Army OCS question pertaining to HUMINT, and Special Forces or Ranger positions.?

Im currently a junior in college and I am heavily considering joining the Army through OCS.

My goal is to eventually become a Captain in a SFOD-A. I have read that the best course into Special Forces is through either infantry or a support branch such as military intelligence. I've been looking into MI, especially HUMINT.

As I understand it is very difficult to be commissioned into the branch of your choosing through OCS. The openings for MI vary with every incoming class. After OCS, can they assign me pretty much anywhere they feel like?

My question is how difficult is it to get in HUMINT. Also, as a HUMINT officer does one ever get to operate in the field and be directly involved with procuring or extracting sources. Or will I have to spend most of my time in an office performing interviews and filing paper work.

Any information would be helpful on HUMINT officer tasks. Also, more information on a path to becoming a Special Forces officer would be appreciated.

I was an 18-E and got out to go to school so that I can become an 18-A. Your best course of action is to go infantry (11-B). Try to get into a Ranger Bat and do a little bit of time enlisted. The SF Branch is an enlisted man's branch. I did my time on an ODA as a commo guy and now I want to get commissioned. But as an officer in SF you'll only get a year of team time and the whole point of being on an ODA is to do team time. You could enlist into a MI branch MOS, where you will have a college degree, you will get out of AIT as an E-4. Then you will probably go straight to OCS. The way you should do if you want the respect of your team is to get your degree, enlist for a Ranger Bat with Airborne school in your contract, do some time in Bat, then go to OCS. After getting your O-1, go back to the Ranger bat until you get your O-3. Then go to SFAS. Good luck

alexander m

what ME said.

in the army, enlisted men work/fight, officers do paper work. its much easier to get what you want officer wise if you go OCS.

no humint officers wont go to the field, they'll fill out paperwork of what happened in the field.

coolitemseller

You apply to go to special forces selection when you are 1LT promotable. As far as getting in is concerned, your branch does not matter. They say they want a wide variety of backgrounds. What ends up happening though is a lot more Infantry and Armor guys get invited to selection because they eat up slots from the support branches (not a whole lot of chemical or ordinance officers want to try out for special forces).

I recommend that you put Infantry at the top of your list. How can you tell if you want to do special forces if you can't handle Infantry? I am not too hot on the MI path for you. My friends who are branched MI say that LT's get to do all the crappy work. The branch doesn't give its officers interesting work until Captain. Check out www.armyocs.com and the book Get Selected for Special Forces

gr8tstsuprninja

I have worked normal humint and intel support for SF. ME has it right. In fact if you go Humint they may not even let you out of the branch. If you have the cahones for SF there are other things they want you to do, but in all reality none of them are as fun as being on a team. Do what ME says and make sure you get your ranger tab on the way.

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