The Insider

Along with discussions of future warfare and force structure comes the question of what role Special Operations Forces will play. In the world outlined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his recent and much-discussed Foreign Affairs article, will more SOF forces be needed? What will an increase in SOF numbers do to its capabilities?

"For SOF in particular that poses a lot of dilemmas that I don't think have been adequately answered," Stephen Biddle , a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said at a luncheon with reporters this week. He posed the question, what happens to the capabilities of Special Operations Forces when their size is dramatically increased?

"If you're going to double the size of the SOF, part of what makes the SOF so good is they're trained so well and they're equipped so well, but part is that they're very carefully selected," said Biddle. "I personally have not seen a good study of what will happen to SOF proficiency if you expand it by X percent."

Speaking at the same event, Maj. Gen. David Fastabend, director of strategy, plans and policy in the office of the deputy chief of staff (G-3/5/7), said that because today's conventional forces have such a high level of combat experience, they already have a greater growth potential than past U.S. forces.

Also, because the deployment schedule in the Army is so rigorous -- a year off and a year on for years in a row -- soldiers are “kind of self-selected for that type of lifestyle," said Fastabend.

"((SOF)) can probably grow more readily than in the past, but certainly there's an upward bound to it," he said.

A May 16, 2008, Congressional Research Service report laid out Pentagon plans for near-term SOF growth:

As mandated by the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) SOF continues to expand. USSOCOM added 6,643 military and civilians in 2007. By the end of FY2009, USSOCOM hopes to grow to 55,890 civilian and military personnel, of which 43,745 will be active duty military, 4,310 Guard, 2,560 Reserves, and 5,275 government civilians. These increases roughly translate into adding five additional Special Forces battalions, four additional Ranger companies, 300 additional SEALs, 2,500 Marine Special Operations Forces, and additional special operations aviators.

FURTHER READING: SPECIAL OPS

Recent and related stories:

• Draft Policy Bolsters Key Role for SOCOM in Security Force Assistance
• Official: SOCOM, Marines Must Seek Security Cooperation Synergies
• MARSOC Aims to Secure Key Role in Trans-Sahara, North Africa
• Pentagon Revises Definition of Military Services' Core Roles, Responsibilities

Defense secretary Robert Gates was the sole guest on PBS' Charlie Rose program last night. It was a wide-ranging discussion on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Russia, China and Gates' historic decision to become the first sitting defense secretary to serve an incoming administration.

The full interview is online here.

Gates noted President-elect Barack Obama's administration must decide what the U.S. objectives are in Afghanistan and whether some of the current goals are too long-term and idealistic.

Perhaps the United States needs to scale back its objectives there for the next two to three years and focus above all on preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for violent extremists, he said. That is easier said than done, he acknowledged, adding the solution cannot simply be military in nature.

"My biggest concern in Afghanistan is the history of foreign armies in Afghanistan going back to Alexander the Great. As long as the Afghan people see us as their friend and ally, as long as they see us as in this fight for them, as well as for ourselves, then I think we'll be OK," Gates said. "But if we get too many forces in there, if they come to see us as in it only for ourselves, and not as their ally, and they turn against us, then I think we cannot be successful."

The solution is to accelerate the growth of the Afghan army and get them in the lead with the United States in a supporting role, Gates opined.

With little more than a month left in office, President Bush is scheduled today to visit the Army War College in Carlisle, PA, to talk about defense matters.

Early this afternoon, in the college’s Thorpe Hall, he is slated to deliver a speech about "national security, homeland security and the freedom agenda."

After the speech, he plans to meet privately with Army War College students.

President-elect Barack Obama is slated to hold a national security meeting in Chicago in today. The Obama camp says the meeting will include Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Secretary of State-designee Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Attorney General-designee Eric Holder, Secretary of Homeland Security-designee Janet Napolitano, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, Ambassador to the United Nations-designee Susan Rice, National Security Adviser-designee Jim Jones, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, White House Chief of Staff-designee Rahm Emanuel and White House Counsel designee Greg Craig.

At the end of the day, Obama is scheduled to hold a press conference at the Drake Hotel to discuss the nation's energy and environmental future. He will reportedly announce his environmental team.

We've just posted a story on a new interim report by the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. The panel is led by former Defense Secretary William Perry, an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama.

The report is the latest to discuss the possibility of a world without nuclear weapons. Notably, however, it acknowledges such a world is rather unlikely to show up any time soon. The Wall Street Journal took up that theme in an opinion piece published yesterday.

The commission's chairman is William Perry, a former Clinton Defense Secretary and a close Obama adviser. Mr. Perry is also one of the 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,' the nickname given to him, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn for an op-ed published in these pages last year offering a blueprint for ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

The commission's interim report is due out any day now, and the advance word is that Mr. Perry has come back to Earth. We're told the report's central finding is that the U.S. will need a nuclear deterrent for the indefinite future. A deterrent is credible, the report further notes, only if enemies believe it will work. That means modernization.

The Army's Human Terrain Team program, which has repeatedly come under fire since its creation, is getting a shout-out from a counterinsurgency officer in Afghanistan. Army Col. John Agoglia, director of the Kabul-based Counterinsurgency Training Center-Afghanistan, told us in an interview last week he plans to soon integrate the teams' research into his organization's training curriculum.

Agoglia said he hasn't personally worked with any HTT personnel. But, he added, "the brigade commanders I've talked to felt they're getting very good information from them."

Under the HTT program, anthropologists deploy alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to facilitate troops' interactions with the local population.

But before CTC-A trainers can tap into the information gathered by HTT teams, officials must build the requisite information sharing infrastructure, including ways of exchanging secret information, Agoglia said.

"We need to get our pipes set up and we need to get our information sharing capabilities improved," the colonel said. "And then we'll start looking at what they have and start pulling them into the training we're doing at the center."

Wired magazine's Danger Room blog has chronicled some of the issues surrounding the HTT program here, here, and here.

A Human Terrain Team handbook, issued by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command in September, is posted here.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes the global financial crisis will force the Pentagon to “squeeze” its budget. In addition, the Pentagon's No. 1 officer passed up an opportunity during yesterday's press conference to support the Air Force's bid to buy additional F-22A fighters.

ADM. MULLEN: I think it's very clear from, obviously, President- elect Obama's public statements, also Secretary Gates, to look at -- to take a very, very intense, focused, comprehensive view at what we're buying -- and from that perspective, I think that's very healthy.

And I say that -- also, I'm obviously discouraged by the lack of cost control that we've got in so many -- in so many of our programs. And we are going to have to get a grip on that, or we will not be able to buy them. It's very clear to me. We won't be able to buy them, and we won't be able -- or we won't be able to buy them in the quantity we need.

I am -- I'm very concerned about the global financial crisis and its impact globally on security. I think it will impact on security over a period of time, and we have to recognize that. I think it's important for all of us in the Defense Department to squeeze our budgets, to draw in where we can, and for leaders to commit to that and certainly recognize that there are challenges out there which we'll continue to have to resource.

Q: Do you think, for instance, of the biggest military needs -- say the F-22, the most expensive fighter plane ever made?

ADM. MULLEN: There's been an awful lot of discussion about that. It's not a matter of do we need it.... We have it. It's a question of how many do we need for the future. And Secretary Gates has been pretty clear. This administration has been very clear about where it's been, where he is, and certainly has, you know, left it open to see what the additional numbers should be. The chief of staff of the Air Force has talked about a number that is another -- what? -- 50 or so more than the 183 right now.

So I think we're going to -- we're going to work our way through that. I do -- I am concerned that it is such an expensive system.

I think it is -- in the aviation world, our future is in the Joint Strike Fighter, but the Joint Strike Fighter is a new system. New systems usually struggle, you know, meeting exact deadlines. And I think it's very important we have capability to bridge to that system with respect to the broad range of capabilities for the country.