In Focus with Curtis Fox: Rethinking the Special Forces Mission – Curtis L. Fox

Editor’s Note: Welcome back to our weekly column with former Green Beret Curtis Fox, where we explore the evolving role of Special Forces. This week, he takes a deep dive into ‘Rethinking the Special Forces Mission,’ examining how mission creep has stretched Special Forces beyond their core competencies and why a return to their Unconventional Warfare roots is essential. 

You can read the previous column here.

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Presently, United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) claims that Special Forces conducts Unconventional Warfare, Foreign Internal Defense, Direct Action, Special Reconnaissance, Counter-Insurgency, Counterterrorism, Information Operations, Counter-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Security Force Assistance.

There is no documented history of Green Berets ever conducting Counter-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Counter-insurgency is somewhat of a redundant claim in that it is essentially an amalgamation of tasks that are already captured under Foreign Internal Defense, Counter-Terrorism, and Direct Action missions. Special Forces have conducted Security Force Assistance in the past, but as we will discuss later, Green Beret NCOs don’t prioritize training battalion staff and sustainment personnel. They prioritize tactical training and kinetic employment. The SFA mission gets little to no priority.

Finally, the Special Forces do not really conduct Information Operations. There are a lot of subordinate functions bundled into this term, but USASOC’s Psychological Operations Groups (PO) are designed to carry the torch of Information Operations. As the PO community works hand-in-hand with Special Forces within the same command, it’s very difficult to claim that the Green Berets are anything more than understudies regarding Information Operations.

Just a few years ago, the Special Forces mission set included just 5 basic taskings: Unconventional Warfare, Direct Action, Foreign Internal Defense, Counterterrorism, and Special Reconnaissance. Why have the five basic missions, for which the Special Forces Regiment was adequately staffed and trained, proliferated into nine expansive missions, for which the Special Forces Regiment is understaffed and inexperienced?

The Regiment needs to trim down its missions, reprioritizing for those missions in which the Regiment’s UW staffing and training profile clearly have application. Security Force Assistance, Counter-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Information Operations are not missions that the Special Forces Regiment needs to prioritize. Counter-insurgency needs to be considered an implied task.

In understanding the future role of the Special Forces Regiment, perhaps we should look to the past.

The OSS was formed with a dual purpose mandate: to collection Secret Intelligence abroad and to conduct Unconventional Warfare. In support of Unconventional Warfare, the OSS created the Special Operations branch to organize, train, and employ indigenous guerillas against the Axis Powers, and the Operational Group Command branch to conduct deep strikes and long-range reconnaissance, often with indigenous partners, against the Axis Powers. In 1952, the Special Forces Regiment inherited both of these functions.

Since 1952, it has been exceedingly rare for Commanders to authorize SFOD-As to conduct UW, and it’s clear that SFOD-As do not overthrow hostile authoritarian governments frequently. The UW mission dates back to the famed OSS Special Operations branch and Operational Group Command branch, and UW remains a validated requirement of the U.S. Army and USSOCOM today.

The Green Berets and their historical predecessors delivered unique value by conducting kinetic operations in hostile or denied environments—usually in the enemy’s rear. Green Berets train to conduct full-spectrum special operations without persistent resupply or connection to higher command and control. Close relations with indigenous partners facilitate the Special Forces mission, utilizing local proxies not only as force-multipliers but as a means of shelter and supply.

Special Forces utilizes indigenous personnel as force multipliers to achieve campaign-level effects, conducting Direct Action and Counterterrorism actions in support of the UW mission. The Special Reconnaissance mission is meant to facilitate the introduction of U.S. forces into theater and enable the UW operations cycle. The Green Beret instructor role is an implied task within the Unconventional Warfare (UW) and Foreign Internal Defense (FID) missions, but training rendered to indigenous forces is meant to facilitate offensive action. USASOC must stop expanding the Special Forces mission portfolio.

It also needs to be understood that the Special Forces Regiment is not the only military institution that works by-with-and-through indigenous partner forces.

The Navy SEALs were stood up out of the old Underwater Demolition Teams in 1962. They almost immediately found themselves training ARVN and commandos in Vietnam. SEALs were also frequently tasked to the Phoenix Program, just like their Special Forces brothers, to lead PRUs in raids. More recently, the SEALs were tasked with FID missions in Afghanistan.

The Raiders of the Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) are also tasked similar FID and SFA missions. MARSOC was created on the orders of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld specifically to alleviate some of the mission load on the other USSOCOM components. Marine Special Operations Teams (MSOTs) were designed as an incremental update to the Army’s traditional SFOD-A, and on paper they have nearly identical mission capabilities.

The U.S. Army has also created six Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFABs). Rather than hollow-out a Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of its field grade officers and senior NCOs in order to send military advisors to an indigenous combat formation abroad, the Army decided to create SFABs to support military assistance missions. Each SFAB is a 500 soldier formation, commanded by a Colonel, and staffed with 60 cross-functional teams of 6-8 advisors. The SFAB teams are categorized as maneuver, artillery, combat engineers, and logistics advisors.

The Special Forces Regiment does not have the size and personnel to exclusively control the train-advise-assist mission sets (FID, SFA, COIN, etc.) in an active war. The Regiment was not large enough to cover all of these missions in Vietnam; nor in Afghanistan; nor in Iraq. It won’t cover all such missions in the next war.

The creation of MARSOC and the SFABs is not the slow and steady creep of outsiders into the exclusive domain of Army Special Forces. These units were stood up in recognition that there would never be enough Green Berets to go around.

Supporting UW/FID Through Special Forces Officers on Permanent Station Abroad

Harkening back the practices of the OSS, personnel from the agency’s myriad branches (Special Operations branch, Operational Group branch, Maritime branch, Morale branch, etc.) all worked in the legendary Detachment 101, but they did not report to superiors out of theater. The theater commander Major General Stilwell gave Detachment 101 broad guidance through a regional headquarters. OG teams (a direct analog of modern SFOD-As) in the field reported to these regional headquarters through a local forward headquarters.

The point here is that field grade officers were on the ground, with a permanent presence in theater. They advocated for the mission, deconflicted with the competing interests of other units, coordinated with other U.S. Service branches and Allies (especially the British), set up field hospitals, training facilities, and command-and-control nodes. They were the ones doing key leader engagements with local partisans. They were the ones who most needed to understand the lay of the human terrain. The SO men were standing up indigenous forces. The OG teams were conducting screening actions, reconnaissance, and raids with local partisans. These units were dependent on superiors that understood the regional paradigm to guide their tactical actions.

Special Forces needs to reconsider how it leverages field grade officers in support of the UW mission. Simply rotating Special Forces group or battalion command staff through the TSOC and JSOTF is insufficient. Conducting UW, and especially the FID sub-mission, requires regional expertise, intimate relationships with host nation officers and policy makers, and an excellent knowledge of U.S. interagency stakeholders.

USASOC needs to canvas the State Department, U.S. Embassies, GCCs, and U.S. Allies for opportunities to station field grade Special Forces officers abroad in roles that resemble the good work of Foreign Area Officers. Field grade officers should be building professional contacts in-country, participating in leadership exchange programs, observing training exercises, writing campaign concepts, and refining doctrine. Most importantly, they should serve as regional experts and liaisons for SFOD-As as they deploy to theater. The current manner in which the command staff of a Special Forces group rotates into theater to run a JSOTF under the TSOC simply does not convey.

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Stay tuned for next Monday’s continuation of “Practice of Unconventional Warfare,” where Fox discusses the bureaucratic inefficiencies of TSOCs and 1st Special Forces Command.