How big is a SEAL team? How many Green Berets are there? We have answers. BY JOSHUA SKOVLUND The U.S. military’s special operations forces (SOF) are home to some of the most highly trained soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen in the world. They must undergo grueling assessments and selections before they make it into one of the prestigious SOF units under the umbrella of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).  But exactly how big is a SEAL team? Are Army Rangers the largest unit in SOCOM? How does MARSOC, a relative newcomer to the SOF world, compare in size? Cold, hard numbe ..read more

Dec. 5, 2023 Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, Christopher P. Maier, delivered a keynote address at the semi-annual Irregular Warfare (IW) Forum. The event, co-hosted by the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School and the National Defense University College of International Security Affairs, convened leaders from diverse sectors to discuss critical IW policy, doctrine, training, and education in the context of strategic competition. In his remarks, Secretary Maier emphasized the pivotal role of IW in achieving national securit ..read more

A Concept for Proactive Campaigning Short of Traditional War by Eric Robinson, Timothy R. Heath, Gabrielle Tarini, Daniel Egel, Mace Moesner IV, Christian Curriden, Derek Grossman, Sale Lilly Researchers from RAND Corporation develop a new concept for strategic disruption by special operations forces, involving proactive campaigns to delay, degrade, or deny an adversary’s ability to achieve core interests through its preferred strategies. This research provides a clear framework, grounded in concrete historical examples, for how strategic disruption camp ..read more

BRIAN PETIT, COMMENTARY NOVEMBER 8, 2023 The grinding Ukrainian military offensive during the summer of 2023 has been a frightful sight for undersized nations fashioning their own defensive strategies against Russia or China. Small nations invaded by numerically superior foes simply do not have the combat power to win a combined arms fight. To nullify this overmatch, out-gunned states require asymmetric options to deter and defend. If deterrence falters and the defense cracks, there are few options to prevent enemy consolidation of control. One irregular ..read more

ByThomas R. Searle, Christopher Marsh, and Brian Petit ABSTRACTThis article provides ten surprising lessons for Special Operations Forces (SOF) from the first year-and-a-half of Russia’s criminal and ill-advised full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These lessons range from the tactical to the grand strategic, and collectively help explain how Ukraine and NATO managed to “boil Putin’s frog” in the years between 2014 and 2022. This strategic success does not change the fact that tragic mistakes have been made and that SOF continue to be misused despite all the efforts to learn from previous misuse of ..read more

Special operators speak 80 languages across the military but often don’t sustain that skills, a new report says. BY PATTY NIEBERG | PUBLISHED NOV 1, 2023 US. Green Berets and elite Marine special operators are learning languages that aren’t always useful on deployments and missions abroad, a Government Accountability Office report found. And those elite troops often let their skills in those languages lapse as their careers go on. The new report sites examples like Special Forces soldiers who learn French as their assigned language, but find it useless in most European ..read more

In the aftermath of Iran-Grenada, several congressional leaders took the initiative to reorganize the Pentagon’s special operations forces, culminating in the creation of U.S. Special Operations Command in 1987. by Forrest L. Marion In mid-October 1983, a “sordid little Leninist dictatorship” on the Caribbean Island of Grenada crumbled, resulting in the British Commonwealth country’s takeover by a more-leftist military junta. The situation immediately raised concerns in Washington regarding the potential for a large-scale hostage crisis in addition to the threat of regional instability wi ..read more

U.S. Special Operations Command is on the hunt for new non-line-of-sight targeting systems. Special tactics operators conduct close-quarters battle training at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, Jan. 27, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Carly Kavish) Special Operations Command is on the hunt for new non-line-of-sight targeting systems to help commandos fight in cities. In a special notice posted on Sam.gov this week, SOCOM unveiled plans for feasibility studies and rapid prototyping. Program Executive Office SOF Warrior is partnering with the Tampa, Florida-based SOFWERX tech hub o ..read more

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 14, 2023 – Last weekend’s Del Mar Country Club Golf Tournament and Dinner-Gala raised more than $1.4 million for the SOF (Special Operations Forces) Support Foundation. It was a star-studded affair that featured honored guests Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy SEAL Collin Green, Chief Warrant Officer Two (CW2) Nick Lavery and world champion boxer Canelo Alvarez. The weekend began Friday night with a reception at a private residence in Rancho Santa Fe. Saturday’s festivities included an 18-hole scramble golf tournament at the fam ..read more

Bill Roggio Senior Fellow and Editor of FDD’s Long War Journal The U.S. military captured an Islamic State “Operational and Facilitation official” during an operation in northern Syria last weekend. The raid marked the latest against the Islamic State’s network in Iraq and Syria, which has been weakened since it lost its physical caliphate in 2019, but continues to persist. The Sept. 23 raid, which was carried out by U.S. Special Operations Forces based in northern Syria, resulted in the capture of Abu Halil al-Fad’ani, whom U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said has “relationships throughout the ..read more