ARTICLE

February 2003

War on Terror Reaffirming Role of Special Operators

by Elizabeth Book

As the United States continues to pursue the war on terrorism, special operations forces increasingly will be relied upon, for their unique skills in unconventional warfare and urban combat, said the former deputy chief of U.S. Special Operations Command.

“I wouldn’t say we won [Afghanistan], but certainly our forces were major contributors, because they were trained to operate in this kind of environment,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. William Tangney, who was deputy commander of USSOCOM from 2000 until 2002.

If future battles take place in urban environments, special operations forces will play a key role, Tangney told National Defense.

“Urban warfare tends to become a squad fight versus a company fight, because your lines are broken, communications are very difficult, and it tends to become very non-linear. … It tends to become very much like the prototype of the modern battlefield, which is non-linear and non-traditional,” he said.

“If you look at Afghanistan, [it was] a very non-traditional battlefield. You were able to leverage technology to assist the operator on the ground, to allow that operator to function in very dispersed areas, in relatively small groups.”

Special operations forces are organized into “small units, which places them in situations where there’s a premium on the ability of the individual soldier, sailor or airman to make sound decisions in a timely fashion in situations of great stress and ambiguity,” Tangney said.

“I started off in this business when I came back from my first tour in Vietnam in 1969,” Tangney said. Originally commissioned an artilleryman when he graduated from the Citadel, he spent his first tour in Vietnam in the 4th Infantry Division, as a forward observer. Later, he was assigned to the 10th Special Forces group at Fort Devons, Mass.

In 1970, Tangney went back to Vietnam, with the 5th Special Forces group, and worked with MACSOG (Military Assistance Command Studies and Observation Group).

“It was the unconventional warfare organization that conducted cross border operations in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam. It was a cover organization for cross-border reconnaissance,” he said.

Tangney said he has seen many changes in the way special operations have been conducted over the past 35 years. “When I came in, in Vietnam, we were kind of on a high, although we had nothing that really approaches the capability we have today. Then, we had a period of time in the 1970s when that capability was allowed to erode. It wasn’t until we suffered the failure in the desert, during the Iranian rescue operation in 1980, that sufficient attention began to be paid to this business,” Tangney said.

The 1980 Desert One fiasco led to a comprehensive reexamination of the entire national capability in special operations forces and the establishment of USSOCOM.

The creation of a four-star combatant command, with its own funding line and an acquisition authority similar to that of the conventional military services “has allowed us to develop the quality forces that we have today,” he said.

Tangney was reluctant to criticize Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s reported decision to re-examine USSOCOM’s acquisition authority and study options to transfer the command’s buying power to the major services.

He characterized Rumsfeld’s move as an example of the Bush administration’s attempt to transform the way the department does business. The defense secretary, said Tangney, “continues to examine roles, missions and functions of SOCOM, and everybody else at the Defense Department. It’s been a very dynamic and energetic administration.”

In Tangney’s opinion, the success achieved by USSOCOM is proof that the organization does not need major management changes, he said. “I think we have quality leadership within the special operations community. I think we have the best force, the best joint force that I’ve seen in 35 years of service. And I think they’re very capably and ably led by a very talented, innovative, bright, insightful group of general officers and senior enlisted from all the services.”

In the war on terrorism, Tangney said the role for special operations remains important and fluid. “Not all wars are the same. The functions that you fulfill are pretty much prescribed by the battlefield on which you have to fight. … What we have is a non-traditional battlefield and a non-traditional opponent, which have to be dealt with in unorthodox, unconventional, and non-traditional ways. That plays to our strengths.”

Tangney now works at EER Systems, in Tampa, Fla. The firm does engineering, information security and other consulting work for military agencies, including USSOCOM.

“About 20 percent of our total volume is defense management services. About 35 percent is in the information technology sector. About 28 or 29 percent in aerospace engineering, with the bulk of that being out on the West coast in support of China

Lake and other customers. Intelligence community services is somewhere around 7 or 8 percent.”

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