Army special operations could see 10% cut
The importance that the special operations community, across all military branches, played in the Global War on Terror contributed to their growth. However, with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the increasing emphasis on the shift towards Asia, the Army is seeing more need for conventional forces and less need for special operations. This move appears to be military wide as the Pentagon is focusing the military towards the Indo-Pacific region.
From military.com:
“There will be some changes which [special operations forces] will be part of. With SOF, it has grown continuously while the rest of the Army has come down,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, told Military.com.
“SOF is going to have to reorient itself and could take significant cuts along with a number of other Army communities,” he said.
The potential cuts, which were first reported by Defense One, would come from enablers, including in logistics and intelligence, but could also include changes to the structure of some Special Forces units that would represent an overall reduction in those forces, the aide said.
The plan, which is still awaiting approval from Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, is being considered as part of a sweeping look at force structure as the Army faces a slump in recruiting and possible reductions in its overall end strength, the aide said. It’s unclear whether the cuts would come entirely in 2025 or be spread out from 2025 to 2029.
“The Army has not yet made decisions on its future force structure. Army leaders are looking at how best to ensure our Army is manned, organized and equipped to deter enemies and win future fights,” Lt. Col. Ruth Castro, a service spokesperson, told Military.com in a statement. “The Army has shifted from focusing on counterterrorism operations to large-scale combat operations, and our force structure will need to shift as well.”
Congress has not been formally briefed on the plan, but “mid- and senior-level officials” in both the Army and special operations community have spoken to congressional offices about the proposal, the aide said.
The potential for cuts to Army special operations has alarmed lawmakers, particularly Republicans, who have argued at recent hearings that it would be a mistake to think those forces will be less necessary in a conflict with China.
“As threats increase, ongoing discussions in the department about cutting SOF budgets and force structure is out of step with the threats and SOF’s growing requirements,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s emerging threats subpanel, said at a hearing last week on the role of special operations in the era of great power competition.
Military.com provides additional information here.
Category: Army
Historically speaking with the Military, losing a skill set / ability usually happens right before needing it again.
Was just thinking of the lessons that history has taught us, but TPTB refuse to remember; specifically, post WWII, the start of the Korean War, and Task Force Smith.
Good old Harry Truman, along with his SecDef Louis Johnson were the architects of that disaster. Take one of the best militaries in the world and give it no funding and no training for five years, it is a wonder they did as well as they did in the first months of Korea. Along with that slimbag Truman doing his level best to do away with the Marine Corps.
Yeah. That butthole
It’s a 10% cut, not 100%.
At a time when they’re having trouble filling recruitment goals.
That is unrelated and anyone who says otherwise is a damn liar.
The idea didn’t age well, I can tell you that.
https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=148432
Mixed emotions.
Will still need them as certain threats will not of away.
But an SFOD – A Team usually does not match up w/ a few tanks rolling in.
Army special operations could see 10% cut
For the big guy?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!🤣🤣🤣
Oh wait, the joke’s on us huh?🤔
Goodbye to all the “D” companies, it was nice knowing you were there.
I’ll play Devil’s Advocate here, as I used to love doing when I worked alongside an 18C and a 37F on the Trail: when does “Special Operations” become not-so-special? The 37F (PSYOP) guy hated my opinion, but then again, he was a ‘roided up bodybuilder that always was short on temper. The 18C stated time and again that many young SF troops going to the Teams were lacking somewhat. You know, quality vs. quantity. When we start mass-producing SOF, there’s something lost. As for that 37F, he’d enlisted when it was an entry MOS. Sometime in the 2000s, it became a packet MOS like SF and Civil Affairs.
My take obviously pisses of some “Special Operators”, but so be it. This Dirty Leg Grunt who did one combat tour in Iraq and one sightseeing tour in Afghanistan is entitled to an opinion. Let’s look at the past 80 years of history…
1943: Paratroopers and Rangers (non-Airborne) were specially trained and essentially SOF. OSS and Jedburgh teams became the basis of modern SF, while frogmen led into the Vietnam-era SEALs that have endured since.
1952: Ranger companies and Airborne (187th ARCT “Rakkasan” to be exact) were given special missions and continued the evolution of SOF.
1966: SF and SEALs were well-established. LRP/LRRP teams and Ranger companies were used to a large extent, even while US doctrine became more dependent on heliborne operations. The days of mass drops and even targeted small-scale Airborne insertions seemed numbered.
1970s: 75th Ranger Regiment is formed. SOF now has a dedicated Special Operations Light Infantry unit to support its Tier One units like Delta (CAG) and SEAL Team 6 (DEVGRU).
1980s-1990s: It’s proven that sometimes it’s just SNAFU, with Operations Eagle Claw and Gothic Serpent. Training pays off but PVT Murphy ensures that we learn that sometimes even SOF can’t overcome poor planning and the fog of battle.
2001: Horse Soldiers…’nuff said.
2023: Green Beret and CJCS Wokeman Milley retires.
Now, I tend to be long-winded and due to the letter count had to abbreviate that a bit. Before catching too much flak, let me say this: I have nothing but respect for anyone who’s served. Green Beret with a Silver Star and 15 deployments? Hell yeah! National guard cook who did six years stateside and was never afforded the opportunity to go abroad? Thank you too man/ma’am.
SOF is an elite community, and I was honored to have done a mission or two with their various forces and have known a number of them, before, during, and after their time in the community. Hell, in PEO Soldier we had a Ranger (incidentally I just hit him up on the BookFace and we’ve been messaging) who, when we went to MG Anthony Pott’s Christmas social made the rest of us E7s look like chumps. We had our MSMs and CIBs (well, two of us), but this guy has DMSMs, valor awards, two PHs, and more. But in today’s military, where the next First is just around the corner and everyone from the Tier 1 CAG guy to the female SF Group Support Supply SGT is considered SOF, how special are SOF as a collective really?
We need trigger pullers. We need forces capable of tackling special missions, with special insertion and extraction capabilities. We need people who are able to train, advise, and assist foreign allies or proxy allies. We also need people capable of being a force multiplier for conventional forces. SOF can’t do it alone and making/keeping the community large doesn’t necessarily equate to it being more effective.
Definitions vary and change with time. “Special” doesn’t necessarily mean “elite,” but it can imply such and is a fairly reliable heuristic – those formations tend to be better funded, with more training opportunities and a stronger unit culture (with many glaring exceptions) than conventional forces – however, that only goes so far. Simply wearing a soft cap and being good at shit is worth so much more than what color of women’s headgear someone wears.
Still, special operations soldiers cannot be created after a crisis occurs. Every time I read about some foreign policy expert advocating a reduction in SOF to focus on conventional forces, I start to doubt how much that “expert” really knows. I highly doubt future warfighting is gonna be anything like they envision.
Conventional forces definitely need better funding and training opportunities – and they need to be able and willing to get rid of their dead weight. Skimming the crème doesn’t make the milk any richer. Periodically cycling some of those SOF folk through the conventional forces – go back to only allowing E-4(p) and above to apply, maybe have every E-7(p) do a conventional turn as a PS before returning to Group as a TS? – might help inspire some of the same mentality in those conventional units while better enabling seniors on both sides to integrate. Spread that experience around in a way that doesn’t feel like punishment. Don’t cut their numbers, raise the standards for everyone else.
In the end its conventional forces that “hold the line”.
I’m not arguing that, just that we may have moved beyond Jomini’s approach and the strategic conventional warfare of the near-future probably won’t look anything like operational conventional warfare of decades-past. AirLand Battle was brilliant and the Big 5 proved themselves – but how much conventional warfare was actually a part of applied US foreign policy compared to less conventional means, especially in regions like the Fulda Gap?
If anything, major powers are going to rely even moreso on proxy actors rather than their own heavy metal, almost definitely in heavily populated areas where the human terrain is anything but an afterthought, and SOF will be in even greater demand.
We absolutely need conventional forces. They are, inarguably, more important for controlling ground than any specialized element. The dichotomy that these planners seem to see between these two forms of warfare, however, is a fiction.
Good point.
We had the Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG) for a good reason, just as we now have the Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB). I’m Army-centric since it’s what I know, but I think that a part of the problem is that we think too much in terms of conventional vs. special forces. AWG was a fairly quiet unit that had good funding (their compound on Fort AP Hill looked nice, and my last SGM had served with them for nearly ten years before their disbanding, while a former 1SG retired as a CSM in the unit). SFAB made headlines when they got a fancy brown beret and–given their mission and force structure–were accused of trying to essentially become SF-Lite.
Not everyone needs a special piece of headgear, and truly elite units can exist in and out of special operations. We need to maintain the truly special operations forces, while trimming the fat of some commands and reeducating ourselves on what “special” truly implies. An SFAB Soldier passes a selection process and works with foreign military forces but is decidedly not Special Forces, while someone in PSYOPS or Civil Affairs conducts a unique mission but should not consider themselves “special” when compared to the trigger-pullers.
I think I’m just too Big Army Infantry for my own good. I think SOF, I think direct action (Rangers/CAG) and dual-purpose fighters/trainers (SF). One of my former peers was a wheeled vehicle mechanic who’d served with an Information Operations unit after having served in AWG and was treated like he was Chuck Norris by some senior NCOs. He had stories for days, which our resident Ranger called him out on. Got it, he served in some “special” units, but that doesn’t make his service as a mechanic any cooler than had he been adding makeshift armor to HMMWVs in 2003.
“‘Special’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘elite,’ but it can imply such…”
I think that therein lies part of the problem. Special operations as a whole encompasses a variety of specially trained units and individuals. Even a career Infantry NCO like me still likes to think of Tier 1 operators when I hear the term “special operations”, but that just isn’t the case. In my opinion, we can afford to lose a few of the more newly minted “SOF” troops, like PSYOP and Civil Affairs. Maybe create a new MOS or implant more of those outlier SOF types in conventional units. We always had liaisons in BDE S3.
I’m an idealist who believes that anyone who completes Jump School should be required to serve in an Airborne unit; that SOF (on the Army side of things) should primarily consist of Special Forces, 75th Ranger for heavy support, and CAG; and that few of us are truly “special”. There’s a benefit to allowing entry-level Soldiers to enlist for SF (18X), and 75th Ranger would not be what it is without junior enlisted. Even as I neared the end of my career, I valued the input of the newest of Soldiers. Hell, even my Drill Sergeant persona would sometimes be amazed at the take a “dumb Private” had on a topic.
Requiring senior NCOs to get out of their comfort zones and serve in a conventional unit could be a good thing. The aforementioned Ranger SFC I served with knew nothing about Big Army, having served in 75th before moving to JSOC when he got too broken down to continue on the line. The former PSG I like to piss and moan about would have been well-served learning something about actually leading Soldiers before becoming an SF/Ranger/Combat Diver qualified Leg Infantry PSG in 3ID. The CAG operator-turned-BDE CSM that was fired shortly after I left would have behooved himself had he accepted that not every Soldier is an elite specimen, and that someone in S2 who barely makes the run can still be proficient in their job.
And “special”… well:
P.S. If y’all have Cat IV enlistees who got out-scored by Koko the ASL-signing gorilla, you know what I mean.
A certain unnamed platoon sergeant in the Corps (1980s) who was a hold over from McNamara’s Morons. He was basically a charity case that the Marine Corps was carrying because they knew he’d never survive as a civilian
I agree that there is a big difference in “eliteness” between various SOF formations, but the reason they’re considered “special” originally has nothing to do with any perception of excellence and everything to do with their representing non-conventional (to include the special category of unconventional warfare) arms of warfighting. It’s not like anyone looks at an STB (definitely not “SOF,” but it says “special”) and says “those guys must be pipe-hitters.” We should never let the uneducated define the terms.
Snivel Affairs and Psy-Poppers are still special operations (I’d even argue the reserve versions’ mission still fits as special-but-definitely-not-elite). Sure, they’re not green beanies, but the nature of their mission remains non-conventional. They (active, at least) do go through selections based around SFAS, if not nearly as rigorous. Lowered bar or not, those who clear it stand out from their non-select peers, which is, by definition, elite.
SFAB might well deserve space under both the “special” and “elite” umbrella (I haven’t personally been impressed , both as they have a selection and in the nature of their mission (there’s considerable overlap between SFA and FID – I’d even argue the MiTT role that preceded it fits as a “special operation”), but the interpretation of SOF has shifted and now often refers specifically to one’s command rather than one’s mission. It’s become more a status symbol than a descriptor.
As a bitter, aging man, I hate unnecessary change and would just rather call shit by its color and consistency instead of claiming any particular shit is any more or less shitty than any other shit – whether it’s baby-poop green or British-pasty tan.
TL:DR – we all do our part, and the best do their best no matter what color their hat is or what anyone else thinks of them.
Well, those civilian DEI administrators and training course development doesn’t pay for itself, you know.
Fro example, from this:
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2980014/the-department-of-defense-releases-the-presidents-fiscal-year-2023-defense-budg/
No price tag listed.
Price tag, along with the required 10%, TBD at a later date
Just my 2 pennies worth, but I think that we ALL are going to need some “Special Forces” skilz before too much longer. Our grubermint does not give one (1) tinker’s damn about us or the country. Just the power they hold and the ill gotten gains they have rat holed in off shore bank accounts. Wonder how hard it was for DiFi to get her camel thru the eye of that needle?
Odd that whenever budget cuts are discussed, it’s always the military that takes the hit. Y’all remember the “Peace Dividends” of years past? How’d that work out? Yeah, not too good, huh. No talk of welfare cuts, foreign aid cuts, pork barrel spending cuts, kongress kritter pay & bennies cuts, illegal alien expenses cuts…need I go one? SOF cuts are 1st ’cause they consider it low hanging fruit for…reasons.
Maybe the grubermint needs to quit worrying about the bogey man of a peer adversary and start concerning themselves with the millions of sleeper agents that are, by now, scattered thru out the country, just waiting. Oh…wait…no! They WANT violence in the streets. They WANT a legitimate to declare martial law and bring in the Blue Helmets to help “restore order”. Phuque these depostic tyrants with a rusty chainsaw, sideways.
If you haven’t already…Prepare
They’ve been cutting Special Operations for over 10 years now. It’s not a surprise.
More likely, the “easier” standards aren’t working to fill slots, so they’re just cutting positions so they can claim they’re at 80+% in units versus 60%.