The social hierarchy of US special operations units
Special Operations
By Frumentarius
September 10, 2025
Human beings never really outgrow their petty adolescent jealousies. It starts once we hit that Age of the Hormone, in which we are always measuring ourselves against everyone else. Within our peer groups, we judge ourselves and others, some days never feeling adequate, other days feeling superior to all.
The phenomenon is evident in elite athletics, the corporate world, among the parents at a local school, and within the government, at every level. You will no doubt be shocked to hear that it is also present within the military’s Special Operations (SOF) community. My friend George Hand ably and humorously touched on this phenomenon in a piece for Sandboxx News (although I’d refute that piece – gently – by stating that our particular SEAL platoon took live-fire training extremely seriously, and never once did I ever push a poop through the water toward another human).
Those minor quibbles aside, Geo’s article reminded me of a GWOT-era meme that made its way around the SOF community a few years after the various US Government SpecOps components had been working together for a while in Afghanistan and Iraq. Given the time spent together, the SOF units had had time to grow much more familiar with each other. Of course, with that familiarity was bred plenty of contempt.
The essence of that meme was that each of the various SOF elements – including the CIA’s Paramilitary Ground Branch – could be described using college as a frame of reference. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but that doesn’t matter, because I have my own ideas, and here they are. No one take offense, these are the musings of a former SEAL and they’re firmly tongue-in-cheek. Also, I’m only including ground units, so no SWCCs, or Night Stalkers.
https://www.sandboxx.us/news/the-social-hierarchy-of-us-special-operations-units/
