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Behind friendly lines: enforcing the need for a joint SOF staff officer

Military Review - May 1, 2004

Continued from page 1.

SOF personnel must complement their formal training with education. SOCOM Directive 621-1, "Joint Special Operations Education System," outlines specific education goals and requirements. (16) As part of the education process, SOF personnel usually attend a host of joint and service courses such as ISS. Selected SOF officers may attend an advanced military studies program such as the Army School of Advanced Military Studies, the Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting, or the Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. Others may choose to attend joint SOF education courses offered at JSOU at Hurlburt Field, Florida. However, this is about as far as the formal military school system can educate SOF officers. Even SOCOM Publication 1 acknowledges, "The majority of a serious professional development program must be self-development." (17) This approach leaves it up to the individual SOF officer to obtain follow-on and advanced education and training. With the current focus on SOCOM expansion, it is time to change the practice of self-development to require SOF officers receive focused education and training in critical joint warfighting skill sets derived from recent GWOT experiences.

Operations in Afghanistan have yielded some noteworthy issues that the Army should address in formal SOF education and training. Although not all-inclusive, the following areas need greater emphasis in SOF education and training:

* Joint fire measures and integration and deconfliction of air and battle space.

* Special activities and compartmented operations.

* Information management and technologies.

* Joint SO doctrine and linkages to the theater campaign plans.

* JSOTF manning requirements, particularly reserve forces.

* Joint operations and planning.

* Full-spectrum and unconventional approaches to operations ranging from small-scale contingencies to high-intensity conflict.

* Synchronization of joint operations to achieve synergistic effects with sister service capabilities.

* SOF and conventional force interoperability.

Joint SOF Officer Skill Sets

Joint fires and battlespace deconfliction have significant effects on SOF planning and employment. Special operations forces have become proficient in the use of tactical fires at the training centers such as the joint readiness training center (JRTC) and the national training center (NTC). Before operations in Afghanistan, most SOF only incorporated organic service fires (organic attack aviation or artillery platforms). Several scenarios at the training centers employ time-sensitive targets and bombers performing close air support. However, these scenarios do not train SOF staffs or JSOTF commanders inexperienced in the joint fires process and battlespace synchronization.

In some cases, JRTC and NTC training creates false expectations about SOF doctrine and employment. (18) Initial analysis from Afghanistan indicates that air power, coordinated with SOF and indigenous maneuver forces, "was a joint air-land struggle in which the ability to combine fire and maneuver by diverse arms made the difference between success and failure." (19) Although combining fire and maneuver by diverse arms might seem new, SOF have employed it before; the current SOF generation has only relearned it. Air power plays an important role in support of SOF assets. The flexibility of air power, particularly from aircraft carriers, can quickly provide SOF with operational fires, as in Afghanistan.

The strategic bomber has emerged as one of the preeminent weapons systems in support of SOF. B-52s and B-1s have the advantages of long loiter time; all-weather operations; reduced short-range, foreign-basing requirements; large numbers of near-precision guided weapons; and large crews able to man a number of communications radios. The joint SOF operator and planner will achieve success if he understands the capabilities joint assets can bring to the fight. In the GWOT, Navy and Air Force assets provide the most responsive joint fire support for SOF.

The special operations liaison element (SOLE) is critical to accessing joint fires and deconflicting battlespace. The SOLE integrates all SOF air and surface operations in the combined air operations center and is responsible for carrying out the JSOTF commander's intent through liaison with the joint forces air component commander's (JFACC) combat plans division (CPD). Efforts to enhance SOLE integration must continue through research that airmen and SOF conduct in their ISS education and in training of JSOTF staffs. Experimentation with agencies such as the Combined Air Operations Center- Experimental at Air Combat Command is also important.

Future JSOTF commanders might request an air support operations center (ASOC). The ASOC is a JFACC asset normally attached to an Army corps headquarters operating as a JTF. Joint Publication 3-05 states, "ASOCs can help the SOF commander request and integrate air power into all the JFC's [joint force commander's] special operations." (20)

The modern JSOTF can be employed as a standalone with a joint interagency task force (JIATF), or as part of a JTF. The JSOTF becomes the interface between conventional and unconventional compartmentalized operations. Although operational security (OPSEC) is paramount to successful special operations, in the recent campaign in Afghanistan, SOF staff officers hampered logistical support to the Northern Alliance and coordination of some critical air support by creating informational stovepipes. SOF staff officers must ensure that their key theater counterparts, on whom they rely on for air support, logistics, and intelligence, are "read-in" so these counterparts can plan and allocate available theater support. Joint SOF officers must continually identify who must participate in planning at the theater level and assess the effect of OPSEC in accomplishing the overall campaign plan.

Advanced SOF education and training must include information management and technologies that can help streamline planning processes through collaboration tools that create a dynamic, interactive interface between a JTF and a JSOTF and its components. (21) Because of the ad hoc nature of today's JSOTF, gaps exist in "national-level intelligence support, operators for systems which provide the common operational picture, and sufficient personnel to sustain combat operations in the future operations and plans cell of a JSOTF." (22) One recent study of the technological GWOT challenges stated that another priority must be "integration of SOF and the leveraging of multilateral capabilities more seamlessly with conventional forces operations." (23)

The recent joint experiment Millennium Challenge-02 (MC-02) debuted a number of collaborative tools for future JTF and JSOTF headquarters. As technology increases, these tools will become more efficient and have greater capability. Proficiency in these techniques and technologies is perishable, however, and reliance on technology alone without a system of back ups could result in the techniques and technologies becoming a millstone to the JSOTF if they falter or are disrupted.

At the start of MC-02, selected personnel had up to three training periods on systems and procedures. The demands of an information-based JSOTF (telephone, e-mail, net-chat, radio, television, video teleconferences, web pages, and on-line collaboration) overwhelmed soldiers with little or no training. SOF must take advantage of advances in information management and technologies to remain relevant.

For SOF to synchronize with conventional forces, they must understand sister service and joint doctrine to comprehend the idiomatic expressions sister services use. Unfortunately, military culture discounts doctrine more than it adheres to it. After every major conflict, SOF seem to reinvent the wheel, and the GWOT is proving no different. Because SOF tend to slight doctrine and education, they "lack the training, equipment and manning to rapidly and effectively establish what are now ad-hoc headquarters at the joint operational level." (24) SOF sacrifices time and energy because they do not know the doctrine well enough and need more warrior-scholars with the skills necessary to serve at all operational levels. SOF personnel must know national security master strategies to combat terrorism, understand SOF capabilities, and build a SOF strategy to prosecute the GWOT.

Experience demonstrates that establishing a JSOTF is easy, but manning it with qualified joint personnel is difficult. Because JSOTFs are not likely to become less complex, SOF must better educate and train officers, especially communications, intelligence, and support field grade officers, finding ways to track and recall officers with expertise in joint SOF operations as they rotate from SOF to conventional units.

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