Improving musculoskeletal injury surveillance methods in Special Operation Forces: A Delphi consensus study

Musculoskeletal injuries have long been a problem in general purpose forces, yet anecdotal evidence provided by medical, human performance, and training leadership suggests musculoskeletal injuries are also a readiness impediment to Special Operations Forces (SOF). The purpose of this study was to describe the injury epidemiology of SOF utilizing self-reported injury histories. Data were collected on 106 SOF (age: 31.7 ± 5.3 years, height: 179.0 ± 5.5 cm, mass: 85.9 ± 10.9 kg) for 1 year before the date of laboratory testing and filtered for total injuries and those with the potential to be preventable based on injury type, activity, and mechanism. The frequency of musculoskeletal injuries was 24.5 injuries per 100 subjects per year for total injuries and 18.9 injuries per 100 subjects per year for preventable injuries. The incidence of musculoskeletal injuries was 20.8 injured subjects per 100 subjects per year for total injuries and 16.0 injured subjects per 100 subjects per year for preventable injuries. Preventable musculoskeletal injuries comprised 76.9% of total injuries. Physical training (PT) was the most reported activity for total/preventable injuries (PT Command Organized: 46.2%/60.0%, PT Noncommand Organized: 7.7%/10.0%, PT Unknown: 3.8%/5.0%). Musculoskeletal injuries impede optimal physical readiness/tactical training in the SOF community. The data suggest a significant proportion of injuries are classified as preventable and may be mitigated with human performance programs.

: The purpose of this paper is to analyze and suggest possible roles for special operations forces in homeland security and homeland defense. The paper reviews the obstacles to the use of military forces in the domestic environment under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and then introduces special operations and special operations forces competencies. The paper then analyzes the current National Strategy for Homeland Security and injects suggestions for using special operations forces to bolster the Strategy. After an overview of United States Northern Command, the Department of Defense's supported command for the homeland defense mission, the paper recommends establishing a sub-unified organization under Northern Command to provide special operations command and control, planning, and mission execution. Underlying the entire discussion is the critical need to incorporate special operations forces early in the campaign plan, rather than waiting for mission execution to blend them into the force structure. Regardless of the role special operations forces play or the structure that exercises their command and control, commanders will reap the benefits these highly specialized forces provide only if they understand who they are, what they do, and how to integrate them into the missions of homeland security and homeland defense.

: The article introduces the United States as the sole superpower. As such the U.S. is obligated to assist other countries in need or threatened by adversaries, as long as it's in our national interests. Future U.S. military involvement will not necessarily be driven by what our armed forces perceive to be a threat to our national security or interest, but how American society at large and our elected officials view threats, determine our national interests and how we wage war as a nation. Special operations forces today are global, joint and versatile. They operate world wide, with little fanfare, often in parts of the world where disease, poverty and civil strife riddle the countryside. They serve in extremely harsh, as well as permissive, environments, under the cover of darkness and increasingly, in the high-tech realm of cyberspace. They can operate as a cohesive joint service team or as a single service unit. A hallmark is frequent operations with coalition forces and other foreign militaries. Special operations forces support conventional forces in major conflicts, and they respond to conflicts or crises such as insurgencies, subversion, sabotage, narcotics trafficking and terrorism. They are not structured or expected to win wars single- handedly, but they can help prevent and deter them. As part of a theater joint task force, they can enable conventional forces to achieve victory. By anticipating changes in world development, analyzing our special operations force employment trends and examining American societal and cultural trends, will help prepare special operations forces for the future. Also in preparing for the future means considering what DoD's expectations will be for the use and role of special operations forces. General Shelton expects we will need special operations forces more th% ever in traditional roles, but they must also prepare for nontraditional environments and more sophisticated threats.

Fitness, training, cognitive and hormonal characteristics associated with musculoskeletal injury and physical performance in Special Operation Forces – An international perspective

S ince the late 1980s, and especially since the tragic events of 11 September 2001, two phenomena, both known for their pragmatic and controversial nature, have come together to pose challenges for US policymakers.The first phenomenon is the rise in importance of special operations forces (SOF).This is evident in the 1987 creation of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) later followed by the Bush Administration's 2004 decision, through the Unified Command Plan, to assign USSOCOM the primary responsibility for prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism.In light of the need for anti-terrorism and counterinsurgency expertise and the asymmetric nature of many current threats, SOF have been described as a "logical military response," one that, for General Peter Schoomaker, provides "an array of expanded options, strategic economy of force, [and] 'tailor to task'capabilities." 1 Despite the logicality, however, such an approach threatens to exacerbate divides, real and perceived, between the conventional and unconventional military communities.In addition to aggravating concerns related to shares of limited resources, the skimming of individuals with high leadership potential, and differing opinions regarding how military organizations should look and act, there is the possibility of antagonism as SOF are often presented as a panacea or a "silver bullet." 2 In the United States and other Western countries, these concerns regarding the utility and implications of SOF vis-à-vis their conventional brethren have existed since the creation of special units in World War II; it is not surprising that they continue today.Parameters

: The nature of the Global War On Terror (GWOT) has driven U.S. Conventional Forces (CF) and Special Operations Forces (SOF) to unprecedented levels of cooperation on the battlefield, and the historical conventional mistrust of SOF is being overwritten today by successful combined SOF/CF operations. The joint force and the Services must continue to improve the ability of SOF to conduct C2 and integrate C2 with their own capabilities. Integrated SOF and CF command and control is a base requirement for maximizing SOF effects in the irregular and asymmetric environments characteristic of the GWOT. This paper will analyze the C2 integration between SOF and CF in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the current main effort of SOF and the U.S. military, and make recommendations for force-wide changes in doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, and facilities as appropriate. Command and control of all aspects of SOF is too broad of a subject to explore in this paper. This paper concentrates on the C2 issues that most pertain to units conducting integrated ground operations, primarily Army Special Forces (SF), Navy SEALs, and U.S. Army and Marine conventional forces.

: Special Operations Forces (SOF) within a Joint Task Force are controlled by a Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF). Presently, JSOTF headquarters are formed around the core of the Theater Special Operations Command (TSOC), a service SOF headquarters, such as a Special Forces Group, or from a composite staff. These methods have significant shortcomings; the TSOCs ability to support SOF throughout the theater is reduced, a Special Forces Group is not trained or staffed to run a JSOTF at the component command level, and a composite staff element requires a substantial amount of time to operate effectively. This paper suggests an alternative way of providing a JSOTF headquarters that avoids these pitfalls. The recommendation is to establish a standing JSOTF headquarters within each TSOC. Included is an analysis of the major benefits and drawbacks of the proposal, an examination of alternative and interim solutions, and a proposed organizational structure for a standing JSOTF headquarters. Forming standing JSOTF headquarters is a controversial issue. No unit or service is anxious to give up personnel to support an organization whose role is invisible to most except during a crisis. Some will contend that there is no real problem. JSOTFs formed in the past where ad hoc and they managed to get the job done. Our country, though, has now been attacked on its own shores and as a consequence, the nation is fully engaged in a global war on terrorism. Winning this war is our military's top priority, but to win it, we must be agile and global in depth. Standing JSOTF headquarters would give SOF an almost immediate command and control capability that is effective at the earliest moments of a crisis. They could provide this capability without detracting from the TSOCs ability to support other, perhaps simultaneous SOF operations in the theater. SOF will lead the military's war on terrorism.

To investigate resilience in American Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel. A qualitative descriptive exploratory design was used to interview Special Forces and Navy SEAL participants about their perspectives on and experiences of resilience. Assumptions that high resilience inversely correlates with suicide risk in SOF drove our primary research questions and study focus. Questions were based on Holling's theory of ecological resilience. Participants provided insightful and detailed data of their resilience and were often self-effacing or self-critical. Responses indicated that although quite resilient, SOF personnel express their resilience in ways known to become pathological and precipitate suicidality if left undetected. Extracted subthemes indicated commitment to others over self and a nexus of trait variables linked to suicidality. Estimated neurotrauma from repetitive blast exposures should be incorporated in future models. Findings challenge prevailing beliefs that dysfunctional behaviors and suboptimal resilience drive SOF suicide. Results herein justify future research and changes to command postures and U.S. Department of Defense initiatives regarding relationships between and among variables of resilience, neurotrauma, and suicide in SOF. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 63(5), 26-38.].

ABSTRACTIn the post-9/11 era the United States’ (US) Special Operations Forces have become an increasingly prominent feature amongst the country’s vast military options. This article is the first to examine US Special Forces through a critical discursive lens. The article examines the conditions of possibility that US security discourse constructs for its Special Forces, who use some methods of warfare which are more commonly associated with US enemies in constructed notions of US warfare. The article argues that the Special Forces’ representation as an ‘elite’ fighting force in popular US discourse acts to stabilize the Special Forces within the wider discursive structures of US security. This is supplemented by a narrative of mystique and the willingness of the Special Forces to ‘fight fire with fire’ against imagined radical threats. In doing this it is possible to highlight the damaging effect of the Special Forces on understandings of the US Self, which constructs its identity in part through how the US ‘should’ fight wars. Despite the difficulty in articulating the Special Forces as part of the ‘American way of war’, US security discourse has proved remarkably flexible in reconciling the Special Forces within its existing structures.

The use of special operations forces (SOF) in war fighting and peace keeping efforts has increased dramatically in recent decades. A scientific understanding of the reason for this increase would provide guidance as to the contexts in which SOF can be used to their best effect, and when conventional forces are better suited. Ashby’s law of requisite variety provides a scientific framework for understanding and analyzing a system’s ability to survive and prosper in the face of environmental challenges. We have developed a generalization of this law to extend the analysis to systems that must respond to disturbances at multiple scales. This analysis identifies a necessary tradeoff between scale and complexity in a multiscale control system. As with Ashby’s law, the framework applies to the characterization of successful biological and social systems in the context of complex environmental challenges. Here we apply this multiscale framework to provide a control theoretic understanding of the historical and increasing need for SOF, as well as conventional military forces. We propose that the essential role distinction is in the separation between high complexity fine scale challenges as opposed to large scale challenges. This leads to a correspondence between the role SOF can best serve and that of the immune system in complex organisms—namely, the ability to respond to fine-grained, high-complexity disruptors and preserve tissue health. Much like a multicellular organism, human civilization is composed of a set of distinct and heterogeneous social tissues, each with its own distinct characteristics and functional relationships with other tissues. Responding to disruption and restoring health in a system with highly diverse local social conditions requires an ability to distinguish healthy tissue from disruptors and to neutralize disruptive forces with minimal collateral damage, an essentially complex task. Damage to social tissue, either through the growth of malignant forces or large-scale intervention by conventional forces, leads to cascading crises that spread beyond the initial location of disruption. To prevent such crises, the healthy functioning of social systems must be maintained by responding to disruptive forces while they remain small. SOF have the potential to mitigate against harm without disrupting normal social tissue behavior. Three conditions for SOF to fulfill such a role are identified: (1) distinctive capabilities of special operators that enable unmediated interaction with local cultures and peoples, (2) persistent presence and embeddedness to foster cultural attunement and mutual trust, and (3) local autonomy and decision-making of SOF to achieve requisite variety for sensing and acting on fine-grained disturbances. We point out the inapplicability of traditional hierarchical control structures for high-complexity local tasks, which require a decentralized control architecture. This analysis suggests how SOF might be leveraged to support global stability and mitigate against cascading crises.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate and injury surveillance (IS) system’s ability to monitor road traffic deaths and the coverage of road traffic injury and death surveillance in Phuket, Thailand.Methods: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on surveillance system evaluation were used to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate IS. Interviews with key stakeholders focused on IS’s usefulness, simplicity, flexibility, acceptability, and stability. Active case finding of 2014 road traffic deaths in all paper and electronic hospital record systems was used to assess system sensitivity, positive predictive value, and data quality. Electronic data matching software was used to determine the implications of combining IS data with other provincial-level data sources (e.g., death certificates, electronic vehicle insurance claim system).Results: Evaluation results indicated that IS was useful, flexible, acceptable, and stable, with a high positive predictive value (99%). Simplicity was limited due to the burden of collecting data on all injuries and use of paper-based data collection forms. Sensitivity was low, with IS only identifying 55% of hospital road traffic death cases identified during active case finding; however, IS cases were representative of cases identified. Data accuracy and completeness varied across data fields. Combining IS with active case finding, death certificates, and the electronic vehicle insurance claim system more than doubled the number of road traffic death cases identified in Phuket.Conclusion: An efficient and comprehensive road traffic injury and death surveillance system is critical for monitoring Phuket’s road traffic burden. The hospital-based IS system is a useful system for monitoring road traffic deaths and assessing risk behaviors. However, the complexity of data collection and limited coverage hinders the ability of IS to fully represent road traffic deaths in Phuket Province. Combining data sources could improve coverage and should be considered.

This study provides an examination of approaches to United States Government (USG) resourcing interventions on a national scale that enhance psychology support capabilities in the Special Operations Forces (SOF) community. A review of Congressional legislation and resourcing trends in the form of authorizations and appropriations since 2006 demonstrates how Congress supported enhanced psychology support capabilities throughout the Armed Forces and in SOF supporting innovative command interests that address adverse affects of operations tempo behavioral effects (OTBE). The formulation of meaningful metrics to address SOF specific command interests led to a personnel tempo (PERSTEMPO) analysis in response to findings compiled by the Preservation of the Force and Families (POTFF) Task Force. The review of PERSTEMPO data at subordinate command and unit levels enhances the capability of SOF leaders to develop policy and guidance on training and operational planning that mitigates OTBE and maximizes resourcing authorizations. A major challenge faced by the DoD is in providing behavioral healthcare that meets public and legislative demands while proving suitable and sustainable at all levels of military operations: strategic, operational, and tactical. Current legislative authorizations offer a mechanism of command advocacy for resourced multi-functional program development that enhances psychology support capabilities while reinforcing SOF readiness and performance.

The purpose of this article is to provide a perspective on the evolution of the Global Special Operations Forces Enterprise as seen from a partner perspective. The article starts with a review of the historical antecedents of Special Operations Forces since the second world war and the development of the Norwegian Special Operations Forces until today. The article then continues with a discussion of the development of the Global Special Operations Forces Network. The construction of a Special Operations Forces network and the operationalization of the Global Special Operations Forces Network is then discussed. Steps that were taken to maintain the imitative and the challenges of creating a coalition to participate in Operation Inherent Resolve is then discussed. Some conclusions regarding the coalition of the willing in relation to the Global Special Operations Forces Network are drawn, and challenges related to this is then discussed. A recommendation in view of the revealed challenges is that a beneficial step for the Global Special Operations Forces Network would be to define the organizational structure and clearly articulate it for operations at all levels.

Combat capabilitie sofunits of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the involvementin the OOS and capacity building (acquisition of newones) during the preparation for dutyinthe NATO Response Force wereanalyzed. There sults of the basictraining course for the spy of the National Guard of Ukraine are given. Special units of the Armed Forces play an important role in the implementation of the Joint Forces operation in eastern Ukraine. During the performance of specific tasks, special forces units not only conducted reconnaissance (special measures) at important enemy targets, but also provided for the deployment of units of the Armed Forces to fire. The experience of recent armed conflicts shows that the most effective fire defeat of the enemy is possible with the maximum integration of means and forces of detection (intelligence). The tool for such integration, as well as for increasing the combat capabilities of special forces (Special Operations Forces), is the involvement in the NATO Operational Force and Capabilities Concept (hereinafter referred to as the Concept). The concept of NATOꞌs operational forces and capabilities is, in essence, a clear set of requirements for the unit involved in the assessment and sets a clear goal for the unit's command. With each assessment, the unit is faced with more and more requirements, for which the unit must be qualitatively transformed in accordance with NATO guidelines and act in accordance with their protocols. Protocols are a unified procedure and are the same for all types of troops. Since the last assessment, the unit has achieved its main goal ‒ full interoperability with NATO units and the ability to perform tasks in any operational area as efficiently as possible.

ABSTRACTThis case study describes the unconventional warfare techniques used by Allied special operations forces during their campaign against Axis occupiers of Yugoslavia from 1943 to 1945. The Yugoslavia campaign was destined to be among the first in a series of twentieth-century unconventional warfare efforts, culminating in the campaign conducted by the United States and United Kingdom covert and special operators. This region of the Balkans was extremely active with occupying German, Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and various client government militaries pitted against largely unconventional forces to include Soviet backed partisans under Tito and loyalist Chetniks backed by Allied Forces. The planning considerations, preparation, and precise military actions conducted during this conflict continue to reemerge in contemporary discussions on special operations theory. The experiences of the past continue to enable successes in the evolution of modern special operations forces that began with the formation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS and employment of special operations forces in Yugoslavia during World War II.