U.S. Air Force Special Tactics operators from the 22nd Special Tactics Squadron

WASHINGTON: Special Operations Forces are going through the kind of generational change that happens about once every two decades, a top general said today, as the force grapples with moving from hunting insurgents to confronting China and Russia.

The head of Air Force Special Ops Command, Lt. Gen. James Slife, warned today at the annual SOFIC conference that “the SOF that we have is not the SOF we will need” for the future, one in which battlefields will be more dynamic, and influenced by machine learning and long-range standoff weapons.

It was a sentiment echoed by SOCOM commander Gen. Richard Clarke on Tuesday: What “we can’t say is: USSOCOM only does counterterrorism, only does crisis response. We have to develop and make sure we really look at what SOF can do in competition and what SOF can do in high-end conflict.”

A big push will be the suggested doubling of investment in cyber operations and electronic warfare in the 2022 budget to about $36 million, but that is only one piece of a larger acquisition framework that needs to change in order to buy cutting edge technologies faster.

“We need to be able to keep pace with advanced and persistent threats in today’s dynamic environment,” Stacy Cummings, the Pentagon’s acting top acquisition official, said at the conference this morning. “That means taking a hard look at our acquisition processes and portfolios to ensure we have the right balance and capabilities for the future.”

Since SOF “require a much smaller procurement of more nuanced and cutting-edge capability, and the ability for us to outpace our adversaries really is dependent upon agility in acquisition,” she added.

Not only do transformative technologies like machine learning and offensive and defensive electronic warfare capabilities need to be developed, tested, and fielded quickly, but climate change should also be factored in. 

“We want to understand how different changes in the environment are going to impact our acquisition systems,” Cummings said. “We want to build that in from the beginning of a program.

“If we think forward past 2035, as the climate changes, we need to be designing our weapons systems” to be able to operate in those conditions, she said. “Whether it’s extreme weather or whether it’s a change in the market conditions that are driven by climate adaptation or by the desire to reduce greenhouse gases across the country.”