Too few planners understand what special operators can do today
No less than in yesterday’s era of counter-terrorism, SOF are indispensable in today’s great power competition.
CLEMENTINE G. STARLING and JAMES CARTWRIGHT | MAY 5, 2024
COMMENTARY SPECIAL OPERATIONS PENTAGON
U.S. special operations forces have a unique role to play in today’s strategic competition with China and Russia, yet—outside a niche community—understanding of what SOF do is limited, outdated, and under-appreciated. It’s time that changed. For global security challenges that transcend traditional boundaries and cut across theaters and domains, Defense Department planners should look more often to special operations forces.
While most often associated with direct-action missions and counterterrorism, the modern special operator is far more than just a "trigger-puller." Hailing back to the roots of special operations in the Great War period, special operators are highly skilled at providing intelligence and executing missions below the threshold of conflict that complicate the goals of great power competitors. In World War II, for example, British and American special operators played an outsized role in organizing and training resistance forces in Nazi-occupied France to undermine the German occupation.
It behooves the national security community to update its understanding of the modern-day special operator and to use these highly trained and specialized forces to pursue U.S. goals against near-peer competitors.
Today, U.S. special operations forces have a diverse array of skills, including expertise in fields such as coding, space, and cyber operations. SOF are not only operators—deployed in kinetic, physical battlespaces—they are also, as importantly, enablers—conducting placement and access in spaces where they can collect information and intelligence and enable missions through AI and engineering support. They can operate across the spectrum of competition, executing and supporting U.S. diplomatic, informational, military, and economic efforts to combat adversary threats globally.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2024/05/too-few-planners-understand-what-special-operators-can-do-today/396316/
