May 01, 2006
For better or worse, Det couldn’t shake ‘elite’ tag

By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writers

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Even before its birth and deployment, Detachment 1 faced tough odds for survival.

While hailed as the experimental test bed for what would become the Marine Corps’ first official step into U.S. Special Operations Command, Det 1 had to overcome internal squabbles among Marines with differing views about whether it should exist at all.

It had to fend off doubts about whether the Corps, strapped by growing deployment and combat bills, could afford what some saw as a luxury force capability.


And then there was the wording. Denoting someone or some unit as “special,” in turn, has made it common to refer to the rest of the force as “conventional.”

Still, the Corps in February stood up Marine Corps Special Operations Command two decades after debating the merits of joining SOCom, which it did not do when SOCom was formed.

MarSOC’s commander, Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, shuns the words “special” and “elite.” In his view, he’s told reporters, all Marines are equal.

But those are not words that Hejlik, who recently worked for Joint Special Operations Command, can escape.

Researchers with the Center for Naval Analyses touched on the subject in a February 2005 study requested by the Marine Corps to analyze the costs and benefits of Det 1 or a future force contribution to SOCom.

The study found a stubbornness in the Corps that, to a degree, feels threatened by SOCom, which is funded separately from the military services.

“The Marines assert their own capabilities while resisting perceived encroachment in their sphere of influence [e.g., operating SOF from amphibious ships],” the study said. “SOCom doggedly maintains the quality of its personnel and ensures that they’re employed in nonconventional ways.”

In the end, the Corps didn’t use Det 1 as the foundation of the MarSOC primarily because the head of SOCom, Army Gen. Bryan “Doug” Brown, wanted different capabilities, senior Marine leaders say.

“We said, ‘This is pretty good,’” but what else can we do?” Lt. Gen. Jan Huly, the Corps’ director of plans, policies and operations, said in an April 12 interview. “We went to [Brown] and said, ‘What is it you need?’ He laid out his requirements and his desires, and we looked at what was in the realm of the possible and what we came up with, we sent him.”

The addition of the foreign military training units and expanded support groups (intelligence specialists, electronic eavesdroppers and fire-control experts) were more along the lines of what Brown wanted, said Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, in an e-mail response to questions.

“Det 1 was a successful operationally employed experiment, and those Marines were awesome,” Magnus wrote. “But Det 1 provided capabilities already within SOCom.”

Huly said that the basic model of the Det was used to shape the MarSOC, but Marine officials took the concept further for the final version.

“Every capability that was in the SOCom Det 1 is going to be in the MarSOC,” Huly said.

Though many of the Det’s troops were assigned to other units and duties outside the MarSOC after the deactivation, that doesn’t mean they won’t get into the commando units later in their careers, Huly added.

“I would venture to guess they will eventually find their way back in there one way or another,” he said

Ellie