Call grows for unconventional warfare command

[unhappycamper]

Call grows for unconventional warfare command
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff Writer
Posted : Thursday Sep 20, 2007 6:47:39 EDT

There are growing calls from inside and outside the military for the establishment of an unconventional warfare command that would oversee those special operations forces whose primary mission is not to kill or capture the enemy.

The idea has been shot down at the highest levels or years. But recent leadership changes in Congress, the Defense Department and U.S. Special Operations Command have given fresh hope that the PowerPoint slides might finally become reality.

At the core of the debate are the Army’s Special Forces, who specialize in working “by, with and through” indigenous forces. They have long complained that they play second fiddle in U.S. Special Operations Command to those units that specialize in direct action, i.e. missions focused on capturing or killing the enemy. SOCom gives direct-action units, particularly those that fall under Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), priority in resourcing, and it is from those units that most of SOCom’s leadership is drawn, they say.

Only by the creation of an unconventional warfare command will the special ops units that emphasize indirect action get a fair shake on the battlefield and inside the bureaucracy, their argument goes.

The proposals for the creation of an unconventional warfare command fall into two rough categories: those that argue for breaking the unconventional warfare forces away from SOCom altogether, and those that advocate grouping those units under a two- or three-star UW command that remains part of SOCom as the indirect-action equivalent of JSOC.

Although the voices calling for taking the military’s indirect-action forces out of SOCom are mostly civilian, the proposal to create a UW equivalent to JSOC inside SOCom originated in the heart of the indirect-action community.

Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/afj_specops_naylor_070919/


uhc comment: This article references ---> http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/09/3049653 , which is an 'interesting' read.

~snip~

"Now, all that changed on Sept. 11," the retired SF colonel said. "The No. 1 priority of the nation for special operations was no longer episodic direct action to surgical standards. ... (E)verybody recognized we had to be able to do unconventional warfare like we did in Afghanistan, but many places at the same time. And everybody understood that it was no longer about airplane takedowns and ship recoveries and these episodic events, it was about a sustained presence in a country to destroy an infrastructure."




Sure sounds like war all the time.