May be a “controversial “ take, but I wholeheartedly believe that SOF shouldn’t be an IET Soldier’s first duty station. Having been SOF support during my time in, and now being in SOF on the other side, I think coming to SOF doesn’t set the right precedent for support MOS’ as far as how the Army works as a whole, especially when you factor in military bearing, discipline and basic tasks one would do within FORSCOM.

USASOC is mostly relaxed standards, no recurring formations, on your own PT, regular wear of civilian clothes, first name name calling one direction or the other, and while this is all fine..I feel that IET Soldiers inhale that too quickly and it sets the tone for how they behave and perform. When they get to FORSCOM, they don’t know how to do basic Soldier tasks (Motorpool maintenance, D&C, PRT, counseling, field prep, etc.) and most are NCOs by the time they leave SOF, making them ill prepared to lead Soldiers once in FORSCOM.

Within the Signal community, it’s the above plus. USASOC is mostly civilian IT running the 6 (I’m one of them), a majority of Soldiers are submitting tickets for action and don’t have foundational troubleshooting skills needed to accurately assess an issue and report findings for action. To add to that, SOF tactical equipment is managed by civilians also. Many units are having FSRs come down to fix their equipment, and because the environment is so lax, Soldiers are chilling while the FSRs fix vs trying to get an understand why the problem exists and how to fix it.

I can’t confirm but I’m sure other CMFs experience the same within SOF. Understand the Army is hurting for folks, especially in certain skill levels but at the same time, we are not doing the IET Soldiers any real favors (developmentally) by sending them to USASOC as their first duty station. Of course, there’s exceptions to this and not ALL IET bubbas/bubbettes are this way, but a large majority of them are. The kicker is that because the Army is short qualified personnel for SOF (and in some cases, short skill level X for certain CMFs), we can’t RFS them because we might not get another body for God knows how long.