The fifth service: The rise of Special Operations Command

: Within the past decade, both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) have undergone considerable transformation. The Navy has shifted its focus a Mahanian, fleet on fleet, blue water engagement to the brown waters of the littorals. Since receiving the designation as the lead Combatant Command for synchronizing, planning, and executing worldwide operations in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has increased its capacity to become rapidly deployable, agile, flexible, and tailorable to perform the most demanding and sensitive missions. In both cases, the operational utility of the helicopter operating from the sea has increased significantly. Guided by SOF theory and doctrine, influenced by the current and future threat environment, and molded after the combat-proven, habitual relationship formed between Navy helicopter squadrons and Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) forces during the Vietnam War; the Navy should designate specific rotary wing assets as SOF under the guidance of Naval Special Warfare Command (NAVSPECWAR). With a legitimate, dedicated naval helicopter SOF asset, NAVSPECWAR can maximize SOF training and operational missions in support of the Operational Commander's time-critical mission requirements. Implementation of this recommendation will ensure a truly joint SOF aviation capability, increase the supply of high demand, low density SOF rotary wing assets, and dramatically improve the operational effectiveness of SOF operations.

: 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.

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

: 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.

: 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.

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.

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) exposure in military Service Members may lead to impaired brain waste clearance which increases neurological disease risk including amyloidopathies. Perivascular spaces (PVS) are part of the glymphatic pathway which support brain waste clearance, especially during sleep. Greater magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-visible PVS burden has been previously observed in patients with neurodegenerative diseases and animal TBI models. PURPOSE: To determine the association between PVS burden (number and volume) and mTBI history in Special Operations Forces (SOF) combat Soldiers. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, participants underwent neuroimaging to capture T2-weighted (T2w) whole brain three dimensional volumes obtained on a Siemens 3T Biograph mMR or 3T MAGNETOM Prisma scanner (TR/TE = 3200/400ms, slice thickness = 1mm, FoV = 256mm x 256 mm). The PVS segmentation was performed using a previously validated, multi-scale deep convolutional encoder-decoder neural network. All T2w images were skull stripped and a custom T2w atlas with segmented cerebral white matter and subcortical gray matter labels was registered to each subject using Advanced Normalization Tools to minimize misidentifying thin tubular structures in the skull, brainstem, cerebellum, and cortex as PVS. Only PVS clusters within the white matter mask were quantified for analyses. Binary mTBI history was self-reported (“yes” or “no”). Due to non-normal PVS metric distribution, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U tests were used to determine group differences in PVS outcomes. RESULTS: In total, 223 healthy SOF combat Soldiers (age = 33.1±4.3yrs) were included for analysis and 123 (55.16%) reported mTBI history. Soldiers with mTBI history had greater PVS number (z = 2.506, P = 0.013) and PVS volume (z = 2.419, P = 0.016). CONCLUSIONS: We found mTBI history is associated with increased PVS burden in SOF combat Soldiers that are clinically recovered from mTBI. This may indicate ongoing physiological post-mTBI changes that could lead to impaired waste clearance via the glymphatic system. Future studies should determine how sleep influences PVS burden following mTBI exposure and if PVS number and volume are meaningful neurobiological outcomes for neurodegenerative disease risk. Funded by US Special Operations Command

: 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.

: Current mission preparation and analysis methods place an undue burden of effort on conventional and special operations forces to effectively synchronize and execute their increasingly complex operational responsibilities in a rapidly changing global environment. This thesis developed a tool for the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in support of their Mission Planning, Analysis, Rehearsal, and Execution (MPARE) initiative to allow special operations forces commanders and staffs to conduct mission planning and analysis in a distributed environment, and rapidly produce dynamic synchronization matrices and scheduling products. Operations research methods provide the foundation for the analysis. The system developed in this thesis is called the Special Operations Mission Planning and Analysis Support System (SOMPASS). SOMPASS is simple to learn and operate, provides dynamic changes with little effort, and is universal in application. This system has the capability to execute on any hardware platform, operate across any network connection, and expand easily to support additional users and requirements. This thesis provides not only a demonstration of capabilities through a special operations oriented illustrative scenario, but also a working product that can be adapted for use in mission planning and analysis by all units under USSOCOM.

HEDAfghanistan, Changing Room of Empires Adrian Bonenberger (bio) First they fell slowly, fort by besieged fort, province by province, then all at once. When Kabul collapsed it happened with the speed and fury of a thunderclap. Alongside the video of desperate Afghans chasing and falling from planes were photos and videos of the Taliban, dressed like US special operators. They emulated the iconic photo of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima and strutted into an air hangar, M4 rifles pointed toward the ceiling, massed at a checkpoint with night-vision devices perched paradoxically above the wraparound "operator" sunglasses popularized by special operations forces and CIA paramilitaries. While visually arresting, these scenes didn't come as a surprise. We've seen this happen repeatedly throughout history, the conquered rising to conquer in their turn. Before its fall over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., Western Rome's military and those of its neighbors had come to mirror each other in important ways, both in terms of tactics and aesthetic preferences. Drawing heavily on Germanic tribes (Goths, Vandals, Alans, Burgundians), Western Rome's military (and, given the role its military played in culture and politics, Rome itself) came to resemble the tribes it fought. Romans lived alongside their Germanic neighbors for nearly four centuries and progressively intermingled until in some places little meaningful distinction existed (and none, in the end, worth fighting for—the ultimate measure of a culture's durability). The Afghans have spent much of the last four decades living side by side with the militaries of the USSR and the US. Culture shifted more slowly back when it moved at the speed of a horse-drawn wagon or sail. Now, culture moves at the speed it takes to upload a video to TikTok or Instagram. It seems beyond question that Afghans have been observing and internalizing the violence they experienced at Soviet and American hands. Watching the History Channel, playing Call of Duty, reading accounts of SEALs, Afghans have come to understand power the way Americans have applied it. Many of them received tactical training from American and other Western militaries. Too, ISIS and the Taliban received extensive training from [End Page 14] Western forces, with those members who survived battles gaining firsthand experience of American, Russian, and European military capabilities and adapting to counter them. Literature on or in Afghanistan over the past forty years has tended to focus on the experience of the country that's deployed there. The Soviet Afghansi with their various permutations (Soviet Baltic, Ukrainian, Russian, and other ethnicities from within the USSR) are the protagonists (or, occasionally, antagonists, if one's watching or reading from the perspective of the US), as are British colonial troops described by writers like Rudyard Kipling, as are Americans and those allied countries deployed alongside the US. The closest one gets to the Afghans or Iraqis is through their cuisine, to which soldiers escape for variety, or their clothing—especially the distinctive pakol cap and shemagh headwrap, which make appearances in (almost every?) novels and short fiction collections about Afghanistan or Iraq published in the last two decades. The food, caps, and scarves do little to change how Western militaries operate in the countries to which they have deployed, and have made a consequently superficial impact on those militaries. One place where the Afghans especially have made a more lasting impact on the US and British militaries is in the tendency of Western special operations units to adopt beards. Originally, this was made out of diplomatic expediency—special forces units embedded with locals claimed that they needed the beards to "fit in" and develop rapport with their counterparts—but the beards quickly became a signifier, a way to demonstrate that one's unit was elite and didn't need to obey the same rules as more conventional units. Some writers exploring Afghanistan refer to this phenomenon through the voice of the Afghans, who refer to special operations units as "the men with beards." In my own short fiction collection, The Disappointed Soldier and Other Stories from War, I write satirically about a conventional unit that contracts beards and the equipment of special...

: Building the capacity of Afghan special operations forces (SOF) is a key goal of the United States and its coalition partners. In February and March of 2013, RAND analysts conducted extensive battlefield circulations in Afghanistan and visited multiple training sites for Afghan SOF. The mentors at these sites hailed from a variety of International Security Assistance Force contributing nations, including the United States, Lithuania, Romania, Australia, Norway, and the United Kingdom. This report summarizes key partnering practices across these international partners and presents findings from SOF partnership case studies in Iraq and Colombia. The goal is to identify best practices for SOF partnership that can benefit the development of the Afghan special operations capability. These best practices also have broader applicability for special operations partnerships beyond Afghanistan.

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.

Features of selection of Military Special Operations Forces personnel of foreign countries by the criterion of physical preparedness are considered. Scientific, methodological literature on the research topic was studied, specialists were interviewed. Selection of candidates for special operations forces is consists of several stages. It has been established that the physical fitness of candidates is checked at all stages of selection. Determining the aerobic and strength endurance of candidates is a mandatory element of testing their physical preparedness. Tests are selected based on the requirements of the future professional activity of the fighters. Also take into account how these tests correlate to injury risk or professional tasks performance. The main tests for determining strength endurance choose exercises with local load distribution. Long-distance running is the main exercise for determining the level of aerobic endurance of military personnel. Swimming exercises is included in the selection programmes for most special operations units. The speed and coordination abilities of servicemen are tested with the help of various variants of the shuttle run. There is no gender or age differentiation when assessing candidates. The selection of candidates is made from several phases and involves complication of standards. The selection program also includes applied physical exercises that are performed in uniform, namely: swimming, marching, overcoming an obstacle course, etc. The system of selection is based on the motivation of servicemen. They tend to score more points than their competitors.

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.].

Evidence from recent operations shows an increasing tendency of employing Special Operations Forces (SOF) with General Purpose Forces (GPF). The larger degree of cooperation and mutual support necessitates Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the Services change current planning and training framework to better reflect present and future operational employment expectations. Previously SOF and GPF planners primarily focused on deconfliction of operations when needed, but Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) have demonstrated a need for