Shore Up SOF
Page 2 of 2
It is also a business that carefully screens for a superior physical and intellectual standard. For every man who completes training, four others will have failed to meet that standard. It takes time, and it is expensive. Yet, there is no other way to create these special warriors—men of action who have the language and cross-cultural skills to operate independently and effectively along the Afghani-Pakistani border against a fanatical, entrenched enemy. The campaign in Iraq is evolving into a full-blown insurgency. These men, with their counterinsurgency skills, now have to engage this same enemy in the cities, as well as in their remote tribal areas. It is a tough job requiring a warrior with a unique skill set.
Currently, the SEAL, Special Forces, and Ranger training cadres are running at full capacity, but these men cannot be mass produced without risking the quality of the force. And given the lead time required to train and develop a competent special operator, we now are losing them faster than we can make them.
Corporate security firms are a growth industry, and their best hire is
an experienced SOF operator. The backbone of SOF is the senior enlisted
men who earn on the order of $55,000–$60,000 a year. After 20 years, they
can retire with half that pay plus a tidy benefits package. Military
pay
scales do little to encourage these valuable men to stay on after 20 years—when
their experience is at its peak. The Blackwaters of the world know full
well how much time and money it takes to create this kind of talent, and
they know a bargain when they see one. That is why they are prepared to
pay these men as much as much as $1,000 a day to leave the military and
hire on with them. Bottom line, we are losing our very best at a time
when we are trying to grow the force to take the lead in the war on terror.
Unless there are immediate changes, the force will become younger, less
experienced, less capable, and less special.
It also is likely that SOF will be asked to carry a heavier load in this fight. Along with a reorganization of our multilayered intelligence apparatus, the 9/11 Commission has recommended that responsibility for paramilitary activity and covert action be shifted from the Central Intelligence Agency to the military. These are difficult undertakings; both require skilled and experienced personnel. Setting aside the thorny issues of presidential findings and congressional oversight that currently accompany covert operations, these taskings surely will fall to SOF, which already is stretched.
Even as our Special Operations Forces are losing their most experienced men, they face a nimble and highly adaptive enemy. In the streets of Iraq and in the tribal areas of Afghanistan, al Qaeda and its Islamist allies are making themselves less vulnerable to conventional U.S. force and air power. The administration has chosen to fight the war on their turf, not ours. Not a bad idea, but only U.S. SOF has the capability and experience to beat this enemy at their game and on their turf. Given their current tempo of operations, I’m not sure they can take on additional duties and responsibility.
So how do we shore up and expand our SOF capability? How do we get these warriors into this fight in the numbers required to win and still honor the SOF Truths?
The first order of business is to keep our experienced operators in uniform.
The loss of these men is not a flesh wound; it is arterial bleeding. It
takes millions of dollars and more time than we have to grow a young American
into an effective SOF operator. The only triage for this hemorrhage of
talent is money. Pay them. It is one of the few areas in the Department
of Defense where the direct application of taxpayer dollars buys immediate
and proven operational capability. There is no long procurement process,
no training lag, no jostling of defense contractors. Every dollar goes
to retain essential human talent.
There is precedent for this. We give bonuses to our military physicians because of the salary gap between military and civilian medical practice. We need to do the same for SOF. How much? How about a quarter of what this talent can command on the outside? We could offer senior, experienced, proven special operators $50,000 per year on top of their regular pay for a five-year extension of their enlistments, or simply offer them their active salaries and their retired pay if they stay on after 20. If these warriors can keep the fight over there, this will be cheap in terms of treasury—less than cheap in terms of the human suffering of another 9/11. And these funds cannot go into general military coffers; they have to be fenced for salary bonuses to retain SOF operators.
 |
| U.S. AIR FORCE (SCOTT REED) |
Next, we must let the special operators fight this war as they are trained
to fight and under the direction of a SOF command structure. Most SOF
operations still are conducted under the command and control of conventional
military theater commanders. Two years ago, Secretary Rumsfeld directed
that SOF conduct operations in theater and across national boundaries
as a supported force—that conventional military commanders assume a supporting
role for SOF. Not an easy thing within the conventional military establishment,
and not an easy issue for SOF.
During its almost two decades of existence, the U.S. Special Operations
Command has focused on training and deploying operational components for
overseas assignment to the regional theater commands. Assuming command
and control of their deployed forces is a new role. Yet, for SOF to achieve
its potential in the critical areas of unconventional warfare and foreign
internal defense, it must undertake the duties and responsibilities of
operational command with full support from the conventional force structure.
This does not mean the end of existing regional theater commands, but
it does mean conventional military commanders must work with and in support
of SOF elements whose commanders may be junior to them. In
Afghanistan
and
Iraq
this has worked very well in the field—the guys on the ground tend to
do what is necessary to get the job done. We must have that same understanding
and cooperation at the senior command level.
Third, special operations must be allowed a more active role in the collection of intelligence. Our enemies have had a good lesson in the capability of U.S. air power and armor and now embed themselves in urban populations or remote tribal areas. This tactic denies us the use of much of our technology. SOF, Army Special Forces in particular, has the cross-cultural skills to conduct unconventional warfare and to develop networks of information in hostile areas. If we are to win this war, we have to develop a more robust counterinsurgency capability, and that will require intelligence—the kind that is developed locally and volunteered by locals.
Our SOF direct-action strike teams are very good at kicking in doors,
but this works only if you know which door to kick. We are in the process
of reorganizing our national intelligence apparatus. In the past, we have
built bureaucracies to provide intelligence product for decision makers;
that is why we have 90-odd collection organizations. In the world of tactical
intelligence, the kind needed to target al Qaeda effectively, the information
has to be precise, timely, and operationally user-friendly. Why not involve
the guys on the ground in building this new national intelligence effort?
We no longer really need an agent to tell us what the old men in the Kremlin
are doing; we need a young man to tell us where terrorists are hiding
in his village. More often than not, this information comes from a SOF
operator who understands the people in that village and has developed
a rapport with them.
The warriors who serve in our Special Operations Forces are unique and special. In many respects, they are our best and brightest—men who are carefully screened, highly trained, and endure danger and prolonged family separation on a regular basis. They stand between us and the dark forces that at this moment are trying to figure out a way to kill large numbers of Americans here at home. That there have been no successful homeland attacks since 9/11 may well be because we have taken the fight to them, in the streets of Baghdad and the mountains of the Hindu Kush.
Some 60 years ago in the skies over England, a handful of young men fought and died to protect England from Hitler’s legions. We now have a small number of special men trying to do the same for us. They believe in America and in the SOF Truths. Isn’t it time for us to show we believe in them and do all in our power to support them?
Dick Couch writes extensively on Special Operations and Special Operations
training. His most recent book is The Finishing School, Earning the Navy
SEAL Trident (Crown Books, 2004).
