Question

[Caliber]

Im just curious if romania has a sort of "elite" army? kinda of like the SAS in britian or the Navy SEALS in USA. if one does exist could u please tell me what its called and if u have any websites for more info and some pics.

thanks :ro:

[Caliber]

no one know?

sorry but i cant really type in romanian

?yeste armata romanesca cam cum ye Navy SEALS in america?

[Alexandru H.]

Romania has no real tradition in elite corps. From the early period of Jurassic to the Nato expansion, our armed forces consisted of peasants with pitchforks, replaced a couple of hundred years ago with "guns", never popular (see, for example, the extended use of the axe in the moldavian land quarrels).

[Indrid]

actually, if we gather all the bodyguards of our rich assholes, we may get a good army........

[Bernard Miclescu]

I think it exists a special high trained brigade, but i do not know the name. A friend of mine is studying in the Romanian Military Academy and he told me smth aout this. But I do not remember well the training, name etc. I presume that the quality is not very high but... In august when i'll see him i'll ask him more about it.

Bm

[C-2]

QUOTE

actually, if we gather all the bodyguards of our rich assholes, we may get a good army........

Those "budyguards are sort of a bunch of bullies that cannot fire a gun because they get scared by the noise.
There is the S.R.I,or the serviciul Roman de Informatii ,sort of a secret service taht has also an "elite"force.
As an "elite "force are considered some para brigades.
No one to fight against.... :rollroll:

[Indrid]

are you saying we do not need a Spetsnaz of out own? i wish we had that............those guys are fuc@#$ng amazing!!!!!

[Jeff_S]

As to the "Romanian" aspect of this question, of course I defer to our Romanian members. I know you will not let us down. :keep:

Most militaries like their soldiers to THINK that they're elite. Sometimes they're even correct... the different elite forces are just are trained and equipped for different missions.

"Special operations" and "elite" are not the same thing. Consider the U.S. military:

The U.S. Marines will tell you that they are all elite.

The U.S. Marine Force Recon units will tell you that they are 2x elite: first because they are Marines, and second because they are Force Recon.

The Army Special Forces (Green Berets) are highly selective, get lots of specialized training, and even have a song and a crappy film with John Wayne to tell the world how elite they are.

The Army Rangers are also highly selective, get lots of specialized training, and get sent on dangerous missions. Plus, they don't have to live with natives, ride donkeys in Afghanistan, eat bugs, and do all that "win-their-hearts-and-minds" stuff. They just kill people and blow things up. :guns:

All aviators, from all services, will tell you they are elite. They have cool uniforms, and their base probably has hot showers and a bar (Hell, if it's a US Air Force base, it probably has a golf course, too )

Anyone who jumps out of a plane, or slides out of a helicopter on a rope, feels like he is elite. He probably has some special jewelry to help him convince other people, too. Don't remind him that he is only "airborne" for the first 30 seconds of the battle... he will just get angry After that he is just another light infantryman.

Navy submarine crews have a dangerous mission, even in peacetime, and work under some challenging conditions. So maybe they have a point when they say they are elite.

Anyone who has anything to do with nuclear weapons will tell you he is elite. I don't care if he is or not, but I hope he is psychologically stable :roll:

Anyone in a support branch who works with anyone I named above, thinks he becomes elite through the connection (airborne postal clerks, submarine cooks... you get the idea).

The real challenge is finding someone who agrees that he is NOT elite.

A bigger question is whether elite units are good for the military or not. Yes, having a hard-hitting force that can turn a battle around has been a winning strategy since Thermopylae. However, elite forces... whether it is a Praetorian Guard, Napoleon's Old Guard, or the Waffen SS... always weaken the regular units. This is always going to happen when you take out the most experienced, motivated, intelligent, and physically fit soldiers. They are the natural leaders who get the unit through hard times, help the green troops survive their first battle, and carry you through to victory. If they really have a different mission (such as the Special Forces) that's OK, but if they are just a "bigger, stronger, nastier" version of the regular army, my feeling is that they are a mistake.

[Caliber]

ok thanks for the comments.

i have many relatives (cousins, grandparents etc.) that live in romania but non of em really care about their arm or anything

[Florin]

As this site was created and mostly dedicated to World War II, I would say that during both campaigns, in the East against the Soviets, and in the West against the Germans and the Hungarians, our elite units were the mountain units and our pilots in the fighter units. I hope I do not discriminate the guys in the armored regiments, who tried their best with the obsolete tanks they had.

Reminder: The furthermost advanced point reached by the Axis in 1942 in Soviet Union was conquered by the Romanian mountain units, and not by the German troops.

[Florin]

QUOTE

A bigger question is whether elite units are good for the military or not. Yes, having a hard-hitting force that can turn a battle around has been a winning strategy since Thermopylae. However, elite forces... whether it is a Praetorian Guard, Napoleon's Old Guard, or the Waffen SS... always weaken the regular units......... If they really have a different mission (such as the Special Forces) that's OK, but if they are just a \"bigger, stronger, nastier\" version of the regular army, my feeling is that they are a mistake.

First of all, the Greek retreat at Thermopylae was due to a Greek traitor, who showed to the Persians some hidden paths on the slopes of the mountains, around the Greek positions. The "Ten Thousands Immortals", the elite unit of Darius, failed in the previous days not because they were not good, but because they had light armor, while the Greeks not only had a much heavier armor, but their front line was consisted of Spartans, which was an elite army as a whole.

Well, Romania was never an empire, and never intended to play the politics as superpower. But when you are superpower, it is a good idea to have something special, something better than the rest of your average troops.
Jeff made a good argument when stated that this weaken the rest of the troops, because the empire not only pick the best men for its best troops, but also offer them the best equipment, sometimes scarce for the rest of its army. Like the Tiger I's and the Tiger II's, generously offered to few units of Waffen SS, and not so generously to the armored divisions of the Wehrmacht.

So the point is how you use these special troops. Jeff also wrote accordingly.
So I'll just give some examples.
The Praetorians were far away from the borders of the Roman Empire, and we may regard them as police and body guards, and not as an army unit.

The elite infantry and cavalry units of the Ottoman Empire, in its heyday, did not grasp the victory in the famous clashes against Wallachia and Moldavia, or against Iancu of Hunedoara, in the 14th...15th centuries. 8) Later, they were an additional pain for the rotting Ottoman Empire, so it is no surprise that when the emperor dismantled them in 1826, he had the active support of the population of Istanbul.

The imperial guard of Napoleon crushed the 2 Russian guard regiments at Austerlitz, but later the emperor did not use them at Borodino, to the disappointment of the French generals and the regular French troops. The fact that the imperial guard broke the Russian encirclement several times, during the winter of 1812-1813, did not change the outcome of the campaign. But of course, saved Napoleon from captivity, and thus the bleeding of Europe continued another 2 years.

In the best moment of the history of the Nazi regime, the summer campaign of 1940, the Leibstandarde SS motorized regiment advanced 214 kilometers in one day, May 10th 1940. But later, when the bleeding regime tried to fill its outstretched defense lines, Leibstandarte and Das Reich were just patches among other patches, making their last great stand when they re-conquered Harkow in March 1943.

Stalin also had his "Guard Armies" and NKVD frontline troops, but they were so many that eventually it was like an inflation of "elite" troops, and I do not recall anything special performed by them.
Later, the "Spetznaz" tried hard in Afghanistan, but I don't think they were trained right for the kind of war expecting them there.

I agree with Jeff regarding the individualist ambitions of the various units of the US Army, US Navy or US Air Force. But this is good for competition, what else should I say. It is not clear to me how well they collaborate in between.
The war of Vietnam was in general a row of local tactical American victories, but as a whole the Viet-Kong won.

Eventually, an impressive success of the elite units was in the recent war for Malvine/Falkland. The boat carrying the 24 helicopters supposed to carry the British SAS from the north of the island to its south was sunk by the Argentine's airplanes. The British paratroopers decided to proceed anyway, so they marched all night toward the south of the island, and in the morning they successfully forced into surrender an Argentinian garrison several times bigger. But they were lucky in a way, because their enemies not only were regular conscript soldiers, but they were also hungry because of precarious food supply. :evil: I never understood these stupid governments who pay so much for the weaponry, but then they are stingy when they have to offer food. :nope:

[Florin]

In my previous note I wrote that the Leibstandarde SS motorized regiment advanced 214 kilometers in one day, May 10th 1940.
It is good to remember that the record was beaten by a regular Wehrmacht unit, not regarded as an elite unit. The 5th Panzer Division, under the command of general Rommel, advanced 275 kilometers in one day, in France, in May 1940.
I don't think this record was ever beaten, by anybody. In the recent campaign in Iraq, if I remember right, the American armor advanced in one day about 250...260 kilometers.

[dragos]

[quote]The 5th Panzer Division, under the command of general Rommel, advanced 275 kilometers in one day, in France, in May 1940.[/quote]
Never read of this. However it seems to me that there were some advanced reconnaissance elements to have advanced such distance, the bulk of the division (artillery, services) are unlikely to advance at such speed, even motorized and without enemy resistance.

[C-2]

What about the IDF in Sinai during The Six Day War?

[Florin]

Dragos,

Once upon a time, I posted a message on Feldgrau.com.
The title was: "When was the greatest advance in one day, German, Russian or Allied?"
I got some reaction, and one post was:

Posted by René from bayer-212-64-224-249.bayer.de (212.64.224.249) on Friday, September 06, 2002 at 08:57:55 :

In Reply to: When was the greatest advance in one day, German, Russian or Allied? posted by Florin from cache-dl08.proxy.aol.com (205.188.209.44) on Thursday, August 29, 2002 at 15:30:49 :

As far as I know, the German 7. Panzer Division (commanded by general Rommel) has the "world record" for on 19 June 1940 a distance of 280 km was covered in Normandy (approach to Cherbourg).
For more info, check out my site on this item, the 7.Panzer Division: http://home.hetnet.nl/~conny-rene/index.html

And my answer was:

In Reply to: Re: When was the greatest advance in one day, German, Russian or Allied? posted by René from bayer-212-64-224-249.bayer.de (212.64.224.249) on Friday, September 06, 2002 at 08:57:55 :

Thank you.
But June 19 wasn't between France offered to surrender (so they ceased to fight) and Hitler accepted the surrender? I think it took a week between France surrendered and the German acceptance. In that week many French soldiers which ceased the fight were made prisoners and sent to Germany.
Am I right or wrong?
The distance is very impressive any way, even when you face an enemy which ceased to fight.
Regards,
Florin