By Ann Roosevelt
Special Operations Command-Joint Forces Command (SOCJFCOM) works to improve how Special Operations Forces (SOF) and conventional forces operate together to benefit warfighter readiness, the commander said.
Much of the work is to “ensure different elements of military power talk to each other,” Army Col. Wesley Rehorn, SOCJFCOM commander, said at the recent Joint Warfighting Conference 2008.
SOCJFCOM is the Defense Department’s primary joint special operations forces trainer and integrator, and is a subordinate command of Norfolk, Va.-based U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM).
Rehorn serves two four stars: as senior SOF adviser to Marine Gen. James Mattis, JFCOM commander, and for Adm. Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. The command is unique because it receives funds and personnel from both commands and works to meet the Title 10 responsibilities of both.
Additionally, Rehorn is a deputy in JFCOM’s newly-created Irregular Warfare Center (IWC), focusing on the joint operational level of war on conventional forces (Defense Daily, June 19), IWC is a bridge to SOCJFCOM and will ensure forces are IW proficient.
The need for the unit’s training and integration work is clear.
“The division of labor in the last six years has changed dramatically,” Rehorn said. For example, some general officers had never really used SOF forces and need to understand how to use SOF on the battlefield, what SOF can bring to them, the command and control interrelationships, and crisis planning work.
Additionally, Rehorn ensures that JFCOM is aware of SOF issues and capabilities, particularly in the areas of concept development, experimentation and interoperability.
One of the important things to clarify in SOCJFCOM’s integration efforts is that “from the SOF perspective [irregular warfare] IW–low intensity conflict–primarily that’s where SOF operates.” At the high end is conventional force major maneuver warfare, but the middle is a “kluge of colors,” which are not specifically SOF or general purpose [force] missions, he said.
A major issue is “who does the missions in the middle,” Rehorn said. There’s never been documentation to define it, which is now part of the integration piece.
“The real key to IW is assessing the environment and not really the mission,” Rehorn said. That is a characteristic of SOF, and a large part of what top DoD leadership means when they say the military needs more “SOF-like” capability.
Additionally, Rehorn said missions should be assigned to the unit best able to do it, not by mission title. For example, can a country risk having conventional forces or an A team discovered? SOF works, “by, with and through,” the country involved, as they say. And this is where a whole of government approach can be useful. Should the military be the solution to a specific problem, or could some other branch of government take on the job and head off potential risk.
In December the third IW Global Synchronization Conference will be held to try and better synchronize what the interagency is doing, trying to work out how to help or leverage and synchronize what is being done, training joint special operations headquarters (JSOTFs) personnel who he’d see on the battlefield, what he can do for them and what they can do for him.
One of the first operational JSOTFs set up after 9/11, called TF Dagger, comprised primarily of 5th Special Forces Group, had a substantial augmentation from SOCJFCOM, which assisted with the startup of TF Dagger and TF Kbar.
Command and staff handbooks are written as a guide to the JSOTF positions, so someone deploying knows the job before he arrives on scene. The unit also trains SOF personnel on technical issues and on the command and control systems and processes they’ll use in theater.
About every six months, the publication “Insights” and lessons learned are sent out to all the JSOTFs, incorporating all new technologies, various procedures, command and control internal processes, and what information on works and doesn’t work.
All JSOTFs use collaborative planning tools, and SOCJFCOM is working with USSOCOM to bring them to experiment with.
In fact, Rehorn said he’d like to replicate a JSOTF at SOCJFCOM. With a small command, it’s hard to train as he’d like, to have personnel work with the suite of tools he’d be working with in theater, which can’t be done now.
Much work is done through exercises such as Mission Readiness Exercises, where general purpose forces train before deploying. SOCJFCOM endeavors to pull in the actual SOF commanders who work in that area. The exercises work with all combatant commands, using scenarios developed specifically for the deploying unit and its designated area of operations.
From this training, SOCJFCOM gleans classified and unclassified lessons learned and set out in after action reviews. “We don’t assess units we train, we feel it’s a COCOM decision,” he said. Reports redact units and names.
After training, a small SOCJFCOM staff heads out with the deploying unit to find out if/where more support is needed.
When the team returns, what’s learned in the exercises can immediately be brought to bear on future training. Lessons learned and best practices are entered into databases at SOCOM and at JFCOM’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis.
Another part of training is on how to work with civil affairs and psychological operations. “What’s developed is that active duty civil affairs units are generalists. On the reserve side, units are specialists,” he said. USASOC has increased civil affairs by another battalion, but there’s still not enough.
“We don’t have enough ISR platforms to look down–we have so many different formats video, stills, everything else–but there’s no capability to kluge them together for analysis, and not the C2 to get [information] to operators in time to affect follow on operations,” he said.
Even with success in analyzing and disseminating its own ISR, “90 percent [of units] don’t get it in time to help. “What’s needed is a way to bring ISR together and have a searchable database that can be analyzed for actionable intelligence,” Rehorn said.
“SOF will never be able to meet all the demands,” Rehorn said. There isn’t enough force structure, so “we have to leverage the capabilities of conventional forces and other interagency elements for a combined effort.”