America’s special operations force is facing an identity crisis

Thank you my friend MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. for posting the taskandpurpose.com perspective that America’s special operations force is facing an identity crisis.
By the way, two of my USMA friends classmates commanded SOCOM in the past - General Joe Votel and General Tony Thomas.

To be honest I expect that the US Special Operations forces and personnel will be able to weather this crisis.

Mission Essential Conversations: The Identity Crisis in Special Forces with COL Edward Croot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPAhSd4wDio



"That’s what a former commander of one of the Army’s top-tier special operations units called Afghanistan. It was a place, over two decades of war, where a generation of special operations units honed their skills carrying out missions ranging from kill-or-capture raids to training Afghan soldiers. With the war in Afghanistan officially over, the U.S. military—especially the special operations community—sees an uncertain future.

“We learned a lot of stuff [in Afghanistan],” says the former Army commander, who spoke under condition of anonymity because he still serves in the military. “We’ve used the lab to hone the tools, but you’re going to pay a penalty. There will be a dividend that we’ll get back in terms of pressure on the force. There is a cost to being constantly deployed. There is also the cost of not being directly engaged in the job you signed up to do all the time.”

America’s secret warriors—who cemented themselves as the nation’s “go-to” force—will need to find that balance in a world where the global order has changed. They will need to pivot to a fight that includes more than just insurgents and terrorists. Experts, from the top of the chain of command to the team room, all agree terrorism isn’t going away, but the world they spent the last two decades fighting has.
America’s special operations force is facing an identity crisis
U.S. Special Forces Soldiers, attached to Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, alongside Afghan agents from the National Interdiction Unit, set fire to a field of marijuana found outside of a compound housing a drug lab during an operation in the Ghorak district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, in 2016. The operation was conducted to disrupt and destroy drug labs owned by the Taliban in the area. Photo by Sgt. Connor Mendez, courtesy of the U.S. Army.

SOF is experiencing an identity crisis, says David Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who specializes in irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. “Joint Special Operations Command’s mission of counterterror is never going away. It is necessary. We’ve raised our counterterror capability to an exquisite level. We’re going to sustain and protect that. The other side is harder to describe.”

But life after America’s longest war for special operations is one of opportunity and provides a return to smaller missions that are just as strategic, if not more, than the big, headline-making battles of the past 20 years. Special operations forces (SOF) will build partnerships with militaries around the world and focus on great power competition—namely countering China and Russia, even as they change how they fight from capture and kill attacks to psychological warfare and influencing local politics.

SOF units are made up of service members from every service. In the Navy, they’re SEALs. The Army has Special Forces—nicknamed Green Berets because of their iconic hats, Rangers, and soldiers specializing in civil affairs and psychological operations. The Air Force special operations is trained to rescue pilots and call in airstrikes. Marine special operations are called Marine Raiders—the nation’s newest SOF community—and can do everything from reconnaissance to commando raids.

Since the 1980s, SOF has gained prominence from pop culture icons like Special Forces soldier John Rambo in First Blood and the subsequent sequels, and shows about Navy SEALs on network TV. This came after high-profile missions like the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, made famous by Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down; operations against rebels in Colombia; leading the assault in Afghanistan on horseback; and finally killing Osama bin Laden in a daring raid in Pakistan in May 2011. SOF has become the icon of the war on terrorism, and, arguably, the bearded, night vision-wearing SOF operator is a new American idol.'

FYI LTC Jeff Shearer LTC Greg Henning COL Bill Aquino SPC Jeff Daley, PhD LTC Dave Duffy LTC Steve Mannell COL (Join to see) LTC Ivan Raiklin, Esq. SFC George Smith MAJ Robert St. Germain COL James Stevens Roach Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. PO1 Robert Payne SFC William Farrell SGM Mikel Dawson CSM Charles Hayden CSM Chuck Stafford

Warfare of the mind.