Army Rangers need ‘emotional intelligence’
Soldiers hoping to join Ranger Regiment face a two-week test of their resilience and calmness
The Army’s new special operations units will assess applicants on their “emotional intelligence”, their commander has disclosed. Troops hoping to join the new Ranger Regiment will have to demonstrate personal characteristics beyond those required by regular soldiers. Resilience, calmness and selfawareness will be tested on a twoweek assessment programme, Brigadier Gus Fair, the first commander of the Special Operations Brigade, has said.
THE Army’s new special operations units will assess applicants on their “emotional intelligence”, their commander has disclosed.
Troops hoping to join the new Ranger Regiment will have to demonstrate personal characteristics beyond those required by regular soldiers.
Resilience, calmness and self-awareness will be tested on a two-week assessment programme that will include “protracted periods of time under duress”, Brig Gus Fair, the first commander of the Special Operations Brigade, has said.
Comprising four battalions, each of about 300 soldiers, the Ranger Regiment will officially be created on Dec 1.
It will form the core of the specialist brigade and will accompany troops from other countries into action against terrorists and hostile state threats.
Two other new brigades are expected to be announced in Parliament today by Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, when he gives more details on
Army restructuring and plans for bases.
The Security Force Assistance Brigade will train allies’ units, but will not go into battle with them, and a new Deep Strike Reconnaissance Brigade will use drones, artillery and missiles to destroy targets at up to 100 miles.
Emotional intelligence – also known as emotional quotient or EQ – is said to be the ability to understand, use, and manage one’s emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathise with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.
Brig Fair said he was looking for “EQ, not just IQ” in the new force.
Drawn from across the Army, he said the Rangers would not take talent to the detriment of other units. “This should have a positive pull-through effect,” he said.
The new units also will not compete with special forces for applicants.
Officers will rotate through the special operations brigade in the same way as the current special forces units, typically on two-year postings.
Soldiers will be able to stay for longer and perhaps their entire careers.
After the two-week initial assessment, applicants will have to prove a high level of soldier skills over two months. Only then will they officially join the Rangers and be able to wear the new gunmetal grey beret.
After being “badged” new recruits will undergo a further eight months of specialist training before being ready for deployments overseas.
The four infantry regiments currently acting as the building blocks for the special operations brigade will be officially renamed on Dec 1, as first to fourth battalions of the Ranger Regiment. Each has been given a specific regional focus: Europe, the Middle East, and West and East Africa.
Troops from the forerunner units trained local forces in Kuwait, Iraq and Nigeria in 2018 to test the concept.
Brig Fair said the Ranger Regiment model of partnering with military, police and other security forces in areas of crisis would be different to Nato’s recent experience in Afghanistan. In future operations, UK Ranger units will ensure they “don’t undermine sovereign ownership of the mission,” he said.
“From the outset [Afghanistan] was a Nato mission,” he explained. “It became an Afghan mission [but] arguably we’d already laid the ground-work; we’d undermined their institutional authority and resilience.”
In a letter to the Army, Gen Sir Mark Carleton-smith, Chief of the General Staff, said the modernisation project, of which the three new brigades are a part, “is an exciting and bold blueprint for a transformed Army, making it the most capable army of its size anywhere in the world”.