special forces,” but in NATO they are referred to as Special Operations Forces, or “SOF,” which is the term adopted here. It also is important to distinguish between SOF and other units that conduct difficult and sometimes secret missions. SOF are often confused with elite military forces. Elite military units—including those with ceremonial duties—take on the same tasks as general-purpose forces, but they receive distinctive designation, training, and resources so that they may perform at a higher level. SOF are typically elite but also special because they are used for different purposes, conducting missions that general-purpose forces either cannot perform at all or not with acceptable levels of risk and costs. SOF also are often confused with units that perform covert operations for intelligence organizations, operating under different authorities and employing different skill sets in order to keep the sponsorship of the units and their activities hidden. Sometimes elite military units are used to perform special operations, and sometimes SOF are loaned to intelligence organizations to perform covert operations, which often leads to less satisfactory results and confuses the boundaries between elite, SOF, and covert operators. Still, the distinctions between these types of forces remain important, and they are observed in this bibliography to the extent possible. Thus the bibliography only covers uniformed SOF, not elite forces more generally, or paramilitary forces used by intelligence agencies to conduct covert operations, such as those employed in World War II by the British Special Operations Executive or the American Office of Strategic Services, or by the French Service Spéciaux, or more recently the US Central Intelligence Agency’s national clandestine forces, or by many other national intelligence organizations. The article does cover classified SOF units, often referred to as “special mission units” in the United States to avoid use of their classified names. Since World War II there has always been a great deal of popular interest in SOF, but after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the number of books and articles on SOF exploded. There is now more good literature on SOF available to the public than ever before. Depending on the filters used, online library search engines reveal more than ten thousand English-language books on special operations, most produced since 2001. There are almost five times more historical accounts of Special Operations Forces in action than there are texts examining the forces themselves. The next largest body of SOF literature is devoted to describing how SOF are raised, trained, and equipped. Here, too, the literature is skewed, focusing on those forces most renowned for daring, lethal operational exploits, such as the Special Air Service, US Navy SEALs, and US Army Green Berets. Air Force SOF that typically support other SOF units receive scant treatment, as do Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations, which some cognoscenti argue should not even be categorized as SOF. Most English-language SOF literature addresses U.S. and British SOF. Within US SOF, the Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and Army Rangers attract the most attention; within British SOF, more attention is paid to the Special Air Service (SAS) than the Special Boat Service (SBS). Classified special mission units are a subject of great interest in many countries, but they are less frequently addressed given the difficulty of obtaining information about their activities.

The views expressed in this bibliography are Dr. Lamb’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or National Defense University.