This is my best understanding as well.
I have watched a lot of ex-special forces guys on YT.
Needless to say, I take it all with massive grains of salt, including the claim that they were even SF in the first place.
However, they all describe the selection processes similarly. And, my educated assumption is that this part is probably too dull for them to lie about, much less lie about in unison across many accounts and years. So I have a decent level of confidence in that aspect of their tales.
Anyway, the common threads are that while they do want highly confident and confident types who are also outliers in terms of physical ability, the selection process is HIGHLY geared towards selecting intelligent team-oriented individuals. Without those two traits you are going to get you and your squadmates killed in a hurry. These missions are highly planned but due to the inherent ambiguity and difficulty the SF guys have to make a LOT of autonomous decision making on the fly when things (inevitably) deviate from the script.
You hear very similar stories from other "elite" types in the military, like combat pilots. While you have to be sort of a highly talented "alpha" type you also need to be professional and team oriented. No loose cannons allowed, either on the individual or squad level.
I have watched a lot of ex-special forces guys on YT.
Needless to say, I take it all with massive grains of salt, including the claim that they were even SF in the first place.
However, they all describe the selection processes similarly. And, my educated assumption is that this part is probably too dull for them to lie about, much less lie about in unison across many accounts and years. So I have a decent level of confidence in that aspect of their tales.
Anyway, the common threads are that while they do want highly confident and confident types who are also outliers in terms of physical ability, the selection process is HIGHLY geared towards selecting intelligent team-oriented individuals. Without those two traits you are going to get you and your squadmates killed in a hurry. These missions are highly planned but due to the inherent ambiguity and difficulty the SF guys have to make a LOT of autonomous decision making on the fly when things (inevitably) deviate from the script.
You hear very similar stories from other "elite" types in the military, like combat pilots. While you have to be sort of a highly talented "alpha" type you also need to be professional and team oriented. No loose cannons allowed, either on the individual or squad level.