Special Operations Forces for the Decisive Decade
By Christopher P. Maier & Bryan P. Fenton
July 06, 2024
In his recent remarks hailing the congressional bipartisan agreement on the national security supplemental appropriations, President Biden noted, "our nation stands at an inflection point — an inflection point in history — where the decisions we make now are going to determine the course of our future for decades to come. This is one of those moments.” Our principal adversaries and competitors, China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, continue to contest the rules-based international order through direct and indirect confrontation, disruption, and malign influence. The employment of emergent and disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence and uncrewed systems, has fundamentally altered the modern battlefield and provides highly cost-effective means of challenging traditional military power. At the same time, terrorist groups continue to threaten U.S. citizens at home and abroad.
Within this new and rapidly evolving security environment, our Nation’s special operations forces (SOF) provide extraordinary value in strengthening international partnerships, responding to crises, deterring conflict, and setting conditions for the United States to prevail in a potential conflict. Last month, U.S. Special Operations Command and the Global SOF Foundation hosted our annual SOF Week for 2024 that brought together military, interagency, industry and international partners and highlighted the critical role of U.S. and international SOF in addressing these complex security challenges. The event brought together over 21,000 participants from across 80 countries to discuss key operational and technological challenges for SOF in this changing strategic environment, as we are increasingly called upon to operate in remote, austere, and contested environments.
One of U.S. SOF’s core strengths is our ability to build and cultivate a global network of generational relationships through low-cost, small-footprint deployments. Since the Second World War, our specially selected and trained forces have worked shoulder-to-shoulder alongside allies and partners to understand strategic challenges, develop stronger partnerships, maintain stability, counter disinformation and other malign influence, and deter aggression. On a given day, U.S. SOF are deployed to more than 85 countries, conducting operations, training, and joint exercises, and when combined with our partners, U.S. SOF’s reach extends to nearly every corner of the globe.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/07/06/special_operations_forces_for_the_decisive_decade_1042633.html
