[Business Insider] What makes special forces "special" isn't just combat skills or superhuman endurance. For units such as the US Army's Special Forces, it's the ability to train and advise foreign forces.
But this requires to ability to speak the local language, or at least to understand enough to know if the interpreter is lying. Yet US special operations forces lack required proficiency in foreign languages, according to a recent report by General Accountability Office, a government watchdog agency.
Between 2018 and 2022, "most Army and Marine Corps Special Operations Forces (SOF) units did not meet foreign language proficiency goals," the report said. In fact, "less than half of SOF personnel completed any foreign language training."
US Army Special Operations Command and Marine Special Operations Command told GAO investigators "that they do not routinely assess if foreign languages assigned to SOF are relevant to the partner forces and local population they communicate with on deployments." |