33rd Annual NDIA SO/LIC Symposium

This is a time made for SOF. Threats of uncertain nature with unclear intentions swirl like a dense grey fog. Recent actions by near peer state adversaries clearly demonstrate their desire to fracture international alliances and disrupt international order to achieve revisionist and revanchist goals. But to achieve these goals, adversaries do not rely purely on military power, rather they deploy a wide array of military, economic, technological tools carried out directly and by disaggregated surrogates, proxies and cybercriminal syndicates, both above and below the threshold of conflict. This mix of threats means that Special Operations Forces (SOF) cannot focus exclusively against one type of threat or a single form of conflict.

The hyper-connected nature of the global environment also means that the friendly side is an equally complex mix of capabilities and players. The broad scope, massive scale, and malign actors expanding disorder globally, means that no single nation can compete and win alone. In order to prevail in this environment, the SOF enterprise will need to build enduring advantages with our allies and partners. Enduring advantage is not provided by new weapons systems, it is the product of realigned force structure, accelerating modernization, achieving significant technological breakthroughs, expanding collective cooperation with Allies and Partners, industry, and academia, and making significant investments in our extraordinary special operations forces and those who serve alongside them. The complex and disordered world of 2023 and beyond will demand forces that are intellectually agile, adept at developing and wielding tools of influence, and when necessary, be devastatingly lethal; SOF is perfectly poised to be that force.