Special Operations

Doctrine / TTP

JP 3-05: Joint Doctrine for Special Operations

US Special Operations Command and the War on Terror - Lieutenant General Dell Dailey (USA) and Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Web (USMC). Joint Force Quarterly article, 1st Quarter 2006. Since 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan have been the most visible battlegrounds in the war on terror. However, Special Operators have been heavily engaged in less publicized ventures. In the Philippines and the Pacific Rim, they are working closely with and training partner nations’ forces to track, locate, and neutralize the terrorist threats within their borders. In the tri-border region of South America (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay), they are helping bring law and order to an area long known for its illicit activities and now associated with terrorist organizations. In the Pan-Sahel region of Africa, Special Operators, along with conventional forces, are training and assisting new partner nations in developing capabilities to deny terrorists freedom of movement and a new sanctuary. This fight is global, and Special Operators are leading the way in every engagement they undertake. Utilizing their unique training, skills, and cultural awareness, they are doing what they do best: developing links within the population that will provide ongoing intelligence and personal relationships that will cement ties with allies around the world. With such capabilities and a global perspective, Special Operators will have an enduring role in defeating terrorism.

U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF): Background and Issues for Congress - Andrew Feickert. Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, September 2004. Special Operations Forces (SOF) play a significant role in U.S. military operations and the Administration has given U.S. SOF forces greater responsibility for planning and conducting worldwide counterterrorism operations. The 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary clandestine and covert operations should become the responsibility the U.S. Special Operations Command has been included in both versions of House and Senate intelligence reform legislation.

Imperial Grunts: With the Army Special Forces in the Philippines and Afghanistan - Robert Kaplan. Atlantic Monthly article, October 2005. America is waging a counterinsurgency campaign not just in Iraq but against Islamic terror groups throughout the world. Counterinsurgency falls into two categories: unconventional war (UW in Special Operations lingo) and direct action (DA). Unconventional war, though it sounds sinister, actually represents the soft, humanitarian side of counterinsurgency: how to win without firing a shot. For example, it may include relief activities that generate good will among indigenous populations, which in turn produces actionable intelligence. Direct action represents more-traditional military operations. In 2003 I spent a summer in the southern Philippines and an autumn in eastern and southern Afghanistan, observing how the U.S. military was conducting these two types of counterinsurgency.

What’s So Special about Special Operations? Lessons from the War in Afghanistan - Colonel John Jogerst, USAF. Aerospace Power Journal, Summer 2002.  Watching the war in Afghanistan and listening to speculation about future US moves, one hears a lot of discussion about US special operations forces (SOF). The consensus seems to be that these forces are tailor-made for the unconventional nature and uncertainty of this war. Every war is unique, but if the uncertainty and chaos of the current war are characteristic of future conflicts, it is important to consider potential lessons from SOF’s success. Lessons learned by SOF over the last two decades and demonstrated in Afghanistan provide some signposts for future conventional forces and the ongoing transformation of the US military.

Special Operations Forces in Operation Enduring Freedom: Background and Issues for Congress - Edward Bruner, Christopher Bolkcom, and Ronald O’Rourke. Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, October 2001.  Special Operations Forces (SOF) are elite, specialized military units that can beinserted “behind the lines” through land, sea, or air to conduct a variety of operations, many of them clandestine. SOF units are expected to play an important role in U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and possibly elsewhere as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S. military campaign against terrorists. This short report provides background information and issues for Congress on U.S. SOF units and will be updated as events warrant.

Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and Defense Policy - Stephen Biddle. US Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, November 2002. America’s novel use of special operations forces, precision weapons, and indigenous allies has attracted widespread attention since its debut in Northern Afghanistan last fall. It has proven both influential and controversial. Many think it caused the Taliban’s sudden collapse. For them, this “Afghan Model” represents warfare’s future and should become the new template for U.S. defense planning. Critics, however, see Afghanistan as an anomaly—a non-repeatable product of local conditions. This monograph examines the Afghan Model’s actual role in the fall of the Taliban, using evidence collected from a combination of 46 participant interviews, terrain inspection in Afghanistan, and written documentation from both official and unofficial sources. The author, Dr. Stephen Biddle, argues that neither of the main current interpretations is sound: Afghanistan offers important clues to warfare’s future, but not the ones most people think. The campaign of 2001-02 was a surprisingly orthodox air-ground theater campaign in which heavy fire support decided a contest between two land armies. Of course, some elements were quite new. Precision firepower was available in unprecedented quantity and proved crucial for success; special operations forces served as the main effort in a theater of war. In an important sense, though, the differences were less salient than the continuities: the key to success in both Afghanistan and traditional joint warfare was the close interaction of fire and maneuver—neither of which was sufficient alone, and neither of which could succeed without sizeable ground forces trained and equipped at least as well as their opponents.

Think Global, Fight Local - Robert Kaplan. Wall Street Journal article, December 2003. Two years ago this month, fewer than 100 men of the Army's 5th Special Forces Group, based out of Fort Campbell, Ky. -- almost all of them non-commissioned officers -- essentially took down the Taliban regime on their own. Along with a handful of Air Force Special Ops embeds, they succeeded where the British and the Soviets before them in Afghanistan had failed, because they had been given no specific instructions. The bureaucratic layers between the U.S. forces and the secretary of defense were severed. They were told merely to link up with the "indigs" (indigenous Northern Alliance and friendly Pushtun elements) and make it happen...  Instead of powering-down to a flattened hierarchy of small, autonomous units dispersed over a wide area -- what the 1940 Marine "Small Wars Manual" recommends for fighting a guerrilla insurgency -- we have barricaded ourselves into a mammoth, Cold War-style base at Bagram that drains resources from the fire bases. It is ironic that just as the Pentagon is proposing a more light and lethal worldwide basing posture (with many smaller footprints rather than a few large ones in Korea and Europe), in Afghanistan, whose mountains and tribes make it the most unconventional of battlefields, we have reverted to such an antiquated arrangement.

Special Operations Forces and Elusive Enemy Ground Targets: Lessons from Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War - William Rosenau. Rand study, 2001.  This report explores the role of ground observers in efforts to detect and defeat such forces. Drawing on U.S. experiences during the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, the study examines the challenges associated with employing ground observers to search large areas for elusive targets. The report also suggests ways in which ground observers might be usefully employed during future conflicts. It should be of interest to both aviators and land warriors in U.S. and allied militaries as well as the broader defense community.

The Hunt for Bin Laden: Background on the Role of Special Forces in U.S. Military Strategy - George Washington University's National Security Archive. Ten documents containing a selection of materials from a variety of sources that give background on the structure, activities and experiences of U.S. special forces.  The materials include a history of the inter-service Joint Special Operations Command, a recent posture statement on U.S. special operations forces, a joint Army-Air Force field manual describing guidelines for military operations in “low-intensity conflict,” a critique of the Army Ranger engagement in Somalia, and other documents describing particular missions and tools relevant to the ongoing deployment in Afghanistan.

Special Operations After Forces Kosovo - Colonel Charles Dunlap Jr. Joint Force Quarterly article, Spring . Summer 2001. Although Special Operations Forces will not disappear any time soon, one cannot assume that they will be unaffected by new technology or the post-Cold War landscape. They will change or atrophy. It is not enough to inculcate new devices piecemeal into existing mission concepts to meet such challenges; instead, the SOF community needs to fundamentally reconsider how it will fit into the 21st century security architecture.

Further Research:

US Special Operations Command

Special Operations .com