I saw this and thought it was interesting. I hadn’t heard that the FL State Guard was establishing its own SOF team.
The Truth About the Florida State Guard’s Special Ops Unit
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he was “reactivating” the Florida State Guard nearly two years ago, veteran special operators and business partners Brandon Graves and Tom Morton knew they could contribute, so they locked themselves in their office and began writing an unsolicited proposal that they planned to send to the governor’s team.
Graves and Morton had recently opened Stronghold SOF Solutions, a one-of-a-kind tactical training facility located in Florida’s Panhandle. Stronghold’s training staff are all former special operators. The 50-acre facility is just minutes from the 7th Special Forces Group. Just a few of Stronghold’s offerings include a two-story live-fire shoot house, a 4160-foot runway, four 360-degree dynamic ranges, MOUT/SOUC sites, an underground training facility and a demolition range that can support up to 40-pound charges. The facility has a clubhouse, drone-friendly airspace and helos — a Soviet-designed Mi-17 and a Boeing MH-6, better known as a Little Bird, which has become the taxi of choice for many special operators.
In their proposal, Graves and Morton wrote of an untapped resource – retired special operations veterans — who would be the perfect force to fulfil FSG’s mission of responding to natural or manmade disasters. They offered to select, train and validate a 60-man special operations force.
“We got their attention in Tallahassee,” Graves said. “They were excited about it.”
Morton said the concept they floated in their proposal is the same concept that led to the creation of Stronghold.
Special Operations Company
The SOC is chock-full of tabs, tridents, wings and berets. Its members include former Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Special Forces, MARSOC Marines, Air Force Special Operations veterans and more.“The vast majority are prior SOF guys, but we did select a few other skills,” Morton said. “The FSG has a more law enforcement-centric mission rather than purely military, so we attempted to build a team that would be successful at this mission.”
“Every one of them has the SOF mindset,” Graves said. “We vetted and trained all of them.”
The state agreed to purchase guns and gear for the SOC. As it stands now, the 60 members are issued Sig-Sauer P-320 9mm handguns and Sig-Sauer MCX-SPEAR carbines.
The kit state officials purchased for the SOC leaves a little to be desired. However, special operators are seldom satisfied with any issued gear.
Media pushback
The legacy media has tried to label Graves as a DeSantis supporter, as if to imply that Stronghold’s no-bid contract was awarded for personal or political reasons. However, neither Gaves nor Morton or Stronghold have ever donated a dollar to any of DeSantis’ political campaigns. (Nor have they ever met DeSantis personally.)This type of bashing was expected.
“It’s fair to say we quickly realized there was a political aspect to all of this,” Morton said. “Whenever politics are involved, the media is going to take every opportunity to spin it in a different way — their way. There are a lot of training companies out there, but I’m not aware of one like ours in the state of Florida — especially one with our facilities.”
What was not expected was the media’s bashing of an American hero.
“The engagement of a combat training company with links to an accused war criminal raises serious questions about the intentions of Florida Governor DeSantis’s civilian military force,” a reporter wrote of one Stronghold trainer, retired Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher.
To single out Gallagher was a new low and extremely unfair, Morton said.
Sig MCX Spears seems like they’re sparing no expense, though the involvement of SEALs in general and Eddie Gallagher in particular definitely raise a few red flags for me. Be interesting to see if other States follow suit with their own State Guard SOF units, or even just infantry based Stat Guard units.