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| U.S. Special Operations Forces: Behind the scenes in global hot spots |
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| Military and Security 5/25/2008 9:47:00 AM |
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By Ronald Baygents (with photos)
TAMPA, Florida, May 25 (KUNA) -- They are the stuff of action movies, but
more important, real life. There are some 8,000 U.S. Special Forces operating
in the Middle East, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and mostly behind the
scenes.
The U.S. Congress in 1986 established by law the U.S. Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) in the wake of the failed 1980 mission to rescue U.S. hostages
who had been held near Tehran for months after a takeover of the U.S. Embassy
there by Iranians under the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. That mission, known
as Operation Eagle Claw, ended with eight U.S. airmen and eight military
aircraft lost at a desert staging area.
During a media tour of SOCOM held last week in Tampa and at nearby MacDill
Air Force Base during International Special Operations Forces Week, U.S. and
mostly foreign press members were granted interviews with top U.S. and allied
officers involved in Special Operations.
SOCOM is a unique organization with a unified combatant command, noted
Colonel Hans Bush, a Green Beret who works in SOCOM public affairs.
Special Operations forces are employed globally through synchronized,
coordinated missions that are underpinned by a number of essential "truths,"
said Bush -- that humans are more important than hardware; that quality is
better than quantity; and that special forces cannot be created after
emergencies occur, but must always be ready and in place.
Special forces equipment is usually modified with more high-tech components
than regular military equipment, and SOCOM has more senior civilians in more
places than is typical of other U.S. Defense Department organizations, Bush
noted.
SOCOM operates under a simpler, more direct hierarchy to make it easier to
move quickly.
Core tasks of SOCOM include unconventional warfare, such as was utilized in
the early phases of the 2001 war in Afghanistan and the 2003 war in Iraq;
foreign internal defense; special reconnaissance; direct action, such as
destroying certain facilities or capturing high-value targets;
counter-terrorism, which is a much broader area of SOCOM responsibility since
the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001; civil affairs
operations; psychological operations, which are often aimed at the "second
audience" in a conflict area and may include distribution of handbills;
counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and synchronized efforts
in the global war on terror.
More than half of U.S. Special Operations Forces are in the U.S. Army,
primarily based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Army Rangers are perhaps the
best known of these.
The remaining Special Ops forces are in the Navy (such as Navy Seals), Air
Force, Marines and Joint Special Operations Command. A Joint Special
Operations University has been established with an emphasis on interagency
training, including with the U.S. State Department, Bush noted.
U.S. Special Ops forces are typically deployed in about 70 countries or
territories on any given day, Bush said.
Although Special Ops forces comprise only 2 percent of the total Pentagon
budget, each service provides the Special Ops forces with their equipment.
The command has an annual budget of more than 7 billion dollars and nearly
50,000 military and civilian personnel.
The original Special Ops forces broke off from the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the late 1940s, but the forces still work closely
with the CIA today, Bush said, as well as with other U.S. intelligence
agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Customs.
During a media roundtable with a nine-member panel of international SOCOM
leaders, Special Operations commander Admiral Eric Olson of the Navy Seals
said Special Ops forces "represent a culture of international cooperation"
that can meet in non-military environments to conduct special operations,
joint operations or bilateral or multi-lateral operations.
The priorities of the forces are "greatly determined by input from the
geographic commanders," Olson said.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the military command overseeing U.
S. Special Ops had moved away from a contentious plan that gave it broad
control over anti-terrorism operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot
spots.
The expanded authority for U.S. Special Operations Command was pushed
through by former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before he resigned in
late 2006.
The shift caused friction among leaders at other war-fighting organizations
who saw it as an intrusion into their geographic domains.
Olson, who has been Special Ops commander since last July, has steered
clear of micro-managing specific missions against al-Qaeda or other terrorist
groups.
His primary focus is to ensure these plans are fused into a broader
strategy for defeating extremist ideologies, reflecting his view that the
troops closest to the action know best how to handle it.
Asked by KUNA if high-level diplomacy would be important to the missions of
the Special Ops forces after a new U.S. president takes office in eight
months, Olson said high-level diplomacy was best left to the State Department.
However, he told KUNA, his command is in the business of training
"warrior-diplomats" who go places no one else goes.
It is "every-day, every-place diplomacy" that separates Special Ops forces
from some of the other U.S. military forces dispatched around the globe, he
told KUNA. (end)
rm.rk
KUNA 250947 May 08NNNN
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مجلس الوزراء
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