UNITED STATES SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES SECOND EDITION
DAVID TUCKER DAVID TUCKER CHRISTOPHER J. CHRISTOPHER J. LAMB LAMB
introduction American Special Operations Forces
The capture of Kabul in 2001 and the killing of Osama bin Laden
in 2011 were the bookends of a remarkable decade in the history of America’s special operations forces (SOF). Indeed, these two feats of arms may well take their place among the most famous military actions in history. In the first, army Special Forces (SF) fought alongside and led indigenous forces in a military campaign that forced the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies to surrender control of Afghanistan. Guiding bombs with lasers and global positioning technology, while sometimes riding on horseback, the campaign combined the most modern technology with the most ancient technique of central Asian warfare. Using an American idiom, President George W. Bush celebrated SF’s success by describing their action in Afghanistan as “the first cavalry charge of the 21st century.”1 In the second, a SOF special mission unit (SMU), a force specially trained in conducting high-risk raids, flew into Pakistan, breached bin Laden’s compound, which was near a Pakistani military facility, killed him, and gathered large amounts of useful intelligence in the form of disc drives and papers before exfiltrating without casualties.2 While remarkable, taking Kabul and killing bin Laden were not all SOF did in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or in other conflicts and missions in the years after 2001. SOF developed to a fine art a form of
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counterterrorism warfare in Iraq; operated against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); helped villagers in Afghanistan, the Philippines and elsewhere defend themselves against insurgents and lawless gangs; and conducted countless training missions with foreign military forces around the world, in which they taught not only technical military skills, but also the rudiments of democratic civil-military relations. In carrying out these various activities, SOF used not only violence to achieve American objectives but also medical assistance, small infrastructure projects, and simple personal diplomacy. As SOF’s accomplishments gave them new prominence, their numbers grew as did their responsibilities. In 2000, there were about 29,000 active duty SOF. In 2018, there were 57,000.3 The Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the overall command for SOF, which since its creation in 1987 had struggled sometimes to integrate itself into the overall military effort of the United States, was made the coordinating authority to counter violent extremist organizations,4 until recently perhaps the highest security priority of the United States. The first edition of this book appeared in 2007, as SOF’s ascent to its new prominence and importance was still gathering speed. The second edition appears as questions have arisen about the future role of SOF. The United States and the Department of Defense recently have switched their focus from terrorism and insurgency to great power conflict, spurred by the rise of China and the continued belligerence of Russia. Will SOF maintain the same roles, importance, and relevance in this new security environment? Of the many things that SOF can do, which are most likely to provide the greatest benefit to the United States, now and in the future? Increasingly, questions are also raised about the ethics and professionalism of a force that operates at the very limits of command and control and in circumstances often unique for military forces.5 The purpose of this book is to address such questions about SOF and, above all, the question about SOF’s strategic utility. Chapter 1 offers a series of interviews of SOF personnel. Virtually every issue we subsequently discuss emerges in these interviews. They also provide a helpful introduction to the character of SOF. The final two interviews are new to this edition. In chapter 2, we present a history of U.S. SOF, updated from the first edition. This history provides perspective on SOF and the array of issues and controversies surrounding them. It shows also that SOF’s complex, often problematic relationship with other military forces and
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political leaders is not simply a contemporary phenomenon. The issues, controversies, and complexity are long-standing; awareness of them is essential background for understanding SOF. Chapter 3, also updated, takes an in-depth look at one particular episode from SOF’s history, its involvement in the effort to capture Mohamed Farrah Aideed, a Somali faction leader. This episode is perhaps the single most revealing case one could study to understand how some SOF operate and the challenges of providing proper command and control of these exceptional forces. In chapter 4, new to this edition, we examine another more recent chapter in SOF history, the development of its ability to find and target individuals of high value. This was the most striking tactical development SOF produced in its operations over the last two decades, but questions remain about its strategic utility. Chapter 5, another new chapter, explores village stability operations (VSO), a term that refers to a village-level kind of warfare SOF have employed since Vietnam, but that found new relevance— and familiar difficulties—in Afghanistan. Chapter 6, revised and updated for this edition, analyzes SOF as the previous chapters have revealed them. The chapter looks at roles and missions, as well as the ways in which SOF are used to accomplish national objectives. The revised and updated chapter 7 examines SOF and the future of warfare and how SOF and their traditional roles and missions might change. The conclusion offers some final thoughts about SOF’s strategic utility based on the history and analysis that precedes it. A brief description of SOF and their various missions will help readers understand the chapters that follow, especially the first. The Department of Defense (DoD) currently defines special operations as “Operations requiring unique modes of employment, tactical techniques, equipment and training often conducted in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments and characterized by one or more of the following: time sensitive, clandestine, low visibility, conducted with and/or through indigenous forces, requiring regional expertise, and/or a high degree of risk.” SOF are the forces “specifically organized, trained, and equipped to conduct and support” such operations.6 SOF constitute approximately 2 percent of the Department of Defense budget and 3 percent of DoD manpower.7 SOCOM describes the typical SOF operator in the following way: “married and has at least two kids; average age is 29-years-old enlisted; 34-years-old officer; has 8 years’ experience in the General Purpose Forces [regular military]; receives cultural and language training; has
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attended multiple advanced tactical schools; enjoys games which require problem solving like chess; is well educated and likely to have a college degree; is a thinking athlete—water polo, track, wrestling or football.”8 Each of the services has a component that it designates as SOF. SF, or Army Special Forces, are known colloquially as “Green Berets,” for their distinctive headgear. The most important organizational unit in SF is what is known as the Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha or the “A-Team,” a twelve-man unit of officers (a captain and a warrant officer) and senior enlisted personnel. Warrant officers are technical experts, combat leaders, and managers. They are commissioned officers but specialists, and so not on a career path that leads to becoming a general officer, unlike the captains who head the team. The captains, although the highest-ranking soldiers on the teams, are usually the least experienced. Warrant officers are typically seasoned soldiers, as are the other team members. This creates interesting team dynamics.9 The team contains specialists in weapons, engineering, medicine, communications, and intelligence. It is so constructed that it can be divided into two smaller teams, each under the command of one of the team’s officers. Six “A-teams” make a company; three companies, a battalion; three battalions, a group. Each group and its subordinate elements focus on a particular region. Fifth Group, for example, focuses on the Middle East and Central Asia. Other army SOF include civil affairs personnel, who specialize in working with civilian populations and foreign governments; psychological operations forces, who specialize in the dissemination of information in support of SOF and other military units; the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which provides helicopter support to SOF; and the 75th Ranger Regiment, elite light infantry who specialize in raids and airfield seizures. The navy’s SOF are the SEALs (short for Sea-Air-Land), whose progenitors were underwater demolition teams but who now, as their name suggests, operate in a variety of environments. They carried out a significant portion of the special operations in the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, for example. Like SF, SEALs operate in small teams. Unlike SF, however, SEALs historically focused on small-unit combat operations, rather than working with indigenous personnel, although that changed somewhat during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also part of the force structure of the SEALs are the special boat teams that carry the SEALs to their targets.
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Air force SOF are the pilots, navigators, and crew who fly air force special operations aircraft and combat controllers and pararescuemen. The combat controllers accompany SOF on their missions and coordinate air support. The pararescuemen, as their name implies, specialize in rescuing downed airmen and SOF. Among lesser-known SOF, combat controllers and pararescuemen are also among its most highly trained. Until recently, the marines resisted establishing separate special forces, although they designated certain elements that received special training as “special operations capable.” However, in 2006, given the demands of the war on terrorism and pressure from civilian leaders in the Pentagon, the marines activated the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) as part of SOCOM. A MARSOC operations team has a structure similar to a SF A-Team, but its operational tasks are more like those of navy SEALs. Recently, MARSOC training has placed greater emphasis on working with indigenous forces. We speak about the various kinds of SOF only insofar as is necessary to discuss the general issues of SOF we focus on, especially the question of SOF’s strategic utility. We also say little about special mission units, a term applied to SOF that specialize in combating terrorism and other secret and often especially demanding missions. These SOF highly value their operational security. What we say about them respects their security but is sufficient to make the points that need to be made. SOCOM, the special operations command, is the overall military structure in charge of SOF. SOCOM is a unique organization because it combines the usual duties of a command (operational authority over military forces) with some responsibilities of a service (recruiting, training, and equipping military personnel). In the past, SOCOM seldom exercised operational authority over SOF. Typically, that was done by special operations commands (SOCs) that work for each of the regional combatant commanders, the four-star generals with responsibility for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and North America. Each of the regional combatant commanders has a SOF command element, its so-called “theater SOC” or TSOC. For example, U.S. Central Command, the command with responsibility for the Middle East and Central Asia, has Special Operations Command Central, or SOCCENT.10 SOCOM exercises its service-like responsibilities by working with the service-specific SOF commands. The U.S. Army Special Operations Command has responsibility for Special Forces, the 95th
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Civil Affairs Brigade, psychological operations forces, the Ranger regiment, and the 160th Aviation Regiment. The U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command is responsible for the SEALs and their supporting boat units. The U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command has responsibility for the air force’s special operations aircraft, combat controllers, and pararescuemen. Together, SOCOM and its subordinate commands take care of SOF-specific training and equipment, while the services provide to SOF what they provide to all personnel under their authority. For example, the air force buys aircraft, which the Special Operations Command then pays to have equipped as needed for special operations. The various organizational and command relationships that govern SOF prepare them to carry out a variety of missions.11 We highlight below several that play a particular role in the chapters that follow:12 Civil affairs: actions to enhance awareness of, and manage the interaction with, the civil component of the operational environment; identify and mitigate underlying causes of instability within civil society; and/or involve the application of functional specialty skills normally the responsibility of civil government. For example, during the 1994 intervention in Haiti, civil affairs teams from the 96th CA Battalion assessed Haiti’s creaking infrastructure, and Company A, 96th CA Battalion restored electricity to Jeremie, Cap Haitien, and other northern cities and towns for the first time in years. Counterinsurgency: Comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes. Examples discussed in chapters 1, 2, and 5 include SOF operations in Vietnam, El Salvador in the 1980s and early 1990s, and Afghanistan. Counterterrorism: activities and operations taken to neutralize terrorists and their organizations and networks in order to render them incapable of using violence to instill fear and coerce governments or societies. These missions include intelligence operations, attacks against terrorist networks and infrastructures, recovery of sensitive material from terrorist organizations, and non-kinetic activities aimed at the ideologies or motivations that spawn terrorists. Some of these operations are cloaked in secrecy, but others, such as the high value targeting missions discussed
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in chapter 4, are well-known. A celebrated example is the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Countering weapons of mass destruction: efforts to curtail the conceptualization, development, possession, proliferation, use, and effects of weapons of mass destruction, related expertise, materials, technologies, and means of delivery. An example of a counterproliferation operation would be stopping and searching a ship on the high seas suspected of carrying a weapon of mass destruction or material for such a weapon, such as the 2002 collaborative effort by Spain and the United States to stop, search, and seized a North Korean–flagged vessel off the Horn of Africa that was carrying Scud missiles apparently intended for delivery to Yemen. Direct action: the conduct of short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or diplomatically sensitive environments that employ specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets. For example, during the Balkan conflict, a SOF team destroyed a stretch of railroad tracks to prevent Serbian troop movements. Foreign internal defense: participation in any of the programs and activities undertaken by a host nation government to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, terrorism, and other threats to its security. For example, following the terrorist attacks on 9/11 SOF advised the Filipino military in their battle with the terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf Group. Special reconnaissance: reconnaissance and surveillance actions conducted as special operations in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments to collect or verify information of strategic or operational significance, employing military capabilities not normally found in conventional forces. For example, in the First Gulf War, Special Forces were inserted behind enemy lines before the initiation of the ground war to analyze terrain and soil conditions along the planned invasion route into Iraq. Navy SEALs also conducted offshore reconnaissance missions as part of a deception strategy to fix Iraqi attention on a potential amphibious invasion by U.S. Marines.
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Preparation of the environment: an umbrella term for operations and activities conducted by selectively trained special operations forces to develop an environment for potential future special operations. These operations are sensitive and have been controversial at times. Their aim is to collect information and establish contacts that will allow SOF to operate more effectively. Psychological operations: operations to convey selected information to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals in a manner favorable to our objectives. For example, during operations in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime and run al-Qaeda terrorists to ground, psychological operations forces developed leaflets and radio broadcasts to weaken support for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. After the defeat of the Taliban, the objective shifted to building support for the interim Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai. Unconventional warfare: activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area. For example, the press reported in 2018 that Special Forces trained Lithuanian National Defense Volunteer Forces to resist an enemy occupation of their country with guerrilla tactics, the unstated likely candidate for such an occupation force being Russia. It should be apparent from the above description of SOF and the list of their missions that SOF are complex and diverse forces. Part of what we discover in examining their history is how diverse they are, how many different kinds of missions political and military decision-makers have called on them to undertake, how different are the orientations and skills of the different elements of SOF, and how political and bureaucratic pressures have shaped them over the years. Given SOF’s diverse capabilities, there also are a wide range of choices to be made about how SOF are organized and employed to best effect. Which missions should they have, and which should be passed on to general purpose forces? What are new missions that might emerge? The following pages provide the information to answer such questions and argue that some answers are better than others.
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This book is the result of a collaboration of almost thirty years in multiple operations, policy, and academic environments. When it came to writing, Tucker was the primary author of the introduction and chapters 1, 2, 5 and the conclusion; Lamb was the primary author of chapters 3, 4, 6, 7 and the two appendices. Each read and commented extensively on the other’s work, with Tucker acting as a general editor. The two appendices, it should be said, are intended to assist students of SOF in particular. The first appendix explains the sometimes confusing evolution of official terminology used to describe SOF missions. The second appendix is an annotated bibliographic essay that explains different categories of SOF literature and points readers to some of the better works available for further consideration. Both authors are former employees of the federal government, but the views expressed in this book are those of the authors and are not official policy or positions of the Naval Post Graduate School, National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
JAMES R. LOCHER, recipient of the 2019
Global SOF Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and former assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and LowIntensity Conflict
“United States Special Operations Forces reflects the authors’ deep knowledge and understanding of special operations. It is unique in that it clearly offers a logical value proposition for the most effective employment of special operations forces. Its arguments are compelling and convincing. A substantive and comprehensive contribution to the literature about special operations.”
HY ROTHSTEIN, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School
Praise for the first edition “If you are limited to one volume on modern American special operations forces, this is the work that should be on your bookshelf.”
JOURNAL OF CONFLICT STUDIES
“The authors’ expertise enables them to boil down complex history, theories, and debates into succinct chapters. . . . Among the few publications in recent years about the special operations community that is a must-read.”
INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY
DAVID TUCKER is senior fellow at the
Ashbrook Center at Ashland University. He taught in the Special Operations/ Irregular Warfare curriculum at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School for many years and before that served in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. His most recent book is Revolution and Resistance: Moral Revolution, Military Might, and the End of Empire (2016). CHRISTOPHER J. LAMB retired as
AMI PEDAHZUR, University of Texas at Austin ISBN: 978-0-231-18388-8
COL UMBIA U N I V E R S I TY P R ES S / N EW Y O R K
a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University. His previous positions in the Departments of Defense and State include deputy assistant secretary of defense for resources and plans, deputy director of the State Department’s interagency task force for military stabilization in the Balkans, and director of policy planning in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. His most recent book is The Mayaguez Crisis, Mission Command, and Civil-Military Relations (2018).
C U P. C O L U M B I A . E DU
PRINT E D IN T HE U. S . A .
Cover design: Lisa Hamm
“This updated edition is a brilliant and timely addition to the exponentially growing literature on the ‘Fifth Service,’ the fastest growing branch of armed forces in the United States and around the world. It is a must-read for students, scholars, members of the armed forces, and anyone who wants to understand the changing nature of warfare.”
Cover images: (top) © Staff Sgt. Trevor T. McBride / U.S. Air Force via AP; (bottom) © Michael Christopher Brown / Magnum Photos. Printed in the U.S.A
“Since its first edition in 2007, United States Special Operations Forces has served as the indispensable source for serious policy and strategy makers involved with overseeing our nation’s special operations forces. With deep knowledge and great clarity, the authors explain the essential characteristics of special operations forces, their strategic utility, and key issues involved in their strategic employment.”