OEF, OIF Demonstrating U.S. Forces Will Need To Be More SOF-Like

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Defense Daily
June 11, 2008
Pg. 1
By Geoff Fein
After six years in Afghanistan and five in Iraq, top military brass are seeing that U.S. forces will need to be much more SOF (Special Operations Forces)-like, with the ability to move quickly and be more adaptive, says a senior military leader.
"The one [requirement] that jumps off the page is the requirement for all services to be SOF-like--to be netted, to be much more flexible, adaptive, faster, lethal, precise-- whether it is soft power or hard power, whether it's projects or kinetics, to bring that into play very very rapidly," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Defense Writers Group yesterday.
"Everything is flatter and faster, and I believe all of us have to adapt in that way," he added.
Mullen emphasized the importance of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). He pointed out that the services have significantly increased the pace of fielding ISR capabilities.
ISR is one of the enabling pieces of SOF forces, Mullen added. "I think that will extend, quite frankly, to other forces.
"Five to six years ago I didn't talk about it...I didn't talk about ISR...what did it mean, how are we going to get at it, and we knew we were short," Mullen said. "We are now much more focused on that and delivering enabling capabilities to our forces, and all the services are going to have to do that."
The other area that Mullen said has been significant is human intelligence, which continues to deliver and needs to continue to grow.
There is also a need to stop collateral damage, he added. "Collateral damage has hurt us very badly."
One of the messages Mullen said he takes away from the impact of collateral damage is that U.S. forces are not going to be able to do that. "We can't afford to do that. We have to actually minimize it in the future."
Mullen also noted there will be a continuing requirement for a counter-insurgency piece. There is going to be a need, he added, to make sure U.S. forces have the right focus on irregular warfare. "I believe we are going to be doing [irregular warfare] for a long time."
"I also believe there continues to need to be a balance, that we've got to focus on what we are doing now, but we can't take our eye off the ball for the long-term," Mullen told reporters. "There are long-term requirements that we've got to meet to make sure it's not just about these wars, but the conflicts we could face in the future."
Clearly, Mullen added, there needs to be a focus on the capabilities U.S. forces need for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We need to do it as rapidly as we can, and the Pentagon is not famous for speed."
Mullen acknowledged there are too many major defense programs whose costs have grown sky high. The Pentagon will have a difficult time gaining the public's trust if it cannot contain those costs, he added.
"There have been studies on how to do this. There are a lot of smart people who have tried to do this in the past that are working on it now," Mullen said. "That speaks to the complexity of it...the complexity of the systems. We have to continue to have leadership focus on this, and there are a couple of areas that I think are particularly important."
One area of importance for Mullen is requirements growth.
"I just don't mean the broad requirements. I mean the requirements from when an idea comes out, to what gets signed in the contract," he said. "And I don't think there's enough visibility, for all of leadership, for what's in those contracts and we need to understand that better."
And the services must contain the growth in requirements.
"That would be a huge step toward containing costs. We don't have much of an appetite for containing that," Mullen said.
 
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