At this link to the web site at Ft Benning you can download 14 charts from BG Rogers (the commander of the 1st Special Forces Command) that explain the ground truth to this article. (note also that nowhere on the charts does he use the term "commando.")
As you can see what this does is to reorganize the units of US Army Special Operations command in order to provide the Theater Special Operations Commands and the Geographic Combatant Commanders for whom they work with an integrated and holistic approach to employment of Special Warfare Capabilities equal to the level of effort of our Surgical Strike capabilities. Or another way to describe this is to provide capabilities to operate in the "missing middle" between diplomacy and war.
So on this Thanksgiving Day I am thankful for the rise in stature of our nation's Special Warfare organization and capabilities.
Wish we could get the commando word out of the press and the pundit's vocabulary at least as it applies to Special Forces, Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations which is what this new command consists of. And the Special Forces (Green berets) have always been "together" assigned to the US Army Special Forces Command. Now that command has been redesignated as the 1st Special Forces Command
Excerpts:
But from the 1940s into the 1990s, the Special Forces mostly practiced unconventional warfare—indirect action, if you will, and the focus of the new 1st Special Forces Command. In that way, the new HQ brings Special Forces “back to its roots,” said Newson, a SEAL officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.This indirect method of warfare is ideal in situations where an American presence could be “too costly or be counter-productive,” Newson explained.
A return to the roots for a vision of the future (that was the title of my first master's thesis in 1995).
We should keep in mind this fact:
Now, the Army’s new Special Forces structure doesn’t actually add manpower. In fact, the Green Berets will actually cut 1,000 people in order to stay within shrinking budgets, an official told War Is Boring.
The U.S. Army Has Quietly Created a New Commando Division
1st Special Forces Command brings together thousands of Green Berets
On Sept. 30, the U.S. Army unceremoniously stood up a new headquarters—
the 1st Special Forces Command—at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The division-level unit
brings together more than 15,000
Green Berets and other special troops in a single new organization.
Previously, the Army’s Special Operations Command had directly controlled all of these troops plus
others on a wide range of missions. The idea behind the new HQ is to assemble a force specifically
tailored for dealing with what the Pentagon calls “hybrid warfare.”
Simply put, hybrid warfare is a blend of straight-up traditional combat—with infantry, tanks and
artillery—and secretive insurgency. Probably the biggest practitioner of hybrid warfare is Russia.
Just look at what’s going on in Ukraine, where Russian-supplied separatist insurgents are fighting
alongside disguised Russian troops in an attempt to seize territory from the government in Kiev and
bring it under Moscow’s sway.
Among other tasks, the U.S. Army’s new 1st Special Forces Command could help the ground combat
branch counter hybrid warfare—by sending Green Beret advisers to train, advise and lead native troops
in embattled countries.
“This is … a real requirement based on Russia’s hybrid warfare approach, as well as the need for partners
in places like Libya, Syria and Iraq, where we want to help stabilize the chaos,” Navy captain Robert Newson,
a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said of the new Army HQ.
(Continued at the link below)
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