Michael Peck
A new U.S. Army special operations forces manual has a mission: to convince the regular Army that the Green Berets have value for conventional combat operations.
It’s a signal that the days of cowboy special operators are over. As the U.S. military switches from small-unit counterinsurgency to big-unit mechanized warfare, ARSOF wants to show that it can contribute to the joint fight.
The focus now is, “How do we show our value to the Army, and how do we help the Army show its value for the Joint Force?” Kimberly Jackson, a researcher at the RAND Corp. think tank, told Defense News.
“You have to prove your relevance,” said Jackson, a former Navy Reserve officer with a background in Naval Special Warfare. “You do that by showing your operational abilities. And that is something that has had to shift a little bit for the special operations community.”
The new FM 3-05: Army Special Operations manual makes clear that the Army’s special forces need to evolve for a world of high-tech, multidomain warfare.
“Our doctrine must describe how ARSOF contribute across the competition continuum — remaining threat informed, strategically driven, operationally focused, and tactically prepared,” wrote Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, in the foreword to the manual.
Braga describes Army Special Forces as one of the legs of the “SOF-Space-Cyber Triad,” an irregular warfare concept modeled after the strategic nuclear triad. These very dissimilar forces would target enemy command and control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting capabilities, or C5ISRT.
FM 3-05 describes what Army Special Forces can bring to conventional combat operations, such as when friendly forces bypass enemy cities and units, leaving stragglers and potential guerrillas behind.
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