John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School
military unit
The U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS) – pronounced "Swick" – primarily trains and educates United States Army personnel for the United States Army Special Operations Command and United States Special Operations Command, which includes Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations personnel. Its purpose is to recruit, assess, select, train and educate the U.S. Army Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations and Special Forces Soldiers by providing training and education, developing doctrine, integrating force-development capability, and providing career management.
History
The command originated in 1950, when the U.S. Army developed the Psychological Warfare (PSYWAR) Division of the Army General School at Fort Riley, Kansas. The U.S. Army Psychological Warfare Center and School, which included operational tactical units and a school under the same umbrella, moved to Fort Bragg in 1952. The center was proposed by the Army's then-Psychological Warfare Chief, Robert A. McClure, to provide doctrinal support and training for both psychological and unconventional warfare.
In 1956, the PSYWAR Center and School was renamed the U.S. Army Center for Special Warfare/U.S. Army Special Warfare School. The school was tasked with developing the doctrine, techniques, training, and education of Special Forces and Psychological Operations personnel. In 1960, the school's responsibilities expanded to counterinsurgency operations. In 1962, the Special Warfare Center established a Special Forces Training Group to train enlisted volunteers for operational assignments within Special Forces units. The Advanced Training Committee was formed to explore and develop methods of infiltration and exfiltration.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q648730. VIAF identifies the subject as 168593988. The Library of Congress control number is no89004336. Authority coordinates are 35.139, -78.999. 1 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 1952, 1956 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.