WASHINGTON, D.C. — When Special Operations Command released a strategy document last year titled the “SOF Renaissance,” it emphasized a framework ‘“tailor made” to face the challenges of a changing strategic landscape. But one area where the command has some ground to cover is its arsenal of unmanned systems, its commander said.
Speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations Symposium on Feb. 20, Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, commander of Special Operations Command, said Ukraine has revealed an imbalance in SOCOM’s ledger: drones, robotics and artificial intelligence.
“Our ledger right now is a little out of balance,” he said. “On one side, we have all we need for a ‘worst day ever,’” such as bombers, fighters, aircraft carriers and missiles. On the other side, things that are “starting to show as changes” and “game changers” in the character of war are “thousands of one-way straight drones, thousands of drones that can go out and come back, uncrewed anything at scale, robotics at mass, AI everywhere.”
Special Operations Command has a “high responsibility” to get unmanned technology, be proficient at it, adapt it and scale it “in support of enabling and multiplying the joint force effects,” he said.
Doing so will “get that ledger back in balance,” he said. “Because we’re watching it change the character of war,” including in Ukraine.
The Ukrainians have no navy but are using autonomous systems “at mass and in the thousands” to hammer the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, he said. “We watched them throw thousands of one-way strike drones” against the Russians, “and we know they’ve done 1.5 million drones a year. Going forward next year, we need it, because we know it’s going to get that ledger back in balance.”
The SOF Renaissance document is largely optimistic that Special Operations Command is entering a world “tailor made” for its strengths and includes a modernization pledge to address some of the gaps Fenton discussed.
“Our innovative modernization efforts emphasize surface and subsurface maritime platforms; next-generation intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; mission command systems; and collaborative and autonomous unmanned systems,” the document stated.
Fenton also discussed areas where Special Operations Command has transformed to meet the needs of changing warfare, including different domains.
“We didn’t have space and cyber and convergence discussions” 35 years ago, he said. “We used what we used to enable the joint force.”
Today, space and cyber are domains “that we are very comfortable transitioning into, because it’s just a ‘how,’ how are we now enabling the joint force, not the ‘what,’ the what stays the same. It’s all about our symbiotic relationship.”
The domain will change, “so we … got to transform,” he said.
Language and cultural expertise has had to adapt and improve for an era of strategic competition, having atrophied somewhat during the Global War on Terror era, Fenton said.
These assets “made us really skilled during the Cold War, when we knew areas, … regional dynamics, we understood interplay between different factions on a very, very deep level that was outside of ourselves,” he said.
While there may have been less of a necessity for such skills during the Global War on Terror, “I would say language and proficiency and cultural skills … that’s coming back” now, he said.
“We are not [counterterrorism command], we are Special Operations Command, across the spectrum” and “tailor made against all the challenges” of the changing landscape, he said. “We’ve been in every one of them in singularity, and now they’re converging, and we’re better than we were.”
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