U.S. special operations forces must expand their arsenal of weapons,
equipment and tactics in order to be prepared for future conflicts,
their leaders told a recent industry symposium.
"In the future, combat is going to be much more fluid, violent
and quick than traditional warfare," said Lt. Gen. William
P. Tangney, head of the Army Special Operations Command, based at
Fort Bragg, N.C. "The battlespace will extend 360 degrees around
the combatants, from the ground right up into space," he said.
Tangney made his comments at the 11th annual Special Operations
and Low Intensity Conflict Symposium and Exhibition, in Arlington,
Va., sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association.
Special operations forces are elite troops from the Army, Navy
and Air Force who are especially trained to take on dangerous and
sensitive assignments, while attracting as little attention as possible.
The U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), based at MacDill
Air Force Base, in Florida, consists of 47,000 soldiers, airmen
and sailors, including:
Managing Social Chaos
One basic problem, Sheridan said, is that the U.S. military is not
set up to manage the kind of social chaos that it encounters in
peacekeeping operations. That is supposed to be the job of international
civilian agencies, he said. "Law enforcement in Bosnia and
Kosovo is not a military job. But the other guys aren't showing
up."
What is needed, Sheridan said, is an international agency that
can deploy quickly to provide emergency law enforcement and public
works services.
U.S. forces also need to stay ahead of a worldwide proliferation
of military technology, warned Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz,
deputy commander of USSOCOM.
Space surveillance is spreading, Schwartz said. These surveillance
services are available from commercial operators to anybody able
to pay. "This means that our adversaries will have forewarning
of our movements," he said.
As a result, explained Maj. Gen. William G. Boykin, commander of
the Army's Special Forces, "It's very difficult to launch a
clandestine operation. The environment just doesn't support that
anymore."
When U.S. forces waded ashore in predawn Somalia, for example,
they were greeted not by hostile fire, but by a horde of journalists
from all over the world, armed with video cameras, bright lights
and tape recorders, Boykin noted.
Once an operation has been discovered by the media, word of it
can reach even the most remote areas. "There's not a village
in the world that doesn't have at least one television, Tangney
said.
In fact, said Army Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, USSOCOM commander,
control of information may turn out to be the "main event"
in future conflicts. "Information-or disinformation-can create
a perception," he said. "It can make people believe: 'Don't
mess with those people, or they'll come and get you.'"
Information Dominance
USSOCOM's psychological operations specialists seek to establish
"information dominance" before any action begins. They
create and distribute leaflets and newspapers. They broadcast radio
and television programs "to people in their homes, in their
own language," said Schoomaker.
To make "first-class" programs, special operators have
built a state-of-the-art video-production facility, nicknamed "CNN
Central," at Fort Bragg, said Tangney.
When it's time to stop talking and start fighting, it's important
to get to the battlefield quickly, with enough weaponry to do the
job, said Air Force Lt. Col. John P. Geis II, a special operations
strategist.
"Wars are getting shorter," he noted. "World War
I lasted four years. Desert Storm lasted three months. Kosovo was
over in 73 days.
"We can no longer take a week to deploy," Geis said.
"By then, we will have missed a good bit of the war."
What worries many special operators is the age of the aircraft
needed to move their troops. Many of the command's workhorse C-130
transports and CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters
are more than 30 years of age.
To replace the helicopters, the Air Force has ordered 50 copies
of the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, with delivery starting
in 2003. The CV-22-produced jointly by Bell Helicopter Textron,
based in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Boeing Company, in Seattle-is
a special-operations variant of the MV-22 being purchased by the
Marines. It is designed to take off and land in tight spaces like
a helicopter and fly more than 2,000 nautical miles with one aerial
refueling, like a fixed-wing aircraft.
A crash of an MV-22 during an evaluation flight in April killed
19 Marines in Arizona. It was the third major accident for the aircraft
in the past decade. A month after the most recent incident, Marine
Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle, deputy chief of staff for aviation, said
an investigation found no mechanical or software failures. The Marines,
he said, would resume flying the MV-22.
Plans for CV-22
Special operations plans to use the CV-22 for a variety of purposes
including long-range insertion of troops, evacuation of noncombatants
and recovery of downed aircrews. But some officers in the command
complain that CV-22 is too small to accommodate even one High Mobility
Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV)-the Army's basic utility vehicle,
better known as the Humvee, which replaced the Jeep.
"We tried to get the services together on the size of the
CV-22," said Geis. "As it turned out, it wasn't big enough."
Partisans of the CV-22 pointed out that it will carry 24 combat-loaded
troopers or 10,000 pounds of cargo. Humvees, they said, can be transported
over long distances in fixed-wing transports, such as C-130s, and
into combat zones aboard traditional helicopters, such as CH-46s
and CH-53Ds.
The problem, Geis said, is that many of these rotary aircraft are
aging. Expectations are that their airframes will begin to fail
in 2015, when they will have to be retired from the fleet.
The same is true of the command's C-130s. Special operations uses
variants of the C-130-built by the Lockheed Martin Corporation in
Marietta, Ga.-for a number of sometimes clandestine purposes.
The Special Operations Command has ordered three C-130Js configured
for Commando Solo missions, with delivery to begin in 2001.
A study of possible replacements of the C-130 transports, tankers
and gunships is scheduled to begin in 2002, Geis said. The desired
characteristics for the new transport, dubbed MC-X, include three
pallet positions, stealthiness, high-subsonic speeds, great maneuverability,
capability for short-range or vertical takeoff and landing and ability
to travel long distances.
Special operators want the new gunship, or AC-X, to be much smaller
than a C-130, with fewer crew members. They want it to be stealthy,
with the speed and maneuverability of a long-range jet fighter.
They want it equipped with directed energy weapons and non-lethal
technologies, and it should be able to engage targets from any angle-above
and below, front and back.
"Something like the B-2 would be my guess," he said.
"We'll take a look at the Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22.
They may be too small, but we'll look."
Testing a Mini-Submarine
Navy SEALs at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, are beginning tests on the prototype
of an Advanced SEAL Delivery System-a 65-foot, 55-ton mini-submarine
designed to bring a team of SEALs close to enemy shores without
detection, noted Harry Schulte, USSOCOM acquisition executive.
Another SEAL maritime vehicle-the Mark V Special Operations Craft-became
operational in 1999, Schulte noted. The 82-foot-long, high performance
craft is intended primarily to speed SEALs into and out of combat
areas at 57 knots per hour. The Mark V can be deployed within 48
hours of notification and ready for operations within 24 hours of
arrival at a forward operating base, Schulte said.
Deployment of the craft, however, does have some limits, he noted.
The Mark V will not fit on either a C-17 or a C-130. It takes two
C-5 aircraft or a surface ship to deliver each boat.
Schulte urged anybody in the defense industry who has a new product
that might be useful to special operations to bring it to his attention.
"Our research and development budget is less than $20 million
per year," he told the conference. "So we're looking to
buy technology that already exists. Sometimes, we have to take a
little more risk, but we're willing to do that."
Driving special operations is the memory of Desert One, the failed
attempt 20 years ago to rescue U.S. hostages in Teheran. That operation-which
led to the eventual creation of the Special Operations Command-fell
apart at a remote location in Iran when a helicopter collided with
a C-130, killing eight members of the team.
"If we're not careful," said Schoomaker, "we might
see that again. We should never confuse enthusiasm with capability."