What's Harder - Ranger School or the Special Forces Qualification Course?

what's harder Ranger school or the Special Forces q course and what's the difference having a Ranger tab in the Special Forces tab I get asked all the time which school was harder the answer is complicated both schools are physically and mentally challenging but in different ways I generally say that Ranger School sucked more but the Q course was harder let me explain more and I will do so using 8 distinct criteria duration and phase graduation rates food and sleep ruck white patrol distances and patrol standards let's start with duration and phasing Ranger School is now 61 days long and consists of three phases the Benning phase Mountains and Florida during the Fort Benning phase you have all of your screening tests such as the army physical fitness tests the swim tests the land navigation tests and the 5-mile run you learn the basics of patrolling via 12 to 15 man squad level patrols you then bus to the Appalachian Mountains for Phase two Mountain phase here you learn basic mountaineering skills and how to do platoon level patrols you then conduct an airborne operation into Florida do some survival and jungle warfare training and then do platoon level patrols in the jungle for the remaining ten days of Ranger school with the exception of a six hour break before going to the mountains Ranger School is non-stop the Special Forces qualification course or q course for short is much longer usually 12 to 18 months which is depending upon which military occupational specialty or MOS you are assigned although the order of the phases changes every few years candidates generally go through six unique phases selection small unit tactics MOS phase Robin sage survival school and then language school Special Forces selection is a six-week tryout to see if the army should invest millions of dollars into training you to become a Special Forces soldier if you pass selection you will then go to small unit tactics training where you will learn basic patrolling next is a military occupational specialty training phase this is where Special Forces medics learn how to be medics engineers learn how to build and blow stuff up and communications and weapons specialists learn the tricks of their trade officers learn how to plan and lead Special Operations everyone is brought back together for an amazing six week long unconventional warfare exercise known as Robin sage candidates then go to survival evasion resistance and escape training known as sere finally candidates go to six to nine months of language school after all of these phases are done a candidate graduates and is allowed to wear the Special Forces tab in Green Beret throughout this entire process you might have a week off between phases to rest in during language phase and MOS phase your weekends are almost always free let's discuss graduation rates I have to point out that I went to Ranger school after I went to the q course this is not the normal progression but it worked out for me the majority of the students in my q course already had their Ranger tabs yet only 18 percent of my q course graduated it normally isn't that low but my year for some reason was an anomaly there were three Special Forces guys in my Ranger school course and all three of us graduated and did very well what I learned from this is that having finished Ranger School doesn't guarantee graduation from the q course but as long as you don't quit almost every Special Forces qualified candidate will graduate from Ranger School food intake in garrison Ranger students eat at the dining facility you recite the Ranger creed do your pull-ups and you go in to eat you're given a spoon only no fork no knife you don't get to pick and choose your food they simply put it on your plate sometimes you are given five minutes to sit down and eat but sometimes you literally don't get to sit down but have to eat as much as you can as you slowly walk to the back of the chow hall put your tray on the cart and walk out this happened dozens of times to me so I hate as much as I could of the high-calorie food and I walked out of the dining facility mad and hungry while patrolling we got to MREs or meals ready to eat each day MREs have 1,500 to 2,000 calories so you average 3 to 4,000 calories a day the problem is that you burn four to 10,000 calories a day so you are working from a caloric deficit every single day of Ranger School and this is why everyone loses weight at Ranger School during the Q course when you're not in the field you frequently eat in the dining facilities although you eat in a hurry you are not yelled at so it is possible to eat hearty and high-calorie food to help you keep strong when you are on a patrol your team decides how much food to bring during the summer we would bring on average one MRE a day but during the winter we might bring two or at least the best parts of two so in garrison I ate three or four times more food in the Q course than I did at Ranger school but in the field I actually ate more at Ranger School nevertheless the caloric deficit was a hundred times more painful and more noticeable at Ranger School let's move on to sleep both the school's trained you to minimize the effects of sleep deprivation let's look at how much sleep you get while in garrison and while patrolling at Ranger School they program training literally 20 hours a day so even if you're not in the field you don't get to catch up on your sleep on the other hand when you're in garrison during the Q course you get 4 to 6 hours of sleep and if you're in between phases or in an academic phase you can get all of the sleep that you want when patrolling it is common to get only an hour or two of sleep or to not get any sleep at all the biggest difference is that you patrol for longer periods of time at Ranger School for example my platoon patrolled for 10 days straight in Florida in the queue course you may do three days of patrolling followed by one day in garrison where you refit and get some more training this cycle means you get three days of little or no sleep followed by one day of four to six hours of sleep and this is much more sustainable than the Ranger school system in summary you get less sleep and less food than you need at both schools which trains you to be tougher than you thought possible but the effects of sleep deprivation and a constant caloric deficit are way more painful and noticeable at Ranger School let's move on to ruck weights during Special Forces selection ruck sacks were weighed before and after land navigation they had to weigh at least 45 pounds and so it was always a good idea to have an extra pound or two in your rucksack in case there was a variance in the scale so let's say they average 47 pounds plus 8 pounds of water that means the lightest ruck I ever carried was 55 pounds during my 71 kilometer individual long range movement I had an old school cigars radio and four batteries I specifically remember my ruck Wayne 87 pounds when patrolling during the later phases of training we got to pack what was appropriate for each mission to include food ammo and team gear this usually averaged 60 to 70 pounds but of course this weight changed daily depending on which weapon you carried and my Robin sage rucksack for infiltration was a hundred pounds the rucksack Ranger school were significantly lighter we were required to carry a change of uniform and boots our extra ammunition and then our share of the team gear I will say my ruck weight between 45 to 60 pounds each day but since you are always tired and starving they hurt much more distances covered during patrols the average Q course patrol might be 10 to 20 kilometres between the starting point and the final objective while the Ranger school patrol was only 5 to 10 kilometres yet the Ranger school patrol sucked more because you were more exhausted and finally patrol standards the patrol standards were significantly higher at the Q course than Ranger School let me give you an example when I was patrol leader for a midnight ambush in the middle of the woods of North Carolina I had just finished setting in the m240 Bravo on a tripod it looks like this soldier in this image except that it was pitch black the instructor taped a laser pointer on the barrel of my 240 Bravo and then with fifty meters away and stood in the center of the kill zone he then got out his GPS in order to pass a patrol in the queue course the center of your kill zone had to be plus or minus 25 meters from the grid given to you in your operations order my navigation was spot on so I passed that test then he had me turn the laser pointer on this is because according to u.s. doctrine when setting up an ambush the crew-served weapon should lay down quote grazing fire the definition of grazing fire is constant automatic rifle fire at 1 meter high to test this he told me to turn on the laser pointer the laser went across his waist so I passed the location and the setup standards Ranger school standards are high make no mistake about it but a Ranger instructor never got out a laser pointer to ensure that the crew-served weapons laid down textbook perfect grazing fire Ranger school is the University the Q courses graduate school so there you have it a summary of the difficulties of Ranger School in the Special Forces q course I have to say that the standards for the Q course were higher but Ranger School sucked more both were hard but hard in different ways I learned a lot at both schools and absolutely recommend them to anyone with the courage to show up in the strength to finish thanks for learning please subscribe if you want to learn more and don't forget to forward this video to a friend who also needs to learn this free the oppress and Rangers lead the way you

Channel: Life is a Special Operation

Views: 3,076,981

Rating: 4.9130054 out of 5

Keywords: What’s harder, school, qualification, course, Special, operations, fitness, green, beret, navy, seal, delta, force, forces, boot, camp, physical, training, pt, program, exercise, system, army, air force, air, national, guard, reserves, marines, recon, coast, trump, Donald, elite, performance, skills, challenge, principles, self, defense, Harvard, teach, learn, bootcamp, join, military, ranger, Recruit, recruiter, basic, ranks, enlist, enlisted, officer

Id: Q1eLYRDBJk8

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 27 2018