Customer Reviews

Special Forces Handbook

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This book is everything that the review says it is. The best thing about military handbooks it that they get right to the nitty gritty without all the fluff and bull that are in other books; they simply give the information in the most straight forward and easy way to understand. This handbook has a lot of illustrations and graphs. Some highlights are the ground-air emergancy code chart and the weapons, survival, and first aid manuals. Plus there are some stuff in here that not all people should have knowledge of, such as demolitions. Just so you know, since it's not mentioned elsewhere, this handbook comes small and pocket size.

The manual contains some very good information that is otherwise obscure from the public's view. The main problems are that this information is very limited in the entire substance of the manual which is filled with complicated engineering and demolitions instructions, charts, and diagrams. This information is not pertinent unless someone has the facility and resources to test it out. Likewise, I may not have much familiarity with demolitions, construction, or anything of that nature, but I think that this is more complicated material that only people with expertise would be able to perform. The Rangers Handbook is a much better buy for anyone in terms of overall information, unless that is they are really familiar with, and looking into demolitions and military engineering.

I first saw this book when it was being assembled by stapling the pages together, which were even smaller then than they are in this version. Some information has been added since then but otherwise it is still the same as it was when it was published as ST31-180 in 1965. It is very basic information but still good field information for those who know how to use it, and it is interesting as a historical document. Other than that, I doubt if it is of much interest to civilians without military experience. It would be interesting to know from today's Special Forces soldiers how valuable the manual is in the modern army.

SAVE YOUR MONEY guys this book is definitely CUT and DRY to the bone... with very little information in it...and the very little information that is contained is PREHISTORIC stuff. USELESS, practically nothing on guerilla warfare..The information in the book that is contained is TOO OUT OF DATE...PRE VIETNAM and POST 2WW...The information is not even good enough for the infantry to use there is so little in it...if you don't belive me then buy it...

I love this book. It's condensed, interesting and thought stimulating. I guess some of the novelty comes from knowing that people have actually used this book to liberate peoples we aren't aware of. The book is interesting, but some of the information is definitely sensitive and otherwise strictly for educational purposes.

This is an army manual. It is not for entertainment and most of it would be to hard for civilians to understand. If you are in S.F. and you need this book you can find it for free through your command or the local tm/mos library, but if I have to tell you that your probably not really S.F.