Special Forces Mission & Mindset: Reclaiming Unconventional Warfare in the Renewed Age of Irregular Conflict
by Daniel Ross
01.23.2025 at 06:00am
Introduction
The post-Global War on Terror (GWOT) United States (US) Army Special Forces (SF) Regiment faces a unique opportunity to rejuvenate its identity as it seeks to find balance with the overarching US Army’s evolving concentration on irregular warfare (IW), Multi-Domain Operations (MDO), and large-scale combat operations (LSCO) against peer and near-peer adversaries. During the GWOT, the SF Regiment uncharacteristically engaged heavily in direct action (DA) and combat-oriented foreign internal defense (FID) principal tasks. Nevertheless, unconventional warfare (UW) has long been SF’s organizing principle and core task. The shift away from this UW identity during the GWOT presents a dilemma for current SF leaders attempting to integrate the SF Regiment’s unique capabilities into the US Army’s plans for future irregular conflicts and potential direct conventional confrontations with strategic competitors. The following article provides background on the resurgence of IW in military doctrine and academia following the conclusion of the GWOT era and discusses the importance of the UW principal task to the SF Regiment. The article then explores some essential ongoing debates circulating throughout the SF community concerning the level of focus on UW as a philosophical mindset or exclusively as a doctrinal mission. The central argument is that SF leaders currently have a distinct opportunity to re-stake their claim on the UW aspect of IW, re-elevate the UW mission to prominence, and foster a UW mindset in the SF Regiment’s organizational culture. Special Forces’ reconcentrated efforts on UW can contribute to fortifying and operationalizing US IW policy and become a pivotal component of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) efforts to compete globally and maintain an enduring strategic advantage against peer and near-peer threats well into the future.
Background and Context
Irregular warfare has experienced a tremendous ascent back into the spotlight of US military doctrine and academia following the perceived end of the GWOT era. Rightfully, to remain adaptable and evolve the Joint Force (JF) for future conflicts, strategic US Army leaders must seek new opportunities for innovation and pursue essential initiatives such as those related to IW. Yet, with this resurgence in popularity, the IW phenomenon has caused a tendency for some stakeholders and leaders across the armed services to disproportionately adjust their attention toward this movement to the detriment of other equally important areas of focus. For the SF Regiment, one of these focus areas involves rebalancing its identity and shifting away from the GWOT counterterrorism (CT) orientation back toward the UW side of the IW spectrum. Special Forces must also grapple with its future role in MDO and LSCO. The renewed IW-specific emphasis sweeping across all scholarly and operational military domains should not shift attention to such an extent that SF leaders become so immersed in the complexities of “the big picture” that attention to the sub-components of IW, specifically UW, becomes neglected or ignored.
The subsequent sections of this article explore some essential ongoing debates circulating through the US Army SF community related to UW. This community, known for its longitudinal expertise in UW, is currently deliberating the relevance of UW, a vital component of IW, in this “current age” of collective attention concerning irregular conflict and future LSCO. One of the most prominent ongoing conversations centers around whether UW realistically has any utility in the future of armed conflict, specifically the overt peer-to-peer LSCO environment exemplified by the enduring territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Though the SF Regiment generally understands the fundamental importance of UW, the military and policymaking community at large does not fully understand or appreciate the concept and views it as of little worth in modern GPC.
Ancillary to this conversation, many in support of maintaining an emphasis on UW continue to debate the concept in terms of doctrinal mission or as a theory or philosophical mindset. Overall, stakeholders in the SF Regiment should pursue a meaningful understanding of UW doctrine and theory and place renewed attention on cultivating a UW mindset among its ranks. Moreover, to not be eclipsed by the IW strategic perspective, SF leaders must reclaim unconventional warfare, own it, embrace it, and re-elevate it in both theory and practice to the forefront of the Regiment’s organizational culture. To accomplish this task, SF leaders must firmly understand UW’s place in the spectrum of contemporary warfare.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/01/23/special-forces-mission-mindset-reclaiming-unconventional-warfare-in-the-renewed-age-of-irregular-conflict/
