Personally, I believe having an understanding (in your case, special ops) of the intracacies (sp?) of the emergency can be a great asset. For example, special operations incidents may require more in depth incident action planning, resources, and time for a succesful resolution. With a special ops background, some errors with the action plan might be avoided. I’ve often suggested if an IC doesn’t have good knowledge of a problem, to find someone that does and get him/her into the CP as technical resource.

Also, my experience as an incident commander seemed to be constrained by my personal limitations. As an example, I tended to not establish an operations officer as early as I could have. Another personal limitation was not allowing the ops officer to perform his/her role without me occasionally barging in. I erred by not remembering that strategy is determined by the IC and tactics are generally determined by the ops chief.

At times, I believed this shortfall was brought about because of the lack of opportunities to utilize a larger command/general staff. I mean, 98% of incidents may require only 2-3 ICS positions be filled.