U.S. warfare takes shape like nothing ever before; special units train for varied fronts

TAMPA, Fla. — The U.S. faces a “decisive decade” as it stares down great power challenges from China and Russia, regional threats from Iran and North Korea, and the resurgence of extremist groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda — and U.S. Special Forces will play a central role in confronting each, said Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command.

Gen. Fenton, speaking Tuesday to an audience at the Special Operations Forces Week convention, said he expects the number of Special Forces missions to increase dramatically over the next decade. Underscoring his comments are global competitions and conflicts that have expanded far beyond traditional battlefields and deep into the economic, cyberspace, information and space domains.

U.S. Special Forces are often tasked with highly secretive missions that never make headlines. The role they will play in the 21st century’s great power competition is a key topic at the convention.

Current and retired military officials predicted deepening partnerships with allies abroad to stave off enemy influence in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

They said U.S. special operations forces are working intently to counter Chinese and Russian economic, information and influence campaigns to weaken America’s standing in North America, particularly in the increasingly competitive Arctic region.

One former military official said special operations forces could play a leading role in “irregular warfare” to weaken enemies from within and chip away at their ability to conduct traditional and nontraditional warfare against the U.S.

The scope of the threats and the rapidly evolving technological battlespace — defined by drone swarms, autonomous systems and artificial intelligence — have created one of the most consequential periods in American history.

“In this decisive decade, autocrats and terrorists alike seek to upend the free and open international system,” Gen. Fenton said during a keynote address.

Those adversaries want to “divide and weaken the power” of America and its partners, he said.

Military analysts envision threats from China, Russia and other state actors primarily in theaters beyond U.S. shores. The most immediate threat from China could be an invasion of Taiwan. Russia’s direct military action against Ukraine has now stretched into its third year. Malign activities by Iran and its proxy network seem mostly confined to the Middle East, targeting U.S. assets and key allies, most notably Israel.

North America and the broader theater could also become a major battlespace.

“In the event of a conflict, we would expect them to try to isolate us in the homeland, to not allow us to project forces to whatever region might be driving some sort of global conflict. And really, to diminish our domain awareness, take away our ability to see their strategic capabilities so they can increase the perception or the reality of holding the homeland at risk should they seek to impose a direct cost on the homeland itself,” a special operations forces commander told a handful of reporters.

Adversaries’ goals, the commander said, will be to “erode our national will and our national cohesion in the hopes that we will put up the weakest fight possible.”

“Our role is to impose those wicked problems on our adversaries,” the commander said. “So, as we think of the other side of that coin, we’ve got to be able to deny our adversaries the ability to impose wicked costs on us.”

More ‘aggressive and offensive’

The phrase “wicked problems” has been repeated in speeches and sessions at the conference and has been used for decades within military circles. A 2014 article in the online Small Wars Journal said, “Wicked problems have no definable problem statement, no objectively correct answer, and layers of uncertainty and unpredictability that make efforts to ‘solve’ them, especially through bureaucratic consensus, naive.”

Such problems grow even more difficult to tackle on a modern battlefield that extends beyond land, sea and air domains.

“I can make an argument for anywhere from five to eight different domains. It was hard enough taking three domains and combining those,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson, director for joint force development for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, said Tuesday at a panel discussion.

“It gets exponentially more difficult with how you look at seven, eight domains and how you bring forces to bear,” said Gen. Anderson, citing space, cyberspace and other modern domains.

The U.S. often views it through a defensive lens: How can America defend against Russian disinformation campaigns or Chinese economic coercion, cyberattacks by Iran or North Korea-linked hackers, or influence operations to weaken the population’s faith in its government?

Current and former officials said U.S. special operations forces could be at the center of those “irregular warfare” missions to undermine a foreign adversary from within and compromise its ability to wage war.

“We’re also the masters of these irregular warfare capabilities that right now seem to be used mostly by our adversaries against us,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, former commander of the Army Special Operations Command.

“But at some point, I expect that we, the West, will get serious about competing in a more aggressive and offensive manner. And those irregular warfare capabilities will serve us well to create dilemmas for our adversaries, to create issues for them to deal with on their peripheries,” Gen. Tovo said at the panel discussion Tuesday, naming China, Russia and Iran as specific U.S. enemies.

“The thing they fear most is internal instability,” he said of those nations. “When you look for cracks we can put a lever into, one of those is our ability to create unconventional warfare efforts.”