Army Special Ops Is Changing Psyops Training to Reflect Ukraine War
Even as some operators chafe at rules that keep them out of the fight, they are keenly interested in how Ukrainians are applying their U.S. training.
ELIZABETH HOWE | NOVEMBER 8, 2022
ARMY SPECIAL OPERATIONS UKRAINE
FORT BRAGG, N.C.—U.S. Army special operators have taken note of how quickly information operations have moved in Ukraine’s 8-month-old battle to eject Russian invaders, the leader of Army Special Operations Command told the Modern Warfare Week conference here on Tuesday.
Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, who praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “Churchillian effect of mastering the information environment,” said ARSOF has already changed its training pipelines to teach those skills.
“Our Psychological Operations combination exercise now incorporates synthetic internet and real-time sentiment analysis to educate students on the speed of information,” Braga said. “I’d say perhaps the speed of information, the power of information ops, might be one of the greatest lessons learned from the events unfolding in Ukraine.”
The Civil Affairs qualification course has similarly “modernized,” to more heavily emphasize pre-conflict competition and creating environments where governance can be “rapidly reconstituted” following conflict against a “major power,” he said.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/11/army-special-ops-changing-psyops-training-reflect-ukraine-war/379500/
