How America's Special Operators are Preparing for a High-Tech Future
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You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. We went down to Tampa for SOF Week recently, and we're joined by a very special guest for a live podcast recording, Frank Donovan, the vice commander of Special Operations Command. We recorded this at a party made possible by our friends at One Brief. Thank you so much to them for helping us throw such a great party down in Tampa. I hope you enjoy the episode.

So last time you were on the show, we were talking about what you guys were doing in terms of proving the Commandant's vision for the transformation of the Marine Corps and the stand-in force. How did you end up at Special Operations Command? Ryan One, thanks for doing this again. The last time Ryan and I talked, I was Commanding General, 2nd Marine Division, and I live a lifestyle that is much like a ranger in the SOF community.

I spend time in the Marine Corps, and then I have an opportunity to serve in SOF, and then I go back and forth. So I've been at JSOC prior to 2nd Marine Division. And then after that, I was fortunate enough to come back to serve as a Vice Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command. Unique job. SOCOM's the only four-star command with two three-stars. But the reality is...

I serve not here in Tampa, but in the Pentagon. My job there is to fight their battle for resources, to make sure our soft forces get what they need to continue their missions. So again, to close it out, last time we talked, we were working things I'd learned on previous deployments before.

forces on for the Marine Corps 2019. How do we evolve the force for the modern conflict? We took those lessons learned, went to Europe and applied them against the threats in Europe at the opening phases of the Ukrainian conflict in support of a fleet commander. So it worked out well.

- Worked out pretty well. Well, the mission in some ways has changed. And so what is the return of Great Power Rivalry done to the priorities and mission sets of Special Operations Command? - Okay, for SOCOM, I'm looking at some teammates here that come from this community. Our mission set for the last 20, 20 plus years, we did what the nation asked us to do. We went to the hard places in Iraq, Afghanistan, Southern Philippines, Syria, and many other locations,

a lot of place in Africa to go do the hardest missions, a lot of counter VEO. And during that time, a lot of the soft formation became very similar because we had to be. The missions were very similar, very hard, very dangerous, a lot of lost teammates. But along the way, we became very, very good at counter VEO operations.

Okay, now the challenge is in this strategic competition era, the things we all got comfortable with or got really good at, stacking odds in our favor, ISR for days at a time maybe, a QRF, a golden hour, stacks of CAS aircraft above our head. What about when all that goes away? Actually-

SOF moves back into our historic role. We do the things that only SOCOM can do in places only SOCOM can go. So you find ourselves right now, not reshaping ourselves, but really, as General Fenton talks about, returning to the SOF renaissance, what we offer the nation that no one else can do. And for us right now, the transition to modern conflict is how do we align seabed to low Earth orbit SOF,

effects, joint soft effects in support of the joint force. That's different. It's

It's hard. It's dangerous. It's demanding. But it puts us at the very cutting edge of tech, tech forward. But really, it also comes back to the core basics of grit, endurance, physical hardship. So, again, going to places only SOCOM can go, do things only SOCOM can do. I'm very interested always, really, in what different parts of the military learn from ongoing conflicts and how it maybe makes them revisit assumptions or not.

How is SOCOM and all of its different constituent parts learning from ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, the Red Sea, Gaza, other places in the world, and institutionalizing those lessons, revisiting assumptions, testing assumptions? It's a question we get quite a bit.

is that the lessons learned from Ukraine, you know, what are they? And they are amazing lessons to be learned. But the ones we're thinking about at US SOCOM is that we have to be as good on day one of the next conflict as Ukrainian is in year three. We have to think about everything we've received taking place both on land

And in places like the Black Sea, how do we adapt that for the SOCOM enterprise? Now, what we probably won't do is buy thousands of unmanned systems, right? Because one, we don't want to pay for them and I have nowhere to put them. And the reality is we have to think about soft being the kind of glue that brings it all together, right? So we want to make sure that on the day...

Think of a conflict, the future conflict. There's D-Day. There's D-1 or 2. You're preparing for it. Then you're getting into it. D-1 or 2, soft teammates, soft operators and enablers are showing up, working with the partners, pulling out those unmanned systems, injecting the latest greatest of the counter to the counter or the alt PNT, whatever it is, to make sure it's effective, whether it has fins or wings or wheels or whatever on it, and then launching it for full effect on day one. That's how we have to think.

And SOF has to think about, again, our clandestine acts and placement, working with partners, and then being that cutting-edge tech at the front level that we can bring it all to bear for that joint force and the partner force. So a question also, Ryan, is that, is it the Ukraine lessons learned or the lessons learned from the South Red Sea? And I challenge you. I think we should learn the lessons from the South Red Sea and what the Houthis are doing, holding us at bay. We're depleting our magazine racks.

to fight the Houthis. They're executing a very effective sea denial, sea control campaign like we had talked in the past. And so I think we should learn from the Ukrainians, but maybe, and this might sound controversial, but should we learn from the Houthis? Are we willing to learn from another adversary that is actually holding ground and pushing back on us?

Something to think about. Yes, imposing costs with very constrained resources on an adversary that has escalation dominance in some way. This idea of being there on day one made me think of, it's interesting how this pervades special operations forces all over the world. I was talking to

Ukrainian special operators when I visited there in late 2022 and learning about how on day one, a lot of you will remember that column of Russian forces that got bogged down north of Kiev. And that's because special operators on day one blew up dams and opened levees and made that happen and took that initiative to do that. But we're now in this world where data and AI are critically important to the success of the mission as well. And how is SOCOM grappling with those questions to advance more sophisticated decision-making

That's a big question that all sorts of organizations are grappling with, from Salesforce to the Air Force to SOCOM. How is SOCOM grappling with it? It's a great question. When you ask someone that's 58-year-old about data, you're going to get probably a crappy answer, right? Because the reality is that any of us here that think that we understand how data is going to support us right now, I'll tell you, I haven't seen a lot of great examples of it. I get a lot of large language models and translations of documents. I get it.

You know, where data starts enabling decision makers to make a good decision, it's not going to be perfect. And data is not going to let us make perfect decisions. We know that. But where do we want the data to reside? Where do we want the human in, on, or next to the loop, right? And how to let that machine turn in support of our needs. I'm seeing a whole lot of support in the machine, like feeding it and making sure that it's set up to give us an eventual good answer or good response.

So for soft, you know, we want to become leaders. And I think we are in many ways pathfinders for becoming a data enabled force. But I'm going to be very selfish. I'd like to use that initially on our resource and budgeting. How can we build the best budget? How can we build the best resourcing plan? How can we acquire the right kit and use data to help us think quickly to be able to scan the horizon and bring the best to us? So I'd like to use data for that.

But on the battlefield, we have to think about where's that tactical edge and how far forward does that data stack need to be? And how much further do our soft operators have to be? And then how much further do our robots have to be? And how do we use data to bring all that together? And really data doesn't care. Offensive, defensive, it doesn't care. So the idea that we're going to have

Data supporting a big COC like we might have gotten comfortable with in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're sitting back, drinking coffee, making these decisions. Remember, because we can control almost all the factors, take all that away. How does data enable us to operate at speeds we haven't operated before? But again, to put that soft leader, that soft strength, our NCOs, in the middle of that decision-making process, they're informed.

to then make the best decision. And I think that's the piece, the journey we're still on. I think we have examples of it. We have the best, you all know, the best bottom-up information in DoD. They'll come up with great ideas and we'll figure out how to use data. But right now, I think we're still on that journey. We've got to be better to understand how to task data

and demand results. And I don't think we're there yet. How does this tie into SonicSphere? This is the first time in SOCOM's history we've had an exercise specifically for the enterprise to take a look at itself. So SonicSphere 25 really focused on data flows. Think about a sensor to an effector, and whether that's a kinetic or non-kinetic effector, can we bring it all together?

And again, and just because how we've been operating for the last 20 years, our components think EUSA SOC, NASPEC WAR, MARSOC, AVSOC, you know, and folks don't realize we now have a Space Force SOC. It's only 12 people, so we're getting there. But the reality is we've had the ability to kind of all kind of develop our own kit, our own capabilities. What we need to make sure that is you have incredible device that's good at maritime domain awareness.

and hooking a target and turn into a JREAP message to get in the Joint Fires Network. What we don't want to do is have five or six versions of those. We want one version. And we want to bring that to our force. So Sonic Spirit 25, let's figure out our data flows, what we call a bow tie. Think over here, sensor. Over here, effector.

how to drive it in to have that soft joint task force in the middle, driving really the results of that joint task force commander through the use of data. But let's see ourselves first in 25, scan the horizon. What do we bring in? And then into 26, start driving that seabed to low earth orbit synchronization of joint soft capabilities. So

It's a journey we're on. And then really, once you start lining everybody up, and if you're doing things in a couple of years outside of that line from seabed to low-earth orbit, we're probably going to stop doing those and invest in those things that bring true joint warfighting capability. So Sonic Spear, first year that we're doing it, we want to come to industry after that to show you our enterprise gap list. What are the things in seabed to low-earth orbit that we need help closing those gaps? And that's our goal. That's what Sonic Spear hopes to get to it.

A lot of people talk and think about, and naturally they should, what role special operations forces would play in the Indo-Pacific, which is the priority theater in a wartime scenario, which we all hope, of course, never happens. But I think there's a really interesting conversation to be had of what role special operations forces may play today. And I know you can't talk specific operational details, of course, necessarily on certain things, but can play short of war.

I would love to hear what you have to say about that. You know, I think it goes back to, we talked about the soft renaissance. Our job is left of conflict, primarily short of war, right? We call it gray zone. You might call it a regular warfare, but our job, we were built, we were built to give our leaders different options compared to conventional options. Think about it. That's what we were built. You think President Kennedy going through the Cuban Missile Crisis, you want to read a good book about it. It's called The Abyss by Max Hastings.

You know, the choices President Kennedy had to respond to the Cuban Missile Crisis were kind of World War II type choices. You know, amphibious landings, let's use nuclear weapons. That's when he thought we have to have other options, left of conflict, other options stepping into conflict, Green Berets, UDTs, NSW. That's where SOF really started to come to bear. So I think if you look at our job is gaining accident placement with partners and allies, right?

Again, in places only SOCOM can go to do things only SOCOM can do. So that accident placement then puts us in the right location to enable the joint force to either accelerate into conflicts or decelerate from conflict. That's the role soft will play. And I think the key is that how do we bring not only those generation relationships like we have in locations like the Philippines and other areas in the Pacific,

But how do we then, in those relationships, bring that leading edge tech that we talked about so while we're there in the right position, we can then start taking care of business. We can start indexing target areas, maritime domain awareness, closing kill chains from those positions that we are forward. That's the role SOF might have always played, but it's coming back to the forefront. And I think we're going to see a larger importance put on SOCOM's role, left of conflict, and then

again, into crisis than into war. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how SOF fits in with these evolving operational concepts and transformations going on in the other services. So, of course, in the Marine Corps, it's EABO and the stand-in force. In the Air Force, you have ACE. We just had the Army announce this transformation. They're going to try to get much more mobile quickly and employing drones and other technologies at greater scale. Where does SOCOM fit in with all this? We see SOCOM playing a

a role in what we call the stand-in force. Now, the Marine Corps came out with that in the force design. But if you think about it, it's those forces that are always forward. That's what we do. We're always engaged. Think Green Berets, think Navy SEALs, MARSOC Raiders, AVSOC Air Commandos. Always forward, always engaged with partners. So what we do, we're part of that stand-in force. So as conflict looms, especially modern conflict, the threat rings that our enemies are allowed to kind of bring to the mix, that conventional force we see probably will have to pulse back

And then we're the ones left inside weapons engagement zone and for SOF even deeper towards the enemy threat. Okay, so I think as we watch the other services, think about modernizing, you know, we will continue to watch across and scan across the horizon and their capabilities they're bringing to bear. We represent that small footprint forward. Most likely, we believe the standing forces, SOF, submarines and Marines forward is really the force that is going to initiate contact

and then enable the joint force to pulse in and out with their more larger capital assets. I think the modernization, as everyone kind of modernizes at sea on land, we'll keep an eye on that through our service components that will align with the services used to stock with the Army. And as they modernize, we want to take best of breed, but also be aware of their tactics

and what they're thinking about their concepts and fit into them to enable them to make those even better. And so we want to be the thing that enables your thing to fully be maximized on the battlefield. That's great. And last question. Hi.

How has great power competition and the end of the global war on terror, although of course SOCOM is still called upon to deal with terrorism, that hasn't ended. But the focus as it shifted to great power competition changed the kind of people that we focus on recruiting and cultivating into special operations. It's a great question. It's a journey we're on right now. We still attract...

incredible young men and women that want to come serve in SOF. And that's SOF enablers, okay, or SOF operators. They want to come step forward and go through an assessment and selection and become one of us, one of you all. And I think that gene pool hasn't dried up, right? But we also, if you think about that, we have to be careful that who is the one on the keyboard, who is the one

swimming into the target. Is it the same person? Okay. Or is it, is it a different person? Are we looking for different traits? We have to be careful that the hard skills that we bring to the fight again, subsurface on the surface, clandestine in the air from our air commandos, those are very hard earned skills. So you have to be careful.

Do you want those individuals also be in cyber, also be in space, also be in IT, all those things? Or do you want to think about how you attract the right enablers or how you get better at synchronizing those effects?

So do you want to buy the cyber human or would you want to get good at leveraging the cyber effect? I'd rather go leverage the cyber effect, not by the cyber human. Right. And I know everyone loves the movies. The individual swims ashore, pulls off the hoodie and changing the tuxedo and gets on the keyboard. Not real. Okay. Um,

Less business nudes, more wetsuits. But the team that does swim ashore or parachutes in, we want them to have the link to the best cyber, to the best space. That's the effect we want to bring to bear. And again, we match that with the grit, the endurance, the courage, the skills of our staff operators and their enablers synced with that space, that cyber, those other effects. That's where we start to change the equation. Thank you so much for doing this, General. This was great. Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate it.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Do not forget to check out our membership program at warontherocks.com slash membership. Thank you for listening. Stay safe and stay healthy.