By Ann Roosevelt
The Defense Department will soon receive strategic guidance for the future years defense budget, fiscal years 2010-2015, according to a top Pentagon official.
“We’re just finishing the guidance for the development of the force, which provides strategic guidance for our investment for the period FY’10-’15,” Michael Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities, told the Defense Writers Group Feb. 6.
“It’s a classified document but it reflects the priorities of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) two years on, so many of the directions that were set there are continuing to be implemented and adjusted as circumstances change,” Vickers said.
It’s likely the guidance will be signed out later this month.
The 2006 QDR focused on core strategic challenges, winning the war on terror and improving capabilities in irregular warfare, trying to shape the behavior of countries at strategic crossroads, homeland defense and preventing the acquisition or use of weapons of mass destruction.
Certain investments were focused on each area. “I think those are really ongoing,” Vickers said. Those investments are expected to pay off in five to 10 years.
“I think we’ve made more progress in some areas in the last two years than we had in the previous 15,” Vickers said from his perspective after 15 years dealing with the issues.
For example, the QDR highlighted the importance of irregular warfare, and a variety of studies have been done since then.
“We’re looking at several different aspects of that–how we train and assist foreign partners and what kind of capabilities and capacities we need to execute that, both with general purpose forces and special operations forces and I might add, civilians as well,” he said.
“Special Operation Forces (SOF) is in the midst of a major expansion in capacity and capability to develop a global SOF posture that will allow us to work with and through our international partners in the global war on terrorism for what we believe will be protracted period of time,” Vickers said.
SOF is transitioning from a more “episodic presence to a more persistent if low-visibility presence” that works through U.S. partners.
Because SOF is increasingly central to current strategy, there are a number of key investments being made for the future force, both to expand capacity and also in select capability areas such as improving the ability to access denied areas, or to tag track and locate terrorists and dangerous materiel, he said.
“I’m the senior official now, responsible for force transformation,” Vickers said.
Transformation evolved and changed significantly after 9/11, he said. The 2006 QDR really is the point of departure because “for the first time it connected transformation with a diagnosis of the strategic environment, particularly the geopolitical environment rather than the technological environment.”
SOF began expanding right after 9/11.
The first initiative was the transition to a headquarters working 24/7 and creating new headquarters such as the U.S. Special Operations Command Center for Special Operations to go with the unified command plan designation of planning and synchronizing the war on terror.
With the 2006 QDR there was a major expansion of special operations units across the board.
“The expansion was intended to create the capacity needed for the global counter terrorism network that we wanted to build,” Vickers said.
While the overall expansion in terms of headquarters personnel is about 15 percent, the operational units are increasing by 33 percent, he said.
Active special forces groups are all adding a battalion, going from three battalions to four. The Ranger regiment is expanding by a third, adding an additional company to each battalion or civil affairs and psychological operations units expanding by the same amount.
New capabilities are being added, such as unmanned aerial vehicles for the new squadron created by the Air Force Special Operations Command and the Marine Forces Special Operations Command. Also, Naval Special Warfare is expanding.
“All that is in the early stages; it takes about five to six years to achieve this expansion,” he said.
Targeting investment means looking at each part of the system to enable expansion, he said. For example, the earliest investments were made in the schools, to expand the number of instructors and facilities.
“The throughput of Green Berets [students] has increased over the past couple of years, actually tripled, from about 250 a year to more than 750; I think we’re at about 800,” Vickers said.
Other initiatives were undertaken together. A new direct recruiting program for Army Special Forces is also helping expand the force and expanding the Ranger regiment. This was important, not only to expand the unit’s capacity but because the unit tends to feed the special forces units or the classified special mission units.
“So if you want to increase them [special forces], you have to make sure you’re increasing the recruiting base,” he said.
All of those initiatives are proceeding fairly well, he said. “We’ve just added our first battalion to the 5th Special Forces Group.” Each of the five active duty groups will add a battalion.
“We’re 20 percent of the way there,” Vickers said. “It will take some digestion even as we move to the end of this period…but it’s critically important to the war on terror.”
“The national clandestine service, or what used to be the directorate of operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, and our special operations forces are really two critical instruments in this the war on terror and both are expanding pretty significantly since 9/11 both in their training base and in their operational ranks, and I think that’s pretty important,” Vickers said.