Unless they end in disaster, most missions remain in the shadows, unknown to all but a few Americans. And yet last year alone, U.S. commandos deployed to 149 countries — about 75% of the nations on the planet. At the halfway mark of this year, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or SOCOM), America’s most elite troops have already carried out missions in 133 countries. That’s nearly as many deployments as occurred during the last year of the Obama administration and more than double those of the final days of George W. Bush’s White House.
Going Commando
“USSOCOM plays an integral role in opposing today’s threats to our
nation, to protecting the American people, to securing our homeland, and
in maintaining favorable regional balances of power,” General Raymond
Thomas, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, told
members of the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year.
“However, as we focus on today’s operations we must be equally focused
on required future transformation. SOF must adapt, develop, procure, and
field new capabilities in the interest of continuing to be a unique,
lethal, and agile part of the Joint Force of tomorrow.”
Special Operations forces have actually been in a state of
transformation ever since September 11, 2001. In the years since, they
have grown in every possible way — from their budget to their size, to
their pace of operations, to the geographic sweep of their missions. In
2001, for example, an average of 2,900
commandos were deployed overseas in any given week. That number has now
soared to 8,300, according to SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw. At the same
time, the number of “authorized military positions” — the active-duty
troops, reservists, and National Guardsmen that are part of SOCOM — has
jumped from 42,800 in 2001 to 63,500 today. While each of the military
service branches — the so-called parent services — provides funding,
including pay, benefits, and some equipment to their elite forces,
“Special Operations-specific funding,” at $3.1 billion in 2001, is now
at $12.3 billion. (The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps also
provide their special operations units with about $8 billion annually.)
All this means that, on any given day, more than 8,000 exceptionally well-equipped and well-funded special operators from a command numbering roughly 70,000 active-duty personnel, reservists, and National Guardsmen as well as civilians are deployed in approximately 90
countries. Most of those troops are Green Berets, Rangers, or other
Army Special Operations personnel. According to Lieutenant General
Kenneth Tovo, head of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command until his
retirement last month, that branch provides
more than 51% of all Special Operations forces and accounts for more
than 60% of their overseas deployments. On any given day, just the
Army’s elite soldiers are operating in around 70 countries.
In February, for instance, Army Rangers carried out several weeks of
winter warfare training in Germany, while Green Berets practiced
missions involving snowmobiles in Sweden. In April, Green Berets took
part in the annual Flintlock multinational Special Operations forces
training exercise conducted in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Senegal that
involved Nigerien, Burkinabe, Malian, Polish, Spanish, and Portuguese
troops, among others.
While most missions involve training, instruction, or war games,
Special Forces soldiers are also regularly involved in combat operations
across America’s expansive global war zones. A month after Flintlock,
for example, Green Berets accompanied local commandos on a nighttime air
assault raid in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, during which a senior
ISIS operative was reportedly “eliminated.” In May, a post-deployment
awards ceremony for members of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces
Group, who had just returned from six months advising and assisting
Afghan commandos, offeredsome
indication of the kinds of missions being undertaken in that country.
Those Green Berets received more than 60 decorations for valor --
including 20 Bronze Star Medals and four Silver Star Medals (the
third-highest military combat decoration).
For its part, the Navy, according to Rear Admiral Tim Szymanski, chief
of Naval Special Warfare Command, has about 1,000 SEALs or other
personnel deployed to more than 35 countries each day. In February,
Naval Special Warfare forces and soldiers from Army Special Operations
Aviation Command conducted training aboard a French amphibious assault
ship in the Arabian Gulf. That same month, Navy SEALs joined elite U.S.
Air Force personnel in training alongside Royal Thai Naval Special
Warfare operators during Cobra Gold, an annual exercise in Thailand.
The troops from U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, deploy
primarily to the Middle East, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific regions on
six-month rotations. At any time, on average, about 400 “Raiders” are
engaged in missions across 18 countries.
Air Force Special Operations Command, which fields
a force of 19,500 active, reserve, and civilian personnel, conducted 78
joint-training exercises and events with partner nations in 2017,
according to Lieutenant General Marshall Webb, chief of Air Force
Special Operations Command. In February, for example, Air Force
commandos conducted Arctic training -- ski maneuvers and free-fall air
operations — in Sweden, but such training missions are only part of the
story. Air Force special operators were, for instance, recently deployed
to aid
the attempt to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped deep
inside a cave in Thailand. The Air Force also has three active duty
special operations wings assigned to Air Force Special Operations
Command, including the 24th Special Operations Wing, a “special tactics”
unit that integrates air and ground forces for “precision-strike” and
personnel-recovery missions. At a change of command ceremony in March,
it was noted that its personnel had conducted almost 2,900 combat
missions over the last two years.
Addition through subtraction
For years, U.S. Special Operations forces have been in a state of
seemingly unrestrained expansion. Nowhere has that been more evident
than in Africa. In 2006, just 1% of all American commandos deployed
overseas were operating on that continent. By 2016, that number had jumped
above 17%. By then, there were more special operations personnel
devoted to Africa -- 1,700 special operators spread out across 20
countries — than anywhere else except the Middle East.
Recently, however, the New York Times reported
that a “sweeping Pentagon review” of special ops missions on that
continent may soon result in drastic cuts in the number of commandos
operating there. (“We do not comment on what tasks the secretary of
defense or chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may or may not have
given USSOCOM,” spokesman Ken McGraw told me when I inquired about the
review.) U.S. Africa Command has apparently been asked to consider
what effect cutting commandos there by 25% over 18 months and 50% over
three years would have on its counterterrorism missions. In the end,
only about 700 elite troops — roughly the same number as were stationed
in Africa in 2014 — would be left there.
Coming on the heels of the October 2017 debacle in Niger that left those four Americans dead and apparent orders
from the commander of United States Special Operations forces in Africa
that its commandos “plan missions to stay out of direct combat or do
not go,” a number of experts suggested that such a review signaled a
reappraisal of military engagement on the continent. The proposed cuts
also seemed to fit with the Pentagon’s latest national defense strategy
that highlighted a coming shift from a focus on counterterrorism to the
threats of near-peer competitors like Russia and China. “We will
continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists,” said Secretary
of Defense James Mattis in January, “but great power — not terrorism —
is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”
A wide range of analysts questioned or criticized the proposed troop
reduction. Mu Xiaoming, from China’s National Defense University of the
People's Liberation Army, likened
such a reduction in elite U.S. forces to the Obama administration’s
drawdown of troops in Afghanistan in 2014 and noted the possibility of
“terrorism making a comeback in Africa.” A former chief of U.S.
commandos on the continent, Donald Bolduc, unsurprisingly echoed these
same fears. “Without the presence that we have there now,” he told "Voice of America,"
“we're just going to increase the effectiveness of the violent
extremist organizations over time and we are going to lose trust and
credibility in this area and destabilize it even further.” David Meijer,
a security analyst based in Amsterdam, lamented
that, as Africa was growing in geostrategic importance and China is
strengthening its ties there, “it’s ironic that Washington is set to
reduce its already minimal engagement on the continent.”
This is hardly a foregone conclusion, however. For years, members of SOCOM, as well as supporters in Congress, at think tanks, and elsewhere, have been loudly complaining
about the soaring operations tempo for America’s elite troops and the
resulting strains on them. “Most SOF units are employed to their
sustainable limit,” General Thomas, the SOCOM chief, told
members of Congress last spring. “Despite growing demand for SOF, we
must prioritize the sourcing of these demands as we face a rapidly
changing security environment.” Given how much clout SOCOM wields, such
incessant gripes were certain to lead to changes in policy.
Last year, in fact, Secretary of Defense Mattis noted that the lines
between U.S. Special Operations forces and conventional troops were
blurring and that the latter would likely be taking on missions
previously shouldered
by the commandos, particularly in Africa. “So the general purpose
forces can do a lot of the kind of work that you see going on and, in
fact, are now,” he said.
“By and large, for example in Trans-Sahel [in northwest Africa], many
of those forces down there supporting the French-led effort are not
Special Forces. So we'll continue to expand the general purpose forces
where it's appropriate. I would. . . anticipate more use of them.”
Earlier this year, Owen West, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, referred to Mattis’s comments while telling
members of the House Armed Services Committee about the “need to look
at the line that separates conventional operating forces from SOF and
seek to take greater advantage of the ‘common capabilities’ of our
exceptional conventional forces.” He particularly highlighted the Army’s
Security Force Assistance Brigades, recently created
to conduct advise-and-assist missions. This spring, Oklahoma Senator
James Inhofe, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recommended that one of those units be dedicated to Africa.
Substituting forces in this way is precisely what Iowa Senator Joni
Ernst, an Iraq War veteran and member of the Armed Services Committee,
has also been advocating. Late last year, in fact, her press secretary,
Leigh Claffey, told
TomDispatch that the senator believed “instead of such heavy reliance
on Special Forces, we should also be engaging our conventional forces to
take over missions when appropriate, as well as turning over operations
to capable indigenous forces.” Chances are that U.S. commandos will
continue carrying out their shadowy Section 127e raids alongside local
forces across the African continent while leaving more conventional
training and advising tasks to rank-and-file troops. In other words, the
number of commandos in Africa may be cut, but the total number of
American troops may not — with covert combat operations possibly
continuing at the present pace.
If anything, U.S. Special Operations forces are likely to expand, not
contract, next year. SOCOM’s 2019 budget request calls for adding
about 1,000 personnel to what would then be a force of 71,000. In
April, at a meeting of the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and
Capabilities chaired by Ernst, New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich noted
that SOCOM was on track to “grow by approximately 2,000 personnel” in
the coming years. The command is also poised to make 2018 another
historic year in global reach. If Washington’s special operators deploy
to just 17 more countries by the end of the fiscal year, they will
exceed last year’s record-breaking total.
“USSOCOM continues to recruit, assess, and select the very best. We
then train and empower our teammates to solve the most daunting national
security problems,” SOCOM commander General Thomas told the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities earlier this year. Why Green Berets and Navy SEALs need to solve
national security problems — strategic issues that ought to be
addressed by policymakers — is a question that has long gone unanswered.
It may be one of the reasons why, since Green Berets “liberated”
Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has been involved in combat
there and, as the years have passed, a plethora of other forever-war
fronts including Cameroon, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Mali, Niger,
the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.
“The creativity, initiative and spirit of the people who comprise the
Special Operations Force cannot be overstated. They are our greatest
asset,” said Thomas. And it’s likely that such assets will grow in 2019.