Because the Pentagon continues to shift away from twenty years of counterterrorism, particular operation forces are getting unnoticed of the dialog, Assistant Secretary of Protection for Particular Operations and Low-Depth Battle Christopher Maier mentioned at Nationwide Protection Industrial Affiliation’s SO/LIC Symposium Friday.
“Typically the outsized position of SOF in CT is a little bit of a drag, within the sense that folks affiliate the SOF enterprise with the CT mission and never a lot else,” Maier mentioned.
However particular ops forces have much more to supply. For instance, it’s a part of the rationale Ukraine is thrashing Russian forces again, mentioned Kenneth Tovo, a retired three-star who led Army Particular Operations Command till 2018. “Eight months of fight success of Ukrainian forces had been constructed on eight years of partnership and coaching with the U.S.,” Tovo mentioned on the symposium.
The present USASOC commander, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, mentioned the identical simply weeks in the past at Fort Bragg.
However Maier mentioned particular operators nonetheless largely don’t “have a voice on the desk within the Pentagon.” He added that one of many group’s greatest obstacles to higher participation is “defining the worth of SOF distinctive from among the different elements of the Protection Division.”
Alternatives might be missed, Maier mentioned, if SOF isn’t thought of as a useful asset in operations aside from counterterrorism.
“We’ll miss the chance to have the correct capabilities, the correct folks on the proper place,” he mentioned. “We have to guarantee that the expertise during the last 20 years with the counterterrorism struggle that has rightfully given SOF so many accolades isn’t overly interpreted by some because the one-trick pony.”
The answer, Maier says, is training.
“There’s not quite a lot of institutional data that goes again, frankly, to the pre-2001 period. No understanding that that is sort of what SOF has all the time accomplished,” he mentioned. “So there is a important quantity of, I am going to say, training, but additionally advocacy required in these conversations, in some circumstances, simply to get a seat on the desk.”
And the pre-2001 period was all about SOF and nice energy competitors, mentioned Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, vice commander of U.S. Particular Operations Command.
“In the event you have a look at SOF’s upbringing, it began in nice energy competitors. So the DNA is there,” Bauernfeind mentioned.
The Pentagon has recognized for the reason that 2018 Nationwide Protection Technique that counterterrorism was not the way in which of the battle of the long run, he mentioned. In 2018, Particular Operations Command allotted 5 p.c of operations in direction of nice energy competitors. By 2022, that share grew to 30 p.c, and in the course of the 2023 fiscal yr, “half of our actions might be targeted on nice energy competitors,” Bauernfeind mentioned.
And SOF might be unnoticed of all of it if it doesn’t outline its worth in that battlespace, Maier mentioned.
“After twenty years of hard-fought fight relevance and being very profitable within the counter-violent extremist group struggle, we have to return to our roots,” Bauernfeind mentioned. “We have now to place our cash the place our mouth is.”
Correction: An earlier model of this report misstated which group had reallocated operations towards nice energy competitors. It additionally misattributed one sentence.
