The Typical Special Ops "Operator"

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 12/19/2017 | J Hines

[w1n1]

What do you think of when you hear Spec Ops Operator? Beards, Heckler & Koch MK 23s and HK416s? Well maybe a guy with a black Under Armour T-shirt with an OD brown operator hat instead.
On the serious side, US SOCOM (Special Operation Command) have just released their 2018 Fact Book.
Inside the new Fact Book are a run down of SOCOM Medal of Honor recipients, Bull Simons Award winners and Commando Hall of Honor inductees as well as breakdowns of SOCOM’s many, many sub-commands including JSOC, MARSOC, USASOC, AFSOC and NSWC functions and capabilities.

The insightful part of the Fact Book that piqued my interest was ‘The Typical Operator’ section.
This short section highlights bullet points describing the demographic of the average 'operator', here's the short brief on it:

• – Is married and has at least two kids
• – Average age is 29 years-old enlisted; 34 years-old officer
• – Has eight years experience in the general purpose forces

On the humorous side of the spectrum, here's Youtuber MatBest11X's version of a special ops operator:
-Bearded, sporting a body armour, operator hat with shades
-Possess an advanced weapon system... See the rest of this hilarious typical special ops operator here.

[Flag_This]

"They invented that for people who didn’t know it was duct tape."

It's Duck Tape duct tape. Say that three times fast.

[ExpatGator]

I have known some smaller and lighter than that.

[njslim]

Knew a guy who worked at Grumman 0 had some tape used to fix leaks in F14 fuel tanks

Man that was some tape.......

[BwanaNdege]

Not to mention many are 5’7” and weigh 170.

Back in 1968 we were told that the average enlisted Marine was 5'8", 155 lbs, 19 years old and many had a little college.

"What! Who's calling me an "average" Marine!"

Excellent to Outstanding! The only way to go.

[BwanaNdege]

My Force Recon DI was my size, as were several of the SEALs I met in ‘Nam.

And most of the best C.O.s I knew were not from the Sgt. Rock, ‘Ahnold’, etc. mold.

[ebshumidors]

Noooooo! I’ve used that tape on ducts, race cars and airplanes, but never ducks.

[wildbill]

I tried to go to the site for a look at the SOCOM factbook and was stopped cold because Firefox said the site is insecure.

Ain’t that a hooah

[CodeToad]

I loved when SOCOM asked the Marines to offer up some “special operators”. Their answer, “Pick a Marine, any Marine!”