Gen. Fenton: War in Ukraine demonstrates need for USSOCOM to innovate much faster
News
May 06, 2025
Dan Taylor
Technology Editor
Military Embedded Systems
TAMPA, Florida. The war in Ukraine shows the necessity for U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to innovate much more quickly than it has in the past, Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, USSOCOM commander, said during his keynote address at SOF Week here on Tuesday.
"We've got to get away from current processes that deliver us yesterday's requirements today," he said. "If we've learned anything from our partners in Ukraine, it's that we need to innovate now in minutes, days, and weeks, not years and decades. And we've got plans to trailblaze this change."
He pointed to constant innovation in the commercial sector that could become useful to the U.S. military, from driverless taxis to drones that deliver pizzas.
"We need those kinds of systems for the special ops community that are waiting for it: attritable, asymmetric, affordable, and plentiful at scale to deceive, dazzle, sense, make sense of, and act addressing the multiple challenges we've laid out," Fenton said. "We see companies -- small companies, big companies, many others -- with unique breakthrough ideas that are game-changing in sensing and disrupting our adversaries' kill chains, and they are bringing incredible solutions to our Global SOF warfighters, helping us with problems and giving us novel ways to think about modernizing existing capabilities."
https://militaryembedded.com/unmanned/sensors/fenton-war-in-ukraine-demonstrates-need-for-ussocom-to-innovate-much-faster
