SOT-A
United States Army Special Operations team
A SOT-A (Special Operations Team-Alpha) is a signals intelligence–electronic warfare (SIGINT-EW) element of the United States Army Special Forces.
They are low-level SIGINT collection teams that intercept and report operational and technical information derived from tactical threat communications through prescribed communications paths. The mission of a SOT-A is to conduct SIGINT/EW in support of information operations (unilaterally or in conjunction with other Special Operations Forces (SOF) elements) to support existing and emerging SOF missions worldwide.
SOT-A's are the direct descendants of the Army Security Agency's Special Operations Detachments (USASASODs).
Capabilities
SOT-A team members can operate in remote, denied areas much like SFODA members. In addition to their linguistic, international Morse code
(IMC) and SIGINT skills, SOT-As are trained in tactical and fieldcraft techniques and are certified in the same basic skills as SFODAs. However, SOT-As are rarely certified in advanced SOF skills such as underwater operations (UWO) or military free-fall (MFF).
SOT-As can detect, monitor, and exploit threat communications through communications transmission intercept and direction finding. SOT-As also can deploy with Special Forces Operational Detachments-A (SFODAs or A-teams) to provide SIGINT support for contingency, direct action, force protection, MTT support, or unconventional warfare. These functions may require SOT-As to:
Deploy with a SFODA.
Deploy independently and then join a deployed SFODA.
Operate independently or with other SOT-As.
“SOT-A” enters the record as united States Army Special Operations team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what SOT-A, United and States can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “SOT-A” 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.