Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces

by Tom Clancy

  • Ruggedized Palmtop Computers—No SF deployment goes downrange without an array of laptop and palmtop computers, and there’s no denying their enormous utility. The problem: The wear and tear is heavy. Right now, most off-the-shelf commercial computing products work in a fairly limited range of environments—temperature, humidity, dust, moisture, etc. And most break if dropped hard. While a forward headquarters or team house can usually handle—or work around—these limitations, equipment that fragile is hardly suitable for field operations. What clearly is needed is a ruggedized family of laptop/palmtop computers, capable of a variety of military and general tasks. These would include e-mail (with the ability to attach digital photos and other files), a small spreadsheet and database, drawing pad, and perhaps even an imbedded GPS receiver. This unit could then be plugged into a satellite phone to send and receive data.

  • Handheld Sensors—One big victory in the fight against size and weight has been in the design of handheld sensors. In just a decade thermal imaging scanners (also known as Forward Looking Infrared—FLIR) have shrunk from small beer keg to soft-drink-can size. Similar improvements have been made in the quality and cost of other systems, including low-light scopes, laser designators, digital cameras, and GPS receivers. The next major advance will likely come in the form of a single unit combining many of the above systems—perhaps a large pair of binoculars that might also communicate through the satellite phone unit. Using such a system, a single SF soldier, acting as a sensor post, could transmit pictures and targeting coordinates back to higher headquarters in all weather and lighting conditions, and then call in precision firepower on a variety of targets—capabilities up to now unavailable to entire units.

  • Climate Adaptive Field Clothing/Gear—The average SF soldier has a closetful of Battle Dress Uniforms (BDUs), each suited to a specific climate and terrain that might be encountered on deployment. Since the climates and terrains an SF soldier might encounter vary enormously—even during a single deployment—his rucksack can get terribly crowded with BDUs, socks, and jackets. It may well be, however, that rucksacks stuffed with clothing may soon be history. Clothing that adapts to local environmental conditions is now within reach. In the near future, conductive microfibers might be woven into a computer-controlled garment. This garment might possess a number of intriguing characteristics. It could have, for instance, a “chameleon” outer shell, which could change color and pattern to exactly match the surrounding terrain and conditions. It could have a bullet-resistant Kevlar interior layer, which could protect against fire from 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and 9mm projectiles at close range. The microfibers might expand under an electrical charge, increasing the garment’s insulating properties. Electricity might be produced by a series of small generators in the joints. In other words, the wearer would make his own power. Such an overgarment might operate anywhere—in deserts, forests, mountains, and cities.All of these projections, while bordering now on the fanciful, have a solid basis in existing technologies. Within a few years (and with the generous help of taxpayer dollars), SF soldiers will go into battle with a number of significant combat edges they do not now possess. Though the new gear will continue to offer only limited utility for low-end missions such as FID and HA, for high-intensity conflicts, such as regional wars and covert raids, it might prove decisive.

  In fact, these higher end missions (and the equipment they require) are the subject of most of SOCOM’s planning scrutiny these days, and for the same reasons that SF scenarios at JRTC and NTC are focused on operations in “big” conflicts. This is so not because the other SF missions are less important, but because the high-end missions are the most difficult in their mission spectrum, and thus require the greatest investment. In the “big” conflicts, the largest numbers of SF units and missions are run, the SF units themselves are large (often battalion-sized), and the risks and difficulties are the greatest.

  How the new technology might apply to those missions is the subject of a series of ongoing field and laboratory experiments, examples of which will shortly follow.

  Twenty-first Century Special Forces CONOPS

  Combat is never more than one false step from screaming, raging, howling chaos. Thus the absolute necessity for what our military calls “command and control.” Ideally, command and control involves easy communication up and down the lines of command. Never has this ideal been achieved. Never has there been sufficient bandwidth. (Smoke signals, flags, trumpets, telegraph, and even radio are very imperfect media.) And rarely, during critical moments, will warriors be able to divide their attentions enough to fight and talk.

  Still, reducing chaos is always a goal.

  The new computer and communications technologies offer a significant leap in the right direction.

  How might these technologies help battalion- or group-sized SF units better accomplish their wartime missions? Perhaps even more important, how can the SF group/command organization and concept of operations (CONOPS) be changed so that smaller, better-equipped ODAs can more successfully accomplish all the various missions that will be handed to them?

  For years, senior SF leaders have worked at creating a more efficient planning and tasking process, one that focuses better on the needs of ODA personnel, and allows input and contributions from a wider variety of personnel and organizations. This effort has included a top-to-bottom review of the entire mission planning and execution process. In particular, SF leadership has been looking for ways to use new technologies or systems to open up the planning process further, to improve team performance in the field, and especially to reduce the time required to plan missions and the size of the workload at every level of the mission planning and execution process.

  Here are some of their early goals:• “Stovepipe” Elimination—“Stovepiping” is a term that has become fashionable among both military and business types. It is a process with a fixed chain of tasks that must be followed in order for the goal of the process to be accomplished. To put this another way, if the goal is to be reached, the process can neither be accessed from outside the stovepipe, nor disrupted by anything, either in or out of the stovepipe.Good day-to-day examples of stovepiping are your local public utilities. If you want electrical power, telephone service, or cable TV, your only recourse (with very few exceptions) is to turn to large and fixed power, telephone, or cable companies. You get what they want you to have. That is, you have virtually no say in how you receive their services, and you pay the prices they want you to pay.

  It will come as no surprise that virtually the entire federal government is a hive of stovepipes, jealously guarded by bureaucrats whose professional lives center on the defense of “their” stovepipe. And you can take as a further axiom that in the government the higher the security “protecting” an organization or program, the more likely that organization or program is a stovepipe.

  Conversely, it will also come as no surprise that those who would make “revolutions” in military and business affairs have been working to destroy stovepipes—or at least to break into them—and allow new people and ideas to bring new life to previously closed communities, processes, and programs.

  Today, the process of tasking an SF ODA with a mission is a top-to-bottom stovepipe. The team has surprisingly little to say about that process. They are not expected to add much in the way of basic input or to suggest options for practically executing the overall mission.

  Of course, the teams make many specific choices about how they will carry out their assigned mission. No SF mission is executed without a tremendous amount of detail planning at the team level. However, the team rarely controls the broad strokes of these operations, as these are usually set at the top levels of the JTF or regional headquarters. In other words, the team’s options lie at the bottom of the tasking chain—at the bottom of the stovepipe. This means their choices are severely limited ... as is their participation in overall planning.

  So, for example, mission-critical issues, such as transportation to and from the
target areas, rules of engagement, and radio net choices, are often simply handed to them; asking for other options is not open to them.

  If other options were open to them, then a team might request an infiltration by sea or submarine, instead of by air, in order to reduce the chances of enemy detection. Or, in order to reduce their risks, a team might like to change their tasking from direct action against a target (a self-contained raid) to special reconnaissance (observing), and then Terminal Guidance (designating the target) for weapons from an outside fire source (aircraft, artillery, or missiles).

  Clearly, commanders will always have to have the final say, yet giving teams more input into high-level planning for their own missions would be a good thing, and Special Forces Command is looking very hard at ways to make that happen.

  • Reduction of Intercommunity Friction—Every SF mission requires the cooperation and support of a number of government and military agencies. The transport aircraft and helicopters that carry the teams, the maps that show them the way, the clothing they wear, all come from everywhere except the Special Forces Command.One naturally expects cooperation and teamwork ... and even better, friendly cooperation and friendly teamwork—especially during risky and dangerous operations where lives hang in the balance.

  That doesn’t always happen. Too often, there’s friction, competition, and rivalry—a situation often made worse by the sometimes heavy-handed ways of the SOF community. There are times when other services and organizations go out of their way to avoid providing what the Special Forces need to properly execute a mission.

  Such rivalry will never be entirely eliminated. However, the many different resources and services necessary for an SF operation require at least the reduction to comfortable levels of the impediments rivalries create.

  This is another example of what Clausewitz called “friction.” Special Forces (like every other military organization) have no dispensation from friction. If they are going to make their missions work, they have to overcome the friction their community generates.

  One of the most powerful sources of friction is the system for delivery of intelligence from the intelligence agencies to its military customers. Special Forces (like every other military organization) vitally require accurate and up-to-the-minute intelligence data.

  Meanwhile, the various American intelligence agencies may well be the most stovepipe-ridden community in the history of humankind. This makes the process of tasking them to collect and then deliver accurate and timely intelligence information difficult—unless you happen to be the president, his immediate staff, or some few other high-level civilian government types. It’s so much more gratifying to the ego to deliver your goods to customers who live at those heights rather than the guys slogging through the mud getting shot at. The security bottlenecks are so tight, it’s hard for SF planners to know what they don’t know, or if information is available somewhere that might help in the execution of the mission—or save lives.

  One way to get around these limitations is to set up tasking and distribution of the various intelligence collection systems at a central SF center. In this way, the teams can make their requests up the chain of command, which has the necessary clout and clearances to task agencies like NRO and NSA. Such a center might also provide other, similar services for the teams—like procuring special clothing, equipment, or food, or arranging special satellite paging and phone services.

  • Improved Connectivity—Computers, data networks, and high-speed telecommunications have revolutionized just about everything you can think of ... except SF mission planning. SF mission planners, with their deep tradition of “stubby pencil” planning in the field, have resisted these advances—often for solid, conservative reasons. Stubby pencils are really rugged.On the other hand, not a long space separates solid and conservative from petrified and dogmatic. “This is the way we’ve always done it. It works. It doesn’t break. I’ll be damned if I do it different.”

  Where’s the truth? For that, we have to answer a simple question. Can advanced sensor, computer, and communications technology give SF personnel (at all levels) a better situational awareness of their operating areas and missions? Will this technology allow SF soldiers to better accomplish their missions, or will it be a “gee-whiz” impediment to their core goals and objectives?

  Many in the Special Forces community have already answered that question, by voting with their pocketbooks and yearly budget allocations. Already, laptop and palmtop computers, digital cameras, and other “gadgets” have begun to change the face of SF operations. At every briefing in an SF operations center, the presentation is delivered by means of a large-screen projector, fed by a computer running recent-generation presentation software imbedded with digital photos and video clips. Computerized mission-planning tools and high-speed digital communications are now also allowing team planners to get involved earlier in the tasking process. Historically, the earlier the participants are involved in planning a mission, the greater the chances it will be successful.

  Meanwhile, in order to get an idea about performance of new technologies and systems outside of command centers, the SF community has hosted a series of laboratory experiments and field exercises. These have evaluated a wide variety of equipment and concepts, which could form the core of SF CONOPS and doctrine well into the next century.

  We’ll look more closely at all this, but before we do, a few words about the testing process itself.

  People learn far more from their failures than from what works the first time. This truth lies at the core of the military developmental process.

  The kinds of field exercises we tend to be familiar with are traditional force-on-force exercises, like those at JRTC and NTC. Experimental exercises (of the kind we’re about to see) are a very different creature. Force-on-force exercises test training, preparation, and equipment under conditions of stress, surprise, mischance, and chaos that mimic as closely as possible the actual conditions of battle. Experimental field exercises are the military equivalent of scientific lab experiments. They don’t test training (though they can have that effect); they test ideas, systems, technologies, and the like under controlled parameters. And they tend to be loaded down with a number of what people in the test and evaluation community call “artificialities”—unreal situations. Screwups happen in all field exercises—and they should—but they are more likely to occur in experimental exercises than in force-on-force exercises. The idea in experimental exercises is to validate particular concepts and procedures, not necessarily to “win” engagements or achieve objectives in the typical military sense.

  Colonel Ed Phillips, USA, with his trademark basketball. Colonel Phillips was the commander of the 7th Special Forces Group during the high-tech R3 demonstration exercise.

  JOHN D. GRESHAM

  Relampago Rojo: Rock Soup and a Vision

  Because the 7th SFG has been at the forefront of new technology implementation within the SF community, and because Colonel Ed Phillips, their commander (he has since moved on), was a leader in the drive to prepare Special Forces for the new century, it will be no surprise that 7th SFG has been the testbed unit for new technologies and CONOPS concepts.

  I first learned of Phillips’s passion for new technology during a meeting in late 1998, when he outlined his vision for future SF CONOPS. It’s a wide and “big” vision of future SF operations, in which SF no longer plays a subordinate role to conventional forces, but works as equals—or even takes the lead when that would be best. Here—in rough form, and a little cleaned up, for security reasons—is the vision he and a handful of others came up with:

  Where Special Forces are concerned, the men on the teams have seen it all. SF soldiers live for downrange missions, where the only link home is a single high-frequency radio channel with a Morse key. All have also planned their share of exercises on a grimy sheet of paper with a broken pencil stub. They also know the value of the new technologies—computers, software, and networking. Still, the o
ld methods have their place. Indeed, they are sometimes indispensable. But when you have complex operations and missions, you’re better off using the new technologies. The missions will be more clearly presented to the participants, and the operations will be better coordinated.

  The new vision, in other words, is surprisingly simple. Where a genius like Da Vinci might need only pencil and paper to sketch a masterpiece, it’s better to give average artists a full pallet of brushes, tools, and pigments. That way, you probably won’t get a great picture, but you’ll get more picture. Technology can be a liberating force for the creative energies of Special Forces soldiers and Special Forces commanders. Technology allows the genius of each soldier to be more fully seen by a wider audience over a greater distance. And it allows commanders more choices (always a good thing: Every commander wants his enemy to run out of options before he does).

  So, for example, the new technologies might allow the primary control center for large and widespread SF operations to be in a different time zone from the conflict. It might even be a permanent room at a group headquarters here in the U.S., which might permanently monitor and control a variety of missions through phone and satellite links to forward operations bases in the field.

  Visionaries have a hard time in military organizations. It’s not so much that military types are hostile to new ideas. They like new ideas, but only within the currently fashionable frame of reference (the stovepipe). What set the recent efforts of Ed Phillips apart from others was the ability to make the visions into a physical reality. In short, he “made rock soup,” as George Patton used to call it.

  During World War II, General Patton liked to attack faster and more aggressively than his superiors thought best. When his bosses tried to stop him, Patton “made rock soup”: A hobo wants to make a pot of soup, but he has nothing to make it with, not even a pot. So he picks up a couple of stones and then borrows a pot of cold water, for “rock soup.” Once he has the pot and water, he borrows a little of this and a little of that, gradually picking up meat, vegetables, and firewood—everything he needs to make “real” soup. Like the hobo, Patton would push a little here and a little there, and get into a small fight somewhere else. And before his superiors knew what was happening, he’d have a full-scale offensive going when he was supposed to be stopped dead.