As the Pentagon moves to slash tens of thousands of combat troops from the U.S. Army and Marines Corps, officials are allaying fears by suggesting that special operations forces will be beefed up to fill any gaps in America’s defense needs created by cutbacks totaling roughly $485 billion. But experts are saying that will stretch the definition of special operations forces, muddying the traditional role the elite units have successfully executed since 9/11.
“Special operations forces are a scalpel, not a Swiss Army knife,” said James Carafano, senior defense analyst for the Heritage Foundation. “They are not a substitute for all the instruments of military power needed to protect the nation’s interests.”
The Pentagon said the cuts are necessary, adding that a “leaner” more “agile” military will remain. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stressed last week that, as the U.S. shifts focus from large ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more emphasis can be placed on special operations groups such as the Navy SEAL Team 6 that killed Osama bin Laden and rescued two aid workers in Somalia. Under the new plan the Army will cut roughly 66,000 troops. The Marine Corps will reduce its troops by nearly 20,000.
One consequence of a smaller military will be fewer troops from which to select the men who eventually become Army Delta Force soldiers and Navy SEALs. “If they want to expand special ops it will be more difficult to get the best if they gut our forces,” said a military official with direct knowledge of the U.S. special forces program. “We also need a ready military in time of war. I have a spare tire in my car, doesn’t mean I’m going to get a flat every day, but I know one day I will.”
Special operations chief Adm. Bill McRaven proposed to Pentagon officials a plan to expand his elite units last fall, according to a report by the Associated Press. McRaven is seeking to increase manpower and equipment for the Theater Special Operations Command so that elite units can strike as soon as threats arise. Details of the proposal have not been made public but White House and Pentagon officials overwhelmingly support it.
Col. Tim Nye, U.S. spokesman for Special Operations Command, told The Washington Examiner that any expansion or deployment of special operations would be at the request of the top commanders overseeing regional commands such as Central Command, which covers the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.
The plan to expand the reach of special operations forces units is to create coalitions with regional allies, said Nye. “Unilateral strikes would be a secondary course of action,” he said.
But military officials privately conceded that a smaller Army and Marine Corps creates a more difficult landscape for special forces operations. “We don’t have tanks, artillery, or the infrastructure needed to hold a forward operating base in the event of a crisis,” said one official. “That’s why we work in conjunction, that’s why we need each other.”
A former senior U.S. official said expanding special operation forces “is a necessary and smart step in the right direction.” But he warned that the United States must maintain a ready National Guard and regular Army. “We don’t have a crystal ball to predict what the future holds,” he said.
Advocates of the plan say that the eventual network of coalitions with trusted allies “will keep every potential enemy and enemy nation looking over their shoulders,” as one senior official said.
“We have hundreds and thousands of these people that we have trained over the years that don’t carry the baggage of identification and who can’t be traced back to us,” the official said. “We don’t have to send them to the CIA for training, vet them. We can put teams, hundreds of teams around the world, undercover.”
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told “60 Minutes” on Sunday said the new, smaller military would still protect America against “a lot of threats that are out there — terrorism, Iran, North Korea, nuclear proliferation, problem of cyberattacks, rising powers like China.”
But Carafano warned that the Obama administration appeared to be making the same mistake of previous White Houses in seeing special forces as capable of filling the gap left by massive force reductions.
“Both Kennedy and Johnson were enamored with covert operations, by CIA and special forces,” he said. Those presidents “increased funding, gave them more missions, but they found not only did it not substitute for conventional operations, in places like Vietnam it just dragged us into deeper commitments.”
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].
