[Icelander]

This isn't specifically a technothriller gear question, but US SOF operate under the assumption that humans are more important than hardware.

I'm trying to narrow down a vaguely plausible career for Ilana Rubio in the US Army. She joined up after a couple of years in college. Theoretically, she could have joined at any point between early 1995 and late 1997, but if it was 1997, she'd have enlisted with a degree. Most likely year of enlistment is 1996.

Ilana did ROTC in college, but decided against finishing school and going the commissioned officer path. Possibly someone informed her that the chances of a female officer being allowed to attend fun training schools in killing people and breaking things were even lower than for enlisted women.

She is a native Spanish-speaker, having grown up in bilingual household in Orange County. As a result of that language proficiency, high ASVB scores (IQ 14) and her interest in becoming a federal law enforcement officer (DEA, specifically) after her enlistment ends, she asked for, and got, MOS 97E, Human Intelligence Collector (now 35M).

I'm guessing her initial enlistment was either two years active, six years reserve or four and four. Just enough to allow her to apply to the DEA as a veteran and maybe earn enough college credits from her HUMINT training and a distance learning program to finish a degree.

If she were male or if she had been enlisting after 2013, she would have volunteered for selection to special operations forces, direct action, counterterrorism, air assault or some other exciting, kinetic assignments with any elite unit that would take her. Airborne, Rangers, Special Forces or something secretive and acronym-rich. She was into extreme sports and genuinely wanted the Army to provide her with sheer cliffs to scale, storms or typhoons to survive, fast vehicles to drive, tacticool guns to shoot, exotic locales to be lost in and perfectly good airplanes to jump from.

As it was, the closest that I can find to excitement for a female 97E in the late 90s would be pursuing an assignment with the intelligence support for Special Operations Forces (SOF). Not a combat assignment, but at least deployable, combat support. And they have to be Airborne-capable, so she got to attend Jump Scool at Ft. Benning. So, excitement-adjacent.

No Ranger School, probably no SERE (though if there was a way for a female 97E to get into it, she'd have tried) and none of the fun schools with lots of rounds expended, playing with explosives or defensive driving. If anyone knows of military schools or training programs open to women in the 1990s, which would appeal to an adrenaline junkie determined to prove herself better, harder and tougher than everybody else, please suggest some.

In her own time, she started to learn Arabic, expecting to perhaps deploy on something similar to Gothic Serpent in Africa. Also, in case the No Fly Zone or the Kurds led to clashes with the Iraqis, it would prove invaluable, maybe get her in country with advisors or SOF. It might even have some application in the Balkans, at least with the foreign trainers that were rumored to be there. She also started learning Farsi/Dari, probably in connection with a relationship with someone of Central Asian, Persian-speaking origin, and ended up liking the language, culture, literature and poetry. She might have had some fantasy that it would be useful in getting her noticed by Top Secret Iran-watchers, but mostly, I suspect, she had personal reasons for wanting to understand someone better.

[The player hasn't detailed her past, just giving me verbal notes, but did mention 'a string of failed relationships'. Until he objects, I shall insert suggestions for failed relationships where appropriate.]

Because of her Spanish proficiency, law enforcement interest (pursuing a Criminology degree) and excellent performace reports, she was assigned to Joint Task Force - North in El Paso shortly after she finished her training. Her next assignment, after attenting Jump School, was Ft. Bragg, as an intellingence specialist in support of special operations.

I don't know what kind of training that usually entails, as the position usually involves staying in a FOB base and assist the SOF staff with briefings or being responsible for the debriefings of friendly foreign nationals, deserters and possibly enemy combatant detainees, but that would usually not be done on site.

In any case, during her assignment to support the 7th SFG (A) at Ft. Bragg, Ilana came across an opportunity to attend special operation type training. True, not genuine SFQC and it wouldn't lead to any combat assignment, but she, and some other selected volunteer women, would train with current SF operators, as well as SFAS candidates, and get to attempt all the same tasks.

The fact that Project Jade Serenity was also a drug trial for some kind of new nootropic drugs, as well as a wide variety of other, supposedly performance-enhancing supplements, given to different groups of participants at various times through the year long duration of the program, didn't matter much to Ilana Rubio. She'd get to play with all the same toys as the boys!

She also got abbreviated language school for a few months, mostly to serve as a convenient subject to measure the effects of the nootropic drugs, but she did get her Dari up to Accented, her Arabic up to Broken (better at reading it or quoting directly from the Quran), as well as making some strides in learning Central Asian CF and memorizing the Quran. She also attended Spanish classes with most of the SF candidates, studying Central and South American dialects.

Her teacher in the exotic languages was an Afghan Tajik, a defector from the Soviet Army who'd worked for the CIA until they lost most of their interest in Afghanistan with the fall of the Soviet Union. He also taught her some words of Pashto, but it didn't even reach Broken, as he didn't really know the language of the rural tribesmen that well. He was employed more because he already had a TS-SCI clearance and a friendly relationship with the Head of Security at the Project than because Dari was a sought after language in US SOF circles.

Now, whether she enlisted for two years of active duty, and extended by another two when she had a chance for Jump School, or was four-and-four from the start, Ilana's enlistment would run out just as Project Jade Serenity ran its course. I imagine that this was unacceptable to TPTB and a contract clause similar to those for real SFQC was inserted.

That specifies a minimum of 36 months remaining Time-in-Service (TIS) after the completion of SFQC. If the soldier would have less, he has to extend or re-enlist prior to starting SFQC. If we assume identical wording in her case, what would that mean for her, practically? Depending on when, precisely, she enlisted, she could have anywhere from six months to two years left before starting Project Jade Serenity. And there would be those four reserve years left, too.

Would the simplest and most reasonable way to meet the remaining TIS requirement have been to agree to convert the four reserve years into active duty? Or would she add extra years to her current enlistment, still having those four reserve years?

Or would she re-enlist for a period of another four-and-four?

Which would a male soldier do, having finished SFAS and going into SFQC, if he had about a year left of his original active duty enlistment and four years of reserve enlistment? Or, as having to meet minimum remaining TIS requirements to qualify for expensive or sought after school billets is not unique to secret squirrel spec-ops, what do soldiers usually do?

Re-enlist or extend for exactly the required period? Serve the reserve years of their original enlistment as active duty or just add the extra time of the extension before the reserve years start counting?

After Jade Serenity, she was not tainted by the cluster-buggery of failure and recriminations among the officers and civilian staff in charge. I imagine that in 2000-2001, she found returning to the duties of intelligence support dull, but that may have changed with 9/11.

Some evidence suggests that after 9/11, 97-Echos or the later equivalents were used by some commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq to provide translation during classified missions where the local interpreter wasn't trusted, exploit sensitive sites, interview detainees during operations to determine whether they were worth detaining or should be left behind or to obtain current actionable intelligence.

Local commanders of Rangers, Airborne units, SF and others would also sometimes set up informal intelligence networks, with paid and unpaid informants, as well as data obtained from open sources (RUMINT :-). 97-Echoes or 35M who had language proficiency were invaluable in such efforts.

So, Ilana Rubio had interesting duties and possibly a greater degree of latitude in how close she got to action than the peacetime Army would have allowed. All the same, she wasn't at the tip of the spear, which would rankle, especially now as she had passed similar selection and went through similar training.

So, when would her enlistment run out and force her to decide whether to go back to her original plan in life and apply to the DEA or to stay a soldier?

2003, when the minimum three years of extra extension would have been up?

2004, when her original eight year enlistment would have run out, counting both active duty and reserve years?

2007, if extending by three years didn't affect the years you had remaining as reserve and the Army decided that an interrogator with functional, if not perfect, Arabic and Dari knowledge was too valuable to lose?

Even later, through some combination of stop-loss, extension bonuses or re-enlistment bonuses that made leaving early a really stupid decision?