By Dean Hoffman
Today’s conflicts are evolving. The threat environment is complex, dynamic, asymmetric, technological and intense — all adjectives that play to the strengths of special operations.
So, it is perhaps no surprise that at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 36th annual Special Operations Symposium, Special Operations Forces, or SOF, were held out as a competitive advantage in meeting threats across the board.
Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of Northern Command, described SOF’s “scalability, ease with technology and unique approach to problem-solving” as features that helped meet the myriad of threats facing his command.
This also highlights a major theme that will define SOF’s success in the near future: integration. If SOF is going to support multiple threats across the globe and across the spectrum of conflict, then it will have to integrate with conventional forces, with new technologies and with new business processes.
Defending the homeland is the first line of effort in the new National Defense Strategy, so Northcom’s mission challenges are not just illustrative of SOF’s utility, they are central to national strategy.
Rarely has the Western Hemisphere seen the simultaneous confluence of so many threats, from transnational criminal cartels to deterring malign Chinese influence to countering regional instability. SOF can certainly play a key role in these missions. After all, as Dr. Sandra Hobson, principal deputy assistant secretary of war for special operations and low-intensity conflict, observed: “Simultaneity is all about distributing risk, and who can better distribute farther with fewer forces than SOF?”
But unlike counterterrorism and direct action missions, SOF cannot meet these simultaneous threats alone. Missions as large as countering malign influence need a unity of effort that can only come from integration with the Joint Force and interagency.
Integration doesn’t just stop with other formations, it also extends to new technologies. From AI and autonomy to cyber and space, technologies are opening up entirely new avenues for SOF to accomplish the mission. In fact, in many cases, these transformational technologies already exist.
The challenge isn’t creating technologies but integrating them into SOF operations. As Army Col. Jeffrey Coulon, commander of Special Operations Command’s Joint Task Force for Experimentation, put it: “We don’t have a technology innovation problem, we have a technology adoption problem.”
Integrating transformational technologies into SOF has two main hurdles.
The first is the technical challenges. For example, since the massive explosion of data in recent years, adding AI isn’t just a question of bolting AI onto an existing tool or radio, but rather requires attention being paid to the architecture of a solution. Where does the compute happen?
What data needs to be moved? and so on.
But there are also human challenges, as Dr. Holly Taylor, co-director of the Center for Applied Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Tufts University, described.
When faced with new technologies, humans are vulnerable to both cognitive overload and cognitive offload. Cognitive overload can mean the human users are overwhelmed by the number of tasks a new technology needs them to perform all at once, such as piloting more than four drones at the same time.
Cognitive offload, on the other hand, is when users trust the technology too much, a phenomenon made famous by drivers following their GPS directions into fields or lakes. Both problems can lead to degraded situational awareness and poor performance, unless the integration of that technology into units is carefully managed.
The new threat environment is also challenging old business processes. In the past, a weapon system could move from concept to testing to production and finally obsolescence over the course of years, if not decades. Today in Ukraine, some capabilities are moving through that same cycle in as little as 17 days. Existing bureaucracies simply cannot keep up.
But integrating new business processes isn’t just a question of moving faster, it’s about moving in the right direction with the right partners.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Edward Vaughan has seen this as executive director of the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell: “Don’t measure the success of a program merely on cost, schedule and performance. If there are no metrics for operational impact, you’ve lost.”
This unrelenting operational focus is another area where SOF is helping to drive the Joint Force forward. For example, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 is working closely with SOF, services and interagency partners to rapidly test, evaluate and field counter-drone solutions. A new way of working that integrates new partners and new technology.
Solving for these three integrations isn’t just about making SOF better, it’s about increasing the capabilities of the Joint Force as a whole. For example, investments in SOF, space and cyber interoperability can help geographic combatant commanders overcome the tyranny of distance and present more options in the face of a crisis.
In today’s complex world, SOF can’t be the only solution to many simultaneous problems. But SOF’s flexibility, adaptability and above all its focus on personal relationships mean that it can help the entire Joint Force forge a path to a more stable, secure future.