A New Vision for Special Forces
by Ned Marsh
|
06.10.2026 at 06:00am
A New Vision for Special Forces Image
Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of the Irregular Warfare Initiative as part of a republishing arrangement between IWI and SWJ. The original article was published on 20 May 2026 and is available here.
Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part article assessing the past, present, and future of U.S. Army Special Forces. See part one here.
The Green Beret’s greatest legacy was never the beret. It was the audacity to imagine something that did not exist. That same audacity is needed now more than ever.
The Army built Special Forces (SF) for a world that no longer exists. The force that defined irregular warfare for a generation is no longer sized, structured, or trained to meet the demands of the contemporary battlefield. The current Special Forces model requires fundamental change.
Restructuring is not optional. It is the only path back to relevance. This is not elimination of the Special Forces branch; it is revolution. The Green Beret does not disappear, the model does. What emerges is a smaller, more capable, more genuinely special force: one that survives in environments the current model cannot even penetrate, delivers effects the Joint Force cannot produce any other way, and serves a role so clearly defined that no operational planner could afford to leave it out.
Mismatch
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/06/10/a-new-vision-for-special-forces/
