CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (CSIS)

USSOCOM: FUNCTION AND FOCUS

WELCOME:

JOHN HAMRE, PRESIDENT AND CEO,

CSIS

MODERATORS: RICK NELSON,

DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND COUNTERTERRORISM PROGRAM, CSIS

JIM MIKLASZEWSKI,

CHIEF PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT, NBC NEWS

SPEAKERS:

ADM. ERIC OLSON, COMMANDER,

U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND

KENNETH P. RAPUANO, DIRECTOR, ADVANCED SYSTEMS AND POLICY ANALYSIS,

MITRE CORPORATION

MICHELE L. MALVESTI, VICE PRESIDENT, SPECIAL PROGRAMS,

INTELLIGENCE, SECURITY AND TECHNOLOGY GROUP, SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION

THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010

9:00 A.M. WASHINGTON, D.C.

Transcript by

Federal News Service Washington, D.C.

JOHN HAMRE: Well, you can tell – you know, I always gauge the success of a meeting

by the kind of energy in the room, and we’ve got so much energy in the room, it’s hard to control them. It’s got to be you, Eric. At this hour of the day on the Thursday, normally, people’s blood sugar is so low, they’re sleeping rather peacefully through the procession. Not today; it’s going to be great. Welcome. We’re glad you’re all here.

This is a great opportunity for us, as we continue the Military Strategy Forum. And I do want to say a special thanks to our friends at Rolls-Royce that are able to make this possible for us to do this, for the Washington policy community. Great pleasure to welcome Eric Olson. This is – I’d just asked him – we’d not met before, although I’ve known him reputationally, and I assume any guy with the name Eric Olson who’s from Seattle had to either be Norwegian or Swedish.

And it turns out he’s Cherokee. (Laughter.) I said, okay, so I really kind of blew that

wide open. So much for my ethnic stereotyping. I should have known, however, because he’s got the reputation for being tougher than a woodpecker’s lips. And he’s had every command that you can have in the Special Forces, and of course, is now at the top. And it’s a great opportunity for us to have him here. Thank you, Eric.

You know, this is an important discussion for us to be having, as a policy community that

thinks about national security. I was up on the Hill when the act was created that created program 11. And at the time, it was a Hobbesian choice, because it was a community that was suffering inside a big military establishment that didn’t value it. And then the question was, how do you promote it? You promote it by giving it an independent status and standing, but then it created more structural barriers that we have to work through.

And I think that’s the central question, of how do we integrate a force that’s out every

day – far more engaged than normal forces, and has been, I think, nonstop – but make it part of the whole? And we’re still working on that. And this is why I’m so anxious to hear Eric’s thoughts this morning, and our panelists, who are going to share further conversation with us. So it’s a wonderful morning. Thank you all for coming. Let me turn it to Ozzie Nelson, who’s going to do this for real and give you a proper introduction. Thanks, Eric.

RICHARD “OZZIE” NELSON: Well, welcome, everyone. My name is Rick “Ozzie”

Nelson, and I’m the director of the homeland security and counterterrorism program today. I’ll be the moderator for the first part of our event, which will be Adm. Olson’s remarks, and then we’ll allow the admiral to depart, and then we’ll break into the panel, which will be hosted by Jim Miklaszewski.

Adm. Olson is the eighth commander of Special Operations Command. His bio is in

front of you. I won’t read it to you. After reading his bio, I realized that mine was probably four sizes too big. So now I need to go back and reduce mine. If he can capture his very prestigious

career in such short language, I must be able to capture mine. But basically, he has served in a variety – almost every role – as a special operator, from a staff officer to a peacekeeper to a direct-action individual.

And he is obviously well-respected and is the first Navy four-star SEAL in the history of

the community. We were just talking about that beforehand. After the admiral gives his remarks, we’ll go ahead and go into some questions for the admiral. I’ll be the moderator, which is, I get the one with the big ruler.

They’re questions and answers, not statements and answers, so out of respect for the

admiral and his time, please limit your remarks to a question and give the admiral an opportunity to respond to it. And we will have microphones about, too, so you can ask your question with a microphone. But we are truly honored to have Adm. Olson here, and sir, I’ll go ahead and turn it over to you. (Applause.)

ADM. ERIC OLSON: Good morning. Thank you, Ozzie. Dr. Hamre, thanks for that

kind introduction. I do claim some Cherokee blood, but I also can’t deny my Scandahoovian roots. I am honored to be here with you this morning. Thank you for being here. I relish this opportunity to represent the members of the United States Special Operations Command – all that, that great force does.

My remarks today will follow a simple progression. I’ll begin with an overview of the

United States Special Operations Command, its functions and its authorities, and then I’ll talk about SOCOM’s role in the current operational environment. And finally, I’ll talk about the future environment and how I see United States Special Operations Command fitting into what the United States and the United States Department of Defense do in the future.

At the end of my remarks, I do look forward to an informal question-and-answer period

with you. I’ll be especially eager to discuss what United States Special Operations Command is doing with its budget and its acquisition authorities. My purpose this morning is clearly not to market United States Special Operations Command or special operations forces. The people who serve in the operational units are by far the best representatives of the talent and capabilities that this community has to offer.

I’m more here to educate. The United States Special Operations Command and its

special operations forces are unique within the Department of Defense. Their roles and missions are unique, and we’re unique in how we prepare and present our force to operational commanders around the world who employ them. Much of this is quite nuanced, but I think it’s useful for this audience, especially, to understand it. And I don’t mean to sound professorial in my presentation this morning at all, but I will support any of your requests for college credit when I’m done. (Laughter.)

Let me begin with a brief history of how United States Special Operations Command

came to be and the basic architecture and functions of the command. Some of you lived through this, but it’s worth a review. This will be a SOCOM 101, of sorts. The Department of Defense activated United States Special Operation Command about 23 years ago. In fact, we’re about

three weeks shy of our 23rd birthday. April 16th, 1987, activated at Mac Dill Air Force Base, Florida, where the commander and the staff of the United States Readiness Command were sort of reflavored as the United States Special Operations Command.

The first commander, Gen. Jim Lindsay, who was on his way to take command of

Readiness Command, was renominated and reconfirmed as the first commander of United States Special Operations Command en route. This is established as a result of law – the unified combatant command was created, as legislated by an amendment to the National Defense Reauthorization Act of 1986 often known as the Nunn-Cohen amendment or Cohen-Nunn amendment, depending on who’s secretary of defense at the time.

As a follow-on to the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act, Congress

mandated that a four-star command be established and demanded that it be a four-star command in order to give it true parity with the other unified combatant commands, and that it be established to prepare special operations forces to carry out assigned missions and, if directed by the president or the secretary of defense, to plan for and conduct special operations.

Title X, section 167 of United States Code defines United States Special Operations

Command, its authorities and its responsibilities, which uniquely combine certain aspects of the other combatant commands, the military departments and certain defense agencies. So uniquely, United States Special Operations Command does have its own budget authorities and budget responsibilities through major force program – as Dr. Hamre described it – major force program 11 in the Department of Defense budget.

It is provided separately to the secretary of defense for the purpose of answering those

requirements that are peculiar to special operations in nature, and the commander of Special Operations Command is the manager and executor of that budget. Additionally, we have our own acquisition authorities so that Special Operations Command can develop and procure – and develop includes research and development activities – and then procure special operations-peculiar equipment, supplies or services.

And the headquarters is also responsible for the development of special operations

doctrine, just as military services write their own doctrine, and responsible for the training and education of special operations skills and knowledge, relying on the services for service-common aspects of that. But Special Operations Command, again, is responsible for the special operations-peculiar aspects of training and education.

Before September 11, 2001, U.S. SOCOM’s primary focus was on organizing, training

and equipping special operations force and providing forces to support the geographic combatant commanders of the world – Central Command, European Command, Pacific Command and the like – also supported U.S. ambassadors and their country teams.

This was steady work, kept our operational force employed and deployed about 25

percent of the time – meaning about 25 percent of the force, on any given day, was outside of the United States in support of operational commanders and U.S. ambassadors, mostly conducting theater security engagement activities with counterpart forces in several-dozen countries at a

time, and over the course of a typical year, would have served in 120 to 140 different countries around the world.

In 2004, with the force heavily engaged in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the secretary of

defense and the president expanded the United States Special Operations Command’s responsibilities, and, when finally codified as policy, U.S. SOCOM was assigned as the combatant command responsible for synchronizing the Department of Defense’s planning for global operations against violent extremist organizations and networks.

Synchronizing was not a doctrinal term at the time. Synchronizing needed to be defined.

And so it was defined through the codification process that assigned United States Special Operations Command that authority. And it is essentially the responsibility – synchronization is arranging in time, place and purpose, actions for maximum or optimum effect. But note that I said we synchronize planning; we don’t synchronize operations. The operations themselves are synchronized by the operational commanders, who have responsibility for the outcome of the operations. And in that case, we are clearly in a supporting role and we are a force provider.

The geographic combatant commanders each have a subunified special operations

command, known as a theater special operations command, or TSOC, through which they generally exercise their operational command, their operational authorities. These theater special operations commands are, themselves, commanded by one or two-star special operations admirals or generals who work for that geographic combatant commander, supported by our headquarters at United States Special Operations Command.

And with baseball season just over the horizon, the analogy is that these theater special

operations commands are the catcher’s mitts into which United States Special Operations Command pitches our deployed force. They then receive and employ the force on behalf of their geographic combatant commander bosses.

So as to synchronize the United States Special Operations Command receives, reviews,

coordinates and prioritizes Department of Defense plans that support the global campaign against terrorists and their networks. And then we make recommendations to the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense regarding force and resource allocations to meet global requirements. This is in response to the demands presented by the geographic combatant commanders.

And then in 2008, United States Special Operations Command was further designated as

the Department of Defense proponent for security-force assistance. And proponent is another term without a clear definition. The authorities of proponency are in fact conveyed in whatever mechanism assigns one as a proponent. But SOCOM’s responsibilities in this role are similar to our responsibilities for synchronizing the planning against violent extremist networks.

We assist policymakers in deciding which potential partner nations the United States

military ought to work with, in what priority and in what manner, and then through a staffing process, carefully, in conjunction with United States Joint Forces Command, we receive requests for assistance forces from geographic combatant commanders and make recommendations to the

Joint Staff regarding which special operations forces, which general-purpose forces, or which combination of forces are most appropriate for a particular security-force assistance mission.

This is and will continue to be a very collaborative effort, in which we advocate and

support department policies in direct coordination with our interagency partners, primarily with State Department, but also with USAID, Treasury and Justice and many others. And security-force assistance is emerging as a more powerful term. It is becoming a more coherent path through which our nation can better work with international friends and partners. It is bringing together many disparate, uncoordinated efforts under a single umbrella.

So where, generally, does the United States Special Operations Command fit into United

States strategy? The most recent revision of the national defense strategy includes the need to strengthen current alliances and build new partnerships to defeat global terrorism and prevent attacks against us, our allies and our friends. It includes the need to prevent our enemies from acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction. It includes the need to work with others to help defuse regional conflicts, and the need to transform national security institutions to face the challenges of the 21st century.

The national defense strategy also describes the strategic environment for the foreseeable

future, although “foreseeable future” is a term that I view as oxymoronic. As a global struggle against violent extremist ideology that seeks to overturn or overrun the international state system, it goes further, suggesting that beyond this transnational struggle, we will face other threats including a variety of irregular challenges, quests by rogue states to acquire nuclear weapons and the rising military powers of other nation-states.

Success in dealing with these threats will require the orchestration of national and

international power over years and decades to come and this will have to be done in an unprecedented way. The United States Special Operation Command’s piece of the defense pie lies primarily in our global responsibilities to provide trained and ready special operations forces to synchronize Department of Defense planning against violent extremist organizations and to serve as Department of Defense’s proponent for security force assistance. In order to do this, it is the responsibility of United States Special Operations Command to transcend the boundaries of the geographic combatant commanders.

Before I get more into discussion of what SOCOM does in the current operating

environment, I do need to touch on what special operations activities are. There are currently 12 activities that are specifically assigned to United States Special Operations Command. Most of them are included in the original legislation that establishes they are defined as core special operations activities insofar as they relate to special operations forces. This does not give Special Operations Command ownership of any of these activity areas, but it does mean that within each of these activity areas, there are tasks that are peculiar to special operations in nature and therefore our responsibility to prepare a force to conduct.

These 12 tasks – I’ll just read through them briefly – they are direct action;

counterterrorism; counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction; unconventional warfare; foreign internal defense; security force assistance; civil-military operations; psychological

operations; information operations; counterinsurgency; special reconnaissance; and the catch-all, “other activities as may be specified by the secretary of defense or the president.”

So there’s a few obvious ones in there such as direct action and counterterrorism. These

are clearly bread-and-butter activities within the special operations community but there’s also a few that are more nuanced and I’ll just talk about a couple of them because they and your understanding of them are important to our current operations.

First is unconventional warfare. This is often misunderstood as the opposite of

conventional warfare – it’s not. Unconventional warfare really is a doctrinally defined set of activities that essentially is stimulating and supporting insurgents. When there is a government that is considered illegitimate or hostile that is challenged by a force, then supporting that force is unconventional warfare and this was the case in Afghanistan in the opening weeks of Operation Enduring Freedom, where there was a relatively mature but relatively incapable force in opposition to the illegitimate, hostile Taliban government in place at the time. That was predominantly the Northern Alliance but it was partnered with other forces within Afghanistan and the insertion of a relative handful of 12-man operational detachments – Alpha, Green Beret A-teams – then supported and stimulated that Northern Alliance force and the other anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan in an unconventional warfare campaign that ultimately led to the Afghans themselves evicting the Taliban from Kabul. So unconventional warfare is essentially the flipside of counterinsurgency.

Now that there is a legitimate government in place in Afghanistan, supported by the

United States and challenged by an al-Qaida-supported Taliban insurgency, we’ve transitioned from unconventional warfare to counterinsurgency as an activity in Afghanistan. This counterinsurgency, as conducted by the United States, is primarily through the conduct of foreign internal defense and security force assistance activities. So these include all actions intended to enable Afghan sovereignty and the protection of the Afghan peoples. So one can make the case that al-Qaida is now the unconventional warfare force, stimulating and supporting the Taliban in its challenge against the government that they consider to be hostile to them.

The last core activity that I’ll highlight here is psychological operations: again, a broadly

misunderstood term. It may stir up in certain audiences images of mind control or brainwashing. I call it truth-telling for a purpose: the truth as a matter of law and as a matter of policy and for the purpose of influencing a foreign audience in a manner that is helpful to mission success and generally and most often for mutually-beneficial purposes. It does involve the distribution of information to serve, again, primarily mutually beneficial purposes, including those intended to demoralize our enemies.

So that’s a bit about SOCOM’s roles and missions. I’ll get more into that during the

question-answer period, if you want me to. Now, I’ll get into how we do some of what we do. SOCOM has the responsibility to synchronize the planning to defeat violent extremist organizations and networks. These organizations could be radical Islamic groups; they could be narcoterrorist networks and other non-state actors who threaten the United States. The Department of Defense campaign strategy against terrorism is contained in Concept Plan 7500. This is 750 pages long. It’s top secret in classification but in a brief and unclassified manner I

can tell you that it is the Department of Defense plan, crafted by the United States Special Operations Command, first approved by Secretary Rumsfeld and then by Secretary Gates so it became the Department of Defense CONPLAN. It has authority within the Department of Defense. It is a guiding plan as it affects other combatant commanders and the military services but it is the supporting plan in the interagency environment for combating violent extremist organizations and it is supported by regional plans crafted by each of the geographic combatant commanders around the world. It does provide the framework for two fundamental approaches to defeat our adversaries.

We call them the direct approach and the indirect approach. These are terms that are

making their way into the common lexicon. Although the direct approach focuses on isolating the enemy threats and then taking military actions against them, the indirect approach focuses on shaping and influencing the environment to eliminate local support to or tolerance of terrorists and their activities. So these approaches are independent – they cannot be isolated from each other. They are certainly not mutually exclusive and both are necessary to form the balanced whole.

The direct approach, as you would suspect, consists of those efforts to directly disrupt

violent extremist organizations. This is capturing, killing, interdicting and otherwise destroying terrorists, their facilities, their organizations and their networks in order to prevent them from harming us in the near term. It also denies access to and use of weapons of mass destruction by violent extremist organizations, some of whom have clearly expressed their intent to acquire and use them against us. These operations are conducted almost exclusively by military forces – DOD is in the lead for the United States on the direct approach.

It’s urgent; it’s necessary; it’s chaotic; it’s kinetic and the effects are almost always near-

term and short-lived. While the direct approach is required to mitigate immediate threats, the overall effects of the direct approach are not decisive. The direct approach is a holding action that buys time and space for the indirect approach to achieve its long-term results.

Decisive results come from the indirect approach, in which we enable partners to combat

violent extremist organizations by contributing to their capabilities through advising, training, equipping or otherwise supporting their efforts. It includes efforts to increase other governments’ willingness or improve their capabilities to remove terrorist sanctuaries from their territories; it includes military support to activities intended to erode the underlying causes, the underlying factors that contribute to terrorist activity in the first place: the basic conditions of economic depression, religious extremism, intimidation and more. Though stabilizing the environment impacts the enemy in the long term, it is the concept of draining the swamp rather than attempting to capture or kill all the alligators.

So although the direct and indirect approaches are fairly easy to define in theory, they are

often difficult to distinguish in practice. It is a careful balance that is required and often an intertwining. People, units and capabilities cannot be categorized as either direct or indirect. Some of the activities that they conduct can be categorized as direct or indirect, but only at the time that those activities are occurring and often they occur simultaneously.

The military is in the lead on the direct approach, as I said, and on the indirect approach, the United States military is, to a large degree, pushing from behind. It’s not our responsibility to lead the indirect approach but admittedly, much of the capability, at least in the United States government, to conduct these kinds of activities, the mass and the money reside within the Department of Defense. There’s a balance between the two that, again, has to be carefully executed and this is where you will find the core of special operations: in the balance of effective direct and indirect operations – the combination of high-end, high technology-enabled tactical skills and the understanding of the operational context of their application.

A good example of this is what occurs on most days in both Iraq and Afghanistan:

training with the Afghan national army, Afghan national police, Afghan army commandos, the Iraqi special operations forces at a very high level – training, eating, living, planning, fighting with them. When the counterpart forces fight with us in support, it looks like the direct approach. They look like us; they move like us; they shoot like us. Through night-vision video, it’s difficult to tell them apart from us. It looks very much like the direct approach when they burst into a room in the middle of the night to put the habeas grabus on the bad guys, separate the good from the bad.

The ultimate effect of this, ultimately, though, is enabling partners to combat violent

extremist organizations themselves so that we can leave and they can control their own destiny. That intertwining happens several times a night in several places across Iraq and Afghanistan. It consumes most of our special operations force that we provide on any given day, whether it’s in Baghdad or Anbar or Marja or Farah.

Another example from Afghanistan comes from Special Forces teams living in remote

camps, well apart from any other military force. Their purpose is to understand the local environment, steep themselves in it and contribute to local security by identifying and supporting the tribal and village leaders who are willing to take action against the Taliban. Support in this case comes mostly in the form of schools, wells, bridges and other development projects as rewards for anti-Taliban activities in these villages. As you can imagine, this is very sensitive. It’s quite dangerous and it’s being done every day by special operations troops in their 20s and 30s.

Our nation’s special operations forces are also at work applying the indirect approach

elsewhere around the world. We are typically in 75 to 80 countries on any given day, mostly conducting unit-to-unit engagements and training events. These operations involve the special forces A-team, a SEAL platoon, a Marine special operations team, Air Force combat aviation advisors, often working in remote places with a relative handful of counterparts and for many of the partner nation units, this is the most prestigious training that they will get all year and it leads to some very important relationships.

We do many civil affairs operations, during which our forces work with local leaders and

USAID whenever and wherever possible to determine which schools need to be painted and where wells ought to be dug or what else will bring value to our presence. We normally contract with local people to do the work so everybody wins.

But the key to success in this balanced approach is persistence. Building partnerships is key and it requires the fostering of long-term military-to-military relationships and ideally, these military relationships will survive the temporary vagaries of politics. The decisive effects of our nation’s persistent engagement with partners around the world can be seen clearly in places like the Republic of the Philippines, where for over five years, special operations forces have been advising and assisting that nation’s armed forces in their successful campaign against radical Islamic insurgents who are linked to al-Qaida in their southern islands.

Even more pronounced are the effects of our nation’s persistent partnership and military

engagement in support of Colombian forces, where for over 10 years, U.S. Special Operations Force has been advising and assisting the armed forces of Colombia in their fight against the leftist FARC. In recent years, the Colombian armed forces have dealt serious blows to that organization and as you all know, about a year-and-a-half ago, it culminated in the dramatic rescue of U.S. and Colombian hostages. The significance of that operation is that it was planned, led and conducted and by the Colombians themselves, Colombians who had trained with and among United States special operations forces for several years. It’s a testament to the time and the resources and the efforts that our nation is committed to enhancing their capacity over the last decade.

In order to best train our people and put the people in the right place at the right time, we

do need to have an understanding of our current and future operational environments. United States Special Operations Command headquarters has developed a way of thinking about the future world. We don’t pretend that this is an estimate or a forecast – simply a way of thinking about it. It’s based on trends and connections that we see emerging, a prioritization of those – which ones are positive that ought to be encouraged? Which ones are negative that ought to be challenged in some way?

We see an increasing globalization, complexity and chaos emerging from this thought

model. There is an increase in demand for natural resources beyond oil that is driving people to move and to compete within their regions or around the globe. Regional economies and societies and cultures are becoming increasingly intertwined by the growing global networks of communication and finance and trade. The nature of the geostrategic environment is clearly changing.

Until the end of the Cold War, the bipolar nature of the strategic environment allowed

nation-states to effectively hold global friction points to a manageable level. The security environment was actually less complex but national economies were also less intertwined and less interdependent and more importantly, nation-states themselves exerted control over information that equated to a primacy of influence over their populations.

But today, the strategic environment can no longer be viewed in the pure Westphalian

model of nation-states, although that model will endure as a model of international order for some time to come. Rather, the international complexity, now, has super-national and national and non-state actors competing for strategic influence and access across the globe. The friction produced by the interaction of three dominant factors – these being trans-national crime, violent

extremism and significant migration – are driving much of the way the world behaves and these have become dominant global factors.

The internal controls of nation-states have eroded and sovereignty ain’t what it used to

be. Territorial sovereignty can still be defined and defended to a great degree but economic sovereignty, informational sovereignty and cultural sovereignty are under continuous challenge. In areas where governments are not able to wield great influence over their people or support their basic needs, non-state alternatives are likely to emerge. Individuals may identify less with the state and in some cases, return to historical and enduring affinities of tribal alliances, natural terrain boundaries and familiar cultural norms. They may accept substitute governments that provide structure and process within tolerable limits and the legitimate government then becomes less relevant in these places and the non-state actor then gains local dominance. This is generally a destabilizing factor where it occurs and it is an opportunity for crime and extremism to take root.

United States Special Operations Command deliberately leans forward to ensure that

proper resources and tools are being applied in these regions. We call it “moving ahead of the sound of guns.” As proud as we are of our ability to respond quickly to gunfire when it occurs, we are at least as proud of our ability to move ahead of the sound of guns in order to prevent that sound ultimately from occurring in places that are at risk. Again, last week, United States Special Operations Command forces were present in 79 countries around the world, to the tune of about 12,000 people.

Not surprisingly, about 10,000 – 86 percent – of special operations forces deployed from

the United States were deployed into the U.S. Central Command area of responsibilities – that’s where the most urgent demand is. But while we were deployed to dozens of countries around the world, we were in direct combat in only two of them: Iraq and Afghanistan. We were at risk in perhaps a half a dozen others.

So who actually does this? I’ll talk about that for just a minute. Special operations forces

now total over 58,000 people. About 52,000 of them are in uniform and except for a couple of thousand at USSOCOM headquarters, the force resides primarily within four service components: U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Navy Special Warfare Command, Air Force Special Operations Command and Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command and in one subunified joint command, the Joint Special Operations Command.

Slightly more than half of the total force is in the Army component and the total force

includes many of the forces that you would expect and are aware of. The Army Special Forces are the Green Berets, Army Rangers and the 75th Ranger Regiment, helicopter air crews, rotary-wing aviators in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment – the Night Stalkers.

Its active-duty civil affairs and active-duty psychological operations practitioners are

under the command of Special Operations Command when they are in the United States: Air Force fixed-wing air crews, largely flying the variance of the venerable C-160 Hercules platform but getting more and more into smaller platforms, including the tilt-rotor CV-22, the Special Operations variant of the Osprey, air traffic controllers who can operate independently in remote

areas, pararescue medics in the Air Force, Navy SEALs, combatant-craft crewmen and many submarine operators and Marine Corps raid-and-assault forces and foreign training specialists and then all of the vehicles and airplanes and helicopters and boats and logistics support and intelligence experts and administrative specialists and technicians and instructors and strategists who support that force are within the United States Special Operations Command.

There’s a plethora of other disciplines that give the force its capability and its

sustainability. About four-fifths of our force is active duty with about one-fifth in the Guard or Reserves. This is a significant shift from five years ago: We were about one-third in the Reserve component as opposed to the one-fifth that we are now. About two-thirds of our force is non-career special operations forces, meaning that they serve in the special operations community for an assignment or two over the course of their careers. About one-third is the SOF careerists – those who volunteer are selected, who go through a training program that typically has an attrition rate associated with it and then who earn a MOS – a military occupational specialty – that assigns them to the special operations forces for most of their careers.

Our operators average close to 30 years old. This is significantly older than general-

purpose force units. They are about 70 percent married and they are doing what it is they came in to do. About half of our force has come in since 9/11 and they are doing what they expected to do. At the heart of everything United States Special Operation Command does is the special operations warrior. These are real people who go forth and conduct the difficult and dangerous missions that this nation asks them to do to solve the complex problems, to endure the challenges that make our strategies work. The complexity of the operating environment requires that special operations forces be of the highest quality, that they maintain the highest levels of war-fighting expertise but also that they understand where they are: that they have knowledge of the regional, the subregional, micro-regional environments in which they work.

Too often, special operations are thought of as unilateral, high-risk, one-shot deals.

There are many times, of course, when that is the case. But what’s truly special about special operations is the ability to work with and through others in pursuit of mutually beneficial outcomes to unusually complex situations. And fundamental to this effort is our recognition that humans are more important than hardware and that quality is more important than quantity. In special operations forces, we believe that substance trumps theatrics, that knowledge trumps doctrine, that finesse trumps mess and that presence without value is perceived as occupation.

It is important to be able to accurately predict the effects of our behavior in the

unchanging context of geography, culture and history of the places we go. To do this requires an understanding that we simply don’t have. And we in the special operations forces do pride ourselves on being somewhat more qualified with respect to languages and cultures and regional expertise than the broader military forces. But we remain underqualified in many key languages and dialects and undereducated in many key areas.

We continue to expand these programs. We continually stress the need for a few

individuals to be thoroughly steeped in other languages and other regions. We have collectively termed these projects and programs Project Lawrence, inspired, of course, by T.E. Lawrence of

Arabia, who is an imperfect model but one who does convey a sense of the value of local expertise.

This is intended to produce individual regional expertise in a way that simply doesn’t

exist now so that we can gain and sustain a credible persistent approach in these regions. These initiatives include an exploration of innovative options to permit specialization without sacrificing promotion opportunities or retention. And this is a cultural challenge within our own military.

And as important as retention is to maintaining our investment in people, recruitment is

equally important. We do seek the right people for the right jobs. We hire the best people we can for the jobs that we assign them to do.

One example of this is an initiative currently primarily within the Army. It was

stimulated by a request by Special Operations Command. It was supported strongly by the secretary of the Army. It was approved by the secretary of defense in November of 2008 and it was implemented just over a year ago in February 2009. This is an initiative known as MAVNI, Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest. And under this program visa holders – not citizens, not green card holders – but visa holders who are in the United States for a period of two years are eligible to enlist in the United States Army.

There is a vibrant blog on this. A number of visa holders in the United States are

communicating with each other about the advantages and disadvantages of enlisting in the United States military. But the response has been tremendous. And 14,000 people have filled out the form that indicates an interest in enlisting in the Army; 4,000 of these indicated an interest in serving in or in support of Special Operations forces. Over 800 have now enlisted in the United States Army. A hundred and 72 are under orders to the Special Operations community; 81 have already reported for duty.

All of them speak English as a second or third or fourth language. Eighty-two percent of

them have at least an associate’s degree. One-third of the master’s degrees that enlisted into the United States Army last year enlisted through the MAVNI program.

So if I sound excited about this, I am. It is one that we continue to support and consider

ourselves primary – to be of primary benefit to us. We do recognize that nonmilitary and nongovernment sectors of American society as

well contain specific areas of expertise that are essential to progress in the military campaigns in this new normal. From anthropologists to X-ray technicians, we do have to embrace disciplines and knowledge outside of traditional military fields. We need to find ways to bring this into our world.

The concepts behind balancing direct and indirect approaches and what amounts to – or

what some describe as a global counterinsurgency effort – are not new to how we conduct irregular warfare in many ways. The Cold War was the aberration. And this is back to more

traditional forms of warfare. I’ll quote: “Pure military skill is not enough. A full spectrum of military, paramilitary and civil action must be blended to produce success.

“The enemy uses economic and political warfare, propaganda and naked military

aggression in an endless combination to oppose a free choice of government and suppress the rights of the individual by terror, by subversion and by force of arms.

“To win this struggle, our officers and men must understand and combine the political,

economic and civil actions with skilled military efforts in the execution of this mission.” I’m quoting President John F. Kennedy in his forward to a 1962 United States Army

manual on special warfare, special warfare being the community that ultimately evolved into the joint special operations community that I now serve.

Pure military skill will not be enough. While the ability to conduct high-end, direct-

action activities will always remain urgent and necessary. On the highest end, most technology-enabled man-hunting and thing-hunting operations are conducted by special operations forces. We acknowledge that it is the indirect actions that will have the most decisive and enduring the effects. The balance and intertwining of direct and indirect are key.

And so now I’ll quote Sun Tzu: “There are not more than five primary colors: blue,

yellow, red, white and black. Yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever be seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes: sour, acrid, salt, sweet and bitter. Yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.

“In battle there are not more than two methods of attack: the direct and the indirect. Yet

these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers. The direct and indirect lead unto each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle: You never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?”

And that is the business and the beauty of special operations forces. I am ready for your

questions. I will say upfront that I won’t provide any meaningful detail on specific operations that are being conducted under a geographic combatant commander’s authority, but I am happy to talk about just about anything else you would like to address. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MR. NELSON: Well, thank you, Admiral, for those very, very insightful comments.

And when you hear that encapsulated in such a form, it just reminds us of the range of areas of locations and the range of missions that the special operations community is involved in on a daily basis; it’s absolutely remarkable. And, of course, those of us that follow the community know under your leadership has been instrumental in trying to get the force ahead of the sounds of gunfire. So we appreciate your vision in that area.

With that, we’ll go ahead and get right to questions. So if you could, please raise your

hand and one of our individuals will get you. We’ll start over here with the microphone. Please state your name and where you’re from and then, again, please ask a concise question.

Q: Admiral, Julian Barnes with the L.A. Times. Why – the special operations forces in

Afghanistan were recently put under the direct control of Gen. McChrystal and the regional commanders in ISAF. And what did you think of that move? And why was that an important move to make?

ADM. OLSON: This has been our consideration for a long period of time. In fact, Gen.

McChrystal and I spoke about that before he deployed a year ago. As long as we are holding Gen. McChrystal primarily responsible and accountable for the outcome in Afghanistan, we ought to provide him all of the tools and authority that he needs to carry out his very difficult mission.

I am in favor of unity of command and unity of effort as military concepts. I support the

shift of operational control of the special operations forces that were shifted to Gen. McChrystal’s operational control. This was not by itself much of a change. He already had in our terminology tactical control over the force. He was already the commander who was approving the concepts of operations for the employment of special operations forces in that environment.

But he gained an additional measure of authority to re-mission the force and re-locate the

force by gaining operational control of it. And if he’s got a nationwide fight to undertake I certainly support his – certainly respect that role.

MR. NELSON: The next question in the back, in the gray, Admiral? Q: Good morning, Admiral. Your force has been engaged in very high OPTEMPO

operations for almost nine years. What is the state of readiness? What is the state of morale, sustainability attrition and so forth? And what are your concerns with regard to the long-term sustainability of the U.S. Special Operations force.

ADM. OLSON: Yeah, thanks, Kevin. I used to work for Adm. Green and I’m not

surprised that your question is about the people. So thanks for asking it. The force is really in pretty good shape. It has proven more resilient than we had anticipated. In fact I think that they are personally rewarded by what they see to be the benefits, the outcome of the work that they are doing. Their families are proving to be quite supportive. There is not enough – you know, we cannot do enough to support them but I think for now, by the normal metrics that we use, the force is in pretty good shape.

Our retention rate is higher than it has ever been; recruiting is pretty good; we are

growing our Special Forces and our SEALs and our Marine Corps special operations teams and our Air Force aviators all at an unprecedented rate. I am quite careful to state that our ability to absorb growth is limited to the 3 to 5 percent range because of our internal structures and our need to not lose our soul in the process of growth.

But, given that rate, we can absorb the growth and apply it in the correct ways on the battlefield. Still, I’m not one who believes that we can keep doing what we’re doing indefinitely, but we’re not seeing signs of breakage in the force yet. Thank you.

MR. NELSON: Adm. Green, thank you for that question. With the blue suit right in

front there. Yeah. Q: Hi, Admiral. Justin Fishel with FOX News. I’ve got to warn you both: My

questions are about the CENTCOM region. As you know, the goal is to get to 50,000 troops in Iraq by the end of August. Are we on pace for that drawdown? And how seriously are the special operations forces there preparing for a possible resurgence in violence at the conclusion of this election process? In Kandahar lots of emphasis is being put on shaping the operations. Tell us what role the special ops are playing in shaping?

ADM. OLSON: Your first question is clearly one for the CENTCOM commander

regarding the drawdown in Iraq. What I’ll tell you is that the special operations forces are not experiencing a drawdown in Iraq. All indications including my conversations with Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Odierno is that the special operations forces will be sustained at about their current level. And so supporting them will become – is a continued mission of the rest of the force.

Shaping operations involve a wide variety of activities. I don’t think I have anything

unique to share on that. Special operations roles are, as I described earlier, we generally are working in small units in more remote places getting a sense for the context of the places that we’re working so that our behavior there will have more predictable effects.

We are very closely partnered with Afghan forces. The way that special operations

partners is with the Afghan commandos is an assigned team will train with the Afghan commandos in a schoolhouse environment, go to the range with them, go through a final exercise with them, graduate them and then move out to their assigned operational areas with them in order to sustain that partnership in a very meaningful way. So virtually 100 percent of special operations activities are in support of Afghan partners. And that’s a slightly different flavor of the way that special operations does its shaping activities.

MR. NELSON: Let’s go try this side of the room. And no cheating; one question per

customer. Let’s go with the brown suit right here in the front. Q: Hi, Tim Davidson (sp). Could you just briefly discuss your highest-priority

technology needs for the command? ADM. OLSON: Yeah, thanks, Tim. (Laughter.) We have many. But there are two

flavors of special operations activities. There is the high-tech enabled man-hunting/thing-hunting flavor of special operations. And so finding things, finding people is very important, the technologies associated with finding and tracking with precision.

So that includes a full range of what’s generally known as ISR: intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance capabilities. I don’t mean just unmanned airborne platforms. This is a wide variety of manned/unmanned, airborne/maritime, ground/human censors associated with all of that discipline.

So that’s a very important technology for us. And another important technology for us is

for us to be able to – they are technologies that allow us to be fully interoperable with partners around the world. So this is more – this is less technology development than technology awareness and technology sharing. But it is a very important need for us. Sometimes we will pursue what doesn’t appear to be the most advanced technology, but it’s the most useful technology in the environments in which we work.

MR. NELSON: Okay, great. In the back in the black – the woman with the black shirt? Q: Anne Flaherty with the Associated Press. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is a hot topic right

now. The Pentagon is looking at it. I’m wondering if you can talk about any specific concerns that will have to be addressed among special forces if that ban is lifted and also if you have a personal opinion that you could express. (Laughter.)

ADM. OLSON: All right. Next question? No – (laughter). I don’t think there are any special concerns with special operations forces. Everybody

who comes into special operations forces has already served in one manner or another in the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps. And we accept those people and follow the laws and policies regarding all military people and monitor the management of people by authority.

I don’t manage the people themselves; the services do that. So I’d say there is no

particular issue with respect to special operations forces. MR. NELSON: We have a question in the middle of the room, the gentleman right here

in the brown – green shirt. Q: Hi. Tony Capaccio with Bloomberg News. One of the corollaries you never talk

about is this counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The 2006 QDR called for a greater capability for SOF to detect, locate and render safe WMD. What capabilities have you grown since then to meet that mandate and are they directed primarily against al-Qaida-type organizations or state actors like Iran and North Korea.

ADM. OLSON: The special operations niche, if you will, of counterproliferation of

weapons of mass destruction obviously gets into some very sensitive areas. But what I can say here is that, generally, our business in counterproliferation has to do with locating and interdicting the movement of weapons, devices, precursors, chemicals and other contributors to a WMD capability.

It also includes, to a degree, the ability to handle, to render safe those things that are interdicted. So that is what we do and we’ve grown in both capability and capacity somewhat since the last QDR in those areas.

MR. NELSON: Okay, last question. We’ll go ahead and go to the gentleman in the back

with the blue jacket. Q: Admiral, it’s Mike Levins (sp) from the Times of London. How confident are you

about the relationship that your guys have with the special forces from other NATO countries – not just thinking of Britain, but other ones too?

ADM. OLSON: Yeah, it’s – there are a few military concepts that seem to be catching

on around the world. One of them is jointness and another one is special operations. And of course we embody both. Our relationships with other nations are quite good. I was just – the day before yesterday at the Pacific area special operations conference, which had 19 special operations – 19 countries represented in their special operations community.

We hosted a conference in Tampa a couple of years ago and had 82 nations show up.

The dialogue is robust. We are finding a lot of common ground. There is an emergence in, oh, a dozen or so countries around the world of a Special Operations Command counterpart of some sort.

What we’re seeing specifically that’s playing out now is a transition of the NATO special

operations coordination center into a NATO special operations headquarters. This is in fact an operational command within the NATO construct that will, in an unprecedented way, bring together training and technologies within the NATO special operations environment. My view of all this is quite optimistic. I think we’re pretty good shape internationally with special operations forces.

MR. NELSON: Okay, well, everyone if you could remain seated while the admiral and

his party depart. But, Admiral, it’s an honor and a privilege to have you here. Thank you for your candid remarks. If we’d give you a round of applause, it’d be great. (Applause.)

ADM. OLSON: Thank you. MR. NELSON: So if the panelists could join us up here. (Off-side conversation.) MR. NELSON: Okay, if everybody could please get back – return to your seats – and

we’ll get the second half started and we’ll get you out of here on time at 11:00. Thank you. (Off-side conversation.)

MR. NELSON: Okay, please return to your seats. Thank you. I can’t believe that we lost half the people. We’re not as important as Adm. Olson. But we’ll go ahead and get started. Jim, I’ll turn it over to you to kick us off.

JIM MIKLASZEWSKI: Okay – (audio break) – there we go. You’d think I, of all

people, would know how to do this. Thank you very much, I appreciate it, Ozzie. And before I begin with the introduction, I just wanted to follow up on something that Adm. Olson said – particularly about the way special operations operate and train the individual armed services in other countries and he alluded, particularly, to the Iraqi commandos.

I had the opportunity to embed with U.S. special operations forces and Iraqi commandos

for a week in the fall of 2003, only about six, seven months after the initial invasion and before the capture of Saddam Hussein. And we went out on several nighttime missions. And I can tell you, when our editors got a hold of the videotape and watched these operations – partially in the dark as you can well understand, some with night vision lenses – they did, in fact, have a difficult time differentiating between the U.S. commandos and the Iraqi commandos.

And this is the first time – because we hear so often – that the local force – we’re hearing

it now again, in Afghanistan – the Afghan forces are in the lead when in fact, in most cases, they’re not. But in dealing with these commandos, even at that early stage, those Iraqi commandos had the kind of confidence and even bravado that one did not see in the rest of the Iraqi forces at the time or for some time to come. And I think that is one of the unsung missions of special operations forces that just doesn’t get emphasized enough. That was just a personal note, thank you for listening. And now, I’ll introduce the panel from left to right.

We have Michele Malvesti, vice president for special programs in the intelligence,

security and technology at Science Applications International Corp. She’s a former senior director for Combating Terrorism Strategy at the National Security Council in the Bush administration. And if you haven’t seen her working paper from December on special operations forces, CNAS, I recommend it highly and you should look forward to a much larger work on special operations forces coming up in the next month or so.

And next to Michele is Kenneth Rapuano, director of advanced systems and policy

analysis at MITRE Corporation. He’s a former deputy assistant to the president and deputy homeland security adviser. And we all know very well, Rick “Ozzie” Nelson. So just to follow up again too on what Adm. Olson had to say to open up the questioning – again, relating back to that experience I had with the special operations forces and the Iraqis and the admiral’s emphasis on the nonconventional warfare, the asymmetrical warfare.

Special operations forces clearly appears to be a growth industry. What is the immediate

and long-term future for Special Operations and how can that be achieved in the timeframe necessary to deal with the emerging threats of today?

MR. : (Inaudible.) MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Oh, I’m sorry. We have comments first from the individuals.

(Off-side conversation.) MICHELE MALVESTI: Hi, good morning. I’m Michele Malvesti. I’d like to just point

out, you know, three key challenges for SOF. In many ways, as we can certainly glean from the admiral’s statements, SOF really have been experiencing their most extensive and transformative use in the modern era over the past nine years. SOF really are enjoying a well-earned renaissance period. But they need to seize this moment. And they need to seize this moment to facilitate their continued development and evolution as well as to help fulfill their value to the nation.

I think they’re facing three key challenges that I’d like to point out today – some of them

are external, some of them are internal. First, the first challenge – SOF have become persistent war fighters operating across the globe. But the national security apparatus broadly continues to struggle with how best to apply force in general and SOF, specifically, outside theaters of combat. I think SOF’s core qualities and mission areas, many of which we heard Adm. Olson discuss, provide policymakers strategic flexibility in destructing but more importantly, in preventing threats and challenges that flow from today’s geostrategic landscape.

SOF really face obstacles to expanding their global access and presence in support of

national security and foreign policy objectives. There are many impediments which we could go into. Let me just highlight one. One area is that many policymakers at all levels of government lack an understanding of the full range of SOF capabilities. I think for many individuals at the senior policymaking level, they tend to equate special operations with what the admiral described, perhaps, as the direct approach – almost exclusively with, kind of, the snatch-and-grab missions, efforts to rescue hostages, takedowns, other kinetic-type operations.

And they tend to remain unaware of the SOF warrior-diplomat role or that indirect

approach that the admiral is talking about and the unique, culturally attuned capabilities that special operations forces bring to bear, particularly in working with relevant populations. And this really is a missed opportunity – not just for SOF, not just for policymakers but quite frankly for the nation in confronting key national security challenges. And so common the SOF senior leadership really must better equip policymakers with knowledge of how their engagement skills work and how they can be better leveraged in support of a full range of foreign policy challenges.

The second key challenge I’d like to highlight with regard to special operations is that

SOF have experienced significant growth since 9/11, essentially over the past decade. We heard the admiral talk a little bit about that. And this growth I’ve defined in five different ways. It’s in budget. It’s in manpower. It’s in their overall capacity by virtue of their expanded force structure. It’s also in their volume of work and it’s also in their level of achievement. And I think growth is in many ways very positive but growth can also come at a cost. And there are potential downsides to any growth. And I think that the SOCOM, the senior leadership must continue to manage and guard against any potential downsides with respect to this growth.

This could include, speaking about the volume of work, it could include greater demands on SOF that could take a toll on SOF’s unconventional thinking, their innovative mindset – which really are hallmarks of special operations – or anything that potentially diverts them from maintaining readiness for those missions that only special operations can conduct. One of the points on the evolution – I do just want to point out because it relates particularly to what the admiral spoke about where SOF, I think, you know, still continue to retain a lot of innovation and imagination in their mindset is really looking at the individual as the unit of action and I think that this is a key discriminator for special operations.

I think it will continue to discriminate them and help SOF to be able to go where others

cannot go and do what others cannot do in places where military mass and might and brawn really do not lend themselves but SOF’s skills – in that individual as the unit of action – really is very appropriate.

And the third challenge I’d like to point out – we heard the admiral talk about the list of

12 core activities as they relate to special operations. I think SOCOM and the senior leadership, when they continue to think through and define what the core mission areas are for SOF, they need to think through them in ways that will fully maximize all units, all commands and all skill sets within the special operations community.

I think there has been a tendency to equate, for example, counterterrorism with direct

action. And I think that in a pre-9/11 world, in our pre-9/11 concepts of combating terrorism, that may have been much more appropriate or applicable – tended to think of counterterrorism for special operations in a much more, reactive, high-end role of resolving particular incidents, particular crises – hijackings, hostage takings.

But combating terrorism in a post-9/11 world is really much more expansive. In SOF,

the community itself – as well as their key advocates – should guard against viewing counterterrorism in a way that privileges only direct action as the embodiment of counterterrorism operations because when you do that, you thereby exclude other key activities, such as foreign internal defense, such as civil affairs operations, such as information ops and PSYOPS that really are critical to one of the nation’s foremost national security challenges.

And if those activities, if FID, if Civil Affairs, if PSYOP are not viewed equally integral

to counterterrorism as direct action is, for example, then they are likely to be further deprived of resources, given only perfunctory attention or not performed or employed to maximum effect.

And so those are just three, you know, key challenges for SOF, I think, the SOF

community really is in a well earned renaissance period. But I think that they need to continue to look to the future and how they can continue to evolve as a unified force. Thank you.

MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Thank you, Michele for saving me from my embarrassment and

– MS. MALVESTI: No –

MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: – appearing to at least answer part of my question. (Laughter.) And Kenneth, please.

KENNETH RAPUANO: Hi, I’m Ken Rapuano. This is a very rich area so I’m going to

try to restrain my remarks to a couple of key observations. I think that Adm. Olson really put his finger on one of the biggest challenges that is facing both the special operations community and the broader U.S. government community writ large when it comes to our operations in theater and looking into the future and that’s really balancing these critical values between the primary missions of the SOF community.

One, the more kinetic, essentially, getting those most dangerous alligators in the swamp

to facilitate our ability to go out and drain the swamp. It’s very intuitive and people accept it and are very in favor of it but in the doing is very complex, difficult challenge. The SOF has to take, really, what is the fundamental premise of SOF, which is getting the right people, in the right places to do the right jobs. What a lot of people in the military community call high-value, low-density assets that we simply can’t afford to spread throughout the entire conventional military system.

So we developed the special capabilities, as well as a very integrated approach to

applying them within a special operations community. Very distinctly different missions – that being the direct and indirect mission – yet they are intertwined in a very fundamental way. And it’s navigating that exchange and balance that is proving to be, I think, very, very challenging. We started out with the fairly highly kinetic-centric approach to our operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve transitioned to much more of an emphasis on counterinsurgency warfare.

But by the same token, these direct action capabilities are still essential to what we’re

doing – not only in theater, but to prevent threats from manifesting in the United States as well. So I would address, essentially, two subcomponents of them. One would be the technology piece – we’ve seen a phenomenal evolution of capability when it comes to ISR, intelligence surveillance applications.

So we have now full-motion video, we’ve got a whole variety, growing variety of assets

to provide us pictures and understanding of what’s going on at least visually and we are looking to now mate that with the human features. And, you know, there’s a Moore’s law challenge in the sense of our capability to collect information is dramatically outstripping our capacity to analyze and apply it. And that’s something that’s facing the broader military community and the special operations community as well.

So how do you ensure that those pictures that you’re streaming from a Predator and other

assets are informed by the specific knowledge of that ODA team that’s operating in that area and understands the personalities and the activities? That would be one issue. And I think that there are both technological and human approaches to addressing that. The other is, perhaps, a little bit more controversial, but I think it’s still fundamental to the effectiveness of both sides of the coin.

And that’s the interrogation and the exploitation, the human intelligence piece of what has most been associated with our direct mission, which is the F3AE cycle. If many of you aren’t familiar with that, that’s the “find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze.” And that’s a process that was really pioneered by the special operations community, in terms of unifying all those elements of intelligence – human, material exploitation – and then follow up action into a single operating authority, so you are able to rapidly capitalize on information associated with terrorist networks, roll them up and then continue the cycle.

What we’ve seen, for many reasons that I think obvious to this audience, are very, very

serious restrictions on our ability to exploit human intelligence. And you’ve seen a coincident reduction of capture operations and a commensurate, significant increase in kill operations. So on the one hand, that’s very satisfying for many people. On the other hand, we are losing capability, both within the military operational community and the broader intelligence community, to better understand the networks, their plans and capabilities.

That would be – this would be an issue that many would say is just outside the pay grade

of SOCOM and the military, and in fact, that is the case. But it’s an area to be sensitive to and be educated on. The pendulum has swung, based on the lack of training and oversight that resulted in abuses like Abu Ghraib, to a situation now where there are such tight restrictions on detainee operations and interrogation operations that many in the military community, as well as the intelligence community, feel that we’ve dramatically undermined our capability to get visibility into the intentions and operations of the adversary. So with that, I’ll leave it at that and we can follow up on the discussion.

MR. MIKLASZWESKI: Ozzie? MR. NELSON: Great, thank you. I’m going to bucket mine similar to what Michele did,

too. In baseball, batting third is kind of prestigious. In think-tank world, I get to fill all the gaps that were not already talked about. So my comments will be slightly shorter and I’m going to look towards the future of SOF here, as well. I mean, it’s important to obviously talk about the ongoing operations, but there’s really an opportunity, as Michele said, for the force to kind of redefine itself and set itself up for future success. And I broke those categories down into three: strategic integration, operational transition and management of the force.

On the operational transition, for SOF really to take advantage of this position it’s in

now, where it has a lot of clout and has been very, very effective, it needs to take the next step in how it’s going to operate outside of the Title 10 battle areas. And that’s going to require some very difficult questions to be asked and some assumptions to be challenged. The U.S. government, for better or for worse, executes geographically and SOCOM is a functional command. And so, when we’re executing geographically, as much as that may or may not be a good way to operate in today’s transnational world, filled with transnational threats, it’s something that they have to deal with.

So all of the departments and agencies, clearly, are going to execute geographically. And

SOCOM has to figure out a better way – the special operations forces have to figure out a better way – to leverage that construct. Some of the ways this is going to happen, and that they can

improve upon, is their integration into the interagency. They need to do a better job, in my opinion, of integrating into the interagency. On one hand, the SOF forces have led the U.S. government, particularly the military, in IA, interagency integration.

On the other hand, they’re not taking full advantage of that and I think that they could do

that further – fill up the IA billets outside of the intelligence community, have a larger presence in some of the other areas. And the presence in those departments and agencies can’t be under the premise that we’re going to get those departments and agencies to do what we want them to do. I always joke that DOD interagency was always a view of, we’ll get the rest of the government to do what we want.

That’s not interagency coordination in a true sense. It’s, how can we help you? As Adm.

Olson said, how can we be the supportive force? And then they need to fill those billets, those individuals, with actual operators – people that understand the special operations community. A lot of times those LNO billets, or those inbeds, are individuals that don’t have a lot of background in SOF and that’s something they need to revisit.

Also, along those same lines, and this is probably the most critical aspect, is the role of

SOF inside the missions – chief of missions – inside the embassy teams. We’ve had a very long debate in the last years, you know, about whether – who should be in control of those military forces inside a foreign country and whether the chief of mission should have any authority over that. If SOF forces are going to get this cultural experience and this language, and get integrated, that is not something that we can do in a periodic or episodic fashion, in which they show up to conduct a small exercise and then depart.

The level of understanding requires you to be embedded in that country over a long

period of time, to develop the relations, to establish the culture – to establish the presence. And that persistent presence is something that SOF is going to have to work with the rest of the interagency on to establish. And one of the things they’re going to have to consider when they do that is, one, is it going to be appropriate at any time in the future for those forces to fall under chief of mission authorities. And that’s something that they need to consider. We’re very, and DOD is very – likes to encourage others to give up their responsibilities and authorities, but sometimes we’re hesitant – DOD’s hesitant to give up their authorities and responsibilities.

For the management of the force piece, I think it’s very, very important. Obviously, folks

have touched upon the fact. They have they have to balance this need between being high-tech and low-tech simultaneously. You know, it’s low-tech relationships that are developed with the high technology that allows them to have a strategic effect with tactical actions. But what they need to do – I think SOF again, needs to do – take an opportunity to do a little better job of saying no.

You know, SOF takes a lot of pride in being the ones that can solve any problems and

take on any mission. In this environment, it’s very difficult to say no. And I think they need to do a little better job of saying that, so they can focus on their core tasks. Because they have some core tasks that nobody else in the U.S. government is relied upon to do and when those

tasks come to bear, or need to be done, they need to be successful. And they need to focus on that.

And then also with their growth, a lot of the SOF growth has not been in operators. It has

been in support forces and in enablers and in the civilian personnel. And I think that there’s going to be a need for them to develop a career path for individuals that are SOF enablers, SOF supporters. It’s going to have to happen. And I also think along the lines of civilian career opportunities, there’s not a civilian career path for those that are involved in the SOF communities. And those individuals are going to become even more important in the future.

And then, lastly, Michele talked about this a lot – the strategic integration. I think she’s

absolutely right about SOF not being appropriately integrated into the national decision-making process. I think they have a unique position, again, because they can take tactical actions that have strategic effects. So I won’t go into any more of that. But I also think there needs to be some changes, or some considerations to the train-and-equip mission. Clearly, SOF is the – SOCOM is the only entity that has a train-and-equip function but doesn’t have a standing service to support it, or for oversight. I’m not recommending that that should take place.

I do think that an assistant secretary in OSD is probably not the level of support that they

need to ensure that SOF is properly integrated into national security decision-making and that something we may want to consider is elevating the status of that billet. But I’ll go ahead and leave it short and turn it back over to Jim. And we can get into some questions.

MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Okay, please, as before, if you could identify yourself. And

please – I’ve been asked to say this – please state your question in the form of a question and not some kind of personal mission statement. If you would, please. So any questions? Yes, ma’am.

Q: Sharon Pickup, GAO. I was interested to hear, Michele, your comment about

policymakers and, you know, their level of understanding and knowledge of SOF and SOF capabilities. Because I would have thought that, maybe not the opposite, but maybe not quite as what you said, given the operational experience.

Because, as you know, when you have an ongoing operation for almost a decade, there’s

a lot more interaction with the capabilities, particularly at the policymaker’s level. So I’m just curious if you could expand on your comments because I would have thought that you would have said that there would have been a greater understanding, given the fact that we’re in a decade, now, almost, of ongoing operations where SOF had been heavily involved.

MS. MALVESTI: Sure. I think my comments – and I apologize if I was not as nuanced

as I should have been – were geared more towards the indirect side of the house, to use Adm. Olson’s terminology. And I’m talking at the very senior levels. I think policymakers – a lot of individuals serving in country teams, who’ve had the opportunity to work with civil affairs, who are working in countries with the embassies, the military information support teams, the MISTs – but not all policymakers.

If you look at the broad span of policymakers, across all departments and agencies, at very senior levels, they don’t have the opportunity to work very directly with the culturally attuned warrior-diplomat side of the house for SOF. Many of the very high, high senior policy-level meetings, certainly over the course of the five years that I sat at the White House, dealing with special operations, decisions to apply SOF outside of declared theatres of combat dealt more with that, kind of, commando side of the House – in terms of highly kinetic, high-end operations.

And so policymakers may have a better sense of that skill set for the special operations

community. But I don’t think that collectively we have thought through, for example, how to properly and fully leverage and utilize the full range of the culturally attuned, diplomat side of SOF: for example, to help shape and stabilize an environment, to then allow for the dedicated, follow-on use of development aid and assistance, for example. And I just don’t think that the senior-level policymakers, who are dealing with very specific, high-end time-sensitive issues as they relate to SOF are really only becoming very familiar with one part and one skill-set inside SOF, and not the other side of the house.

MR. RAPUANO: I would just quickly add to that, to say that there’s just a natural

tendency to look for near-term results the more senior you get in government. And of course, the direct action side, particular when it’s addressing what are considered potentially imminent threats, get a tremendous amount of attention. The longer-term, more nuanced set of capabilities necessary to address more of the fundamental causes, versus symptoms – it’s just more complex. It’s a large elephant. There are many hands on it. And it takes more time and effort to get that understanding.

Q: Tim Davis, and this is for Ozzie. Could you please expand on your remarks that you

need something beyond a Title 10 authority for SOF? You kind of threw me out on that one. I don’t understand that.

MR. NELSON: No, I apologize if I talk too quickly sometimes. I didn’t mean beyond a

Title 10. What I said is – what I was trying to articulate is that, you know – we were talking about comments about the ASD SO/LIC?

Q: Your opening. MR. NELSON: Oh, beyond Title 10, I’m sorry. I’m talking about outside of the

declared war zones, Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s what I meant. Q: They have that. MR. NELSON: Well, I know they have the authority, but how they operate in those

authorities is what I’m talking about. Q: I understand where you’re going with that, but they’re operating, you said, in 88

countries. So what exactly –

MR. NELSON: It’s how they’re operating in their company – in those countries. I’m arguing for a more persistent presence in those countries, a more established presence. Something that’s not based – a lot of those relations and those operations and those countries are based on mil-to-mil exercises that are scheduled and that’s the extent of it, in many cases. What I’m suggesting is if you want to have the culture of expertise, if you want to develop the relationships, it’s going to require a long-term presence in those embassies. So that’s what I was trying to capture there.

Q: Thanks. MR. RAPUANO: And I don’t mean to embarrass you, Kim, but for those of you who

know Kimberly Dozier as CBS correspondent, she has just recently taken a new position in terms of the chief intelligence correspondent for Associated Press.

Q: Thank you. Last Thursday – MR. RAPUANO: Congratulations. Q: Thank you very much. And so I’ll ask an intel question. Maj. Gen. Flynn, Mike

Flynn, recently came out with a controversial report published by CNS, which also published Michele’s recent report. And he talked about how he needed to shake up the way the military gathered intelligence in Afghanistan because it had been too CT, direct-action oriented. Gets you the background on all the Taliban and al-Qaida activists throughout Afghanistan, Pakistan, such as they could reach there – and that he needed more COIN-centric information. He wanted to know the price of fuel in the marketplace.

Now, he’s gotten a lot of grousing from operators since then, saying, well, you know, that

was the mission then. Don’t criticize us because the mission has changed and that’s what we were doing. There’s also a question of, well, if you switch all your resources to getting the kind of information he’s asking for, where do you get the intel to get OBL? So where do you all come down on that?

MR. RAPUANO: I would say that that really gets to the heart of the tension, not only in

terms of the roles and responsibility when it comes to all the different functional areas of intelligence, but who’s doing what to whom, within not only the U.S. military, between white SOF, black SOF, conventional forces, but then NATO and ISAF. There’s a lot of collection apparatus out there and you need to think about where do you apply what level of asset to collect what type of intelligence or information? You know, that may not be the area where you’re getting the most return on investment from very unique and specialized assets, but what’s the collection plan?

And I think that’s something that Gen. Flynn has been working on, in terms of better

integrating collection amongst all these disparate units, in a more collaborative fashion. Because there are only so many resources and then, once you collect that, where is it fused? How is it analyzed and disseminated? They’re challenges that they’re dealing with. So I would argue that he’s making a very important point. It is important information to support the longer-term COIN

operations, but it shouldn’t – it can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done at the expense, in my view, of intel and information supporting more direct action for more imminent threats. So it’s a question of governance and a question of integration and coordination.

Q: I would follow up, isn’t that was the fusion centers were supposed to be all about? So

why create a parallel system? MR. RAPUANO: Are you talking about the targeting fusion centers? Which – fusion

center’s a very popular concept today and – Q: That’s what operators on the ground say to me, that we have the fusion centers.

That’s where we join; that’s where we’re gathering and sharing all this intel already. Why does Flynn want to create a parallel universe of intel outside of the fusion centers? Why not just add in?

MR. RAPUANO: Well, my experience may be a little dated at this point. I did an

active-duty tour serving Gen. McChrystal and working with Gen. Flynn from the end of ’06 into ’07. In fact, that was – one of my responsibilities was setting up the targeting fusion centers, which was about fusing intelligence collection amongst all these various elements in the field. But the focus was on the HVT mission there.

Now, again, this was prior to Gen. McChrystal coming on board as the commander and

the increased emphasis on COIN, but then it does get to a capacity question. If you’re combining both the HVT mission with the broader COIN mission in terms of collection, you’ve dramatically expanded your requirement and then you need to think through. Are those fusion centers the appropriate locus for that collection, or are you going to do it in another fashion?

Q: Excuse me, if I could, I’d like to go back to my original question. We’ve heard from

Adm. Olson talking about persistence. You, Ozzie, mentioned persistence. You, Michele, are talking about a renaissance and all the additional requirements. And we’re looking at a growing threat in terms of asymmetrical warfare. Well, first of all, my experience is we just don’t have enough of these guys. I’ve watched them work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia and I’m just wondering, can any administration – this one in particular, right now – pony up the kind of commitment and cash necessary to grow special operations? Is that possible in the near-time future and what’s going to be required?

MS. MALVESTI: I think, again, growth is good. But always, again, growth to do what?

And if you currently have 86 percent of the force in CENTCOM in direct support of – you know, primarily within two declared theatres of combat – the limited numbers and percentage of SOF who are operating across the world is very restricted. You know, I think the admiral has said 74 countries around the world. Part of this, though, is not having the persistent presence and engagement.

Again, I don’t think that – it’s not necessarily unique to SOF. I think the military as a

whole has yet to think through how best to incentivize a career path that keeps individuals in countries long enough to sustain long-term partnerships, relationships beyond just TDYing

individuals. I don’t think SOF needs more temporary presence. I think they need more persistent presence, you know, across the globe.

But you do have, you know, very, very small percentages of SOF operating around the

world. I think I actually have the statistics here. If you have 86 percent in CENTCOM, we currently only have 6 percent in PACOM, 4 percent in AFRICOM, 2 percent in EUCOM, another 2 percent in SOUTHCOM and less than 1 percent in the NORTHCOM AOR. And I think that this mass concentration within one, you know, within CENTCOM and again, across Iraq and Afghanistan, really comes at a cost for the engagement and the culturally attuned capabilities that SOF can bring to bear elsewhere.

It’s just, I think, it’s growth, but not just growth to have more, necessarily, individuals,

you know, concentrated en masse. I mean, worldwide presence and engagement has been a touchstone for SOF for many years. This concentration over such a long period of time, though, is coming at a cost in terms of engagement elsewhere, so it’s again, growth – but growth to do what and to be where?

MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Well, but as we’ve seen recently, so many of these threats –

extremist threats – have been popping up in other countries, where SOF is not located. And my impression, at least, is: It is the objective of SOF to head off the extremists before they get a foothold, before they come to some kind of power, where they can take out their actions militarily.

MS. MALVESTI: Yeah, absolutely. MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Well, then, how does SOF balance that? MS. MALVESTI: Part of it is also what the requirements currently are – the military

requirements are – in terms of the geographic combatant commanders and where they are, currently, in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ll let Iraq – I mean, I’ll let Ozzie and Ken speak to that as well.

MR. NELSON: No, I think it’s a great question, obviously. And you know, it’s one of

the reasons why, I think, SOF has to say no more often. Because there were a lot of missions that I saw firsthand in Iraq and Afghanistan that I felt, you know, could have been done by the general-purpose forces. And because SOF is so good at what they do, there is a tendency by the operational commanders to want to use them in some of these missions.

And I think that SOF needs to regain some of that ground as far as their uniqueness and

their specialty, so that they can do exactly what you said, Jim – so they can employ themselves better in other fronts, and just like the admiral said, to get ahead of the sound of the guns. And the other issue was growth. I agree with Michele. I’m not sure that more growth is necessary. I think that if you’re going to have more growth, again, we have to distinguish between the operators – you know, the actual trigger-pullers themselves, so to speak, and then support infrastructure.

Because as you have this global presence – and SOF is a global force – it’s almost going to be as important. Detail is very, very long on logistics. Detail is very, very long on ISR and all those capabilities and assets. And you don’t need a special operator to conduct those kinds of activities. You need someone familiar with the special operations community, which goes back to my earlier comments about the importance of developing a cadre of nonoperators – non-trigger-pullers – that understands the SOF community in those global support functions.

MR. RAPUANO: I would just add to both sets of comments that it really does come

down to specialization in the sense of, we’re growing SOF, but when you look at what the resource requirements are for counterinsurgency operations, they’re very, very large. And I think that’s why heretofore you’d seen a prioritization of the high-value, direct mission set. Because it’s much more focused and you get much higher return on investment in the sense of, you don’t need to apply this fertilization resource, essentially, that you are in COIN.

But by the same token, we’re growing COIN capabilities throughout the conventional

military force, so it does come back to governance and coordination. Where are you going to get the best return on the more specialized assets within SOF, versus all of these developing and growing counterinsurgency capabilities and awareness within the conventional force? And then, finally, you’ve got to have a better prioritization process. We simply cannot do everything, everywhere.

And I think that when it comes to mission prioritization, the SOF community is

struggling because they do have such a worldwide presence. They have a worldwide mission. Yet on the other hand, they are very focused in terms of the lion’s share of the resources to CENTCOM theater of operations. And you can’t do everything, everywhere. You’ve got to make some hard choices. And I think that we’re going to have to do that. We’re never going to be able to grow SOF to address all of our concerns throughout the world when it comes to insurgency and extremism. It’s just not going to be possible and we need to accept that and prioritize.

MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. Q: Hi. John Gruen, Lockheed-Martin. When we were talking about the better utilization

of SOF forces and maximizing their use, as Ozzie mentioned, the SOF enablers and the services picking up some of that slack, it easily could be termed irregular warfare – a new term of the day. Making general-purpose forces more SOF-like – do you see the services taking that on board, or are they resisting your opinion on that?

MS. MALVESTI: I’ll answer part of the question and then I’ll let somebody else take a

different stance on it. I’m not sure if so many people always talk about SOF-like. I’m not sure that even individuals outside of SOF know what that actually means. I think special operations has become all things to all people. I would say that the general – and I’m certainly not – I have no expertise on the general-purpose forces per se – you’re right. If you look even at the 2010 QDR, you see general-purpose forces taking on or being assigned to develop competencies in areas that, quite frankly, were once almost the sole province of SOF.

Also, just by virtue of nine years on a battlefield, their proficiency – their technical proficiencies – are starting to slowly close the gap between SOF, you know, kind of direct-action type capabilities. Now, whether or not – how far away the general-purpose forces are from developing true core competency in SOF-like missions – I think they’re probably a long way off. But I would say, you know, competition’s good. It may be good for SOF.

This will help them retain innovation and imagination, you know, to see, perhaps,

individuals starting to take on particular areas. Rather than think of it in terms of, let’s start divesting of particular missions – I mean, I think it’s important to shed work in operations of marginal value – but, you know, a little competition’s always good. And I think if it helps SOF to be imaginative, to remain innovative in how they’re going to approach mission sets, I think that’s a good thing.

MR. RAPUANO: I would just add to that. I mean, I think the big discriminator for SOF,

traditionally, has been very significant technical capabilities and enablers, very intense, specialized training, the experience and maturity of their force. And in certain of those areas, you have seen a closing of the gap with conventional forces. When you look at the enablers that are available, now, to the standard infantry platoon in the Marine Corps or the Army, some of those exceed what our tier-one SOF forces had 10, 15 years ago.

So the capability of the conventional force has increased dramatically. The combat

experience level and training, at least for the types of missions that we’re working on in theater, has improved substantially. They’re still – you don’t have the same maturity and experience when you compare the average special-operations operator to the standard infantryman, but you do have a significant closing of the gap. So it really does get back to, how are you going to apply the differentiated value of the special-operations community to give you the best return on that investment and then leverage the conventional force to start filling that gap?

Because the gap also reflects a significant expansion of mission, particularly when you

get into the counterinsurgency realm. Because the counterinsurgency mission is never-ending and it’s worldwide. And we see it growing. So that’s something that the SOF community is never going to be able to address all of. They’re going to need to focus at those areas and those locations, with those populations, where we feel the combination of the greatest threat and likely return on investment from the investment of those assets.

MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Please. Q: Hi, Paul Dennem (sp). What do you think are the top two or three gaps that the

warfighter needs to address in terms of C4ISR? If you could fix two or three things, you know, both for indirect and direct action – you know, in the field as well as in the operations center – what would those top three, four things be?

MR. RAPUANO: Well, certainly one of them is tacking and tracking, in terms of targets

of interest. The other is, in my view, it gets back to this Moore’s Law challenge, in the sense of, we are collecting, by orders of magnitude, more data with the employment and deployment of more and more of these assets. And it’s the ability to digest it and apply it that is just a

tremendous challenge. So how do you get the information of most relevance in the hands of the operators who need to apply it?

Because what we’re doing, in effect, is we’re drowning the operators in information and

they can’t handle it. They can’t digest it. You know, you can give a lot of technology to that E-3, E-5 in the field, but there is a saturation point where he cannot absorb it. And we’re got to be developing both the technology, as well as the processes to better discriminate and filter the information that we apply to the warfighters. And it’s not an easy challenge

And it does get that human element, in the sense of, all this data – in terms of ISR in

particular – it’s the significance of the information. So you’re seeing patterns. You’re collecting more information on patterns and individuals and potential TTPs, but if you’re not applying, throughout that system, the human knowledge that we’re gaining through our presence – both from the special-ops community as well as the conventional forces – and then all the other, whole-of-government set of players that are involved – if you’re using it and applying it where it matters most. You know, we’re developing tremendously better capacity, but not necessarily better capability.

MR. NELSON: Yeah, I think Ken’s exactly right. I mean, I would – number one is, you

know, unmanned UAVs, unmanned aerial sensors still remain huge. I still am completely perplexed why we, as a nation, have been unable to product the number that we need to cover the battlefield. And then just tagging and tracking the unmanned, unattended sensors, I think, is significant as well.

But then, ultimately, it is – it’s the data. And it’s not just the ability to mine the data.

Ken is exactly right about that. It’s also the ability to integrate the systems. I mean, we still have – we can’t even get the data in the same data space, you know, or we have NATO data; we have intelligence community data; we have Special Operations Command data. And they’re not – assistants aren’t even physically talking to each other, so you can’t even do a legitimate search in a data mine until you get that together. So those are probably all the three top priorities from my perspective.

MR. MIKLASZEWSKI: Okay. (Applause.) Thank you very much. We appreciate it. (END)