United States Army Special Forces

United States Army Special Forces are both units and a military specialty designation in the United States Army

For many countries, "special forces" is a generic term. For the United States, it refers to specific units, and thus the more general term is special operations forces. In the U.S., Special Forces are trained and have their "home" in the United States Special Operations Command. In some cases, USSOCOM has operational control, but Special Forces (and other special operations forces) are usually attached to geographically Unified Combatant Commands.

Special Forces have a core set of seven missions, and may carry out other related duties.

Primary mission	Secondary mission
unconventional warfare (United States doctrine)	Combat search and rescue (CSAR)
Foreign internal defense(FID)	security assistance
Special reconnaissance (SR)	Peacekeeping
direct action (DA)	humanitarian assistance
counter-terrorism (CT)	humanitarian demining
Counter-proliferation (CP)	Counter-drug operations
psychological operations (United States) (PsyOps)	--
information operations (IO)	--

USSOCOM units or other U.S. government activities may be the specialists in these secondary areas

Missions

Unconventional warfare

The United States defines UW as guerilla warfare conducted or supported by United States Army Special Forces (SF) and other units in the United States Special Operations Command. Guerilla warfare is one aspect of the broader term insurgency. The United States definition of UW is:

"Military and paramilitary operations, normally of long duration, predominantly conducted by indigenous or surrogate forces who are organized, trained, equipped, supported, and directed in varying degrees by an external source. It includes guerrilla warfare and other direct offensive, low visibility, covert, or clandestine operations, as well as the indirect activities of subversion, sabotage, intelligence gathering, and escape and evasion"