The Army plans to shutter two of its Security Force Assistance Brigades, formations stood up nearly eight years ago to train and advise the militaries of American partners and allies, according to officials.
Army officials confirmed to Task & Purpose that the 4th and 54th Security Force Assistance Brigades, or SFABs, will be closed, though no timetable for the move has been announced, leaving the Army with four remaining brigades. The 4th SFAB, based at Fort Carson, Colorado, concentrates its missions in Europe, while the 54th is an Indiana-based National Guard unit that augments active duty SFAB units across the world.
A senior Army official told Task & Purpose that the move will free up seasoned soldiers from SFAB duty to be reassigned to traditional line units like infantry and armor. SFAB units are, by design, heavy on soldiers who are already several years into their Army careers.
“The reason that we’re cutting those is to make room for or get more noncommissioned officers into the force. That’s where we’re hurting the most,” said Col. Dave Butler, spokesperson for the Army Chief of Staff. “We’re trying to fill the ranks up of the operational force and we have a lot of NCOs and junior officers in the SFAB formations.”
When Army officials looked at the mission of the two units, they decided there were “redundancies” in their missions, particularly in 4th SFAB’s focus on Europe, according to Butler.
“We need more soldiers, noncommissioned officers, and officers in squads, platoons and companies,” he said.
Since their inception in 2017, soldiers assigned to SFABs have worn distinctive brown berets and specialized in training conventional forces of U.S. allies and partner nations, like how to operate together in different environments, use certain types of military equipment, or employ certain tactics for their own forces. The units are mostly concentrated on working with partners from geographical regions in the Middle East, South America and Asia, where many U.S. allies train smaller and sometimes less professional militaries.
The move to shutter the units was laid out in an Army executive order issued last week. The order did not include a timeline or specifics on the changes, but Butler said the Army is going to establish operational planning teams to work out details of the unit closures.
Butler said the mission of the 4th SFAB is not needed for the relationship the Army has with partners in Europe. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the 4th SFAB has supported training for Ukrainian armed forces outside of the country and worked on improving cooperation among European and NATO allies.
“These are long-term existing relationships. We’ve been training together, building together for decades without the SFAB,” Butler said. “Where we envision SFABs to be is in a place where those relationships and that training didn’t exist or needed to be bolstered — but Europe is not a place like that.”
The Army stood up the first of the six SFAB units in 2017 to advise Afghan, Iraqi, and Peshmerga forces. The concept of a brigade dedicated to military training was later expanded to support other U.S. partner forces. In the unit’s early days, officials acknowledged that the Army had trouble recruiting soldiers for the SFAB because of a “negative association” with similar efforts like the transition teams that trained Iraqi security forces and the Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands program.
There are no plans to stand down the other SFAB units, Butler said, adding that the Army is focusing on “prioritizing the traditional operational force.”
Soldiers with 1st SFAB at Fort Benning, Georgia work with partners in South America; 2nd SFAB at Fort Bragg, North Carolina train with African nations; 3rd SFAB, based at Fort Cavazos, Texas, work with Middle Eastern partners; 5th SFAB at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington work with countries in the Indo-Pacific region.
The 4th SFAB consists of fewer than 1,000 soldiers, according to an Army official familiar with the plan.
That official told Task & Purpose that shutting down the 4th SFAB could impact the 10th Special Forces Group, which is also based out of Fort Carson and focused on Europe. Similar to the SFAB’s mission to train and advise U.S. allies, Special Forces soldiers are also tasked with training American allies.
“I’m pretty sure [10 SFG] in some respect, maybe appreciated the SFAB being there because some of that stuff, that’s the low-hanging fruit of partner-partner and ally work that SFAB is doing,” the official said.
‘How do you replicate that anywhere else?’
The 54th SFAB is authorized at a strength of roughly 800 soldiers who provide teams of roughly four to 12 National Guardsmen to augment active duty SFAB missions. They have also deployed as advisors to response teams for hurricanes, power outages and floods. They are headquartered in Indiana with battalions in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Ohio and Illinois.
No plans have been announced on where the 54th’s Guardsmen might be reassigned or offered other positions.
The 54th SFAB was stood up as a National Guard unit specifically designed to pull uniquely qualified soldiers from across the country. In fact, it was designated as the 54th to match the 50 states and four U.S. territories, “75% of which are represented in our brigade right now,” the unit’s Command Sgt. Maj. John Hoffman told Task & Purpose. In their civilian roles, he said, his soldiers are doctors, lawyers, and federal agents with the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Drug Enforcement Agency. They even include a municipal judge.
“It’s a wide swath of America inside of that brigade and the reason it’s that way is because people come from all over the United States to join the brigade,” he said, adding that as National Guard members they skew older, meaning they understand risk better and have unique civilian experiences that pay off when advising partner nations. For instance, soldiers from his unit with experience working for Amazon and Walmart joined a mission in Moldova to help teach their forces about logistics.
“There’s nobody on any component of the Army that can tell you more about getting material in someone’s hand than Amazon or Walmart,” he said. “How do you replicate that anywhere else?”
Hoffman said SFABs are soldiers from conventional forces that teach skills “unconventionally” to foreign militaries.
“We teach it in an unconventional way because we don’t put an entire battalion on the ground to do it,” Hoffman said. “We put 12 bubbas and bubba-ettes on the ground to do it, and they come up with some innovative ways in order to teach these skills to our partners all around the world, bridging language and cultural gaps.”
SFABs were an initiative created under Gen. Mark Milley, the former Army Chief of Staff, who became embroiled in politics during President Donald Trump’s first term in office when he served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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