[Senate Hearing 117-957]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-957
UNITED STATES SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND'S EFFORTS TO SUSTAIN THE
READINESS OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES AND TRANSFORM THE FORCE FOR
FUTURE SECURITY CHALLENGES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
of the
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
April 27, 2022
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services
GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT
Available via: http: //www.govinfo.gov
_______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
59-762 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JACK REED, Rhode Island, Chairman JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York DEB FISCHER, Nebraska
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut TOM COTTON, Arkansas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
TIM KAINE, Virginia JONI ERNST, Iowa
ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia RICK SCOTT, Florida
TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
MARK KELLY, Arizona TOMMY TUBERVILLE, Alabama
Elizabeth L. King, Staff Director
John D. Wason, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
MARK KELLY, Arizona, Chairman JONI ERNST, Iowa
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire DEB FISCHER, Nebraska
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
TIM KAINE, Virginia RICK SCOTT, Florida
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan TOMMY TUBERVILLE, Alabama
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
April 27, 2022
Page
United States Special Operations Command's Efforts to Sustain the 1
Readiness of Special Operations Forces and Transform the Force
for Future Security Challenges.
Members Statements
Statement of Senator Mark Kelly.................................. 1
Statement of Senator Joni Ernst.................................. 3
Witness Statements
Slife, Lieutenant General James C., USAF, Commander, Air Force 4
Special Operations Command.
Braga, Lieutenant General Jonathan P., USA, Commanding General, 9
United States Army Special Operations Command.
Howard, Rear Admiral Hugh W., III, USN, Commander, Naval Special 14
Warfare Command.
Glynn, Major General James F., USMC, Commander, United States 21
Marine Forces Special Operations Command.
Questions for the Record......................................... 43
(iii)
UNITED STATES SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND'S EFFORTS TO SUSTAIN THE
READINESS OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES AND TRANSFORM THE FORCE FOR
FUTURE SECURITY CHALLENGES
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2022
United States Senate,
Subcommittee on Emerging,
Threats and Capabilities,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:36 p.m. in room
SR-232A, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Mark Kelly
(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Committee Members present: Kelly, Kaine, Peters, Ernst,
Fischer, Scott, Blackburn, and Tuberville.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MARK KELLY
Senator Kelly. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for
being here. The Emerging Threats Subcommittee meets this
afternoon to receive testimony from the leaders of the U.S.
Special Operations Command service components. We look forward
to hearing how you are shaping our special operations forces in
line with the priorities laid out by the National Defense
Strategy (NDS) and what more we can do, what we can do, to
ensure the readiness of your forces for the range of missions
they may be asked to conduct in coming years.
First I would like to welcome our witnesses today:
Lieutenant General Slife, Commander of U.S. Air Force Special
Operations Command (AFSOF); Lieutenant General Braga, Commander
of U.S. Army Special Operations Command; Rear Admiral Howard,
Commander of Naval Special Warfare Command; and Major General
Glynn, Commander of U.S. Marine Forces Special Operations
Command. I also hope you will pass along our sincere
appreciation for the service and sacrifice of the approximately
74,000 men and women of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
and their families.
The special operations community has achieved so much for
the Nation in the last 20 years, but it has also borne a
significant burden in doing so. As our strategic priorities
evolve, we must never forget the people that make our special
operations capabilities so effective. As SOCOM commander
General Clark stated during his posture hearing earlier this
month, ``Special Operations Forces (SOF) creates strategic,
asymmetric advantages for the Nation across a spectrum of
conflict. Their enduring value resides in the ability to adapt
and to combat asymmetric threats, including in the gray zone,
employ precision and surprise to achieve strategy effects in
conflict or crisis, build access, placement, and influence
through sustained partnership with foreign forces, and support
allies and partners' resilience and resistance efforts, all
providing discreet options when conventional action is
impractical or not desired.''
General Clark's testimony builds upon the recently released
Special Operations Forces Vision and Strategy that lays out an
ambitious, 10-year roadmap for realigning special operations
capabilities to support the National Defense Strategy.
The threat posed by violent extremists remains present and
our SOF will remain at the forefront of keeping pressure on
terrorist networks to prevent them from conducting attacks
against our Homeland and interests overseas. Successive
National Defense Strategies have rightly emphasized a more
resource-sustainable approach to counterterrorism, and long-
term strategic competition has become the primary strategic
focus. Our special operations forces have a central role to
play across the spectrum of competition, crisis and, if
necessary, conflict, with our strategic adversaries, even when
U.S. forces are not directly involved in hostilities.
As has been widely reported, the persistent engagement of
U.S. special operations forces with their Ukrainian
counterparts, over a period of years, has undoubtedly
contributed to their success in degrading the larger and more
heavily armed Russian invasion forces. Without going into
details of our current support to the Ukrainian forces, I hope
our witnesses today will discuss the lessons learned from our
engagement with Ukraine and how they can be applied to shaping
our special operations forces for the future.
As agile as our SOF community is, adjusting to the demands
of long-term strategic competition will not be easy after more
than 20 years of sustained counterterrorism and stability
operations. Our SOF will require not only new skills and
capabilities, but also new operating concepts to make best use
of their limited capacity and ensure their activities are fully
integrated with conventional and interagency partners, a
concept described by the new National Defense Strategy as
``integrated deterrence.''
During today's testimony I hope you will address how your
commands are preparing our special operations forces to support
the requirements of the geographic combatant commands while
balancing the high demand for special operations capabilities
around the world. I hope you will also address our efforts to
ensure that our special operations forces remain a respected
and trusted force by reinforcing a culture of accountability.
Last, but most certainly not least, I hope you will update
us on efforts to support special operations families as they
manage the stress resulting from the frequent and demanding
deployment of their loved ones.
I will now turn to our Ranking Member, Senator Ernst, for
any opening comments that she may have.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JONI ERNST
Senator Ernst. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you,
gentlemen, for being here today. I apologize for my tardiness.
A number of us will have other committees. We will pop in and
out as we can. But again, I appreciate you appearing in front
of our subcommittee, and also thank you for your continued
service, not just to you but to your command teams as well. We
want to recognize those Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and
leaders that participate in your roles as well.
So, of course, the testimony that you provide today will
play an important role in this Committee's work on the National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the men and women of
Special Operations Command have been at the forefront of our
national security over the last two decades and have undertaken
some of the Nation's most challenging missions. They have
inflicted serious damage to al Qaeda, to ISIS, and other
terrorist groups that want to harm us.
While the counterterrorism mission will remain an enduring
requirement for our special operators, the force must transform
itself to deal with the growing threat posed by China, by
Russia, and other state actors. This will require modernizing
the force, updating training and tactics, and employing
innovative operational concepts. That is why I included in last
year's NDAA a provision requiring a special operations joint
operating concept for competition and conflict. I look forward
to that being developed and delivered to this Committee this
year.
In order to support efforts to modernize the force we need
to provide them with the resources they need to fight and win
in a future fight. President Biden's budget request is woefully
inadequate in this regard. The fiscal year 2023 topline request
for SOCOM is the same as it was last year, despite a
significant increase in threats.
As we all know, a flat budget equals a budget cut. This
reality is only exacerbated by the rising inflation. SOCOM
estimates that its fiscal year 2023 budget request is actually
$1.3 billion, or 9 percent, less than its fiscal year 2020
budget, using constant dollars. This represents a significant
decrease in SOCOM's buying power and hampers its efforts to
modernize the force.
That is why this Committee needs to look at SOCOM's
unfunded requirements list and do what it can to help address
these shortfalls. I hope our witnesses will tell us where they
are facing the most pressing shortfalls and describe the impact
on their ability to accomplish the mission.
Lastly, and most importantly, I want to talk about the
greatest capability in SOF, our special operations men and
women. As the first SOF truth says, ``Humans are more important
than hardware.'' That is why I have been so supportive of the
Preservation of The Force and Families Initiative (POTFF),
created after Admiral Olson's testimony in 2011, that the force
is, ``beginning to show some fraying around the edges.'' POTFF
has been instrumental in taking care of the physical, mental,
and spiritual needs of our operators and their families. POTFF
truly is a readiness-builder for the force. I look to our
witnesses to describe how they are using POTFF and other
programs to ensure our troops and their families get the
support they need.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Senator Ernst.
We will now begin with witness statements. We will start
with Lieutenant General Slife, Commander of U.S. Air Force
Special Operations Command. General Slife.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES C. SLIFE, USAF,
COMMANDER, AIR FORCE SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
Lieutenant General Slife. Good afternoon Chairman Kelly,
Ranking Member Ernst, distinguished Members of the Committee. I
am honored to appear before you today as the Commander of your
Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), and I would like
to thank you for the opportunity to speak about the employment
of our Nation's special operations forces in the future
operating environment.
On behalf of myself and our Command Chief, Chief Master
Sergeant Cory Olson, and the 21,500 airmen we serve together,
thank you for the support and resources provided by this
Committee since our last testimony last year.
The National Defense Strategy describes the strategic
environment substantially different from the one in which we
have operated for the last two decades. AFSOC, like the other
SOF components, finds itself at a strategic discontinuity, a
moment in which the future should not be considered a linear
extension of the past but rather as something different
altogether.
Such inflection points require transformation, and my goal
today is to describe in greater detail some of the changes we
are implementing to ensure our airmen, the disciplined
professionals who representative our competitive advantage,
remain relevant in the emerging operating environment.
As the Department embraces integrated deterrence as the
framework concept of our defense strategy, the AFSOC of the
future will have to balance among five focus areas to compete
with our pacing adversaries.
First, AFSOC will generate advantage by campaigning in the
gray zone, operating across the spectrum of visibility and
attribution. We will use our force to create the dilemmas and
uncertainty, and present cost-imposing problems for our
adversaries. For instance, the development of an amphibious
capability for our MC-130 transport aircraft will enable
runway-independent operations, extend the global reach and
survivability of the aircraft, and provide access to the
enormous portions of the Earth's surface covered by water that
does not currently exist.
Secondly, we will engage as part of the broader Joint Force
employing our unique and sensitive capabilities to create
windows of advantage and sap adversary strength. In order to do
this effectively, we are transforming our training and force
presentation models. Our force generation process is made up of
four phases, each 5 months in length. The phases include a
reset phase, individual unit training, as well as joint and
collective training prior to commitment as part of the Joint
Force.
We are pathfinding a new capability that we refer to as
``mission sustainment teams.'' These 58-person teams are
comprised of 22 different specialties and allow our airmen to
operate out of austere regions with the agility the future
operating environment requires. Our airmen will spend the 15
months of the force generation cycle training in skills above
and beyond what their normal tasks might entail. The end result
is a team of multifunctional airmen integrated into our
tactical formations that can provide limited force protection,
air transportation services, bed down, subsistence and
operational contracting support, and aircraft and personnel
safety, to include explosive ordnance disposal. By building
these small, agile teams capable of operating in disaggregated
fashion in austere sites, we will create dilemmas and
uncertainty for our adversaries.
Third, AFSOC will remain poised to respond to global crises
and contingencies, wherever and whenever required, in
increasingly contested environments. We are employing our force
generation model to produce mission command echelons at a
higher state of readiness than previously has been possible.
Our force generation model will prepare, train, certify,
verify, and validate our airmen and their command teams are
ready for alert and deployment taskings. These airmen will be
trained to respond to short-notice taskings while employing and
maneuvering in militarily and politically contested
environments. This will reduce the current risk to mission and
risk to force by providing continuity of leadership.
Fourth, AFSOC will more efficiently disrupt violent
extremist organizations to ensure they are unable to mount
external attacks on the U.S. Homeland, and do so in a cost-
effective manner. Our Armed Overwatch program's light
footprint, rapid deployability, multi-mission utility, and much
lower operating costs per flight hour will enable AFSOC to do
more missions with fewer aircraft than had previously been
possible.
Finally, AFSOC will remain focused on the specific tasks
and missions assigned to SOCOM under the Unified Command Plan
and the Joint Strategic Campaign Plan.
Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member Ernst, distinguished Members
of the Committee, the Nation, the Air Force, and U.S. Special
Operations Command appreciate your time today in giving me the
opportunity to talk to you just a little bit about the AFSOC of
the future.
[The prepared statement of Lieutenant General Slife
follows:]
Prepared Statement by Lieutenant General James C. Slife
Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member Ernst, and distinguished Members of
the Committee, I am honored to appear before you as the Commander of
Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). I would like to thank you
for the opportunity to speak before you today about the employment of
Special Operation Forces (SOF) in the future operating environment.
AFSOC is responsible for developing forces with the skills, resilience,
and relevance we need to put the Nation in a position of strategic
advantage in today's competitive environment. On behalf of myself,
Chief Master Sergeant Cory Olson, AFSOC's Command Chief, and the 21,566
Airmen we serve together, I would like to express our gratitude for the
support and resources provided by this committee since our last
testimony in 2021.
The National Defense Strategy describes a strategic environment
substantially different from the one in which we have operated for the
last two decades. AFSOC, like all of the SOF components, finds itself
at a strategic discontinuity--a moment in which the future should not
be considered a linear extension of the past but rather something
altogether different. Such inflection points require transformation,
and my goal today is to describe in greater detail some of the changes
we are implementing to ensure our airmen--the disciplined professionals
who represent our competitive advantage--remain relevant in the
emerging operating environment.
As the Department embraces integrated deterrence as the cornerstone
concept of our defense strategy, the AFSOC of the future will balance
among five focus areas to compete with our pacing competitors. First,
AFSOC will generate advantage by campaigning in the gray zone. We will
operate across the spectrum of visibility and attribution to create
dilemmas, uncertainty, and cost-imposing problems with which our
adversaries must contend while simultaneously placing the U.S. and our
allies and partners in positions of continued advantage. Second, AFSOC
will employ SOF-specific capabilities as part of the joint force.
We will use our unique and sensitive capabilities to create windows
of advantage for the joint force, most often acting in a supporting
role to a broader joint campaign. Third, AFSOC will remain poised to
respond to global crises and contingencies, prepared to respond
whenever and wherever required in increasingly contested environments.
Fourth, AFSOC will more efficiently disrupt violent extremist
organizations to ensure they are unable to mount external operations
against the U.S. homeland. Finally, AFSOC will remain focused on the
specific tasks and missions assigned to United States Special
Operations Command in the Unified Command Plan and the Joint Strategic
Campaign Plan.
Generate Advantage by Campaigning in the Gray Zone. Our command is
committed to developing forces and capabilities capable of campaigning
in the gray zone. While the term ``gray-zone'' is not precisely
defined, the DOD has generally accepted the concept of gray-zone
operations as those which take place with ambiguous attribution and in
space between peace and declared war. From the ``little green men''
used in the Russian invasion of Crimea to the Chinese maritime militia,
our pacing competitors are developing creative ways to obscure their
activities and intentions under a veneer of plausible deniability. SOF
are uniquely suited to understand, identify, and expose such activities
while providing our decision-makers with more proactive options of
their own.
theater-air operation squadron
As our command works to transform into the AFSOC we will need, a
new operational unit, the Theater-Air Operations Squadron (T-AOS), will
help us campaign in the gray zone. Each regionally aligned T-AOS will
apply all-source intelligence analysis; multi-domain space, cyber,
information, and special operations integration; and a robust planning
capability to enable Geographic Combatant Commanders and their Theater
Special Operations Commands to fully leverage the unique capabilities
AFSOC provides. Working in concert with the Theater Special Operations
Commands and coordinating with sister SOF services, these squadrons
will develop a deep understanding of the environment and develop
integrated campaign options for operational commanders.
generate advantage
To generate advantage, SOF needs to be able to shape conditions on
the ground and create dilemmas and uncertainty for our adversaries. Our
reveal to deter and conceal to win approach captures this strategy. The
development of an amphibious capability for the MC-130J would enable
runway-independent operations and extend the global reach and
survivability of the aircraft and the joint force. It offers nearly
unlimited water landing zones to enable seaborne operations, allowing
us to operate at a time and a place of our choosing, inserting and
extracting any number of capabilities, personnel, or devices.
Additionally, palletized munitions provide a viable, affordable, near-
term means of airdropping long-range precision fires from existing
airlift platforms, such as the C-130 and C-17. As a roll-on roll-off
capability, the possibility that any airdrop-capable cargo plane in the
U.S. inventory could employ munitions, domain awareness, or electronic
attack payloads will create dilemmas for our adversaries by,
introducing uncertainty in our approach and sowing doubt in the
confidence they have of understanding our procedures. In conjunction
with the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFSOC pioneered this capability
for the joint force with a successful live-fire of an air-launched
cruise missile from an MC-130J this past December.
Employ SOF Peculiar Capabilities as Part of the Joint Force. The
creation of SOCOM in 1987 and AFSOC in 1990 represented a rare
opportunity to build a new kind of fighting force. Habitual joint
training and deliberate acquisition of specialized, interoperable
equipment enabled us to create a highly trained and capable force
postured for short-term crises and contingency responses while also
supporting the broader joint force. This concept paved the way for
SOF's unprecedented operational tempo and strategic impact in the fight
against violent extremist organizations over the past 20 years.
But now, in 2022, the Nation's SOF are once again standing at an
inflection point, albeit one not yet defined by a catastrophic event
such as those which characterized prior inflection points in April of
1980 and September of 2001 and forced us to make major changes. As we
look to the future, AFSOC will need to be postured to deploy to remote
locations, create options to sustain and protect operators for multiple
days, yet be able to move quickly in contested and austere
environments. AFSOC is leading the way in developing concepts and
forces required to operate under these conditions.
mission sustainment teams
AFSOC is currently pathfinding a new concept called Mission
Sustainment Teams (MSTs). The 58-person teams are comprised of 22
different specialties. These Airmen spend 15 months in a deliberate
force generation cycle, learning skills above and beyond their normal
tasks, before a five-month deployment window. For example, the food
services Airmen learn to drive the forklift, while the heavy equipment
operator learns to set up the communication equipment, and the radio
operator learns to operate a crew-served weapon. The MSTs will be
integral to AFSOC's tactical formations with limited force protection,
air transportation services, bed down, subsistence, operational
contract support, and aircraft and personnel safety including explosive
ordnance disposal. Teams will complete the Special Operation Forces'
Force Generation model (SOFFORGEN) in four phases, each made up of 150
days of training. Training includes individual, unit, and joint,
collective blocks which build high-functioning teams prior to their
deployment in the fourth, or ``committed'' phase of their cycle. By
building small, agile teams capable of operating in a disaggregated
fashion, we will provide skilled teams capable of creating dilemmas and
challenges for our adversaries.
Respond to Crisis in Increasingly Contested Environments. The
current and future operating environment is characterized by the re-
emergence of peer competitors, disruptive technologies, weaponized
information and disinformation, and direct and indirect challenges to
the global norms of the last 75 years. Our challenge will be to
transform AFSOC, which has evolved over the last two decades to sustain
long-term counter-violent extremist operations in relatively permissive
environments, into a force structured for success in the emerging
operating environment. We are moving out aggressively to this end.
command and control/ organizational change
This year, AFSOC began implementing a new force presentation model
to replace the ad hoc Joint Special Operations Aviation Component
(JSOAC) structure. JSOACs were comprised of individual augmentees from
disparate organizations that had not trained together as a unit prior
to deployment. Our new force generation model uses a four-phase cycle
to prepare, train, certify, verify, and validate our Airmen for alert
and deployment. The construct is required to take us from the AFSOC we
have to the AFSOC we need. It will maximize preparation and planning
for enduring counter-violent extremist organization threats while also
posturing the force for success in competition and conflict. In all
instances, our new approach will reduce the current risk to mission and
risk to force resident in JSOAC.
The framework calls for expeditionary forces organized as Special
Operations Task Groups (SOTGs) and Special Operations Task Units
(SOTUs). Task Groups will be squadron-based O-5 led elements focused on
integrating Air Force special operations capabilities into joint
special operations units. Task Units will be led by O-4s and senior O-
3s, and will reside under the task groups as the tactical units of
action for a given capability (e.g., AC-130 gunships, U-28 intelligence
platforms, or Special Tactics ground forces). Incorporating this new
model will align our processes with other USSOCOM components and
provide a more agile and ready force. In the future, our adversaries
will apply more pressure to our physical security, communication
networks, and our logistics supply lines. The fact that our Airmen will
arrive on the battlefield as high-functioning teams will be critical to
their success and survivability. Additionally, the predictability of
our force-generating cycle combined with a robust certification,
verification, and validation processes will now allow deliberate
oversight of deployment preparations, which ultimately increase
capability and reduce the risk to mission while addressing the central
finding of the SOCOM Comprehensive Review of SOF culture and ethics.
special tactics next
Within AFSOC-and the Air Force writ large-no group paid a greater
human toll and carried a heavier deployment burden for the last two
decades than AFSOC's Special Tactics force. Our Airmen achieved
remarkable tactical and operational effects, primarily by calling in
devastating, and often lifesaving, airstrikes on the enemy-often in
close proximity to friendly forces. However, the Special Tactics force
of the future will have to reorient and focus their air and space power
expertise to generate and leverage global access, integrate and deliver
multi-domain effects, and provide options for personnel recovery in
support of the joint force. The air and space-centric perspective of
the Special Tactics force will provide unique opportunities to
understand and affect adversary activity below the level of armed
conflict; project forces, capabilities, and effects into contested
environments; and expand relationships and interoperability with both
traditional and non-traditional partners. We think this force will be
integral to helping solve some of the joint force's toughest
challenges--such as outflanking adversary Anti-Access/Area Denial
capabilities and enabling joint force long-range kill chains.
high-speed vertical takeoff and landing
To remain poised for global crises and contingencies, AFSOC is
prepared to respond whenever and wherever required. Highly contested
environments require pulsed operations, providing short windows of
opportunity to conduct multiple missions, due to the reduced
probability of sustained, theater-wide air superiority. To create those
windows of opportunity, the joint force needs air capabilities that are
runway independent and operate at speeds beyond what current rotary-
wing and tilt-rotor technology can provide. High-Speed Vertical Takeoff
and Landing (HSVTOL) capabilities will support a range of missions
including tactical mobility; autonomous intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance; and kinetic and non-kinetic strike. HSVTOL technology
will provide the joint force with vastly increased speed, range, and
survivability.
Efficiently Disrupt Violent Extremist Organizations. The
reemergence of strategic competition, tightening fiscal constraints,
and the accelerating rate of technological change demand significant
adjustments to ensure that AFSOC continues to be successful in counter-
violent extremist organization operations. In this new environment,
AFSOC must disrupt violent extremist organizations, rendering them
incapable of mounting effective external attacks on the U.S. homeland
and do so in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. These operations
will be conducted in more austere environments, demanding smaller
logistical footprints and fewer air platforms; AFSOC envisions Armed
Overwatch as the centerpiece of our approach to addressing this
problem.
Historically, special operations forces have relied on an ``air
stack,'' a composition of 5 to sometimes more than 20 aircraft that
combine to provide an array of specific capabilities costing the
taxpayer upwards of $150,000 per flight hour. Armed Overwatch's light
footprint, rapid deployability, multi-mission utility, and
approximately $5,000 per flight hour operating cost will enable AFSOC
to ``collapse the stack'' while providing the necessary air support.
Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member Ernst, and distinguished Members of
the Committee, The Nation, the Air Force, and U.S. Special Operations
Command face a strategic inflection point, and the challenge for AFSOC
is clear. The threat and environment have shifted, and today's
challenge is to remain a step ahead. It will undoubtedly be
challenging, but the men and women who comprise AFSOC have never shied
away from complex challenges in ambiguous environments. Our command
will provide forces ready to generate an advantage in competition,
enable the joint force in the conflict, and respond to crisis, all
while remaining engaged in countering violent extremist organizations.
The focus areas outlined in this testimony will unleash AFSOC's
competitive advantage-our people-on this challenge. On behalf of all
AFSOC Airmen and their families, thank you for the opportunity to
address you today and for your continued support. I look forward to
your questions.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, General.
Lieutenant General Braga, Commander of U.S. Army Special
Operations Command. General.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL JONATHAN P. BRAGA, USA,
COMMANDING GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY SPECIAL OPERATIONS
COMMAND
Lieutenant General Braga. Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member
Ernst, and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you
for the opportunity to represent the 36,000 exceptional men and
women of the United States Army Special Operations Command,
2,800 of which are deployed right now across 77 countries. I am
proud to accompany my teammates, seated to the left and right
of me, that I have had the honor and privilege to serve in
combat. Senator Blackburn, on behalf of the entire command I
would like to thank her and express our gratitude for her
support in upgrading Jeremiah Johnson's Silver Star for his
valorous actions in Tongo Tongo, Niger. Thank you.
Joining me today is Command Sergeant Major Michael Weimer,
USASOC's senior enlisted advisor. Mike really represents our
people. Mike has served the Nation for 29 years, deployed to
combat 19 times since September 11, 2001. He has carried with
him a New York City Fire Department (FDNY) patch as a reminder
of our solemn responsibility to protect the Nation. On the 20th
anniversary of 9/11, we were fortunate to stand with hundreds
of our Army special operations teammates while Mike returned
that same patch that he carried on multiple objectives around
the world, to the men and women of FDNY, on the crowded and
emotional streets of Manhattan, as a symbol of our solidarity.
It is an honor for both of us to serve with the brave men
and women of the Army special operations community who were the
first in and the last out of Afghanistan.
As we approach Memorial Day, we are reminded of the
selfless sacrifices made by our soldiers and their families
over the last 20 years, especially the more than 1,700 Gold
Star family members. This year we will inscribe Staff Sergeant
Ryan Knauss, one of our psychological operations warriors, as
the 378th name on our wall, and we will never forget.
Every component of the Army Special Operations Command
contributed in Afghanistan. From our special operations
aviators infiling (infiltrating) Rangers in the dark of night
to our civil affairs teams operating in austere conditions to
Green Berets riding on horseback through the mountains, your
Army special operations had an impact and protected the
Homeland without fail.
I assure you we remain vigilant in protecting the Homeland
as we weight our efforts, the priorities outlined in the
National Defense Strategy. USASOC supports the Joint Force
through irregular warfare campaigning for integrated
deterrence, while simultaneously preparing for high-end
conflict. It is vital that we address these challenges with
strong interagency, international, and joint relationships to
preserve our advantages over our Nation's adversaries.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine demonstrated President Putin's
determination to impose his will in blatant disregard of
international norms, rules, and behaviors. Our existing
partnerships and forward presence in the region demonstrated
strategic value when options were needed. Following the
invasion of Crimea over the last 7 1/2 years, Army special
operations deployed to assist our fearless Ukrainian partners
in support of building their resistance capability and
resiliency.
As we apply lessons from this crisis to train, organize,
equip, deploy, and campaign, we remain resolute in our resolve
to address our Nation's most consequential strategic pacing
challenge, the People's Republic of China. There is no
sanctuary from the scope and scale of the threat. We remain
steadfast in our confidence that this generation of Army
special operations soldiers will build upon the legacy of those
who proceeded them and uphold our promise to protect the Nation
without equal.
We are committed to maintaining your trust and continuing
our complete transparency with Congress and the American
people. I thank you for this opportunity and look forward to
answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Lieutenant General Braga
follows:]
Prepared Statement by Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga
introduction
Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member Ernst, and distinguished Members of
the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to represent the 36,000
men and women of Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) and to update
you on the posture of the United States Army Special Operations Command
(USASOC). I am proud to accompany my fellow Joint Force special
operations component commanders here this morning.
USASOC supports the Joint Force worldwide through irregular warfare
campaigning for integrated deterrence, while preparing for high-end
conflict. ARSOF is vital to the Nation because of our capability to
provide asymmetric options with tailorable solutions and a unique
mindset to prevail in any conflict.
It is an honor to serve with the brave men and women of ARSOF who
were the first in and the last out of Afghanistan--exemplifying 20
years of selfless sacrifice. The heroism and transformative leadership
of those who were there at the beginning and those who sustained the
fight made a difference. Our people learned the importance of strong
interagency, international, and Joint Service cooperation necessary to
build enduring advantage over our Nation's adversaries--a lesson we
carry into today's and tomorrow's challenges.
Russia's further invasion of Ukraine demonstrated both the acute
threat that Russia continues to pose as well as the unique role of SOF
in this context. The strategic value of our existing partnerships--
built over the past eight years particularly with our Ukrainian
partners--quickly became apparent.
Success depends on strong relationships with Allies and Partners
that require deliberate investment and cannot be built overnight.
USASOC contributes to integrated deterrence through multi-partner,
multi-domain convergence, and synchronization of transregional
operations. We are applying these same lessons to our Nation's most
consequential strategic pacing challenge, the People's Republic of
China (PRC).
The strategic environment is dynamic. The US Special Operations
Command (USSOCOM) and Assistant Secretary of Defense/Low Intensity
Conflict (ASD-SO/LIC) have recently released the SOF Vision and
Strategy to guide the future for our entire SOF enterprise. As we
refine the SOF Future Operating Concept 2040 and assess force design
considerations over the coming months, we remain convinced of the first
SOF truth that, ``Humans are more important than hardware.''
USASOC is operationally minded with responsibilities to man, train,
and equip formations. We are organized to conduct irregular warfare
across the continuum of campaigning, crisis, and conflict. USASOC's
persistent forward presence, flexibility, and relationships provide the
Nation with enduring asymmetric advantages.
We are building a concept referred to as the SOF-Space-Cyber Triad.
This is a convergence of trans-regional, multi-domain, and joint
capabilities to exponentially increase the holistic strategic effects
of each capability across the spectrum of conflict now and in the
future. Our increasingly complex strategic landscape requires
innovative approaches that fuse and integrate all our expertise to
maximize our collective impact.
We are committed to maintaining your trust and continuing our
complete transparency with Congress and the American people. I look
forward to sharing our recent progress, along with our assessment of
the evolving challenges we face.
the usasoc enterprise
USASOC generates special operations forces, validates, and
certifies headquarters for deployment, and modernizes for the future.
We serve as the Center of Excellence and proponent for three Army
branches and are the force provider for all Army SOF operational
requirements. Our people are uniquely assessed, organized, trained, and
equipped. Our partnerships, cultural understanding, diversity of
thought, and enduring relationships enable the current presence of more
than 2,800 Soldiers in 77 countries.
The U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School
(USAJFKSWCS) generates forces for USASOC. The school is responsible for
assessing, selecting, and training Soldiers in special operations
competencies. USAJFKSWCS consists of two Special Warfare Training
Groups and a Special Operations Medical Training Group, and serves as a
Center of Excellence and proponent, they represent the Special Forces,
Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations branches. Each year,
USAJFKSWCS trains more than 13,000 Army, Joint, and foreign military
personnel in basic and advanced SOF skills. The school teaches 115
courses and 12 languages at 180 training locations in 22 different
states. As a standards-based organization, this is where we forge our
expectations, culture, and values.
First Special Forces Command (1st SFC) is task organized to conduct
irregular warfare campaigning with a trans-regional focus on Chinese
and Russian malign activity. First SFC provides regionally aligned,
culturally attuned forces consisting of eleven subordinate
headquarters: Five Active Duty Special Forces Groups, two National
Special Forces Groups, two Psychological Operations Groups, a Civil
Affairs Brigade, and a Sustainment Brigade. These forces develop deep
regional understanding and maintain persistent focus on National
Defense Strategy (NDS) priorities. First SFC provides a steady state
campaigning headquarters with transregional Continental United States
(CONUS)-Based Operational Support (CBOS) to the Theater Special
Operations Commands (TSOC) and Geographic Combatant Commands (GCC).
First SFC also is responsible to provide a deployable two-star Special
Operations Joint Task Force--Contingency (SOJTF-C) on behalf of
USSOCOM.
The U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command (USASOAC)
provides precision rotary wing aviation and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAV) for SOF worldwide. Our aviators and crewmembers are highly
trained to maintain and operate the most advanced helicopters and UAV
systems. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (160th SOAR) is
the DOD's premier tactical denied area penetrating force. They fly in
high-risk and politically sensitive areas where others cannot go. They
also provide advisory support to enhance the aviation capabilities of
our Allies and partners.
The 75th Ranger Regiment (75th RR) is the Nation's premier light
infantry force. They take great pride in their ability to deploy
painfully light yet, profoundly lethal. Rangers maintain a fighting
force capable of rapidly deploying, on short notice, anywhere in the
world. The 75th RR remains postured for critical, over-the-horizon
counterterrorism missions and Joint Forcible Entry operations.
irregular warfare
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, we were not forward postured in
Ukraine. In response to this unprovoked aggression, we invested time
and talent campaigning in support of Ukrainian territorial defense. In
Ukraine we built enduring relationships, provided logistical support,
and began training with the intent to increase societal resilience to
bolster their resistance posture. As it became evident that a Russian
invasion of Ukraine was imminent earlier this year, many believed that
the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv would fall within 72 hours. Today is day
62, and Kyiv remains under Ukrainian control.
As Russia continued to escalate, U.S. European Command (USEUCOM)
led the contingency response. ARSOF's forward presence provided a
foundational understanding of the operating environment and played a
role in humanitarian assistance, and information operations, while
providing on-the-ground daily assessments for senior leaders.
As armed conflict broke out, our regionally aligned forces led a
Coalition Planning Cell of 17 nations to coordinate information with
international SOF partners and Allies. CONUS-based forces established
an irregular warfare transregional campaigning headquarters to
synchronize SOF approaches. This builds on the enduring legacy of 10th
Special Forces Group's 1952 activation and their subsequent employment
in Europe supporting strategic competition with the Soviet Union.
Ukraine is imposing great cost on Russia in the information space
and USASOC is USSOCOM's lead for military support information
operations. Our teams gain and maintain contact with our Partners
transregionally to maintain information advantage, but we must evolve
to challenge the speed, scope, and scale of our adversaries'
information operations capabilities.
The people of Ukraine deserve all the credit for fighting back the
Russian aggressors. Our Partners are displaying undaunted determination
as they fight for their homeland, reaping high returns on investment to
their resistance movement. These irregular warfare tenets are being
applied as we expand our focus to PRC activities in alignment with the
NDS.
PRC influence is increasing in scope, scale, and velocity without
regard for international norms or boundaries. Just as we demonstrated
in Ukraine, irregular warfare investments are required now in
preparation for the PRC's stated intentions to challenge the global
order.
innovation as a mindset
There is no sanctuary at home or abroad. We must change how we
think about protecting and projecting our forces. Advancements in
unmanned platforms challenge our legacy systems and programs. Our
digital signature exposes individual and collective patterns of life.
We must understand our critical vulnerabilities and challenge all
assumptions. We must consider every space and domain contested.
Innovation requires us to rapidly apply lessons learned to
modernization. We need industry, academia, warriors, and policy makers
to come together in a Whole-of-Nation approach to innovate against
future threats. Innovation must be creative, unconstrained,
collaborative, and forward focused. There is no end-state to
innovation.
In 2019, we established the USASOC Force Modernization Center (FMC)
to accelerate our ability to change and outpace our adversaries.
Comprised of a diverse group of talented thinkers and partnered with
academia and industry leaders, FMC nests priorities with USSOCOM SOF
Acquisition Technology & Logistics and Army Futures Command to provide
world-class support to our Warfighters.
The seven modernization priorities for USASOC are: Irregular
Warfare, Information Advantage, Multi-Domain Operations
Interoperability, Next Generation Precision Effects, Unmanned Systems/
Robotics/Artificial Intelligence, Next Generation Mobility, and
Enhanced ARSOF Soldiers. We synchronize within these priorities while
remaining a bottom-up driven organization. We have men and women on the
ground identifying problems and providing requirements. Whether we lead
or support, USASOC serves as a catalyst for innovation through our
continued experimentation and operational use. We are deliberate with
our selective disclosure, knowing our initiatives drive adversary
decision cycles.
Last month, 44 organizations participated in a USASOC exercise
focused on the intersection of SOF-Space-Cyber Triad capabilities
leading to a series of upcoming experiments. Lessons learned allow us
to test our assumptions and solutions in Service (Army Project
Convergence 2022) and Joint Force exercises (Unified Pacific 2022).
Hardware solutions are important, but people remain our primary focus.
people
People solve our most complex challenges and create strategic
impacts through cohesive and disciplined teams. Our Human Performance
and Wellness (HPW) program deliberately advances the intellect,
understanding, agility, and lethality of the people who form the
foundation for our success. Investments in our Soldiers, civilians, and
families set conditions for programs and policies that attract, retain,
and sustain our force.
The Preservation of The Force and Family (POTFF) program provides
essential health services. We want to thank the Committee for expanding
the POTFF program to the immediate family members of soldiers who are
killed in combat or combat related training accidents. With these POTFF
resources we can respond to the needs of our force quickly and
flexibly. We hope you will continue your sponsorship of this crucial
program and recognize that the challenges outlined in the NDS increase
the requirements on our force.
USASOC is an excellent place to serve the Nation. We have high
expectations and standards, but we are not without flaw. We continue to
battle suicide and domestic violence. Misconduct has our full
attention. Engaged leaders proactively address these concerns with the
full support of our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual
professionals. During last year's testimony, USASOC acknowledged that
it needed to increase its inclusivity by supporting the specific needs
of women in uniform.
In January 2021, my predecessor, LTG Fran Beaudette, commissioned
the Women in ARSOF Study to identify barriers female Soldiers encounter
in ARSOF units and establish lessons learned and best practices to
recruit, integrate, and retain extraordinary Soldiers.
A total of 5,010 participants completed the Women in ARSOF Survey
to help identify unique challenges women encounter throughout their
service. Subsequently the research team conducted focus groups of women
from fourteen subordinate commands. This was followed by numerous
command team interviews at the group, battalion, and company levels. We
take the results of this study seriously and are actively addressing
the findings.
We are humbled by the immense sacrifices of our ARSOF families. As
Americans we are indebted, and we thank this Committee for continuing
to support them. We will never forget our fallen heroes and the
sacrifices of our beloved Gold Star families. Please never forget the
over 1,700 Gold Star Mothers, Fathers, Spouses, Grandparents, and
Children we hold dear in our USASOC family of our 377 fallen since 9/
11.
We are proud of the three Medal of Honor recipients that continue
to serve in USASOC. It speaks volumes that they all fought to remain in
operational leadership positions. I want to highlight this year's two
recipients: MSG Earl D. Plumlee from 1st Special Forces Group and SFC
Christopher A. Celiz, who posthumously received the Medal of Honor
while serving in the 75th Ranger Regiment.
MSG Plumlee served as a weapons sergeant assigned to 1st Special
Forces Group, when insurgents attacked his base. He instantly responded
to an explosion. Ten insurgents wearing Afghan National Army uniforms
and suicide vests poured in through the breach. MSG Plumlee and five
other special operations Soldiers, mounted vehicles and raced toward
the detonation site. Using his body to shield the driver from enemy
fire, MSG Plumlee exited the vehicle while simultaneously drawing his
pistol and engaging insurgents. He repeatedly placed himself in extreme
danger to protect his team and the base, and to defeat the enemy.
SFC Christopher Celiz was the leader of a special operations unit
comprised of partner forces and members of the 1st Battalion, 75th
Ranger Regiment. SFC Celiz gave his life leading an operation to clear
an area of enemy forces in Afghanistan. His selfless actions saved the
lives of others and almost certainly prevented further casualties.
Throughout the engagement, SFC Celiz significantly changed the course
of the battle by repeatedly placing himself in extreme danger to
protect his team and defeat the enemy.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to Members of Congress for
supporting the award upgrade for SFC Jeremiah Johnson. SFC Johnson was
mortally wounded during an ISIS ambush in Tongo Tongo, Niger. He was
awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor for his conduct during the
battle, but thanks to your support, SFC Johnson's award was upgraded to
a Silver Star when new video footage was recovered showing his complete
disregard for his own safety while charging through enemy fire to
provide additional support for his fellow Soldiers. On behalf of SFC
Johnson's family and the men and women of USASOC, we thank you for
honoring our heroes.
conclusion
The global threat landscape is as complex and challenging as it has
been in decades. USASOC is fully committed to selecting, training, and
equipping a formation of experts in the art and science of irregular
warfare Without Fear.
USASOC is conducting irregular warfare across the continuum of
campaigning, crisis, and conflict alongside our SOF partners, the Joint
Force, and with our interagency counterparts. Partners and Allies
remain critical to our success. Today's challenges are truly a team
sport, and USASOC will be ready for the PRC pacing threat and acute
Russian threat. They will challenge us, technology will evolve, and
USASOC will continue to adapt and build an enduring advantage Without
Fail.
We are ever mindful of the high expectations and trust that this
Committee and the American people demand from our formation, and we
assure you they will continue to protect the Nation and free the
oppressed Without Equal. That is our promise to the Nation.
I want to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to the
Committee for continuing to support the men and women of USASOC. I look
forward to answering your questions.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, General.
Rear Admiral Howard, Commander of Naval Special Warfare
Command. Go ahead, Admiral.
STATEMENT OF REAR ADMIRAL HUGH W. HOWARD, III, USN, COMMANDER,
NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE COMMAND
Rear Admiral Howard. Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member Ernst,
and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to report on the mission readiness of Naval Special
Warfare. I am honored to update you and the American people and
humbled to do so alongside Force Master Chief Bill King, who I
have served with for 31 years.
My report to the American people is shared with humility, a
humility sharpened through the complexity and risk of our
mission. The threats that face our Nation give us urgency to
accelerate distinctive and irregular capabilities from the
maritime flanks of our adversaries, for integrated deterrence
in our Nation's defense. I am confident that we are delivering
the disruptive and necessary change to be ready for what the
Nation will ask of our force.
Our comparative advantage is our people, this Nation's
greatest treasure. Our SEAL operators, combatant-craft crewmen,
warfighting support teammates, and families who, alongside our
Gold Star families, form a highly reliable team, a team fused
together and enrolled with a common purpose, trust, and candor,
creativity, and resilience. We fortify the culture of
continuous assessment and development and design new character,
cognitive, and leadership attribute assessments across the
career continuum. We have implemented and improved a more
rigorous selection for all leaders, officers and senior
enlisted, a process that includes psychometric testing, peer
and subordinate assessments, and a double-blind selection panel
leveraging data science and counter-bias approaches to increase
precision and objectivity of leader selection and assignment
decisions.
We recognize diversity as one of our greatest sources of
strength to solve the hardest problems, and we are making
significant investments with the Navy to directly engage
communities that are underrepresented in our formation.
We built the sustainable architecture to proactively seek
out candidates that may not have historically thought of
joining our ranks. Since my last report we graduated our first
female combatant-craft crewman and tripled female cadre across
all phases of the assessment and selection pathway to bolster
development of women in Naval Special Warfare.
Delivering a more lethal and survivable force requires that
we evolve and adapt faster than our adversaries. Over the past
year, we developed a plan to substantively increase investment
in the modernization of exquisite, cross-domain capabilities
that provide the access and effects we must have as a Nation to
persistently hold peer adversaries' critical targets at risk.
We are now holding approximately one-third of our force in
reserve to more agilely respond to emerging global missions,
and critically to conduct the urgent experimentation with
innovative mission concepts for step changes and tactics and
advanced technologies. Technologies that include artificial
intelligence, autonomous, multi-domain unmanned systems, and
cyber electronic warfare, and kinetic effects.
As the Navy's commandos, we are tightly linked with fleet
commanders, allies, partners, and U.S. Government agencies to
create irregular warfighting advantage for the Joint Force, and
generate uncertainty in adversary confidence, escalation
offramps, and greater leverage for our civilian leadership in
crisis.
Master Chief King and I are proud of our force and their
service to protect and defend our great Nation. We will
continue to be humble stewards of the incredible trust that you
and the American people place in us, and we thank you for your
continued support of our team and Naval Special Warfare's
families. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Howard follows:]
Prepared Statement by Rear Admiral H. W. Howard III
Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member Ernst, and distinguished Members of
the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to report on the mission
readiness of Naval Special Warfare. I am honored to update you and the
American people and humbled to do so alongside my fellow Special
Operations service component commanders.
Over 10,000 strong, Naval Special Warfare includes 3,034 Sea, Air,
Land operators, our SEALs; 784 Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen,
commonly referred to as SWCCs; 4,602 combat support and combat service
support personnel; 727 reservists and 1,245 civilians. Our active-duty
force accounts for 2.4 percent of the Navy's overall personnel and 14.3
percent of U.S. Special Operations Command's (USSOCOM) personnel. With
the decisions before you in the President's Fiscal Year 2023 Department
of Defense (DOD) budget, we can accelerate distinctive maritime special
operations capabilities to expand United States irregular deterrence
options that create decisive opportunities for the Joint Force and
extend the reach of the Nation's intelligence enterprise to inform
policymakers of emerging threats.
Our Nation faces unparalleled security challenges and increasing
geopolitical risk that include the rise of near-peer powers that aspire
to undermine global stability, increased economic and social
disruption, and lower technological barriers for non-state actors to
access new informational, biological, chemical, and improvised nuclear
weapons. The threats to the homeland and those of our allies and
partners are evolving in scope, scale and existential potential.
Authoritarian states conduct irregular statecraft and warfare in the
gray-zone to coerce nation-states, normalize corruption of democratic
societies and open markets, and subvert the international system of
norms and laws that have made possible an unprecedented era of global
stability and human advancement. They challenge individual freedoms,
fundamental human rights, and threaten freedom in the global commons
that provide for trade and the exchange of ideas. They leverage
technology to erode the United States' margin of advantage that
underwrites deterrence and geopolitical stability. We are seeing this
today in the destabilizing and unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine
and tensions in the Indo-Pacific. These new strategic threats demand we
urgently evolve Naval Special Warfare in substantive and creative ways.
As the Nation's Naval Commando force that solves hard problems,
Naval Special Warfare initiated a deliberate, comprehensive, and urgent
transformation in 2020 to meet these new threats and create irregular
warfare options that strengthen and complement deterrence. We are
working to bring together the right mix of technology, operational
concepts and capabilities for a force that is enrolled, assessed,
selected, trained, developed, led, and networked together to deliver
strategic effects along the maritime flanks of the Nation's
adversaries. As we do this, the uncertain and complex operating
environment ahead requires that we continuously reinforce the bedrock
principles and values that make our team timeless and authentic--a
humble and fully accountable team.
Naval Special Warfare's standard remains--the relentless pursuit of
excellence in the defense of the Nation and to be trustworthy stewards
of the incredible trust that the Nation places in our force. This
posture statement is an update on our people, our activities, and our
distinctive capabilities in support of the Nation's defense. I present
the report to the committee and the American people with confidence
that we are implementing the substantive changes to be ready for a
higher complexity and higher risk operating environment. This statement
incorporates guidance from the Department of Defense, Special
Operations Command, the Chief of Naval Operations' Navigation Plan, the
USSOCOM Comprehensive Review findings, and a continuous environmental
scan of global threats to core United States interests.
strengthening our force and family
Naval Special Warfare's competitive advantage is our people--our
SEAL operators, Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen, combat support
personnel, civilian teammates, reserve force, and our families and Gold
Star families: a highly reliable team fused together and enrolled with
a common purpose; trust and candor; creativity and resilience. While
our fighting formations embody unparalleled warfighting grit and
determination, our families represent the highest levels of self-
sacrifice and commitment, with none more representative of this
selfless behavior than our Gold Star families. Above all, we continue
to acknowledge their sacrifice, express gratitude for their continued
support, and underscore our commitment to always stand with them. We
especially honor the Gold Star family sacrifices with our mission focus
and stewardship--they will never be forgotten.
Building a Culture of Continuous Assessment and Development
The critical findings of USSOCOM's 2019 Comprehensive Review inform
our innovative approaches to evolve recruitment, assessment, selection,
and training that underpin Naval Special Warfare's transformation. We
continue to engage at every level across our formation to identify and
proactively address corrosive behaviors--from intolerance and extremism
to sexual assault and harassment. These behaviors are inconsistent with
our service oath and the core values of the Naval Special Warfare Ethos
and Creed and undermine the unity and strength of the Nation.
We are undertaking rapid and comprehensive institutional changes to
create a sustainable culture of continuous assessment and development
focused on character, cognitive and leadership attributes. We are
learning from Service-unique career courses and becoming more deeply
involved in Navy and Joint education opportunities.
Foundational to continuous assessment and development, the
Continuum of Leader Development (CLD) Program initiative serves as a
platform for candid individual assessments that integrate peer,
subordinate, leader, and training cadre evaluations of leadership,
character, and tactical competence. These assessments begin during
Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) and Basic Crewman Selection
(BCS) Assessment and Selection pathways throughout every phase of a
Naval Special Warfare operator's career progression. In its second year
of Force-wide use, the CLD effort is two-fold: 1) provide the
individual with objective data and analysis to facilitate self-
improvement through reflection, and 2) inform leadership of high
performers and latent risk through consistent rubric-based performance
assessments, peer and subordinate evaluations, and leadership
observations.
We adopted cutting-edge assessment best practices from across DOD
and industry to create an enterprise leader selection initiative--the
Naval Special Warfare Leader Assessment Program (NLAP). Through a
double-blind interview process, SEAL leaders are assessed by a panel
that leverages data science, counter-bias training, and operational
psychology assessments to increase precision, objectivity, and fairness
of selection decisions before every milestone level. The added data
from psychometric testing, writing and physical evaluations, and
directed peer and subordinate assessments give us greater selectivity
and assignment precision for critical leadership roles--in ways that
substantively mitigate risks to mission and force. Officer and senior
enlisted leaders that complete NLAP receive executive coaching and
counseling from the panel for development. We expect to see the biggest
returns from NLAP at the front-line Platoon Commander and Platoon Chief
level where we will focus on developmental opportunities to
institutionally engineer processes that mitigate risk of leadership
failure.
Since my last report to you, we significantly reengineered our
recruitment and assessment model to proactively identify candidates and
conduct more rigorous candidate pre-assessments through the creation of
the Naval Special Warfare Assessment Command--a sequential O-5 command
where experienced Active Duty SEAL and SWCC operators conduct targeted
external outreach and candidate assessments that allows for greater
precision and insight for candidate identification. With the support
and reinforcement of Navy Recruiting Command, we are transforming
candidate outreach to contact diverse candidates across America to
deepen and broaden the future force. These are two examples of how we
are following through with our commitment to identify and enroll
candidates in the opportunity to serve with the Naval Special Warfare
team. Our outreach model is scalable and repeatable, and as we pioneer
increased use of data and technology, we expect promising results in
growing diversity within Naval Special Warfare.
We also recently established a new Naval Special Warfare Enlisted
Assessment and Selection (NEAS) process to ensure our candidates--from
their first contact until they start assessment and selection at BUD/S
and BCS--meet our high standards. Modeled after the pre-assessment
rigor we already apply to all SEAL officer candidates to select for an
opportunity at BUD/S, we intend to evolve NEAS to mirror this same
level of rigor for enlisted candidates before they receive final
approval to begin formal assessment, selection and training at BUD/S
and BCS.
Building Strength through Diversity
We recognize diversity as one of our greatest sources of strength,
and we are making significant investments in initiatives that create a
foundation for cultural understanding, empathy and respect for diverse
perspectives and experiences, which ultimately strengthen the force's
problem-solving capabilities.
Naval Special Warfare is constantly learning and evolving across
the spectrum of recruitment, assessment, selection, training, and
inclusion. We have increased outreach efforts to 24 new geographic
locations across the Nation where diverse and underserved candidates
live. With our Assessment Command team, I recently conducted an
outreach event at the NROTC unit of Morehouse College, Spelman College,
and Clark Atlanta University--three Historically Black Colleges and
Universities in the Atlanta region. We also engaged with over 100
female Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy earlier this year where we
made it clear our standard is an achievable standard and we are
investing in the foundation for future female candidates. We are
collecting and assessing real time analytics for refinement of outreach
efforts alongside the Navy Recruiting Command team. In expanding Naval
Special Warfare efforts to increase candidate diversity, our Outreach
and Assessment Detachment and Navy Parachute Team executed the first
iteration of the Naval Special Warfare Insert Challenge, an event
combining a tandem freefall insert of diverse ``athlete influencers''
into a physical evolution highlighting Naval Special Warfare's core
character, cognitive and leadership attributes.
Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are framed
by three lines of effort: climate and culture, talent management, and
education and training. Our focus on climate & culture aims to decrease
bias through DEI representative and leader engagement at all levels.
Our talent management efforts aim to increase equitable opportunities
that strengthen operational effectiveness through the enrollment,
assessment, selection and retention of diverse talent, while
maintaining standards, accountability and mission-readiness
requirements. Finally, our focus on education and training aims to
increase understanding of DEI as an operational imperative by
developing increased capacity, character, competence and connectedness
through enterprise engagement and education. Training environments must
reflect and reinforce DEI outcomes. To ensure these efforts have proper
visibility, leadership and resourcing, we launched a Naval Special
Warfare DEI Task Force that is aligned with CNO and SOCOM DEI
initiatives.
Over the past year, and in close coordination with the Navy, we
disestablished the separate and isolated Warrior Challenge Rate recruit
rifle division at the Navy's Boot Camp to fully integrate SEAL and SWCC
Sailor Recruit candidates within the diverse Navy accession cohort.
SEAL and SWCC candidates now begin their careers by completing the
standard Navy Boot Camp program, solve their first problems in the Navy
with teammates that reflect the diversity of the Republic we serve, and
establish closer connections to the Navy we serve in. In parallel, we
transferred the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School from Great
Lakes, Illinois to Coronado, California and have significantly
increased the degree of coaching and mentorship that Naval Special
Warfare candidates now receive directly from Active Duty SEAL and SWCC
cadre.
Naval Special Warfare continues to make progress transforming our
outreach efforts for Women in SOF (WISOF) as well. We achieved a
significant milestone this year as the first female SWCC graduated
Basic Crewman Selection and joined a Special Boat Team, setting the
example for future women to serve as operators in Naval Special
Warfare. To build on this positive momentum, I also directed an
increase in WISOF cadre billets from four to eleven and distributed
them across each phase of the SEAL/SWCC assessment, selection, and
training pathway to increase female leadership to assess candidates
with Naval Special Warfare's gender-neutral character, leadership,
cognitive, and physical attributes; foundational and distinctive
attributes that combine to make possible the complex and high-risk
missions the Nation asks of our force. We also launched an enterprise-
wide Women's Professional Network, with the mission of supporting
personal and professional development through networking,
presentations, and mentoring.
Building a Resilient Team
Operator Health and Resiliency remains a primary focus for our
formation. While Naval Special Warfare suicide rates remain low
compared to other force and national averages, we recognize any suicide
in our formation is one too many, and we continue to use Human Factors
Councils to identify and proactively treat personnel with elevated risk
factors of suicide or suicide related behaviors. Over the past year we
accelerated investment in our Human Performance Task Force. This Task
Force works with mental and physical health experts to move beyond the
treatment paradigm of performance enhancement and issue prevention,
collecting measures of performance and effectiveness to continually
refine our efforts. This holistic approach has become a regular battle
rhythm penetrating the Naval Special Warfare formation and reaching
across assessment, selection, human factors, strength, conditioning &
rehabilitation, and cognitive, non-cognitive & spiritual health.
Ultimately, these efforts ensure a successful transition beyond service
in the Navy.
An exemplar of these efforts is our Warrior Transition Program,
focused on ensuring a positive return home after deployment. Every
servicemember deploying has an in-person meeting with a psychologist
who tailors a family plan and facilitates transition from deployment to
garrison, screens for psychological risk and provides support
resources. Following austere deployments, Warrior Transition takes
place in a third country location that allows for additional
``decompression'' time. Transition meetings and resources are offered
to significant others and family members to facilitate an optimal
reunion. Since inception, this program has identified 10-15 percent of
our operators for follow-up treatment including health and adjustment
issues that would have otherwise gone unidentified.
Our holistic performance model makes special efforts to address the
brain health of our operators. In 2021, the Naval Special Warfare
cognitive program completed more than 10,000 encounters with
servicemembers to preserve brain health, including novel equipment and
procedures to limit blast exposure during training as well as teaching
strategies to manage attentional control. More than just preserving
brain health, the team also leads special operations efforts in
optimizing cognitive performance. Naval Special Warfare intends to
continue breaking new ground in protecting and optimizing the mental
performance of our warfighters.
innovate for relevance
We continue to aggressively innovate for military advantage,
decision dominance, and expand edge in all aspects of our enterprise.
Naval Special Warfare's modernization strategy intends to deliver step
changes in capabilities through advanced technologies including
artificial intelligence, autonomy and interoperable multi-domain
unmanned systems, and next-generation communications. These
technologies combine to increases in access, mass and precision, and
effects.
We are accelerating innovation through hard target mission
imperatives that create opportunity for high strategic leverage
options. We are prioritizing innovation in defining missions that only
we can do for the Nation in the maritime domain--on and under the sea--
and into the littorals. Naval Special Warfare's distinctive maritime
access and placement and ability to deliver effects in denied areas
depends on continuous innovation in maritime platforms and
technologies, such as the next generation Combatant Craft Heavy and
next generation Dry Combat Submersible. This focus on innovation is
critical as we drive to outpace and outmatch our adversaries' rapidly
improving capabilities. These planned investments will enable maritime
SOF to close on some of the Joint Force's highest priority targets and
reduce the cost per effect, risk to mission, and risk to forces.
Capability Development
Over the past year, we continued to invest in exquisite, cross-
domain capabilities to increase advantages in the gray zone where SOF's
forward footprint provides effective access for holding adversaries'
critical targets at risk. Through kinetic strike and non-kinetic
effects against littoral targets, our objective is to invest in
capabilities that can provide all domain effects from maritime access
vectors to solve the Joint Force's hardest problems.
Every investment we make is anchored on expanding distinctive
competitive advantage--accessing contested and denied areas. These
investments cover an array of capabilities from enhancing undersea
range to delivering strategic effects to extending long-range targeting
and strike for the Joint Force. We are in deep collaboration with
national, joint, and Navy Warfare Centers to develop technology
advancements in unmanned platforms launched from maritime craft. These
capabilities will extend Joint Force AI-infused reconnaissance reach
and act as a force multiplier in contested spaces, reducing risk to our
personnel, providing real time battlespace awareness and decision
dominance, and increasing the number of targets we can hold at risk.
Digital Modernization
Delivering a more lethal force requires the ability to evolve
faster and be more adaptable than our adversaries. We are committed to
artificial intelligence and machine learning capability development.
From recruitment to training and operations, we continue to evolve how
we work, optimizing for efficiencies that bring capability to the
battlefield faster.
Led by our Chief Technology Officer we are investing our brightest
talent and resources together with DOD and industry leaders to
aggressively implement a ``build a little, test a little, learn a lot''
model that accelerates our adoption of artificial intelligence for
warfighter advantage. Bringing together advanced national efforts in AI
with pragmatic experimentation by well-trained, combat-experienced
operators will help ensure that the highest-impact innovations are
rapidly selected and accelerated to transition and fielding.
Our NAVSOF AI Task Force--partnered within the Navy, USSOCOM and
DOD AI initiatives--is developing and infusing data advantage across
our formation, from personnel to workforce and warfare systems. In
collaboration with the Navy, we recently launched the Unmanned Task
Force Sprint focusing on Naval Special Warfare's multi-domain Manned
Unmanned Team concept for scalable effects via resilient, autonomous,
and interoperable unmanned platforms that close the kill chain, hold
adversary targets at risk, and reduce risk to our own force.
campaigning for irregular deterrence
As the U.S. Navy's Commandos, we are tightly linked with Fleet
Commanders, allies, partners and U.S. Government agencies to create
warfighting advantage for the Joint Force. We are energetically
innovating to create asymmetric advantages across the spectrum of
conflict. We are postured to respond rapidly in support of crisis and
to apply an unconventional maritime approach that enables the Joint
Force and our allies and partners to compete and win. We are executing
a deliberate and urgent transformation to expand irregular deterrence
options, which we view as complementary to traditional nuclear
deterrence as an integrated approach to deterrence, with a team capable
of solving problems of the highest complexity and military, strategic
and political risk.
Optimizing Warfighting Capabilities for What's Next
Over the last twelve months, Naval Special Warfare Command
established a flag-level task force that is a forward-looking and
operational level command and control (C2) deployable headquarters for
Combatant Commanders for the highest complexity and highest risk
maritime access missions that require integration of component resource
authorities and operational level C2 accountability to identify and
mitigate risk. Recognizing the critical nature of this level of C2
capability in support of the evolving nature of Naval Special Warfare's
role, we invested in the people, billets and C5ISRT infrastructure and
facilities that enable preparation for and execution of the Joint
Force's hardest targets.
Naval Special Warfare continues to increase its asymmetrical
advantages and orient distinctive and irregular capabilities on
strategic targets and hard operational problems with the Fleets and
Joint Force. A renewed emphasis on the maritime environment and the
undersea focuses Naval Special Warfare's transformative initiatives and
ensures the United States can rapidly gain, maintain, and extend access
in conflict to win if deterrence fails. Over the last year, I have
continued an aggressive and comprehensive strategic engagement program,
meeting with Joint and Interagency leaders to develop the most
integrated, capable, and credible Naval Special Warfare force in our
history. As an `inside force' looking to create dilemmas for the
adversary and advantage where the enemy perceives superiority across
all domains, I am concentrated on maritime access vectors to solve hard
problems. To present the Secretary of Defense and the President with
scalable options, we have a trans-regional focus, campaigning on the
edge that is lower cost and lower risk for escalation.
In leveraging U.S.-based large-scale exercises to certify our
warfighting readiness, Naval Special Warfare's integration and
participation in Fleet and Marine exercises are yielding mutually
beneficial dividends, from enhancing interoperability and facilitating
alignment against adversary threats, to fostering innovation and
increasing lethality through our shared understanding of capabilities
and experimentation. Deepening Fleet and Joint partnerships is crucial
to sustaining and expanding capability and the future vectors that can
be expanded from it, including non-kinetic effects. Through Fleet
exchanges and Joint exercise training, Naval Special Warfare
demonstrates emergent capabilities that increase operational and
strategic advantage, fleet survivability and provide Fleet and Joint
Commanders options from a ready force against emerging strategic
threats.
Naval Special Warfare's role in war games is another area we are
informing Cabinet-level policy makers while learning their priorities,
and then translating that experience in tactical level war games where
our foundational formations can develop their own military concepts to
increase idea sharing from the bottom-up. The success of Naval Special
Warfare's war game series is particularly noteworthy, having generated
numerous concepts for integrated deterrence and justifications for
further research, development, test and evaluation funding.
Force Re-design for Greater Lethality, Innovation and Resiliency
We are now holding approximately one-third of our combat ready
forces in ready reserve, an unprecedented adjustment that increases
USSOCOM flexibility globally for deliberate deploy for purpose NAVSOF
missions that we will proactively shape in support of Combatant Command
campaign objectives. Critically, this design provides our forces the
time and space to experiment with concepts that drive step changes in
capability advancement, experimentation, and concept development that
we can conduct at lower training risk because these forces are combat
ready and have already mastered core mission essential tasks.
We are urgently implementing changes across our tactical formations
while aligned with the Joint Warfighting Concept. At the core tactical
maneuver element level, we re-shaped our force from 72 to 48 platoons
and reinvested SEAL combat power within the remaining platoons to
increase their survivability and lethality. This one change increased
tactical leader selectivity by over 33 percent, another contributing
factor to solve for leadership failure risk. Realigning end-strength
savings as we evolve the platoon of the future for relevance, we added
a maneuver element for reconnaissance and the capacity to integrate new
technologies within the platoon, including leveraging non-kinetic
effects and multi-domain unmanned systems. We are driving the next
evolution as we experiment and operate with this new force design
model.
As a core force design imperative, we integrated two O-6 level
Major Commands--Naval Special Warfare Groups THREE and TEN--to form
Naval Special Warfare Group EIGHT, aligning undersea capabilities for
distinctive maritime access with the ability to fuse various sensor
capabilities, non-kinetic effects, and multi-domain unmanned systems.
This shift also provides a greater command and control capability,
warfighting function depth, and unity of command for the highest
complexity missions ahead. We continue our Force Design initiatives
within intelligence and sustainment warfighting functions as well.
Balancing Enduring C-VEO Mission with Integrated Deterrence
Naval Special Warfare capabilities are essential to defending the
nation against both peer adversaries and extremist threats.
Counterterrorism (CT) and Countering Violent Extremist Organizations
(CVEO) remain core missions as these threats endure and possibly
accelerate with the proliferation of scalable, lethal technologies. We
are leveraging lessons learned from the last 20 years and applying
cutting edge technologies to advance our strategic advantage in the
direct-action mission set, with applications to both CT and nuclear
peer adversary threats. We continue to expand objective certification
exercises to sustain CT/CVEO capabilities and deliver step changes in
combat readiness with the integration of peer-level opposition forces
and detection technologies. These adjustments and innovations--with the
modernization of our ranges--make our force more survivable, lethal and
precise. We will never underestimate non-state threats and acknowledge
that Naval Special Warfare will continue to provide critical
contributions to the defense of the homeland from terrorism.
Developing Critical Partnerships
Naval Special Warfare is actively expanding our integration with
the Nation's intelligence enterprise and research and development
partners. We are prioritizing international and trans-regional
relationships with reliable global partners for combined operations
where our nations' interests align. Since my testimony last year, we
initiated efforts to strengthen our relationships with select partners
where we can achieve maximum effect in support of evolving threat
profiles. I have personally engaged with SOF leaders across our most
critical partner nations within the Indo-Pacific and European theaters.
Continuing our shoulder-to-shoulder work with allies and partners
expands options to ensure access for the Joint Force. We are continuing
to invest to build critical relationships, develop combined tactics,
techniques, and procedures, define logistics and facility support
requirements, and posture for rapid execution and mutual support in
time of crisis.
Together, Naval Special Warfare leaders and our critical allies and
partners will identify the next actions and initiatives we must take to
prepare for an uncertain future--including optimizing our enterprise
intelligence support for strategic targets, expanding all domain
unmanned system investments, investing in expeditionary sustainment
depth, acquiring resources for research, development, test and
evaluation, and employing authorities and permissions to rapidly
prototype in-house solutions to deliver what the Nation needs to win
over its adversaries.
conclusion
Naval Special Warfare remains a team of common purpose--trust and
candor--creativity and resilience. A team with a diverse set of roles,
responsibilities, experiences, and perspectives--a diversity and
inclusivity that we embrace as we seek to solve the hardest problems--a
diversity fused together by an unyielding pursuit of excellence and an
ironclad commitment to the Nation and all who selflessly serve. Naval
Special Warfare's grit and gallantry are a powerful testimony to the
attributes of a highly reliable, bold, and resolute team, testimony to
the attributes we relentlessly develop--the attributes that make
possible the incredibly complex and high-risk operations our Nation
asks of us. We demand individual, unit, and community accountability to
uphold our standard.
As Force Master Chief Bill King and I engage with our force, we
express gratitude for their service and personally present a United
States Constitution to every member with a letter inside from us that
emphasizes humility and authenticity--and the criticality of remaining
apolitical and non-partisan. This tangible reminder of the oath we all
took to protect and defend our great Nation--and serve all Americans--
reinforces what it means to be stewards of Naval Special Warfare and
always mission ready.
We will continue our relentless drive to advance distinctive
maritime and irregular options that increase national leverage and
expand the ways we deter the Nation's adversaries. We remain grateful
for the support of the American people, and we will continue to be
stewards of the incredible trust that you and our Nation place in us.
Thank you for your continued support of and care for all our Sailors,
Civilians and Naval Special Warfare families.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Admiral.
Major General Glynn, Commander of U.S. Marine Forces
Special Operations Command.
STATEMENT OF MAJOR GENERAL JAMES F. GLYNN, USMC, COMMANDER,
UNITED STATES MARINE FORCES SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
Major General Glynn. Thank you, Chairman Kelly, Ranking
Member Ernst, and other distinguished Members of the Committee.
Thanks for the opportunity to update you on the status and
posture of Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command
(MARSOC). It is an honor for Sergeant Major Loftus and I to
join you again this year, alongside my fellow SOF component
commanders and their senior enlisted leaders.
Since we met last year, MARSOC maintains a persistent
forward-deployed presence in support of six named operations
across the globe, and Marine Raiders conducted operations in
Indo-Pacific Command, Central Command, and Africa Command,
while episodic deployments in support of European and Southern
Commands.
Our mission-tailored forces continue to maximize efficiency
while remaining faithful stewards of resources and continue to
account for significantly more of the missions performed than
the size of the force, 3,500, and slice of the budget would
predict.
As you have heard from the geographic combatant commanders,
they are increasingly challenged in the uncertainty of semi-
permissive environments as our adversaries seek to gain and
maintain influence in the gray zone. MARSOC is leveraging our
organizational agility, predominantly our size, to maximize the
effectiveness of the force and provide immense benefit to the
SOF enterprise and our parent service. Competition requires
special operations forces that can be active in the gray zone
and win in conflict, for which your Marine Raiders are postured
and focused. In fact, it is our quest to bring transparency to
the gray in gray zone.
Over the past year we have further developed our innovative
operating concept that provides the Nation with a unique
capability. Strategic shaping and reconnaissance encompasses a
wide range of capabilities, from cooperation with partners and
allies to increasing costs to adversaries to deter, disrupt,
and deny their objectives.
The operational art of SSR, Strategic Shaping and
Reconnaissance, seeks to connect the joint, interagency,
intergovernmental, and multinational communities as they
develop persistent networks that can enhance strategic
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The concept
supports multi-domain campaigning for long-term shaping and
influence in support of SOCOM, the Joint Force, and the Nation
in strategically critical locations.
As one example over the course of the last year, MARSOC
provided SOF-peculiar capabilities to the theater Special
Operations Command for AFRICOM while connecting the combat
power of the Marine Corps 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit to
provide capability and capacity in support of current
operations off the coast of Africa. This demonstrated the
possibilities in a domain approach that includes forward-based
SOF operating in the littorals that can connect air, maritime,
and cyber elements, in this case of a Marine Expeditionary
Unit, off the coast of Somalia, to maintain pressure on violent
extremists while supporting our regional partners.
As we experiment with emerging and next-generation
capabilities, operations against violent extremist organization
networks continue and provide our forces the placement and
access with partners and allies against priority threats. We
pursue missions in littoral regions that facilitate close ties
to the naval force that include fleet marine forces. Our
ability to leverage these characteristics is integral to our
expanding impact as part of what our Commandant calls the
``Stand in Force,'' necessary at the persistent forward edge of
deterrence.
We recognize that the current and future operational
capabilities rest upon a foundation that we all have in
common--outstanding Marine Raiders and their families. To
maximize continued excellence and enable new operational
concepts, we must continue to safeguard and sustain our most
valuable resource through programs we discussed in some detail
last year, specifically Preservation of The Force and Family,
sexual assault and prevention, and diversity and inclusion
initiatives. Each are at a different point of maturity, yet
they contribute to a collective organizational culture of
physical, mental, spiritual, and family excellence to enhance
mission success and strengthen family resilience.
In closing, we remain committed to providing the Joint
Force with Marine Raiders that possess unique special
operations capabilities, who are threat focused, devoted to
force modernization, and whose actions continually demonstrate
our motto, ``Spiritus Invictus,'' or ``unconquerable spirit.''
On behalf of the men and women of MARSOC, I thank the
Committee for your continued support to those in uniform and
their families and for your commitment to our national
security. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Major General Glynn follows:]
Prepared Statement by Major General James F. Glynn
introduction
Chairman Kelly, Ranking Member Ernst, and other Distinguished
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to update
you on the status and posture of the Marine Forces Special Operations
Command (MARSOC). I am honored to testify alongside my fellow Special
Operations Forces (SOF) Component Commanders and extremely proud to be
in command as we celebrate the 16th anniversary of MARSOC.
You have my gratitude for the exceptional support for our
warfighters from this committee and from the rest of Congress. We
continue to uphold the Marine legacy and forge the path of Marine
Raiders providing the Nation and Geographic Combatant Commanders a
Marine Special Operations Force capable of strategic impact that is
dynamically shifting to meet the demands of the future. As you have
heard from the Geographic Combatant Commanders, they are increasingly
challenged in the uncertainty of semi-permissive environments as our
adversaries seek to gain and maintain influence. MARSOC concurrently
seeks opportunities to leverage our organizational agility to maximize
the effectiveness of the force and provide immense benefit to the SOF
enterprise and our parent Service. Global engagement amongst Great
Powers requires Special Operations Forces that can be active across the
continuum of cooperation, competition, and conflict, for which your
Marine Raiders are postured and focused. In essence, those who seek to
compete with us want to avoid direct confrontation and have created a
`gray zone' that MARSOC intends to help make less opaque.
Over the past year we have advanced our development of an
innovative operating concept that provides the nation with a unique
capability. Strategic Shaping and Reconnaissance (SSR) encompasses a
wide array of capabilities to deter, disrupt, deny, adversaries'
activities, or increase their incurred costs. These operations,
activities, and investments (OAI) provide shaping and influence effects
to increase Joint Force awareness of adversarial interest and
influence. We are prepared to challenge adversaries in critical
geographical regions across the globe, and your Marine Raiders are
expanding this capability now and continue to compete through an all-
domain approach that preserves U.S. influence and keeps our adversaries
on their back foot.
enduring mission
Since we met last year, MARSOC maintains a persistent forward
deployed presence in support of six named operations across the globe.
Reinforced Marine Special Operations Companies (MSOC), remain deployed
to conduct full spectrum operations in the Indo-Pacific Command,
Central Command, and Africa Command, with elements also episodically
deployed in support of the European and Southern Commands.
Additionally, MARSOC maintains a LtCol-led headquarters, Special
Operations Task Force (SOTF), ready to deploy and, when required, can
repeatedly generate an O-6 level headquarters as a Combined Joint
Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF).
Inherent in all deployable MARSOC formations is the ability to
collect and fuse information that illuminates adversary actions and
networks. Further, each formation can conduct activities to shape and
influence the environment, from expanding partner resilience through
training, advising, and assisting, to supporting combat operations when
needed. These units also connect the larger Joint Force to interagency
partners, designed to utilize their organic capabilities and leverage
unique or exquisite capabilities that make forces more effective in
counter violent extremist organization (C-VEO) operations and bolster
our approach to integrated deterrence.
As we experiment with next-generation capabilities, we continue
operations against C-VEO networks that provide our forces the placement
and access against priority threats. We pursue missions in littoral
regions that facilitate close ties to the Naval Forces, to include
Fleet Marine Forces. Our ability to leverage these characteristics
makes us an impactful part of the `Stand in Force' necessary at the
persistent forward edge of deterrence.
enduring support to the force
MARSOC maintains a high, but sustainable, operational tempo in
support of our nation's global initiatives. We pride ourselves on being
a premier example of an effective and efficient force, providing
outsized return on investment. Over the past 16 years, the continual
assessing of the effectiveness and efficiencies of our structure,
employment, development, and design, led us to remain good stewards of
the resources provided to the command. MARSOC continues to account for
approximately 1.6 percent of the Marine Corps end-strength, utilizing
approximately 0.6 percent of the Service's annual budget (MFP-2).
Similarly, MARSOC accounts for 4.5 percent of USSOCOM's manpower,
operating on less than 2 percent of the MFP-11 budget, while executing
approximately 10 percent of USSOCOM's missions.
To generate the highly trained Raiders required to execute these
missions, over the last year, the Marine Raider Training Center (MRTC)
conducted three Assessment and Selection courses and graduated two
Individual Training Course (ITC) classes that produce our Special
Operations Officers (SOO) and Critical Skills Operators (CSO). MRTC
conducted fifteen advanced skills courses which enhanced our direct
operations skills, intelligence collection capabilities, discreet
capabilities in technical surveillance, cyber enabling skills, advanced
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE),
Survival Escape Resistance and Evasion (SERE), and advanced
communications. MRTC has evolved its instruction by incorporating
lessons learned from the operating forces, experimentation, wargames,
and the Unit Readiness Exercise (URX) known as RAVEN.
RAVEN maintains pace with the changing global operating environment
involving strategic threats capable of trans-regional effects. These
threats, often asymmetric, are encountered across multiple domains by
U.S. power projection in highly contested spaces. Through steady
engagement with Geographic Combatant Commanders and TSOCs, RAVEN
provides relevant pre-deployment training for on-going operations in
support of multiple Combatant Command Operation Plans and Theater
Security Cooperation Plan requirements. The exercise iteratively
incorporates operational commands' guidance, After Action Reviews, and
joint lessons learned to implement the latest trends, threats, and
tactics. We hold this exercise twice annually, in the fall and spring,
and invite members of the subcommittee to attend, at your convenience.
a modern operating concept
The operational art of Strategic Shaping and Reconnaissance (SSR)
connects the Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational
communities to develop persistent networks that enhance strategic
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The concept supports
campaigning with long-term shaping and influence in support of SOCOM,
the Marine Corps, and the nation in strategically critical regions. We
are currently competing with adversaries in new domains, both
geographic and virtual. All-domain targeting and influence campaigns
will illuminate and inform the national security enterprise.
SSR operationalizes the tasks and requirements found in the
national strategy, Higher Headquarters Guidance, and an analysis of the
pacing threat. This approach provides the Joint Force a Special
Operations capability by evolving a traditional tactical activity,
Special Reconnaissance, and transforming it into a strategic capability
that can scale as events and the environment requires.
At its core, SSR is the fusing of special operations with
intelligence across all domains. Strategic shaping takes place during
all phases of an operation and throughout, cooperation, competition,
crisis, and conflict. It is conducted through a variety of options that
may range from security cooperation relationship building to precision
direct action against strategic and priority targets. These actions are
carefully crafted to achieve the desired effects while managing
escalation, and provide policy makers with a wider range of options.
Through globally synchronized special operations, SSR is applied
against the threat threads of an adversary that cross traditional
boundaries and borders. This approach supports the Joint Force to
maintain deterrence and preserve access to key areas of interest.
Over the past two decades, national priorities required us to focus
on the global counterterrorism fight. As a result, we concentrated our
efforts on the skills required to be successful in the military fight
against VEOs. As a result, we will continue to maintain this prominent
capability to fight tonight and win in these arenas, and we will also
harness this competency to further our development of SSR to address
current and emerging challenges.
In our role as a connector between United States Special Operations
Command and the Marine Corps, MARSOC remains prepared to leverage its
small size and agility to create conditions that enable our SOF sister
services and the Marine Corps in competition and conflict. As a
complementary force in the contact layer, Marine Special Operations
Forces are poised to assess strategic locations and operational
imperatives, while also working as part of the Stand-In Force to trade
time and space for Joint Force maneuver in all domains. All aspects of
multi-domain operations will require enablement by SOF, which MARSOC is
prepared to support. These capabilities, integrated into our
operations, facilitate actions SOF can take to support the resilience
of our partners, support resistance movements against adversaries,
influence populations to align with U.S. ideals, and conduct precision
direct operations as required.
transformative support
SOCOM outlines areas that the SOF enterprise will focus its
modernization efforts. Working within this guidance, our Combat
Development and Integration directorate continues to aggressively
pursue modernization. Our efforts define the investment resources
required to lead enterprise development and employment of irregular
warfare and special reconnaissance capabilities while highlighting the
operation and maintenance (O&M) resources to adapt our force and
accelerate the realization of a new operating concept. Our submissions
account for risk to current readiness and take a measured approach to
near-term risk tolerance by recognizing opportunities to divest to
invest in modernization. However, people remain our critical platform.
As such, we have made noteworthy investment in exercises and training
to develop new and refined capabilities.
Moreover, MRTC is also adjusting to the needs of Marine Raiders. As
the SOCOM proponent for littoral Special Reconnaissance, new training
requirements are emerging, and we continue to adapt our courses of
instruction to excel in the contemporary operating environment. For
example, this past year MRTC added a new course, MARSOF ISR Tactical
Controller, to the Special Operations Capability Specialist (SOCS)
formal training pipeline to organically certify our Geospatial
Intelligence Marines. Later this year, MRTC will conduct an additional
Multi-discipline Intelligence Operator Course (MDIOC) to increase the
production of Intelligence SOCS, a Maritime Mobility Course to increase
organic maritime capabilities, finally with Marine Corps Education
Command's support, Special Operations Officers will all be completing
Captain (O-3)-level Service PME immediately following ITC alongside
their Marine Air-Ground Task Force peers.
Outside of personal development, and in partnership with other SOF
elements, the Service, and a broad array of government and industry
partners, MARSOC Combat Development and Integration directorate
continues to pursue intelligent unmanned, automated, and robotic
technologies across the force. At the forefront of these development
efforts is the pursuit of a technological fusion of unmanned systems
technologies with advancing cognitive Raiders, Broadband Tactical Edge
Communications, and Organic Precision Strike efforts. Further, we have
submitted requests for transformative investments in our force tied to
each capability area that will ensure we are properly resourced to
certify, validate, and verify SSR required capabilities across the
force generation cycle. One such example is our Cloud, Machine
Learning, and Artificial Intelligence capabilities. These tools support
operations in the information environment, increase battlespace
awareness and strengthen C2 through enterprise-level data management
and governance.
taking care of our raiders
In the spirit of the first SOF Truth, we embrace the concept of
``Who First, then What.'' We know Raiders can expertly develop, adopt,
and implement innovative operational concepts that serve National
Security requirements. Given the changing operating environment,
protecting Raiders requires continued analysis and adjustment. While
conducting operations, we are professionally capable of traditional
risk mitigation and force protection, but new risks have emerged as we
pursue innovative doctrine and operations.
New environments and operations require that we adjust our posture.
As an example of innovative protection, our communications directorate
has pioneered the deployment of spectrum guard protection, which uses
commercial off-the-shelf technology to monitor our electronic signature
and devise methods to preclude adversarial collection. We remain active
in pursuit of excellence in cyber operations in accordance with
designated coordinating authorities, while assessing new avenues of
both offense and defense in an all-domain approach. Protecting the
force abroad and at home remains a top priority.
We clearly recognize that current and future operational
capabilities rest upon a foundation of outstanding Raiders and their
families. To maximize capabilities and readiness to enact new
operational concepts and continued excellence, we must continue to
safeguard and sustain our most valuable resource. The MARSOC
Preservation of the Force and Families (MPOTFF) program continually
delivers responsive and effective support, and remarkably continues to
evolve with the changing demands and needs of our force. The MPOTFF
program provides resourcing that facilitate holistic physical,
cognitive, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Fully utilized, the
MPOTFF lines of effort of Human Performance, Medical Care, Spiritual
Fitness, and Readiness (Unit, Personal, Family), coalesce and optimize
physical and cognitive performance, and increase the resiliency of our
families. This strategy, as part of a greater USSOCOM effort to capture
longitudinal exposures, aims to proactively sustain and extend the
longevity of the force and ensure optimal healthcare during, and after,
service.
We are currently expanding the SOCOM Assessment Baseline Readiness
Evaluation System (SABRES). The comprehensive assessment and monitoring
protocol assists leaders with decision making by providing data for the
early assessment and treatment of cognitive performance. With your
continued support, MPOTFF will remain the standard for improving the
endurance, effectiveness, and resilience of the force by using best
practices across SOCOM, the Marine Corps, and Naval medical community.
The result is a command-driven, organizational culture of physical,
mental, spiritual, and family excellence to enhance mission success in
career, family, and other life areas.
To maximize capabilities and readiness to enact new operational
concepts and continued excellence we must continue to safeguard and
sustain our most valuable resource. The MARSOC Preservation of the
Force and Families (MPOTFF) program continually delivers responsive and
effective support, and remarkably continues to evolve with the changing
demands and needs of our force. The MPOTFF program provides resources
that facilitate holistic physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual
well-being. Fully utilized, the MPOTFF lines of effort of Human
Performance, Medical Care, Spiritual Fitness, and Readiness (Unit,
Personal, Family), coalesce and optimize physical and cognitive
performance, and increases the resiliency of our families. This
strategy, as part of a greater USSOCOM effort to capture longitudinal
exposures, aims to proactively sustain and extend the longevity of the
force and ensure optimal healthcare during, and after, service. We are
currently expanding the SOCOM Assessment Baseline Readiness Evaluation
System (SABRES). The comprehensive assessment and monitoring protocol
assists leaders with decision making by providing data for the early
assessment and treatment of cognitive performance. With your continued
support, MPOTFF will remain the standard for improving the endurance,
effectiveness, and resilience of the force by using best practices
across SOCOM, the Marine Corps, and the Naval medical community. The
result is a command-driven, organizational culture of physical, mental,
spiritual, and family excellence to enhance mission success in career,
family, and other life areas.
At the same time, we continue to expand inclusion and diversity.
MARSOC is more than managing diversity; we are leveraging diverse
backgrounds to build integrated teams capable of broader and deeper
problem solving. We appreciate that diversity and inclusivity are
operational imperatives, and we are engaged at all levels to expanding
inclusivity across the force. We are proud of advancements in the past
year and continue to recruit, assess, select, and train this elite
force, cognizant that it is representative of the best of our Service.
Concurrently we remain consistent, effective, and improving in the
Sexual Assault and Prevention Response program, as well as the Suicide
Prevention Program. We continue to work within the guidelines set forth
by Congress and the Department of Defense regarding prevention, and
consistently support victims while lawfully prosecuting cases.
Leadership, training, information, and consistency are paramount in
eliminating sexual assaults within our ranks, and these efforts remain
critical to retention and recruiting.
From the perspective of deployment-to-dwell, the force continues to
get healthier due to internal recruiting efforts and the modernization
initiative you have supported over the past few years to better balance
our force ratios, specifically our Special Operations Capabilities
Specialist (SOCS) and Combat Service Support (CSS) personnel. As a
result, our deployment to dwell ratio is in line with Secretary of
Defense guidance and continues to trend positively for our Special
Operations Officers, Special Operations Capability Specialists and
Critical Skills Operators.
Our diverse Recruiting and Advertising Branch works closely with
Marine Corps Recruiting Command to leverage service efforts and enhance
mutual endeavors to attract and retain quality Marines. We have
increased efforts by providing information to every recruit that
attends Marine Corps Recruit Training regarding the different career
paths available at MARSOC. By doing this, we continue to attract a
talented and qualified pool of Marines. Thanks to our professional
reputation and continued operational employment, there has not been a
shortage of highly qualified Marines applying to attend our entry level
courses.
Our retention success is evident as MARSOC has routinely achieved
and surpassed reenlistments goals. In fiscal year 2021, MARSOC exceed
the larger Service first-term reenlistment rate by 11 percent. For
subsequent term reenlistments MARSOC achieved a healthy 82 percent,
reflecting a high sense of overall job satisfaction and continued
commitment. We continue to maximize support to USSOCOM, TSOCs and Fleet
Marine Forces over the long term while we carefully ensure the welfare
of our servicemembers.
closing
In closing, we remain committed to providing our Nation with Marine
Raiders that possess superior special operations capabilities, are
devoted to modernization, and whose actions continually demonstrate the
motto Spiritus Invictus, or `unconquerable spirit.' Your Marine Raiders
will remain always faithful, always forward, and on behalf of the women
and men of MARSOC, I thank the Sub-Committee for your continued support
to those in uniform and their families, and for your commitment to
national security. Semper Fidelis.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, General, and thank you to all of
you for your statements. I will begin our first round of
questions for 5 minutes here. This first question is for all
four of you, and since we only have 5 minutes we will have to
keep it brief.
For much of the last 2 years, the Department has been
refining a joint warfighting concept that finds a credible
theory of victory should deterrence fail with a near-peer
adversary. However, our long-term strategic competitors
continue to make gains through hybrid warfare and coercion
below the threshold of traditional armed conflict.
As you all have pointed out in your statements, our SOF
have a key role to play in this type of warfare. So as you look
at what will be asked of our special operations forces for the
next, say, 10 to 15 years, what do you believe will be the most
important skill sets and capabilities, and which of these will
be the most difficult to develop?
We will start with General Slife.
Lieutenant General Slife. Thank you, Senator. As integrated
deterrence is the framework concept, one of the things that we
talk about in AFSOC is that ``deterrence'' is the noun and
``integrated'' is the adjective. Deterrence is the thing we are
trying to do but integrated is how we are going to do it.
I think when you think about what integration means there
is no force in the DOD [Department of Defense] that is more
integrated than SOF. We are jointly interoperable at much lower
levels. All four of us have operated with one another in combat
since we were much, much more junior in our careers, and so SOF
is integrated internally.
Furthermore, SOF has a set of relationships around the
globe, both with partner militaries and also with embassy teams
that is unrivaled. AFSOC was present in 74 countries since the
last time we had the opportunity to speak to this committee.
Finally, across the U.S. Government, no part of the DOD
force is more connected to the interagency and the intelligence
community than our Special Operations Forces. So I think that
is going to be where our competitive advantage lies is our
ability to integrate internally, across the U.S. Government,
and also with our partners.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. General Braga?
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, I would echo the
critical importance of making sure we work with our
international partners and intel community and interagency. It
is even more important as we face strategic challenges of China
and Russia. We have to rethink everything we do, how we live in
a contact layer and look to seek to provide options, both
during competition, and should it transition to high-end
conflict, how do you survive, how do you shoot, move, and
communicate, how do you live in a different electromatic
spectrum that our adversaries are invested very heavily in.
So we are relooking at everything from our capabilities to
how we train people to ensure their survivability, still
maintain a focus on smaller units of action having an outsized
effect, being able to operate, though, in austere locations
with those partners in the contact layer.
Senator Kelly. Admiral?
Rear Admiral Howard. Our contribution to integrated
deterrence is principally the irregular ways and means that we
deter our peer adversaries. We are prioritizing irregular
partners, irregular global partners, irregular denied access
capabilities for hard targets, irregular and scalable effects.
In terms of capabilities that support this effort, lethal
and survivable access platforms, both on the surface and the
subsurface domains, unmanned systems that are increasingly
autonomous and interoperable, and then cyber and electronic
warfare.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. General?
Major General Glynn. Senator, as you are aware deterrence
and deterrence theory can get pretty complicated. But the
biggest thing, the most significant thing in deterrence that we
find, as has been alluded to, comes from our allies and
partners and their perspective of risk, and what is most risky
to our adversaries, be they China or Russia?
The most important part of deterrence is going to remain
the relationships and the allies and partnerships that we
specifically invest in in the special operations community.
To the other half of your question, the hardest part, I
believe, is going to be the technical aspects. We have all
already alluded to information operations and cyber
capabilities, and there has been one allusion to space thus
far. That is going to take education and training over time,
that is a substantial investment on all of our parts.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. When General Slife mentioned the
MC-130 amphibious operations I thought that might be on the
list. An Air Force guy potentially landing on an aircraft
carrier might be a skill set that would be hard to develop.
[Laughing.]
Lieutenant General Slife. I have done it. It is easy.
Senator Kelly. It is easy?
Lieutenant General Slife. It is overrated.
[Laughing.]
Senator Kelly. Well thank you for that, and I will now
recognize Senator Ernst for 5 minutes.
Senator Ernst. Thank you so much, and, of course, as we all
sat down and visited during your office calls we talked
extensively about POTFF. Maybe in my second round of questions
I can ask each of you a little bit more about POTFF and your
specific programs.
But General Slife, there was something that you brought up
in your office call that I would love to hear a little bit more
about, your efforts within POTFF to address the moral hazard.
It is something that I had not put a lot of thought into, but
if you could explain to the Members of our Subcommittee what
your intent would be as you continue to delve into this area.
Lieutenant General Slife. Thank you, Senator. I am happy to
do it. The conversation that Senator Ernst and I had yesterday,
we talked about the three types of invisible wounds that many
of our servicemembers suffer from because of their experiences
over the last 20 years. The first one is neurocognitive injury.
So this is really Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), concussive
effects. It is a physical damage to the brain. We understand
that and we are focused on that. SOCOM has a DOD-leading
program around neurocognitive health.
The second invisible injury is psychological injury, and
this manifests as post-traumatic stress. It is the
manifestation of witnessing or being part of a significantly
traumatic event and the long-term effects that has on you.
But I think there is a third type of invisible injury, and
it is moral injury. These are the injuries that are incurred
when we act in a way that is contrary to our moral system, and
we do damage to ourselves as we reflect back on the things that
we have done over the last 20 years. I have experienced some of
this myself, having made decisions in the moment to take
people's lives that I then, afterwards wonder, was that the
right decision. It seemed like the right decision at the time,
but what does that mean to me now?
As we have looked at moral injury as a third type of this
invisible wounds kind of triad, we have been engaged directly
with the Air Force to invest in that leg of our POTFF program
that would attend to these moral injuries. We have gotten
commitment from the Air Force to embed a religious support
team, a chaplain and a chaplain assistant NCO, into every
squadron-level formation in Air Force Special Operations
Command. This does not exist anywhere in the Air Force. I had
to work hard with the Air Force to get there. But we do have
that program coming down in the pike.
That is a big win for us in the POTFF front, and coupled
with some of the other things that we may talk about, Senator,
that is really the answer to your question.
Senator Ernst. No, thank you, General Slife, and I am
anxious to hear more about that as you continue to develop
that.
General Braga, thank you so much again. During the office
call you had the opportunity to visit with me and my team about
the Ukrainian forces that you have been able to train and work
with over 7 years or so. It was an investment that now we see
is paying large, large dividends.
What are the follow-on risks from the invasion, in
particular when we look at Moldova and Kosovo, and just in your
judgment where do we need to expand our footprint and presence
in European Command (EUCOM)?
Lieutenant General Braga. Well, ma'am, certainly I do not
want to speak for EUCOM and their current prioritization, but I
would say we have had longstanding, generational relationships
in some places across Eastern Europe, both in NATO and non-NATO
countries, that I think pay huge dividends and return on
investment, for, honestly, small amounts of physical footprint
on the ground, as we expand their capabilities.
We mentioned resistance and resiliency but it is also
interoperability, and I believe Senator Kelly mentioned that,
expanding the access presence and influence.
When I mentioned the scale and scope of the threat of
Russia and China, we will not be able to do this alone. That is
why I talk about the international partners and increasing
their capacities and their capabilities is so critical. That is
from information operations. That is unconventional warfare.
That is asymmetric tactics, techniques, and procedures that you
are seeing unfold right now in the Ukraine. I will not go into
it in this forum but would be absolutely willing to go into it
in perhaps a closed-door session of other partnerships we are
expanding right now, and certainly the world is paying
attention to what is unfolding in Ukraine that is adding
emphasis to that.
Senator Ernst. Wonderful. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you,
Mr. Chair.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Senator. Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Thank you to all of you. To your
testimonies, a couple of points that I find interesting and
just kind of want to underline. General Glynn, you talked
about, when you were asked about deterrence you said the lead
deterrence that we have is our network of alliances and
partners, and it truly is an edge where Russia and China, they
are just not really in the same ballpark with us on that. They
do not have that network, and now they are seeing how powerful
a network of alliances can be, so that is a takeaway.
Then, General Braga, I like the fact that you started with
talking about your enlisted leader colleague carrying the FDNY
patch for 20 years, because it has been 20 years where I think
we have leaned really heavily on special forces. Sort of
disproportionate to your slice of the budget or the size of the
manpower component, we leaned very heavily on you.
So I have really one question that would take much longer
than 5 minutes to answer, and maybe I will start with General
Glynn and go right to left around the table, from my side.
During these 20 years where we were leaning very heavily on
you, largely in missions against non-state terrorist
organizations, they have had a lot of lethal capacity but they
have not had the ability to like challenge us in the air,
challenge our communications dominance, challenge some other
just strong areas of expertise we have.
As we are now looking at a National Defense Strategy, that
focus is on peers that do have the ability to, you know, not
have a permissive air environment or challenge us on the
communications side. I suppose, as special operations leaders,
you have to think about new strategies and make new investment
decisions too, to recognize the reality of that kind of a
challenge.
Talk a little bit about how, within your commands, you are
sort of looking at the battle against great-state competition
and how that affects the planning and investment decisions you
make.
Major General Glynn. Thank you, Senator, for that question,
and I think I will tee it up and then as we go around the horn
we can probably expand on it.
The notion of the gray zone is I guess where I will start,
and it is defined as gray for a reason, because it is where, if
we looked at ourselves for 20 years and decided how we would
want to combat the strengths that the United States brings in
the manner in which we have for the last 20 years, we would
probably come to many of the conclusions that our strategic
adversaries have as well.
So to your question, the choices that we are having to
determine right now is, what of the counterterrorism skill
sets, the stuff that we have invested and developed very well
over the last 20 years, how much of it translates, how well
does it translate, and what else do we need to be able to do?
In sitting alongside these gentlemen in the past, I think I
will conclude for the moment with our examination of cyber
capabilities, our examination of space capabilities, and the
integration with special operations going forward to narrow
that gray zone. If you will allow me to stop there.
Senator Kaine. Admiral Howard, you and I have talked about
the cyber dimension of this before, but I would love to hear
your answer on this as well.
Rear Admiral Howard. We have, and with cyber and electronic
warfare, with our proximity to access to hard targets we see
ourselves as a part of that kill chain, in extending the reach
of the cyber and electronic warfare enterprises.
But we are clearly at an inflection point nationally. I
think within special operations we are entering, I call it the
fifth modern era of special operations. For Naval Special
Warfare, we over-rotated on counterterrorism clearly, and we
lost some ground in the distinctive things that only we can do.
We are moving with urgency to make the main thing the things
that only we can do in the maritime domain.
I would also say that we are investing in time and space to
conduct experimentation and concept development with combat-
validated forces, and that is important to embrace what is in
front of us, put pressure on ourselves, and deliver step
changes. Move faster. Learn faster. We can do that at lower
training risk with combat-ready forces.
Then, finally, the fleet integration, using the fleet and
the Joint Force to red-team ourselves in terms of survivability
and lethality.
Senator Kaine. Great, General Braga.
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, I will just mention two
to add on there. First, information advantage and information
operations. I think we are watching it daily, the strategic
impact this has. I cannot envision a future where that does not
increase in importance, affecting targeting audiences, general
populations, governments, armies, morale, and eroding their
overall effectiveness.
Secondly, we have started a campaign of learning. The other
component commanders mentioned it. But I really look at SOF,
space, and cyber as the modern-day triad. I think we owe you
best military advice and options and national command authority
for flexible deterrent and flexible response options that
involve and optimize those three legs of the triad for options,
both in deterrence but also maintaining dominance in the
domains for high-end conflict and supporting the Joint Force.
Senator Kaine. I am out of time but can I let General Slife
answer? Are you okay, Coach? Thank you.
Lieutenant General Slife. Thanks, Senator. I will just
briefly highlight one other thing. You know, I believe that the
service components of SOF are most effective when we are
closest to our parent services, and I think you have heard some
of that from Admiral Howard talking about his relationship with
the fleet. It is no different for us.
I think one of the places where we see a value proposition
for SOF is enabling, particularly in conflict-type scenarios,
enabling our broader service, you know, parents, to be
effective. I think for AFSOC there is a lot of work to be done
in the integrated air defense area as well as the counter-space
mission area. There are a lot of very critical capabilities
that our adversaries rely on in those areas that I think SOF
brings unique capability to effect. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Kaine. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Senator Kelly. Senator Tuberville.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thanks
for being here today. Thank you for your service. It is such a
tough time for the world that we live in.
This is for all of you. What resources, if any, have you
asked for but not have been provided? I am asking it for this
reason. In November 2020, Acting Secretary of Defense Chris
Miller enacted the fiscal year 2017 NDAA requirement to elevate
the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operation/Low-
Intensity Conflict ASD (SO/LIC) position to be on par with
other service secretaries. But last May, Secretary Austin
reversed this decision, burying SO/LIC back under the Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy. SO/LIC is still understaffed
and is not getting the routine direct access to the Secretary
the Deputy Secretary it should, as directed by the NDAA.
So just any comments any one of you have on that? General,
I will start with you.
Lieutenant General Slife. Senator, thank you. So each year
I we find ourselves trying to balance our budgeting
recommendations among modernization, readiness, personnel
programs, these types of things, and every year we come up
short. I think we could all find additional areas where we
would like to invest in order to reduce risk.
The budget that was submitted--I think Senator Ernst
described some of the fiscal realities of it--but it represents
a balance of risk among those areas. To directly answer your
question, I think each of us have contributed to the SOCOM
Commander's unfunded priority list, which reflect those areas
where if additional resources were available those would be the
things we would recommend that Congress might consider
investing in.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you. General?
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, I would echo. We have
submitted that in the congressional unfunded priority list and
it touches upon a lot of some of the capabilities we were
talking about previously. But there is absolutely an impact if
you just take inflation alone. Inflation alone has certainly
affected our supply chain, no different than any other facet of
society right now. I mean, the average increase in parts, when
you are talking for our helicopter fleet, has gone up 31 to 35
percent, and that comes at a tradeoff.
So there are always tradeoffs and prioritization decisions
to be made where you balance risk to force, risk to mission,
training readiness, or deploying through operations,
activities, and investments. So that is continual, but just
like the rest of the world, we are dealing with that impact of
inflation right now, with, as Senator Ernst said, the flat
budget.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you. Admiral?
Rear Admiral Howard. What is before the Congress now is an
opportunity within Navy Special Warfare to make some additional
investments, in denied area access, across the maritime flank,
where we maintain comparative advantage with peer adversaries,
irregular and scalable kinetic and non-kinetic effects, so a
suite of effects across a range of attribution options there,
and the survivability and lethality of our sub-sea and surface
platforms.
So we are given the opportunity to make some growth in our
community, pending the congressional judgments there, we are on
the right trajectory for what I outlined before, in terms of
what we are aiming for, for irregular deterrence.
Major General Glynn. Senator, thanks for the opportunity to
comment on it. I would say that the most acute area, the place
where we face the hardest choices, and they are well-known at
ASD(SO/LIC) and at the SOCOM level, that is a good team. It is
a good relationship that supports all of us, I believe.
But where it really comes down to a hard choice is when we
have to make choices between equipment and people. I think you
heard that in our opening statements. What do I mean by that?
Modernization, the investment in the technology that is
required to compete with the likes of Russia and China, while
taking care of current operations and supporting the force and
the family. I think that is somewhat where we are at now, in
terms of how will we pay for modernization going forward.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you. Just one more quick question
here. A recurring theme here in the Senate is that our
commanders in the field do not have enough Intelligence,
Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR). Just your quick
thoughts, you know, commercially, the available options such as
Maxar. What capabilities do they bring? As anybody got any
thoughts on that?
Lieutenant General Slife. Senator I would offer to you that
commercial capabilities are growing at a rate that rivals
organic military capabilities, and I think a key part of our
ISR enterprise going forward is going to be leveraging the
various modalities of intelligence collection available from
orbit. So I am interested in pursuing every one of those as
part of a holistic air- and space-based ISR architecture.
Senator Tuberville. Anybody else got a thought on Maxar or
any other capabilities?
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, as the world becomes
more connected we need to rethink modern-day ISR, so it is not
just from things in orbit, obviously Low Earth Orbit (LEO),
Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and space, but also just how the
world becomes more connected and rethink and experiment with
ways to have better situational understanding out there. Again,
I think SOF can be part of that solution, with our innovation-
type mindset of employing commercial capability as well as
Government-procured capability.
Senator Tuberville. Admiral Howard, have you heard of
Saildrone?
Rear Admiral Howard. Yes, I have.
Senator Tuberville. What do you think about it?
Rear Admiral Howard. Unmanned capabilities are absolutely
critical for autonomous systems that give us situational
awareness, decision dominance, and in the case of that platform
specifically, maritime domain awareness.
Senator Tuberville. General Glynn, have you got anything to
say about it?
Major General Glynn. I would offer, Senator, that I think
when we think ISR we typically think of that vehicle, and
really General Slife is the one who has educated me over the
course of the last year that really the way forward we need to
think about the manner in which those vehicles are controlled,
rather than a single operator with a single control system on a
single platform, often referred to as ``swarming,'' but how
will a single operator, through a control system, have access
to any number of platforms that can do what is needed, when it
is needed.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. We will go through our next round
of 5-minute questions. I want to start with Admiral Howard and
talk a little bit about undersea capabilities here.
It is pretty much understood that our undersea capability,
we have got a comparative advantage to Russia and China in the
ability to operate under the ocean. I understand this is one of
SOCOM's priority investment areas for fiscal year 2023 is the
development of a new undersea insertion and exfiltration
capability.
So, Admiral, can you just kind of step through us here how
the development process is going, how you are working with
SOCOM to extend the undersea reach of naval special operators,
and also a little bit about integration with the regular Navy.
You know, often as you are developing a system and you are
trying to get it to work with something you might not--it is
not part of the development program but it needs to work with
existing hardware, that can be a challenge. So if you can
comment on that as well.
Rear Admiral Howard. Thank you. Our relationship with our
submarine force has never been closer. We learn from working
with our submarine force. You know, they are an exemplar of a
highly reliable organization, which we always strive to be. We
also have an advantage as a country in the undersea with our
allies and partners. I was recently in Europe with several of
our allies, where we are collaborating on new capabilities and
combined operations.
For acquisition and oversight and execution and due
diligence of these programs we are investing with SOCOM and
SOCOM's Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (AT&L) inside of
my own command so that we bolster the workforce around the
execution of the program. The integration, we have a dependency
with the Navy. There is a great alignment with Admiral Gilday's
staff and OPNAV N9 under Admiral Conn, and then, of course, at
Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). I am confident that we are
on a trajectory to deliver the Nation capabilities that are
distinctive and access the denied targets in a way that is
survivable and persistent.
Senator Kelly. Can you talk a little bit about some of the
requirements that, unclassified, what you are looking for in
this system and how the integration with the Navy is going? I
know in prior systems we have had difficulty integrating
hardware onto submarines, and I want to make sure that that is
not something we encounter here with this program.
Rear Admiral Howard. We are on the right course in that
regard with the Navy to expand the kinds of capabilities that
we can integrate onto our submarine posts. With future
capabilities we are looking at extended ranges, increasing
payloads, teaming with unmanned systems. That is generally our
strategy. We see the undersea as absolutely critical to
deterrence. I think that it is a place that we maintain
advantage, and it is a place where we must maintain advantage
to critically deter our peer adversaries.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. Senator Blackburn.
Senator Blackburn. Thank you, and thank you all. We
appreciate your time so incredibly much.
General Braga, thank you for your time yesterday. We
appreciate that. We talked a lot about China and the Chinese
Communist Party. I want to talk a bit more about that because,
as you know, when we look at what is happening with this new
Axis of Evil--Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea--and look at
the way that Russia and China, and North Korea also, with
hypersonics, the way they are looking at space and nuclear and
cyber, hypersonics and autonomy, there are concerns that have
arisen.
So talk to me a little bit about how you are leveraging
early research in emerging technologies to prevent some of the
technological surprises across different warfighting domains,
and how are you drilling down on that? Because it is going to
require an intentionality that sometimes may not have been
required in other disciplines.
Lieutenant General Braga. Thank you, Senator, for the
opportunity to discuss that. I think one of the transferrable
lessons learned from the last couple of decades is the power of
network analysis and network defeat in identifying critical
vulnerabilities, whether it is supply chain or high-end weapons
systems, as really the whole Joint Force is looking at
maintaining dominance, whether it is JADC2 or the joint
warfighting concept.
SOF's role in that is, I think, clearly to seek out some of
those vulnerabilities, work amongst our Joint Force partners,
and specifically in support of the geographic combatant
commands, but leveraging perhaps the other strengths of, I
mentioned earlier about cyber and space, for more holistic
effect to hold at risk some of their critical vulnerabilities
and nodes, be it in C5-ISR&T, their mission command platforms,
or weapon systems. We would absolutely appreciate the
opportunity, in a closed-door session, to go into more detail
at some of the operational aspects that we are looking at, but
have confidence that we are continually experimenting and
looking at and analyzing how to best take advantage of those--
learn more first and then look how to take advantage of those
possible vulnerabilities in support of the Joint Force.
Senator Blackburn. I think it would be helpful to here from
each of you, and you can just give this to us in a written
response. I think it is probably a bit too much for here, and
then we can dig a little deeper on that in a closed session at
some point. But hear from each of you where you feel like there
are shortfalls in capacity and capabilities and then how we
need to change. Each year we are working on the NDAA, and as we
change that focus to look at what we are going to do in the
future, how we are going to utilize new capabilities,
hypersonics, how we are going to utilize some of the
technological innovation that is coming our way, I think it
would be helpful to us as we go through to figure out, where
you all see, where the differences in what we perceive and what
you are dealing with every day as you are going about your
task. So if I could ask you all for a written response I would
appreciate that.
I also want to turn a little bit to AI and assisted
decision-making. We have, I would say, probably at this point,
because of ISR we have volumes of data and video feeds that
could be used to establish really kind of a routine and also an
abnormal activity line. I think it is important for us to know
how you all are using big data analytics to look at this and
how you are going to expand the utilization of big data in
order accommodate and backfill limited personnel, and knowing
what you are going to do with those analytics and how you are
going to utilize AI would be helpful to us.
I guess I have got five pages of questions here and I am
out of time. So, Mr. Chairman, I will send it back to you and
will have some things for the record. Thank you all.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Senator. Senator Ernst.
Senator Ernst. Yes. Thank you so much. I am going to go
right back to POTFF. I think as we all have sat down and
visited about the things that are important for our forces,
especially in the realm of SOCOM, it does come back to
Preservation of The Force and Family. So I know, General Slife,
we had started with you. You talked a little bit about moral
injury and what you are doing to combat those effects. What I
would like for each of you to do as well is talk a little bit
about POTFF, and if you have any special initiatives that you
have started we would love to hear about those, as well as
other avenues that you would like to see adopted throughout
your forces.
General Slife, do you have any additional that you would
like to add, and then we will go to General Braga.
Lieutenant General Slife. Briefly, Senator. So POTFF
resourcing is appropriately spread a little unevenly across
AFSOC. Some of our units have greater demands for one aspect
than another. But one thing that we have generally seen is the
units with POTFF resources embedded at the unit level have
lower incidences of ill discipline, they have lower instances
of sexual assault and sexual harassment, they have lower
instances of suicidal ideation or attempted suicides. So based
on some of this there is certainly a correlation. We are not
yet sure about causation. We continue to collect data to be
able to draw that.
But based on the very positive results we have seen out of
our POTFF program there is an increase in AFSOC's POTFF
investment. We have taken internal offsets in order to increase
our POTFF resourcing across more of our units inside of AFSOC
because of the very positive results we have seen.
Senator Ernst. That is good. Go where they are. Yes, thank
you. How about USASOC?
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, first of all, thank you
for your stalwart support of POTFF over the years. The men and
women of USASOC absolutely thank you.
I think it has been easy to sell when you show the physical
manifestation of someone who has had a grievous physical wound,
and we have those types of vignettes, but I do think we need a
better job on the data collection phase of it. So we are
starting different initiatives, from baselining our incoming
students--again, we have about 3,000 at any one time at Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, going through our school system--and
identifying a digital profile of them to help them be the best
possible person they can be, across all pillars of POTFF.
We are investing and trying to be more data-driven, even on
spiritual and falling in line with the Army's lead for
spiritual assessment tool, which is at least in the academic
research proven to increase resiliency and lower rates of
depression and suicide and the like. I am a personal huge
believer of the behavioral health impact that both our
operational psychologists and my clinical workers have just
made an untold amount of impact. When we even look at our
formation from suicidal ideations and the like we have a lower
rate of usage rate for acute care for those coming into the
formation who have been specifically assessed and selected and
those who have just been assigned to United States Army Special
Operations Command.
But we need to do a better job on the data collection, get
that to really everyone to tell the story, the good-news story
of POTFF. So we are making efforts in that, to not only to
smarter-base the SOCOM solution but also human factors
dashboard that we are working on at the USASOC level.
Senator Ernst. Thank you. Admiral?
Rear Admiral Howard. Thank you. One of our data advantage
initiatives is around POTFF and seeing the data in a way where
we can more accurately articulate measures of effectiveness,
understand needs. I would just say a tremendous effort on our
team to destigmatize mental health issues. The care that we
have embedded is transformation from our ops psychologists to
our chaplains, with emphasize on neurocognitive health as well.
Then lastly I will just say that veteran health, and
thinking about POTFF into our veteran population. This is where
we are partnering with outside-of-government entities and
bringing those best practices to our veteran teammates.
Senator Ernst. Yes, great. Thank you, Admiral. General
Glynn?
Major General Glynn. Senator, I will likewise thank you for
your continued support of POTFF. I think I will take a
different tack and just flag an area where I think all of us
should pay attention, with the shift in the future of what
military health care is likely to be. We find ourselves focused
on potential gaps between POTFF as we have known it and the
areas where it has extended that and our need to walk it back,
if you will, to fill in gaps that seem to be created. I will
give you an example.
You have heard several references to mental and behavioral
health. That specialty care is an area that we are paying very
close attention to going forward. You can see that that is
going to be a persistent need, and access to that is--I know it
is challenging across the enterprise, not just military health
care, but that is an example of an area.
On the plus side, we talked about this in your office call
but for wider awareness, SOCOM's investment and our opportunity
to work on the cognitive performance side, our ability to
baseline folks who join MARSOC, and now we can watch them over
time is already interesting. I think it is going to become
fascinating over the course of 5 to 10 years.
Senator Ernst. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Mr. Chair.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Senator. I just returned from
visiting our allies and servicemembers, a couple of stops in
Poland and Germany. It is clear that U.S. Special Operations
Forces can act as a significant force multiplier for our
strategic partners, including when facing off some well-armed
adversaries. I think nowhere is this more apparent than in what
is going on in Ukraine today.
As I mentioned, and I think General Braga mentioned during
our opening remarks, reports have indicated that Putin's army
here has stalled in Ukraine because of the direct support in
training special operations forces of the Ukrainian military
since the invasion of Crimea in 2014.
General Braga, I know that you cannot comment on the
specifics in this training but can you discuss some of the
lessons learned from Ukraine regarding the use of Army special
operations capabilities as the United States military continues
in this pivot towards great power competition with Russia?
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, thank you for the
opportunity. I think there are lots of lessons learned that can
be applied elsewhere, although other parts of the globe are not
certainly the same, from our information ops and psychological
operations, civil affairs teams on the ground right now working
with the multitude of international non-governmental
organizations supporting the people of Ukraine, and certainly
our special forces teams who have been there, again, for
multiple years now, helping them. I mean, the credit really
goes to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian military. We
just helped them a little bit along that journey.
But I do think what is an untold story is the international
partnership with the special operations forces of a multitude
of different countries. I will not name the number right now
but they have absolutely banded together in a much-outsized
impact to support Ukrainian SOF and Ukrainian military in their
efforts right now that I think is a great new story. I think
that really bore out from the last 20 years of working
together, sweating together, bleeding together in different
battlefields, on different continents. Some of these partners
are new. There has been a coalescence and a joining of that
unity of effort. It is absolutely inspiring to see. That,
itself, is--I think you mentioned earlier--is something that
our adversaries desire to have, that we have, and that is
really a gold standard, those international partnerships, that
can be part of the solution moving forward.
Certainly we are taking tactical lessons learned and
immediately trying to apply them to our schoolhouses and our
other foreign partners for everyone to learn as this
unfortunate conflict continues to unfold.
Senator Kelly. Yes. Sometimes it is not ideal to share
those lessons learned. Do you have any examples that you are
comfortable----
Lieutenant General Braga. Well, it is impressive to see,
just in open press, you see the impact that manned and unmanned
drones and teaming is having. I think that is an absolute
critical growth area for United States Army Special Operations
Command. It is one of our modernization priorities, one of our
seven modernization priorities. I cannot envision a future
battlefield without ever-increasing manned, unmanned robotics
and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to maximize
their effect and impact across all warfighting functions. That
is something we are looking at extremely closely and only
seeing growth in future prioritization, resources, training,
and even possibly we are experimenting what type of MOS or
branches or specialties are inside the Army Special Operations
Command, so it is not just an additional duty. It is an actual
specialty.
Senator Kelly. Can you comment on a little bit about how
the cultural and language, training that Army special operators
receive and how that has helped in training our special
operations partners in other countries?
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, it is imperative that we
are both culturally attuned and speak the language. Now, do we
speak the language of every country we go to? We cannot really
match that up, but we try, and we put a lot of effort into it.
It is a baseline requirement, coming out of the special forces
pipeline. It is maintained throughout, through sustained
training, and perhaps most importantly, as we geographically
align--I mean, our special forces groups and their civil
affairs and psychological operations (PSYOPS) teams, they stay
regionally aligned.
We are working in all geographic combatant commanders (GCC)
to this day, and many of them have not taken their eyes off the
ball to support the GCC commanders' priorities there, be it
Civil-Military Support Element (CMSE) teams, military
information and support teams, our special forces Operational
Detachment Alpha (ODA), or even aviation detachment, advisories
detachments. They are operating around the globe in support of
every GCC commander's priorities, but language is absolutely
critical to being part of that interoperability. It is not just
equipment, and it also shows that you care.
Senator Kelly. Before I turn it over to Senator Ernst here
for the third round of questions, and I know this has been a
focus that the Army has had for decades, this language
capability, but for General Slife, Admiral Howard, and General
Glynn, is this something that your special operators are also
focused on, or is it a capability you would like to integrate
into the force in the future?
Lieutenant General Slife. Senator, specifically for AFSOC,
because most of our operations deal either directly with
aviation or with the integration of air and ground capabilities
through Joint Terminal Attack Control and things of that
nature, English is the international language of aviation, as
you know, and so what we have found is that our partners
generally prefer to do those security force assistance type
activities in English because it is what they deal with in the
aviation world.
We do not see a demand signal for increased language
capability, although to General Braga's point about cultural
training, cultural awareness, and those types of things, that
is an area of investment for us as we think about security
force assistance.
Rear Admiral Howard. Thank you, Senator. We have a modest
investment, I think it is calibrated the right way, and we also
make an effort to increasingly identify candidates that are
coming in with natural language capability.
Major General Glynn. Senator, language and culture have
been part of our training pipeline since inception, and so
every critical skills operator that is created, or has been
created over the course of the last 15 years, goes through a
language unique to the theater in which we intend, or they are
most likely to deploy. So as you would hope, like we have
recently shifted to some of the more significant languages in
the United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) Area of
Responsibility (AOR), to include Mandarin Chinese.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. Senator Ernst.
Senator Ernst. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I know our
vote has been called so I will just be brief, and if you can
provide brief answers as well.
I did mention a little bit in my opening statement the fact
that SOCOM's budget is flat for this year in what the President
has submitted. So we know that that is less buying power with
the rate of inflation out there.
If you can, talk through the impact that that will have on
your ability to train and resource and mobilize then your
forces. I also noted that SOCOM submitted $650 million in
unfunded requirements to buy down risk and to accelerate
modernization, which really further reinforces the inadequacy
of the budget as presented by the President.
So if you can, just very briefly again, General Slife we
will start with you, if you could talk about the impacts and
what that will have on training modernization resourcing.
Lieutenant General Slife. Yes, Senator. Briefly, it delays
any resource shortfall delays our ability to modernize. It
delays our ability to maintain the force at the highest state
of readiness. These are all balances. They are part of the risk
calculus. So I think you see, as you characterized it, the
SOCOM unfunded priority list are those things that SOCOM
believes will buy down that risk to a lower level than where we
are carrying it right now.
Senator Ernst. Great. Thank you.
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, I echo, obviously, the
unfunded priority list will help buy down that risk by
accelerating some of the capabilities we are looking to expand
upon that we have been talking about. I mentioned briefly that
inflation is absolutely having an impact. It affects our flying
hour programs, repair parts, repair engines, and that certainly
has an impact, and what that ultimately results in is at the
other end, reduced readiness if you do not have the way to keep
your aircraft maintained and your crews up to speed, just from
an aviation type aspect.
So it certainly has an impact, and at the ultimate end of
the day can you put forward less into the theater to support
the geographic combatant commanders if there is less resources,
and I would say that would be something we have to look at as
we maintain and restack our prioritization between training,
readiness, modernization, and employment.
Senator Ernst. Yes. Thank you. Admiral?
Rear Admiral Howard. Where I have a concern is really in
readiness and the ability to--what we are seeing with the focus
on experimentation and concept development for step changes to
be ready for what is ahead. You know, we are seeing an increase
in requirements for that experimentation and concept
development, and to get ready.
Where I see concern going forward is in unmanned systems,
multi-domain with an emphasis on software, not hardware. That
gets to the autonomy and interoperability. We have to win as a
Nation in that capability space.
Senator Ernst. Thank you. Major Glynn, or General Glynn?
Excuse me. Major Glynn. Sorry. I demoted you horribly. I am so
sorry. General Glynn.
Major General Glynn. I would go back and do that all over
again.
Senator Ernst. A better day and age, maybe.
Major General Glynn. Senator, as a component without major
platforms it boils down to people in our case. So what the
choice is in modernization, investments in modernization, how
quickly can we go after the technological capability and
expertise to understand our electromagnetic signature and our
digital footprint, and to have an awareness of our adversaries?
That would be one.
The pace at which that change will occur is going to be
impacted by resourcing. The alternative is to maintain a less--
as has been alluded to by the other commanders--a less-ready
force or present a smaller force offering around the globe,
which is obviously not what we want to do because we have
longstanding relationships with allies and partners that we
want to sustain. But that is where we are at, as a component,
when it comes to that budget situation.
Senator Ernst. Thank you. So I think all of your statements
just further emphasized that we do need to have growth within
this component, within SOCOM, and the budget, to make sure that
you are able to modernize, to make sure your readiness does not
suffer, to make sure that we are able to fill the ranks and
continue to fill the ranks in the future.
You know, I have always had it hammered in my head to
assume prudent risk, but at what point does that risk no longer
present itself as prudent? I think we need to continue to move
forward with a robust budget, and it is something that I will
be pushing for as we move into our budget cycle through
appropriations and with this National Defense Authorization
Act.
With that I will have no more questions, and so I will turn
it back to you, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Senator Ernst. I have got a few
more. I want to try to get through them briefly so we can get
to this vote. At 30 minutes people start to get nervous.
General Slife, SOCOM is nearing a contract award for maybe
up to 75 Armed Overwatch airframes, and this would provide
reconnaissance and strike capabilities to small, geographically
disaggregated teams of special operations forces. Can you
articulate the requirement for the Armed Overwatch program and
explain why a new platform is more affordable and effective
than existing platforms, including certainly for ground attack
the A-10 but also for reconnaissance, something like the MQ-9,
and just a little bit about on the requirements and the
affordability effectiveness aspect of this.
Lieutenant General Slife. Thanks for the opportunity to
talk about it, Senator. So a couple of aspects of that. First
of all, our methodology for supporting our forces on the ground
over the last several decades has really boiled down to the
development of what we call an air stack over objective areas.
You will typically have single-role, specialized platforms, AC-
130s, A-10s, MQ-9, U-28s. You have this stack of airplanes over
an objective, each platform providing a niche capability to the
force on the ground. That averages, in terms of cost per flying
hour, over $150,000 an hour is what it costs to generate kind
of the typical stack for that.
As we look at having a multi-role platform in the Armed
Overwatch concept, that kind of multi-role set of capabilities
comes down to something less than $10,000 a flight hour. So it
is a much more efficient way to do that. Further, it allows us
to push those platforms further forward into more austere areas
where they can operate co-located with the ground teams that
they are partnered with.
So not having them have to fly from hundreds of miles away
but rather being partnered with the ground team that they will
be supporting in places that have very austere aviation support
with a very light logistics footprint is really what we are
after, Senator.
Senator Kelly. How do you resolve the issue of something
like an AC-130 gunship being able to lay down a massive amount
of fire to the ground with something like an AT-6 with a
limited? Has that been well planned and thought out?
Lieutenant General Slife. Senator, I think I would say it
depends on the mission that is being contemplated. Clearly
there will be missions that require more deep magazine fire
support than what an Armed Overwatch platform might have. But
the idea of the Armed Overwatch platform is it is a modular
capability, and so you can outfit the aircraft with a robust
suite of sensors that will exceed what is available with most
dedicated ISR platforms today, or you can outfit the platform
with a robust suite of precision munitions. It really depends
on the mission.
Clearly the Armed Overwatch platform is not a panacea for
every tactical situation that a ground force might find
themselves in, but for what we envision the enduring counter-
violent extremist organization (VEO) mission looking like we
think it is prudent investment.
Senator Kelly. When do you feel that the contract award
will be made?
Lieutenant General Slife. Senator, I think in months, so
this summer I expect to see a contract award. All the back-and-
forth with industry, the proposals have been received, all the
questions have been answered. At this point the source
selection team is going through their deliberations and is
going to make a recommendation to the milestone decision
authority at SOCOM here in the coming weeks, and then a
contract will probably be awarded prior to the end of the
summer.
Senator Kelly. Thank you. I have one final question for
General Braga. At present sometimes obtaining approval to drop
a bomb is a lot easier than getting the permission to send a
text message. So have you seen any improvement in the ability
of your psychological operators to gain the authorities and
permissions necessary to operate effectively in the information
environment, and if you have not, what more do you think we
need to do?
Lieutenant General Braga. Senator, I have seen some
improvement. In my professional opinion, in order to match the
sheer capability and capacity of adversaries, collectively all
of us need to expand that capability, and we need to be able to
move at the speed of the information environment, which is
faster than perhaps we have been used to in the past. So I
think it requires new relationships. Certainly we are investing
our own resources into expanding that capability in information
ops to support our psychological operations forces. It is new
ground for all, but it is what we need to do in order to
succeed, both in competition and I actually see it for a role
in high-end conflict as well.
So we have a long way to go. We are on a journey. We have
seen some improvements. We are dedicating resources, time,
effort, and training towards it, but I absolutely look forward
to working with the leadership at the Pentagon and our
interagency partners to inform you of any recommended changes
moving forward.
Senator Kelly. Please do, and my door is always open to all
of you. I know Senator Ernst's as well. So anything you need we
want to help.
I also want to thank you, Generals, Admiral, for
participating in this hearing today, and I look forward to
continuing to support you and all the men and women at SOCOM,
all 74,000.
This hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 4:03 p.m., the Subcommittee adjourned.]
[Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:]
Questions Submitted by Senator Joni Ernst
united states special operations command special operations forces
leadership
1. Senator Ernst. Lieutenant General Braga, Lieutenant General
Slife, Rear Admiral Howard, Major General Glynn, understanding the
importance of robust transition support to our warriors as they exit
service, what are the unique needs for our special operators as they
make this transition?
Lieutenant General Braga.
Transition Support: USASOC Transition initiatives promote and
enable access to resources for Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF)
servicemembers (SM) transitioning from our formation to other military
service, private sector employment, retirement, or other unique
opportunities. We do not seek to replace transition support from the
Army or the Department of Veteran Affairs, but to enhance those
services through public-private partnerships.
USASOC Perspective on Successful Transition: USASOC has identified
a successful transition as the culmination of career-long accumulation
of proper professional, physical, psychological, educational, and
financial preparation. Thus, a successful military-civilian transition
starts with the Soldiers' entrance into the force, not in the final
year of their service. Since USASOC is composed of decentralized
elements with distinct needs, transition programs have been
traditionally managed by Commands Service Units (CSUs). USASOC seeks to
lend staff support to these decentralized efforts to optimize
transition success across the USASOC enterprise, while still allowing
the CSUs to focus on their distinct needs.
USASOC intent for Transition Approach: People are our No. 1
priority, that doesn't end when they leave our formations, which is why
we are studying the potential to extend their eligibility and access to
key Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) resources for 2 years
after retirement. Our transition program will focus on casting a wide
net to keep our population healthy and continuing to make our country
better.
ARSOF Veteran Engagement and Transition Support (ARSOF VETS):
Seeking to establish a collaborative community that connects with and
engages the Service Member and Family upon entry into ARSOF throughout
service in uniform, into and through post-separation for 24 months;
topics and areas of investigation of interest to the Command include:
Creation of Transition Coordination Cell at USASOC-level: Composed
of a transition coordinator and nurse case manager, in conjunction with
adjacent staff elements (Judge Advocate General, Comptroller, and
Surgeon's Office).
Analysis, program evaluation, and implementation of
effective engagement, information and messaging campaign to ARSOF
senior Service Members, veterans, and supporting peer and service
organization networks.
Support to SMs while in uniform, into transition, and 24
months post-separation
o Landscape review of trends, behaviors, and Veterans and their
transition post-uniformed service
o Review and analyze the trends of transition through service,
the effect upon transition post service, and implementing interventions
earlier in ARSOF operators' career span to support and enable a healthy
transition post-service
Fill SOF-peculiar gaps in Army Transition Assistance
Program (TAP)
o Understanding the support network for ASRSOF Veterans through
peers, public, and private organizations, and veteran access to Army
Transition Assistance Program (TAP) and Veterans Affairs (VA) programs
and care
Thicken the Support network to connect to VA and
benevolent Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs)
Equip ARSOF veterans with the right knowledge, processes,
and tools to thrive after their service to the nation
o Travel to and audit all CSU-level programs and identify gaps
o Work with financial and legal staff directorates to facilitate
appropriate support to CSU-level programs
o Coordinate with all educational-assistance programs to support
ARSOF Soldiers' pursuit of undergraduate and graduate-level degrees
o Leverage internship programs and private industry corporations
to provide an iterative transition experience (i.e. Skillbridge
Program)
Execute deliberate engagement with ARSOF Soldiers to
promote proper individual success at the proper milestones
o Regular robust transition seminars covering all aspects of
military to civilian transition
Executed with ardent Command emphasis
Education on transition processes and common obstacles
Tutelage in mind-set obstacles
Review, documenting, and treatment of medical issues
Introduction to Veteran and Benevolent Organizations
Introduction to Army Transition Assistance Program (TAP) and
USSOCOM Warrior Care Program
Introduction to and assistance in accessing educational resources
Introduction to family assistance programs to aid in family
transition
Introduction to spiritual and wellness resources to aid in
personal transition
Assistance in personal preparation at individual level (financial
planning, job searching, interview preparation)
o Leveraging program-of-record information to track ARSOF
Soldiers' physical, cognitive, professional, and wellness measures from
the time they enter the schoolhouse to the day they transition from
military service (SMARTABASE)
Provides iterative documentation and treatment over the course of
several years, as opposed to trying to fill gaps in the final 24 months
of a career
Lieutenant General Slife. Our people perform their best both in and
out of the military when they are healthy. We are proud of the care we
provide our airmen for physical wounds, but the last 20 years have
taught us that not all wounds are visible. We have made significant
progress in addressing neurocognitive and psychological trauma, but we
have work to do in dealing with moral injury. We have recently received
a commitment from the Air Force to embed a religious support team, a
chaplain and a chaplain assistant, NCO, into every squadron level
formation in AFSOC. This does not exist anywhere else in the Air Force.
Our chaplains are working to understand and address moral injury, and
their physical proximity to our airmen aims to ease access, reduce
stigma, improve overall health, and ease the transition into civilian
life.
Rear Admiral Howard. Over the course of their service careers,
Naval Special Warfare (NSW) operators experience intensive operational
training and numerous deployments in challenging environments. As a
result, the unique needs for our special operators as they make the
transition from service include:
Focused and intensive medical preparation for transition
and post-military care--Due to their higher operational tempo, in
uniquely hazardous environments, NSW personnel frequently sustain
greater incidences of traumatic experiences. This trauma can create
complex medical concerns that require additional time, attention,
documentation, and preparation to effectively address prior to
transition. Additionally, there is an increased need to connect our
personnel to specialized medical services that can continue to treat
these conditions beyond their transition from the military.
Transition services personnel--Special operators spend
many years serving in high-functioning organizations that rely on a
tight-knit culture of trust and performance. In addition, traditional
(non-SOF) transition assistance programs provided by the military
services do not provide relatable experiences for NSW's operators and
do not provide a timely, or tailored approach to holistically address
the special operator's transition.
Connection and purpose beyond the military--Research
shows military transition and psychological performance issues,
particularly in the phases leading up to transition, create
susceptibility to negative outcomes, including suicidal behavior. For
NSW's special operators, where a specific identity, unique culture, and
team focus is integral to the organizational construct, these feelings
can be acute.
Major General Glynn. The baseline needs are consistent with every
servicemember who has served their country and deployed numerous times
to austere environments in defense of our freedom. However, to your
point, there are some unique benefits and issues related to a career in
special operations. Our Care Coalition network and onsite specialist
continuously strive to improve the support that connects them to the
opportunities and available care from both the government and civilian
sectors. MARSOC recognizes based upon the small size of the component
and the deployment tempo of the command there are individuals that
required additional attention in a compressed separation or retirement
timeline. We look to support those marines and sailors with traditional
capabilities, and emerging technical opportunities for both in person
and virtual career placement opportunities, education opportunities at
all levels ranging from graduate degrees to fellowships, and detailed
transfer of health care and benefits to the servicemember and family.
2. Senator Joni Ernst. Lieutenant General Braga, Lieutenant General
Slife, Rear Admiral Howard, Major General Glynn, is there a gap between
conventional forces and our special operators in this regard?
Lieutenant General Braga. The nature of Army Special Operations
Forces formation presents unique transition obstacles.
ARSOF soldiers are specially selected and trained personnel from
the greater conventional Army. Additionally, ARSOF units are smaller,
more flexible entities than conventional Army counterparts. When
combined with an ever-growing demand to apply ARSOF capabilities
globally, it is imperative to maximize the availability of every ARSOF
member possible. Losing one person on a twelve-person team leaves an
exponential hole. Consequently, commands under the USASOC umbrella
struggle to negotiate the annual ``train, man, equip'' cycles to
deliver the elite capabilities that the Nation expects.
When a soldier needs to remove himself/herself from an operational
role to transition, it leaves a gap that will drastically need to be
filled. Unlike conventional forces, there is a significantly smaller
pool of replacements that are produced after a significantly longer
training curriculum at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School. Thus,
the unit is either faced with asking the soldier to sacrifice much
needed time to transition at the end of a career or sacrifice readiness
capability due to the loss of a highly trained individual. This can be
mitigated by changing the perspective on transition from something done
at the end of a military term of service to something done throughout
the trajectory of a term of service. Periodic health assessments,
talent and personality evaluations, family services, financial
services, and education can all be addressed at regular intervals of an
ARSOF member's career (prior to their final 24 months in the Army).
This will enable them to accomplish their vital post-military
preparation and still provide operational capability. The HQDA
Transition Assistance Program does not offer these services because
conventional military units can afford to dedicate time to soldiers at
the end of their careers. Replacements are more available.
Additionally, the caliber of soldier within ARSOF, on average, has
a higher level of experience and ambition. The majority of ARSOF
soldiers are seeking (and are qualified for) executive level or near-
executive level positions in the civilian realm. They are abstract,
educated thinkers that have expertise in concept development, program
management, human resources, negotiating obstacles, and working with
multiple entities. The job opportunities offered within the HQDA TAP
resources do not provide these types of opportunities. Job placement
services and internship prospects are offered for pre-approved
companies that are mostly entry level administration or trade-specific
opportunities. Although there is nothing wrong with these types of
offers for transitioning soldiers, they do not provide the requisite
amount of job satisfaction, stimulation, and quality of life ARSOF
soldiers establish during their military service.
Additionally, TAP has a large spectrum of military specialties that
transition to the private sector differently. In contrast, a
conventional Army Infantry Unit, for example, has a large majority
force that is Infantry. Tailoring transition programs to a homogeneous
group, such as an infantry division, is more tenable than creating a
modular transition program to help Special Forces, Rangers, Aviators,
Psychological Operations soldiers, and Civil Affairs soldiers alike.
Thus, more resources and capability are needed to ensure that each of
these military specialties and demographics are adequately escorted
through the military to transition experience.
Lastlyg, USASOC units are decentralized across the continental
United States, Europe, and Asia. Thus, as USASOC struggles to provide
services to multiple specialties, it also needs to navigate transition
shortfalls present at each installation across the continental United
States, Europe, and Asia. Each geographic location has its own unique
opportunities and obstacles that require nimble transition services to
establish effective systems to address these geographic peculiarities
and the specific ARSOF military specialties that reside on each post.
Lieutenant General Slife. The past 20 years saw Air Force Special
Operations Command, the smallest of the ten major commands in the Air
Force was the most deployed and the most decorated. It is noteworthy
that in spite of the high operations tempo, AFSOC has the highest
retention rate in the Air Force. The investment in POTFF has created a
resilient and ready force.
Rear Admiral Howard. While we can't accurately compare our special
operator transition to conventional force transition, our force is
committed to strengthening our focus on unique interrelated health and
functional impairments such as traumatic brain injury effects;
vestibular and vision impairments; endocrine dysfunction; sleep
disorders including obstructive sleep apnea; chronic joint/back pain
and other orthopedic problems; substance abuse; depression, anger,
worry, and stress reactivity; marital, family, and community
dysfunction; problems with sexual health and intimacy; and
hypervigilance. In addition, higher operational tempos often prevent
adequate transition time for our special operators.
Major General Glynn. There is not so much as a define gap between
conventional and special operations transition support. The service
opportunities are available to all members, including SOF. Some of the
SOF peculiar transition issues are created by the deployment tempo that
simply does not permit as planned a transition as SOF would benefit
from. Likewise, there are health issues, like exposure to repeated
blasts, which occurred in the line of duty, and USSOCOM has created
programs and networks to bridge that gap to take care of all
servicemembers assigned to a SOF component. These resources require
continuous management to ensure they adapt with the size of the force,
the types of services required and the cost of those services to ensure
the benefits are available to each transitioning servicemember, taking
into account that each case is different and requires dedicated and
tailored support.
3. Senator Joni Ernst. Lieutenant General Braga, Lieutenant General
Slife, Rear Admiral Howard, Major General Glynn, would the force
benefit from some additional help tailored to their experiences?
Lieutenant General Braga. Yes, USASOC believes SOF Forces could
benefit in general from a more deliberate approach by expanding the
purview of POTFF / Human Performance and Wellness (HPW) Programs to
include:
Making more programs available that address Post
Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injuries our SOF Operators incur
while serving and must deal with as Veterans
Codifying ARSOF Specific Transition Programs with
Coordinators that enable transitioning Service Members to build a
``one-of-one'' approach to addressing individual career needs
(credentialing, certifications, education) and assistance in building
empowered ARSOF Veterans
Support efforts that ensure there is continuity of care
for all ARSOF Veterans
Support efforts that enhance seamless transitions from
DOD to VA and Sponsorship of our transitioning SOF Operators to their
destination locations (States) that are geared to reduce negative
outcomes such as Veteran suicide, homelessness, and unemployment
Expand the eligibility window of DOD Skillbridge Program
from 180 days before separation date to 365 days before separation
while keeping the maximum length at 180 days to provide additional
flexibility to Commanders to manage opportunities between Unit and
Veteran Readiness
Ensure that soldiers are afforded enough time to execute
a successful transition. USASOC advocates soldiers to start 24 months
prior to their final day in the military
Providing additional suicide prevention training,
services, and strategies for transitioning Service Members prior to the
24-month transition window may reduce suicide rates post-separation.
Research suggests that veterans out of the service for up to 3 months
were more likely to take their own life than Active Duty
servicemembers. The suicide rate nearly tripled among veterans who had
been out of the military between three to 12 months.
Lieutenant General Slife. The prolonged exposure to stressful
environments experienced by many in the SOF community can make
transitioning to ``normal'' civilian careers more difficult. Having a
dedicated program or team that understands and builds upon the unique
experiences and culture of our members would be a huge benefit as they
transition to civilian life.
Rear Admiral Howard. Yes. Ideally, all special operations units
would have dedicated transition services personnel consisting of
transition advisors and medical professionals to assess, identify, and
resource the risk factors that special operators experience in their
career and must address during their transition process. In addition,
all special operations units would benefit from having dedicated post-
transition resources. NSW's operators need additional resources to
assist them in finding and engaging in a new purpose, translating their
unique skills to the civilian sector, navigating relationships outside
of the military environment, and connecting with their new (typically
non-military) team environment.
Major General Glynn. Certainly. All servicemembers to include
special operators and their families, would benefit from having access
to embedded and networked transition support staff with whom trust and
relationships have been established, particularly when the
servicemember is deployed and the family is preparing for transition.
__________
Questions Submitted by Senator Kevin Cramer
personnel costs
4. Senator Cramer. Rear Admiral Howard, it is my understanding that
we spend more per servicemember today than at any other point in
history. Is that true?
Rear Admiral Howard. Direct costs for SEAL/SWCC qualification
training increased from fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2022. Direct
costs include Operations and Maintenance associated with initial
qualification training (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Course (BUDS)
and Special Warfare Combatant Craft Crewman (SWCC)) and advanced
qualification courses. NSW does not maintain historical records to
sufficiently compare recent costs to those incurred prior to fiscal
year 2018.
Additional assessment costs (separate from recruiting costs) also
increased between fiscal year 2018 tofiscal year 2022. Indirect costs
associated with operating Naval Special Warfare Center (NSWCEN), which
supports initial and advance training, also increased between fiscal
year 2018 and fiscal year 2022.
Information for direct costs for the assessment, selection, and
training pipeline, and total indirect costs is provided for fiscal year
2018 to fiscal year 2022 (estimated). The costs below are not adjusted
for inflation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fiscal Year Fiscal Year Fiscal Year Fiscal Year Fiscal Year
2018 2019 2020 2021 2022E
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Initial and Qualification Training............. $15,222,000 $17,599,000 $17,051,000 $19,487,000 $20,714,000
Assessment..................................... $560,000 $560,000 $496,000 $994,000 $1,855,000
Indirect Costs................................. $42,141,000 $40,954,000 $48,354,000 $54,620,000 $61,080,000
----------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL...................................... $57,923,000 $59,113,000 $65,901,000 $75,101,000 $83,649,000
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Senator Cramer. Rear Admiral Howard, what metrics do you use to
determine the cost to (recruit, assess, select, train) an individual?
Rear Admiral Howard. The total costs to recruit/assess/select/train
NSW personnel are not fully captured by NSW. Costs of recruiting and
basic training are captured by Navy Recruiting Command and Navy
Education and Training Command, whereas NSW-specific initial training
is captured by NSW. Overhead costs include all indirect costs required
to conduct our courses and include Civilian Pay, Base Operating
Support, Range Support, various support contracts, and Facilities
Sustainment, Restoration, Modernization (FSRM). Candidate throughput
for our courses is captured every year on our OP-5J Attachment 10
Budget Exhibit.
Cost Per Candidate. For fiscal year 2022, NSW's Qualification
Training Costs (Direct (Blue), Assessment (Orange) and Indirect (Gray))
are projected to be $83,649,000. Projected required candidate output is
303 (175 SEAL Operators, 58 SEAL Officers, and 70 Special Boat
Operators). Projected costs per candidate are estimated to be $276,076
($83,649,000 / 303 candidates). Changes in counting candidate output/
cost preclude direct comparison with prior fiscal years. General data
indicates that NSW's cost per candidate did increase over the prior
period.
health & readiness
I am interested in how you determine readiness in the human domain.
Equipment, training and manning are all relatively easy metrics to
measure.
6. Senator Cramer. Rear Admiral Howard, how are you assessing the
``health'' of the force?
Rear Admiral Howard. NSW has embedded licensed, credentialed POTFF
providers at the O-6 level major commands to provide immediate access
to care, to evaluate and treat all medical and human performance
conditions in the areas of psychological health, musculoskeletal
health, and cognitive performance. Medical readiness metrics for
immunizations, dental status, and deployable status are tracked monthly
to ensure our forces are always ready for operational commitments.
Annual human performance assessments, including body composition,
strength, and cardiovascular performance are required to ensure
physical capabilities for mission requirements are maintained and to
proactively address any identified risk area. Cognitive performance is
measured prior to deployment and at least every 3 years using the
Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics (ANAM). Psychological
health is assessed through the Human Factors Program, to identify any
personal challenges one might be facing, engage their senior
leadership, and develop a plan to optimize functioning before the
challenges become significant problems. Psychological assessments are
also performed upon return from deployments through Warrior Transition
and Third Location Decompression programs. These multi-domain
assessments provide a holistic overview of individual and command
readiness.
7. Senator Cramer. Rear Admiral Howard, why aren't we using a more
representative model that includes both health (high blood pressure,
mental health, diabetes, heart disease, depression, etc.) AND
performance (non-deployable status, mental health, obesity, diabetes,
cognitive function, strength, endurance, recovery, etc.) metrics to
better understand not just the status but also the trends?
Rear Admiral Howard. The NSW Human Performance Program has a robust
data base that tracks and records individual and team performance
metrics, such as aerobic capacity, mobility, power and strength, and
lean muscle mass. These metrics are used to proactively identify and
address any risk areas and to ensure the highest level of performance
of all personnel. All musculoskeletal injuries are given a mission
status of Red, Yellow, or Green, and are used to recommend a command
member's ability to deploy or participate in physical mission training.
Psychological health metric trends are tracked longitudinally by
gathering and analyzing data from programs such as the Human Factors
Program, Warrior Transition, and Third Location Decompression. Monthly
psychological health reports are also generated that track trends,
utilization, and content issues.
__________
Questions Submitted by Senator Marsha Blackburn
preservation of the force and family (potff)
8. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, Lieutenant General
Slife, Rear Admiral Howard, Major General Glynn, what metrics do you
use to define `success' concerning POTFF and how does each service
determine metrics for success?
Lieutenant General Braga. USASOC uses USSOCOM Directive 10-12,
which provides common data collection requirements for each POTFF
domain. The requirements include utilization measures and other domain
specific data, such as a physical assessment, psychological assessment,
psychological diagnosis, or spiritual fitness scale.
USSOCOM Directive 10-12 identifies three statuses to stratify
individuals based on how mission capable they are: (1) Green is fully
mission capable; (2) Yellow is some functional limitation for mission
essential training or deployment participation; and (3) Red is
significant functional limitation--member advised not to participate in
mission essential training or deployment.
While the directive lists the common data collection requirements
for all SOCOM POTFF domains, USASOC collects additional data to inform
our program evaluations with feedback from subordinate unit Human
Performance and Wellness (HPW) personnel.
Lieutenant General Slife. AFSOC measures `success' by the reduction
of risk behaviors. POTFF is spread a little unevenly across AFSOC as
some of our units have greater demands for one aspect than another.
Data has shown that units with POTFF resources embedded at a unit level
have a lower incidence of risk behaviors (sexual assault/harassment,
suicidal ideation or attempted suicides). Based on the lower
incidences, we believe we are seeing a significant return on our POTFF
investment.
Additionally, AFSOC is implementing the use of an annual Tactical
Performance Index Questionnaire (TPIQ) as a comprehensive evaluation of
a member's current performance and lifestyle metrics. The TPIQ includes
metrics to show improvements or changes in an airman's physical,
mental, social, spiritual and cognitive capabilities and will help us
monitor changes over time.
Rear Admiral Howard. Since the implementation of SOCOM's POTFF
program at NSW, `success' has been assessed through two broad
categories: (1) tracking trends of harmful behaviors, and (2) measuring
utilization of POTFF service providers. Trends we focus on include
suicide, DUI, spouse abuse, divorce, service-related injuries, etc.
Utilization rates of POTFF services demonstrates whether the services
are destigmatized and whether servicemembers are being more vulnerable
in accessing offered care, as well as overall availability and access
to POTFF providers.
NSW POTFF uses metrics directed by SOCOM and success is determined
through identifying positive trends over time.
Major General Glynn. MARSOC has developed and implemented across
the component a comprehensive evaluation process that addresses the
quality and effectiveness of the program. The primary metrics used to
define success are: 1) Access to care/services; 2) Sustained
operational availability; 3) Enhanced career longevity; 4) Health and
wellness of the Family. This program extends to those MARSOC members
and families assigned to billets outside of the immediate organization.
9. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, Lieutenant General
Slife, Rear Admiral Howard, Major General Glynn, are you aware if your
POTFF-related metrics for success and definition of success are the
same as those used by your counterparts at the other service component
commands?
Lieutenant General Braga. Yes, POTFF staff at SOCOM headquarters
provide policy guidance and resources for the program. Service
components and TSOCs are responsible for implementing POTFF at their
commands, including identifying any unique needs or capacity gaps at
each command.
We (USASOC) are nested within SOCOM's POTFF data collection effort
to measure the utilization, quality of care, and ensure both help us to
meet our mission requirements. The critical resources, programs, and
leader emphasis to help take care of our soldiers and their families is
imperative to preserving our experienced Special Operators that have
endured over two decades of sustained combat operations and ensure we
are postured to meet the requirements that the Department of Defense
and the Nation have for ARSOF in the future.
Assessment:
Measures of performance / effectiveness at soldier and
unit levels
Data from existing assessments and surveys
Physical, Cognitive, Psychological, Spiritual / Social,
Administrative, and Program metrics
Regular updates to enable Commanders to more frequently
gauge unit readiness
Return on Investment:
Benefit to soldiers--improved health, fitness,
readiness, and access to care
Benefit to Commanders--improved ability to meet unit-
specific readiness needs
Benefit to Units--improved readiness, morale, and
effectiveness
Benefit to Army--increased readiness, reduced
attrition, and cost savings
Lieutenant General Slife. Yes. USSOCOM will employ Smartabase
software, a HIPAA-compliant software system that can improve human
performance and optimize strength, speed, stamina, and help with injury
prevention across the enterprise. While the mission and function of
each component drives specific performance measurements, there is a
high degree of standardization across the components.
Rear Admiral Howard. Yes. A recent SOCOM Directive has standardized
POTFF metrics collection to better define success. This Directive
identified 17 distinct data collection items across the five POTFF
domains. Those 17 data elements will be collected by all component
commands for input into a centralized, Force-wide data repository.
Major General Glynn. Yes, there is a common baseline, and it is
expected there will be slight deviations due to unit specific nuances.
The MPOTFF Program communicates regularly both internally to the
USSOCOM components, Marine Corps, and Navy; and externally to the many
health, academia, and industry professional resources that are critical
to the success of the network. This type of communication creates a
degree of standardization across the force. USSOCOM Leadership
recognizes a level of uniqueness at each subordinate command and the
associated policy, delineates baseline standards.
10. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, Lieutenant General
Slife, Rear Admiral Howard, Major General Glynn, what are the
shortfalls with current POTFF domain guidance regarding roles and
responsibilities?
Lieutenant General Braga. USSOCOM Directive 10-12 defines the
common requirements of the POTFF program across five domains--physical,
psychological, cognitive, social and family, and spiritual--by
providing an overview of the program, including its goal, the domains'
roles and responsibilities, and execution guidance for the subordinate
commands.
USSOCOM does not believe there are any current shortfalls regarding
POTFF related roles and responsibilities. Based on SOCOM guidance,
USASOC provides guidance and resourcing to meet POTFF mission and
intent.
Lieutenant General Slife. SOCOM has made vast improvements to
strengthen and clarify the roles and responsibilities across the
domains of resiliency while allowing flexibility for each component to
tailor their programs to meet the needs of the force down to the unit-
level commanders. AFSOC has further defined our guidance for the unit-
level commanders by implementing the Integrated Resilience Optimization
Network (IRON) program and by providing clarifying guidance on the
roles, responsibilities, goals and processes across all domains. This
will ensure the maximum effectiveness and proper utilization of all
resources provided through the POTFF program in concert with and
complementing those provided by the Air Force.
Rear Admiral Howard. NSW does not assess there are any current
shortfalls regarding POTFF related roles and responsibilities. Both
SOCOM and Navy provide strategic level guidance and appropriate level
resourcing to meet POTFF mission and intent, with the commensurate
provided autonomy. The mantra of ``centralized guidance and resourcing
/ decentralized execution'' provided by higher headquarters allows for
maximum flexibility and adaptation. NSW considers their POTFF program
``right sized'' in terms of personnel and programs in a currently
fiscal constrained environment.
Major General Glynn. We are conscious that the operational
environment has shifted from highly kinetic conflicts with
servicemembers receiving both severe visible and invisible wounds on a
near daily basis. As a new norm is baselined, we are conscious that
even with the best force protection measures in place we still have
servicemembers in harm's way and conducting hazardous duty on both
operational and training assignments. An example of an emergent and
growth area is cognitive wellness and the SABRES program that USSOCOM
sponsors. Servicemembers and families still require the detailed levels
of care sustained by a fully funded and resourced program; in fact, at
this point may be when they can reap the mid to long-term benefits of
POTFF more than in the midst of war.
degraded visual environment (dve) software integration
11. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, what would be the
potential time, cost, and mission benefits of Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) procurement of a standard DVE solution as a mission-
enhancing, rather than risk-mitigating, too?
Lieutenant General Braga. The USASOC DVE solution is a risk
mitigation solution which improves safety to crew and passengers and
allows USASOC rotary-wing aircraft to exploit adverse environmental
conditions both enroute and at the objective to gain a tactical
advantage. In the past 20 years, Special Operations Aviation aircraft
have suffered over 20 fatalities directly attributed to operations in
degraded visual environments. The USASOC DVE solution is tested, in
production, and is fully funded. Fielding of DVE solutions is currently
ongoing. The USASOC solution is the best fit for USSOCOM's rotary-wing
aircraft. USASOC has demonstrated and shared its DVE solution with the
US Army and USSOCOM. The Army is adopting the USASOC solution for the
Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA). While the rest of the
USSOCOM aircraft enterprise has different requirements, any commonality
at the system or subsystem level is surely beneficial.
Lieutenant General Slife. The strategic, fiscal, and technological
landscapes are shifting and the ``AFSOC We Needed'' is no longer the
``AFSOC We Will Need''. As we pivot, the mission-enhancing DVE system
for CV-22 has been deferred due to higher priority requirements. A
reduced visibility landing system capability (risk-mitigating) for
SOCOM CV-22s is currently undergoing developmental testing as part of
the next CV-22 tactical software release planned in 1st quarter fiscal
year 2024.
Rear Admiral Howard. Currently for maritime SOF, DVE software
integration would be mission enhancing. Potential applications include
NSW surface and sub-surface craft in a maritime environment or
operators in a low-visibility (i.e. dust storm or fog) land
environment. Efforts to increase collection of all-spectrum information
through hardware/software and then consolidate that information in
real-time to provide pertinent critical information would decrease the
cognitive load on operators. Decreasing the cognitive load on operators
is in SOCOM's and JWC's guidance for decision advantage.
NSW is currently unable to ascertain time and/or cost benefits, and
currently have no (high TRL) DVE systems under consideration.
Major General Glynn. Degraded Visual Environment Software
Integration is part of the SOCOM Aviation Systems Portfolio. MARSOC
does not have an aviation component. As a supported element utilizing
rotary aircraft for air assault MARSOC appreciates the requirement for
the best and latest technological capabilities for pilots that best
support the mission and mitigate the hazards of aviation operations.
leveraging emerging technologies
12. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Slife, how is Air Force
Special Operations Command (AFSOC) incorporating a hybrid proliferated
space architecture to enable resilient cross-domain operations?
Lieutenant General Slife. The strategic environment is
substantially different from the one in which we have operated in for
the last two decades. In order to remain relevant in the emerging
technologies environment, AFSOC is participating with Air Force
Research Lab and the Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation
office on experimentation of emerging low earth orbit (LEO) based
satellite communications technology. This technology can become a
resilient and affordable Beyond Line-Of-Site command and control
enabler for Joint All-Domain Command and Control via the AF Advanced
Battle Management System. AFSOCs efforts are focused on helping test,
advise, and steer the commercial satellite communication industry to
develop capabilities and functionality that can be leveraged by DOD in
the near future. Assuming LEO satellite technology achieves desired
results at low cost, AFSOC intends to leverage AF and SOCOM to field
these capabilities to airborne platforms, ground C2 nodes, and Special
Tactics within 1-2 years.
Additionally, AFSOC is also engaging with the USSF on development
of the Rocket Cargo Specialized Spacelift Vanguard project to
demonstrate commercial spacelift capabilities. This capability has the
potential to provide National Command Authority, Combatant Commands and
Theater Special Operations Commands a new ability to rapidly transport
personnel and equipment anywhere in the world. As a deeply invested
partner in the Vanguard Rocket Cargo effort, AFSOC provides subject
matter experts to develop Special Operations Forces (SOF) payload
configurations and concepts in order to influence payload bay design.
These concepts will support development of SOF Medical spacelift
payloads for Air-Land, Air-Maritime, and Air-Drop capabilities support
Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief missions. The ability to
respond to a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief crisis by
rapidly deploying forces and equipment anywhere in the world within an
hour is a strategic differentiator.
13. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, how can SOCOM
strengthen and innovate current specialized skillsets and capabilities
with existing specialized testing infrastructure?
Lieutenant General Braga. USSOCOM is maximizing resources toward
Joint efforts capable of conducting Joint All-Domain exercises /
experimentation to expand opportunities at Service Combat Training
Centers (CTCs) and SOF venues like the Crestwood, KY underground
training facility and the Special Operations Training Center at Fort
Bliss and White Sands Missile Range. USASOC is leveraging ongoing Army
efforts to develop new military career fields and specialties related
to areas like Counter Threat Finance, Data Analytics and Software
Development. USSOCOM is invested in improving Joint capability sets
related to these fields. Additionally, USASOC is conducting the
necessary analysis to explore the feasibility of expanding SOF career
fields related to robotics and unmanned systems. These investments
buildupon current Joint and Component initiatives designed to better
equip and prepare SOF for Joint All-Domain Operations. USSOCOM is
investing in increasing the skills and capabilities of our
Psychological Operations soldiers. This includes creating people and
organizations that are capable of competing trans-regionally across the
information space. These efforts include the integration and
synchronization of Service and Joint SOF, Space, and Cyber
capabilities.
14. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, what innovative
experimentation is United States Army Special Operations Command
(USASOC) focusing on to counter Chinese and Russian malign activities?
Lieutenant General Braga. USASOC is focusing its innovative
experimentation in the areas of Irregular Warfare, Information
Advantage, Multi-Domain Operations Interoperability, Next generation
Precision Effects, Unmanned Systems / Robotics / AI, Next Generation
Mobility, and Enhancing the ARSOF soldier. USASOC has been directly
involved in the development of the Joint Concept for Information
Advantage (JCIA) and the Army Concept for Information Advantage 2028 to
address required capabilities to identify and counter malign
information and influence. USASOC is specifically experimenting in the
convergence of SOF, Space, and Cyber capabilities, Contested
Communications, Data at the Edge, Counter Unmanned systems, Robotics,
and Next Generation Lethality Systems such as advanced loitering
munitions. USASOC is committed to conceptual and live experimentation
thorough our efforts with the Joint Staff J7's Global Integrated
Wargame (GIWG), Army 2030, 2040, and the Joint Warfighting Assessment
events, USSOCOM's Shadow Warrior, and the full range of Army Future
Warfighting Experiments (AFWE) including Joint Live Experimentation in
the Army's capstone event, Project Convergence. USASOC is partnered
with ASD/SOLIC's Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate
(IWTSD), the Army's Space and Missile Defense and Cyber Commands, Rapid
Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), Night Vision
Lab, and Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber,
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center (C5ISR), as well
as OSD, National Labs, and private industry.
artificial intelligence assisted decision-making
15. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Slife, how can Special
Operations Forces utilize data-processing software such as Big Data
Analytics to assist in utilizing available data to compensate for
limited personnel?
Lieutenant General Slife. Using analytics and enabling AI will
continue to be critical as SOF evolves. We continue to monitor the
progress of Project Maven and other AI applications to gain
efficiencies in intelligence analysis. We are actively contributing to
development through tagging and deconflicting intelligence data. We
remain confident that AI will allow us to use our manpower more
efficiently in the future.
We are also using AI in defense of our cyber networks. We use AI to
prioritize observations within data sets, perform analytics
(descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive) and provide
actionable insights in defense of the network. These analytics help
AFSOC to achieve increased flexibility and risk reduction in
constrained environments. A few of our current efforts in use now:
AI / Big Data Analytics search across all social media
and news sites for specific information or patterns which assist us
regarding news, posts, and rumors related to SOF activities,
adversarial activities and more. This includes overcoming language
barriers via natural language processing.
On our networks, we are able to enable automatic network
traffic analysis to determine actor intent and trustworthiness of
services in real-time, allowing us to respond appropriately.
ukraine and taiwan
16. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, what lessons can
be applied from the Russian-Ukraine conflict to other partners
worldwide--particularly Taiwan?
Lieutenant General Braga. [Deleted.]
17. Senator Blackburn. Lieutenant General Braga, how can each
component command work together to meet the different requirements in a
Ukrainian or Taiwan scenario?
Lieutenant General Braga. Unity of effort and collaboration is an
organic feature of SOF Components.
SOF components work together in sharing intelligence and
various partner nation building endeavors, both point to point and/or
thru the respective regional Theater Special Operations Commands,
particularly when sharing common areas of operation.
Special Operations components possess unique expertise and
capabilities.
Domain and functional based unique expertise are rarely
redundant and cannot or should not be replicated.
ARSOF has significantly regionally aligned PSYOP and
Civil Affairs units that complement all SOF units of action.
Naval Special Warfare has significant maritime assets
that other SOF Components do not and it would be cost prohibitive to
duplicate.
Each Army Special Forces Group possesses highly skilled
elements that interact and complement all other units of action
deployed in that respective area of responsibility.
Continued joint SOF participation in Joint Chief of Staff (JSC) and
Service exercises
Continued joint SOF participation in a litany of JCS and
Service Exercises is another critical tool to drive SOF component
teamwork, especially in the large-scale global exercise environment.
USASOC requests continued funding and advocacy for SOF
participation in as many of these venues as possible.
SOF provides combat multipliers to magnify the effects of
indigenous mass.
Both Ukraine and Taiwan involve conflict with a superior
adversary.
Engaging a superior adversary by employing Irregular
Warfare (IW) concepts offers the best chance of success.
SOF are experts in the conduct of IW.
special operations forces ethics
18. Senator Blackburn. Rear Admiral Howard, how do traditional
roles of ethical teaching resonate with SOF operations, and what are
the untapped options for shaping ethical narratives and decisionmaking
to address these issues?
Rear Admiral Howard. Naval Special Warfare (NSW) implements ethics
and culture development in every phase of assessment and selection,
utilizing various approaches and techniques as we strive be an exemplar
of a Highly Reliable Organization on-and off-the-battlefield--with
trust, authenticity and integrity.
First, NSW is selective of the individuals who are offered the
opportunity to participate in the SEAL and SWCC assessment and
selection pathways; candidates are assessed based on character,
cognitive and leadership attributes. Ethical individuals are the
building blocks of an ethical Force. Upon admission to the SEAL and
SWCC training programs, candidates receive both formal and informal
development. Informal development takes place in day-to-day
interactions between candidates and instructor staff who are empowered
by NSWCEN leadership to identify and leverage opportunities to develop
candidates with an ethical decisionmaking foundation. In terms of
formal ethical training, a minimum of 4 hours per week is programmed
into SEAL and SWCC Basic Training, and ethical decisionmaking is
enforced continuously through small unit tactics instruction during
SEAL Qualification Training (SQT) and Crewmen Qualification Training
(CQT), including 10 hours of lessons learned and tactical ethics
scenarios administered by qualified SEAL and SWCC instructors. Further
detail regarding ethical development during the SEAL and SWCC training
pipelines can be found in Encl (1) (Developing Ethics and Culture at
the Naval Special Warfare Center).
Upon graduation from SQT and CQT, SEAL and SWCC operators report to
their operational commands (SEAL Teams and Special Boat Teams) where
ethical development is programmed into every phase of the Inter-
Deployment Training Cycle (IDTC). The IDTC is broken into three
distinct phases: Professional Development (PRODEV, focused on
individual education, training, and qualification), Unit Level Training
(ULT, focused on training the maneuver element in core and core plus
mission areas necessary to certify for deployment), and Task Group
Integration Training (TGIT), which incorporates combat service (CS) and
combat service support (CSS) personnel into more complex scenarios that
are tailored to respective elements' deployment area of operations,
with oversight from the Commander (O-5 level) of the Task Group
element.
During PRODEV, prospective leaders within NSW attend courses of
instruction administered by NSW Leadership Education and Development
Command (NLEAD) which are required to fulfill respective leadership
positions (E-6 Leading Petty Officer, E-7/O-3 Platoon Leaders Course,
E-7/O-3 Ground Force Commanders Course, E-8/O-4 Troop Leaders Course,
Chief Warrant Officers' Course, O-4 Executive Officer Course, E-9/O-5
Command Leaders' Course). These courses leverage a mix of ``traditional
roles of ethical teaching'' (for example with Dr. Jeremy Davis, a
Postdoctoral Associate from University of Florida for ``Ethics Theory
and Application'') and less traditional roles utilizing combat ethics
case studies methodology, and tactical decisionmaking exercises led by
experienced military personnel. What resonates with the candidates in
these courses depends on how well the content is delivered rather than
whether it is ``traditional'' or not. We find that this blended
approach with a mix of both is most effective: the traditional approach
provides a framework, while the non-traditional approach addresses
application.
Upon completion of PRODEV, elements at the Platoon and Troop level
progress into ULT, which incorporates Tactical Ethical Conditioning
(TEC) where tactical leaders and operators are put into scenarios that
test their knowledge and ability to apply the law of war, current
theater Rules of Engagement, and ethical decisionmaking in stressful
situations and then debriefed accordingly to develop the operator's
``ethical armor.'' In addition to scenario-based ethics conditioning,
ethical discussions and personal vignettes are used for shared
awareness and personal development throughout ULT.
Progressing into TGIT, NSW elements aggregate CSS and CS personnel,
and participate in TRIDENT Exercise to garner Certification for
deployment at the O-5 Task Group, O-4 Task Unit, and O-3 Task Element
levels. Within TRIDENT Exercise, Ethical dilemmas are present in every
training exercise scenario, designed to test and develop decisionmaking
processes and consideration. In practice, this looks like leaders
intuitively assessing/asking: ``Can I?'' ``Should I?'' and ``So
What?''--further refining with ``Is it (whatever it might be) legal,
moral, ethical?'' and sharing/staffing/collaborating ideas by, with and
through peers, mentors, and experts. While operational dilemmas are
certainly tested, e.g. Go or No-Go criteria--based on changing
conditions/circumstances; legal, ethical, and moral aspects are
challenged as well as each leadership team--and their maneuver elements
must navigate through the uncertainty presented by the simulated yet
operationally oriented training scenarios. Most importantly, these
deliberate sets and reps offer NSW personnel a low cost yet high yield
learning opportunity in this critical area. In addition to TRIDENT
Exercise, every deploying unit is required to participates in Just
Warrior Training (JWT), a formal course facilitated by Chaplains and a
SEAL Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) on the importance of ethics in
garrison and while deployed to reinforce moral character based on the
SEAL/SWCC ethos and Just War theory.
We believe the current overall NSW ethics training delivered to our
sailors at all phases of their professional development pipeline is
both robust and thorough. We continually evaluate options to better
shape our ethical narratives and decisionmaking using updated and
relevant vignettes and by tapping into the civilian education and
professional ethics networks for current best practices.
19. Senator Blackburn. Rear Admiral Howard, how do commanders
balance innovative technologies and austere conditions with ethical
decisionmaking at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels?
Rear Admiral Howard. NSW Commanders ground the employment of
innovative technologies in austere conditions with ethical
decisionmaking and ensure the Force conducts itself with the highest
moral and ethical standards, on and off the battlefield.
Upon deployment, NSW forces continue to have opportunities for
ethical development. Deploying forces generally undergo and Operational
Chan of Command (OPCON) shift to the Theater Special Operations Command
(TSOC) that is responsible for operations in their respective
deployment's geographic area. Each TSOC builds upon a geographically
focused Law of Armed Conflict / Rules of Engagement and the ethical
training that NSW units receive during TGIT through their operational
guidance and persistent contact with subordinate commanders. When
physically dislocated, NSW Commanders maintain contact with subordinate
commanders in their administrative control chain-of-command to provide
mentorship for professional and ethical matters.
Furthermore, by incorporating ethical training metrics into pre-
deployment certification of all deploying elements, NSW ensures that
only units who have demonstrated ethical decisionmaking in realistic
conditions attain Certification by their Commander, Verification by
their ISIC, and Validation by their TYCOM (CV2) for them to deploy. NSW
relies on the ethical foundation that is imbued throughout selection
and training, the IDTC methodology, and through position-specific
leadership training to prepare operators and leaders; then tests them
in realistic conditions to confer trust (via CV2) that they will
conduct themselves in keeping with the high moral standards that their
nation expects of them when deployed around the globe.