 My name is Rick Ozzie Nelson, I'm Director of the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Program at CSIS and I want to thank everyone for attending today. I have a couple of general announcements first off. We obviously want to thank FinMechanica, this is the third year they sponsored this event at CSIS and we're continuing to be appreciative of their support. You've heard it again three times today, please mute your cell phones or put them on vibrate. No one wants to be that person. So please help us out there. We'll also be tweeting at CSI underscore org and we're using hashtag GSF 2012. Following the panel remarks, we will take questions from the audience. Please wait for the microphone, identify yourself and phrase your question as a question. There will be no statements, only questions. With that we'll go ahead and get right into the to meet of this hopefully what we will be lively discussion. So the title of our panel today, the future special operations, is this the time to change the unified command plan or UCP. We are lucky enough to have three immensely distinguished for military officers. First we have General Pete Pate, retired from active duty with the United States Marine Corps in 2007 after more than 40 years of service. He most recently served as the 16th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position he held from September 2005 to October 2007. He previously served as the vice chairman from August 2001 to October 2001 to August 2005. He earned his commission from the Naval Academy in 1967 and began his military career as a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam. General Pate currently sits on both the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and the Secretary of Defense's Defense Policy Board and is a distinguished senior advisor to CSIS. Well thank you for attending. Next Admiral Keating. Admiral Keating retired, Tim Keating retired from the Navy in December of 2009 after serving three years as commander of US Pacific Command. Before that as commander of Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command. He's an accomplished pilot, as all Naval aviars are, having spent over 5,000 hours in tactical jets and having performed over 1,200 landings on aircraft carriers. He currently serves on the Naval Postgraduate School Board of Advisors, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Virginia Commission for Military and National Security Affairs and the National Committee on US-China Relations, among others. And lastly we're honored to have Admiral Eric Olson, who was most recently retired from the Navy in August of 2011, having served as the eighth commander of the US Special Operations Command. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1973 and qualified as a Naval Special Warfare Officer the following year. He is the first SEAL to achieve the three-star or four-star rank and at the time of his retirement he held the title of Bullfrog, the longest serving SEAL. During his time as commander of US OCOM he presided over the one most dynamic periods in the organization's history. Gentlemen we're honored that you all join us here today, thank you. Before we begin, as we've done with all the panels today, I'm going to take a few minutes to try to objectively frame our conversation today. Next slide. Next slide, here we go. In January the Department of Defense released a new defense strategic guidance laying out US strategic interests and priorities in the coming year. The guidance puts forward a vision for a future that will be in several ways very different than the past decade. Threats in the future are likely to be varied and diffuse, emanating from a host of different actors in different regions. To meet these challenges, the guidance emphasizes global missions that build partner capacity and work to address threats before they fully emerge as well as rapid reaction to specific crises. Further, the guidance calls for a force that will be smaller and leaner but will be agile, flexible, and ready and able to implement innovative low-cost and small footprint approaches. Some have suggested that special operations forces are uniquely suited to meet the requirements, do their unique skills in both direct and indirect action, their ability to undertake tactical actions that have strategic effects, and their small number of personnel their mission is generally required. Next slide. In order to achieve their missions, special operations forces balance direct and indirect approaches. Over the past decade of major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, SOF have been heavily involved in direct action missions. These missions involve the direct application of force that are often kinetic in nature. An example of such a mission would be a raid against a militant training camp or a hostage rescue mission. These missions are relatively visible and their success more quantifiable. As a result, much of the public focus has been on these types of mission. However, as the US shifts away from major combat operations and towards a preventive global posture, indirect action is likely to be of increased value. Indirect action seeks to increase security through non-kinetic means and includes activities such as security force assistance and tend to help build the capabilities of partner nations an area where threat may be emerging. SOF have been involved in indirect action in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the demand for such missions is likely to increase dramatically compared to direct action as operations shift out of Title X zones and into a global environment. Demands of SOF are going to change in the coming years, leading some to suggest that the structures governing how these forces operate may have to be modified as well. Currently, there are two models in which SOF can be utilized. Next slide. Command of control is SOF in theaters. Under the SOF theater model, US special operations commands provide SOF units and capabilities to GCCs or geographic combatant commands who have operational control over deployed SOF. Operation control is then exercised through this theater special operation command. And you can see the legal, the US code where that language comes from. Next slide. The second one is for selected special operations. Under this model, which is applied less routinely, if ever, the US SOF may be directed to exercise command of deployed SOF rather than simply supplying forces to GCCs. However, there's strict limits on this authority and can only do so when directed by the National Command Authority, the President and the Secretary of Defense. Slide. This architect may not be flexible and agile enough to combat global threats that do not conform to a regional construct. For instance, if a military organization is based and operating in the Middle East but is moving drugs and or other illicit goods from Latin America through smuggling routes in Africa and onto Europe, how would you address it under the current architecture? Additionally, the current architecture requires that GCCs initiate a request for special operations forces potentially limiting the effective and timely deployment of SOF capabilities. In order to address these challenges, some support US SOCOM having greater ability to initiate and coordinate deployments to more effectively respond to threats on a global scale. In order to exploit the future of SOF as well as the idea of the shift in the architect governing SOF in the US SOCOM, the panel is going to go ahead and review a few questions. Slide. These are the questions we'll talk to in a moment, but first we're going to go to five to seven minutes from each panelist. We had a lengthy discussion to see who would go first, and Admiral Olson has kindly offered to go start with his remarks to give us the SOCOM perspective, although he's not representing SOCOM, as none of our speakers are representing any of our former commands. And Admiral Keating from the COCOM perspective, and then General Pace from the Chairman and Chas perspective, but not the current perspective. So will that, Admiral Olson, please, sir, over to you. Dr. Hammer, CSIS for putting this forum together. It's great to be with you and to see so many familiar faces in the audience. And I'm very glad to be with my distinguished colleagues up here, couldn't ask for more expert partners in this forum than the ones who are here today. This is going to be a uniquely nuanced kind of discussion, almost all of the finer points about United States Special Operations Command are complex. It is not a well-understood command in terms of its position within the Department of Defense or with respect to its authorities, with respect to its responsibilities. And I think much of that will come out today. And I'm not going to give a command briefing. I am not in the command anymore, but I will start with just a little bit about what SOCOM is and what Special Operations Forces are, and there is a distinction between them. And I know this is quite a sophisticated audience, so I won't talk about that more than a minute or so. First, it is truly a joint command. It is a combatant command by law established in legislation with Army, Navy, Air Force, and now Marine Corps components and a joint subunified command along with that. It is global in its approach to the world. It has no defined geographic area of responsibility, but it provides forces to work all around the world and on a typical day in about 70 or 75 countries. Only in a shooting war in one of those countries with forces that are higher than normal risk and a handful of others. But mostly they are just a presence force working with a counterpart to conducting training around the world. They are separately funded. Major force program 11 is provided by the Congress in response to the budget that's submitted by the department to fund those activities that are peculiar to special operations in nature. And that's the language of the legislation peculiar to special operations in nature. And therefore United States special operations command and special operations forces depend very, very heavily on the services for much of their support, much of what they do. And there is about an equal amount of investment by the services in special operations capability as there is provided by MFP 11. And then there are wide ranging responsibilities and authorities. You can state with some accuracy that the commander of special operations command has authorities respond on a much smaller scale, but authorities is responsibility similar to many ways to a service chief, similar in many ways to a service secretary, similar in many ways to a head of a defense agency and certainly established as a combatant command. So having responsibility as authorities of a functional combatant commander. But the commander of special operations command has little operational authority and he has virtually no operational authority outside of the continental United States. He has combatant command of all US based special operations forces. But when forces are deployed, they transfer to the command of the geographic combatant commander into whose theater they deploy. And the commander of special operations command has not in the past had the authority to initiate requests for forces, the process by which forces are deployed. Those are initiated by the receiving geographic combatant commanders, not by the providing command of the United States special operations command. So to be clear, I transferred command of special operations command to Admiral Bill McRaven last August, eight months ago. And where our views and opinions may coincide, I am in any case not speaking for the special operations command or the special operations commander today. My opinion, the fundamental question that we're addressing today is this. And it's which commander is in the best position to determine the optimal allocation of special operations forces capabilities globally. And I can make a case that that would be the commander of the United States special operations command. Better than anyone else, he knows the capabilities and availability of his force, the condition of his force. And he's charged with taking a look across the geographic boundaries of the geographic combatant commanders to determine whether activity in one area may be supported by actions in another GCC's area with potential effects in a third or fourth geographic combatant commanders area. He tracks global trends and linkages. It does his best then to prepare his force for future contingencies. He's accountable for special operations forces readiness to operate anywhere. But again, he has little authority over where and when to deploy his force. So I believe a solution to the current situation, which I believe is sub optimized is to give the commander special operations command the authority to initiate a request for deployment. This is to accelerate a process not circumvent it. Simply as the geographic command as the special operations commander sees what is happening across geographic combatant commanders boundaries. He may have a view of something about to happen in one part of the world that that geographic combatant commander hasn't yet focused on because he hasn't seen the activity in the in the neighboring geographic combatant command. So this is not at all about forcing or sneaking special operations forces into a geographic combatant commander, but instead accelerating a process of initiation coordination with both the geographic combatant commander and the country teams in the places where special operations forces might be needed to help develop knowledge in some cases about a about potential activities. It's also about enhancing the theater special operations commands. The theater special operations commands are sub unified commands of the geographic combatant commander. They are under the COCOM and OPCON combatant command and operational control of that geographic combatant commander with special operations command being the provider of that capability, but with no operational authority, no operational strings into the into the theater special operations command. The geographic combatant commanders use their theater special operations command to exercise operational control of the special operations forces that are deployed into their theater and my opinion is that that relationship should not be changed, but you can make a case that combatant command of the theater special operations command could be under the commander of special operations command and that could include executive agency so that then the commander of special operations command would be more responsible for providing the capabilities, the funding to the theater special operations command and could better support the geographic combatant commander's needs and it shouldn't be lost on us that both Transcom and Stratcom, the other two functional commands besides SOCOM, maintain combatant command of their forces when they are deployed into another geographic combatant commanders, into a geographic combatant commanders theater only SOCOM does not have combatant command of those forces. So at the end of the day I think this is about centralized management of the allocation of deployable special operations forces, coordinating with geographic combatant commanders and country teams to accelerate the process and it's still about decentralized operational control of those forces, but with US special operations command's monitorship of the activities of the forces that are deployed and frankly in the past there have been some geographic combatant commanders who have actually prevented their theater special operations commanders from even reporting the activities of special operations forces to the commander's special operations command, which makes it very difficult for him to be accountable for their readiness frankly. Separately I'd like to note that what's happened in the last decade has been a very powerful bringing together of the interagency community. The intelligence community and special operations community in particular have become quite comfortable working with each other. This is beginning at the beginning, not separately brought together at the end after both communities have worked an issue, but they work it together from the very first indication of an issue that will have to be addressed. Second across the interagency community there's been quite an exchange of people as the commander of special operations command, let's just snapshot a year ago, there were about I had about 140 members of other agencies coming to work at our headquarters in Tampa every day and we had close to 100 uniformed members of special operations command going to work in about 15 other agencies inside the national capital region every day. This is a paradigm shift from the way things were a decade ago and a decade ago and now we're seeing these interagency individuals grow up together in operational and headquarters environments and become quite comfortable with that. I have to credit General Pace. With much of that he was one who supported the exchange of people between other agencies and special operations command and special operations command. We took that as a responsibility for SOCOM to be an extension of the joint staff in many ways in that regard. And then I'd like to mention the international piece. There has been a building of special operations capabilities globally. Over the last four or five years I could probably name a dozen countries that have created a special operations command like organization within their nation meaning in order to get an organization that is not under a service chief but that reports separately to a joint staff or to a minister of defense. And although the United States special operations command is not an ideal model for any of that there are some concepts within the United States special operations command that are from which other countries are drawing some inspiration and education. So SOF depends on the services. SOF serves as a SOCOM serves as a supporting commander for deployed forces. And I think what this is about mostly today is how the commander of special operations command can use his budget and his authorities to provide even better support to the geographic combatant commanders. Over to you. Admiral Wilson, thank you very much, sir. Admiral King, sir. Thanks, Ozzie. It's good to see a lot of good friends and to be on a panel with Eric and the chairman is a great privilege. I'm not so sure. I was trying to figure out how to stand in front of this juggernaut that is special operations command, particularly in today's world. The remarkable, incredible successes enjoyed by our men and some women in the various types of operations, some of which we read about, some of which we don't in the past decade are of surpassing importance to us as a country and to the world. That said, I'm not so sure that the proposal, as I understand it, will fix anything because I don't fundamentally understand what needs fixing. I had the privilege of two combatant commands, Northern Command slash NORAD and then Pacific Command. They couldn't have been much different. And had I had it stopped after Northern Command NORAD, I would be up here and would probably have a different perspective than I do have now having enjoyed the great privilege of about three years at Pacific Command. One floor below me at Pacific Command was Special Forces Pacific Command. And there was a two-star army guy there to begin with, Navy guy there when I left, who enjoyed unfettered access to the office or me on the phone or if I was unavailable to the desync or the deputy or whatever we're supposed to call them these days. Sure, like that word sink. Rumsfeld's not, Secretary Rumsfeld's not here. Anyway, we had an ongoing operation involving special operations forces in the Philippines. Didn't attract a lot of attention. A whole lot of guys, six, 700 special forces, effective operation, not involved in direct kinetic offensive operations. They were training the Philippine Marine Corps and Army and Special Forces. And on a daily basis, I felt I had a reasonable to very good appreciation for the challenges and opportunities confronting available to the commander of the Pacific Command. Eric cites, he can come up with a couple of examples where a regional combatant commander was not helpful in execution of important special operations missions. The fix, the change, the alteration proposed or being considered may eliminate if not reduce chances for recurrence of those occasional obstructions to the well oiled machine that a special operations proceeding forward with timely, effective, efficient, likely kinetic operations that cross geographic command boundaries. I don't believe that this change as proposed necessarily eliminates the possibility of confusion. I think we need to be very careful. We should take this in a very slow, measured, careful manner. Take it under consideration. Slow, measured, careful manner. Chairman Pace, I had a privilege of working for him a couple of times and I heard him say more than once, let's make sure we do no harm. I'm not suggesting that the proposal will be harmful, but the way things work now from where I sat in various jobs, ranging through all manner of joint and straight Navy jobs, I wasn't aware of a situation where an immediate response was necessary and was not provided in the case of straight white soft operations in particular. Other classified operations, you bet they may be good examples. So another point, Eric mentions how transcom and stratcom enjoy certain relationships that special operations command does not. I would submit, at least from where I sat and where I sit, there's a world of difference between what strategic command does and even bigger difference at transportation command and what special operations command is capable of doing and what we expect of them and what we demand of them. So writ large, I would say let's be very careful, let's not try and change a system that works relatively well to very well from my experience if in time, how long is that, I don't know, and put it subjected to some war games and some very careful analysis, the proposal as being considered proves to be a more effective, efficient way of utilizing or a remarkable, unique capability resident or special operations forces than I'm all for. I'm just not so sure. Thanks. Great, thank you, Admiral Keating. I was concerned that the paddle might not be exciting. So I appreciate that. I do want to clarify one thing what we were discussing here is just the command relationships and potentially changing that or modifying that to facilitate future missions but not on any specific initiative that may or may not be pursued right now inside the Department of Defense. General Pace over you, sir. Thanks, Ozzy. At the expense of making this a love end, I am delighted to be on this stage with Admiral Keating and Admiral Olson, two gentlemen who are truly heroes of our country and it's good to be on the same platform with them both. Thank you. I have not had a discussion with Admiral McRaven. I have not had a discussion with General Dempsey, so I do not know the exact nature of the proposal that's on the table. I know what I've read in the paper, forgive me, Eric, but that's not always exactly accurate. And I know what I read in Admiral McRaven. Admiral McRaven's 12th March testimony in front of the sask, which did not really address this issue. And I remember as chairman that I didn't really need a whole lot of public help from the 15 guys that went before me and I think that probably General Dempsey doesn't need a whole lot of public help from the 17 guys that went before him. But this being in Washington, I'm gonna speak my mind anyway, I guess. If I, let me just approach from this standpoint, if I were still chairman, what would I wanna know? First of all, I'd wanna know what is it that we're trying to fix? It's obviously a problem in somebody's mind. What is it? And how do we make the process more effective and more efficient? That's the bottom line. You're always gonna be goring somebody's ox a little bit, especially at this level. Wherever you draw the line on the map, however you divide up, op-com, take-com, co-com, no matter how you do that, somebody's gonna be a little bit more advantage than the other guy. The question is, how do you do it in a way that best serves the nation? On the indirect mission, I think we've got that pretty good. Special ops traveled to about 100 different nations during the course of a year. The indirect mission advisory nature is a long-term mission. When I was sink south in Miami, I had the privilege of having special operations forces work in long-term in the Americas with us. And I benefited from what they did. And the process, though, of allocating the resources and getting them into the countries could accommodate the request for forces and the like that it took. So I really don't think that the problem is on the indirect side. That leaves the direct side. And that clearly is where our special operators for the last 10 plus years have served the country so magnificently. And the question then becomes, if they feel that the process is not working as smoothly as it can be, what is it that we might look at to change? I come to it with two biases for sure. One bias is, as chairman, I was not in the chain of command. Yet I was held responsible for what happened. Several times during my time as vice chairman and chairman, I was asked my opinion about whether or not the chairman should be inserted into the chain of command. And each time my response was, man, you would make my life so much easier. If I'm gonna be held accountable and responsible, give me the authority to get something done. However, my recommendation always was and always will be, please do not do that. As an American citizen, do not give any uniformed officer, even one as nice as me, the absolute authority to move every plane, any ship, any troop, any missile, any whatever around the globe without the authority of the president, the elected president, and his desentated secretary of defense. I think it is not good for our democracy to have anybody be able to move anything around the planet other than the president and the secretary. That's bias number one. Bias number two, speed is a force multiplier. Multiplier, clearly the faster you can do something, the more powerful the impact in almost every circumstance. But I worry about speed. I worry about speed making it too easy to employ force. I worry about speed making it too easy to take the easy answer. Let's go whack them with soft, as opposed to perhaps a more laborious answer, but perhaps a better long-term solution. We're not gonna kill our way to success in this war. We are certainly gonna do what Admiral Olson and now Admiral McRaven's troops have been doing magnificently, which is decimating the enemy leadership. But at the end of the day, from the special ops community viewpoint in my opinion, it is the indirect missions that will have a long-term impact, long-term effect. So if we are talking about direct missions, how do we make them more effective and more efficient? I will tell you, when we knew that a crisis was bubbling and I knew that the Navy inside a geographic area that the Navy had reached out and said to carry a battle group, go ahead and start steaming toward wherever, still inside the area in which they've been assigned, but getting a little closer to the boundaries that if our civilian leaders made the decision, then we'd be better prepared to support their decision, would execute their decisions. I'm good with that. And I'm good therefore with the concept of the command of special operations command, being able to identify and start moving forces. But I would not want him to be able to do that without the mother may I that comes from the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary or the President of the United States. Right now, as Admiral Olson pointed out, we've got the combatant commander asking for forces. I think it's fine for the special ops commander to ask for forces, but I would not want those forces, whether it's a ship or a special operator, to cross boundaries between combatant commands without the Secretary of Defense or the President having approved it. I think we have the capacity to do that. I don't know that I understand the entire proposal, but if the proposal is for the special operations commander to be able to propose the movement, I see nothing wrong with that. The difference being that if a geographic commander does it, it gets passed through SOCOM to get their opinion. If the SOCOM commander does it, it's gonna get passed through geographic command for their opinion. So either way, people's opinions are gonna be asked. But if at the end of the day, you can demonstrate to me that no kidding, we can shave hours or days off of response, then I wanna listen to that very carefully and set it up in a way where we can do that as long as we don't end up putting into one individual's hands the power to move things globally without the President or the Secretary saying, do it. I'll stop there. Thank you, General. Obviously, if I could have a couple of minutes because just to be clear, I did not offer to go first. I agreed to go first. This is true, I confirm it. One of the disadvantages of going first is that the others get to comment on your remarks, you don't get to comment on them. So I would ask for just a couple of minutes. Absolutely, sir, I'm not gonna know. One either I didn't speak clearly or there were assumptions made that I just wasn't aware of. In response to Chairman Pace's comments specifically, in my view, this is much less about responding in a direct action role and much more about responding in the indirect action role. This is about getting ahead of crisis, ahead of the sound of guns in order to prevent that, to gain an understanding on the ground in a place where we've just now the most subtle hints that something may be developing. I think that the process for actually deploying forces for kinetic actions in response to a crisis works pretty well. It's the much more nuanced, the much subtler need to get a small number of people in a place to start working with the country team, start working with geographic combatant commander forces on the ground if there are any to gain an understanding so that then when special operations forces do deploy there, if they need to in greater number, they have a better sense of the place about their predictions about what to do will be, their predictions about the effects of what they do will be far more accurate. This is about, special operations is much more a knowledge-based capability than a platform-based capability and in order to use it to its full capability, you've got to understand the place. And so it is these very small deployments to unusual places that may not be on the scope of a geographic combatant commander, may not be on the scope of the joint staff. I think we're talking about mostly and in no way is this meant to give any person, in my view, the authority to, as I said, force or sneak people around, can't cross a geographic combatant commander's boundary, certainly without higher authority, can't deploy forces O'Connor's without higher authority. This is, as I said, meant to accelerate, not circumvent any of the authorities of the joint staff or the Office of the Secretary of Defense in terms of where forces go and how they move across borders. There might be a minor objection voiced in what Eric, what you said, if it's below the scan of the geographic combatant commander? No, well, let me explain that. There may be things happening in UCOM funded out of someplace else with potential effects somewhere else, with training camps somewhere else, and it's just not on the scope of those somewhere else's yet. It may be on the scope of UCOM, but it's not on the scope of the somewhere else's yet. But SOCOM's responsibility is to step back and take a look across all of that and track the trends, track the linkages, track the connections, track movement, track behavior, and see whether or not those kinds of potential actions outside of one GCC's theater may be brewing. So that's what I meant. I don't mean that the GCCs aren't paying attention. What I do mean to say is that GCCs focus their attention on their combatant commands, AOR, not on anyone else's. SOCOM does not do that. This is a very interesting discussion. Obviously, to you all now, we have not coordinated what we're gonna say. That was just cool, but before that discussion. From my standpoint then, I do believe that the indirect mission is the most important mission, long term. And I do believe that there's enough time. I mean, Admiral Olson's point is correct, as his slides were correct in saying that it is a development of the understanding of the knowledge. But there is, in a direct mission, the speed and times that have to be worried about. In the indirect mission, there are the country team in all of its parts that need to be coordinated with. And somebody needs to be the stuckie. I mean, the President and the Secretary of Defense need to be able to reach out and to an area and say, you're the guy I'm holding responsible. And I believe that as correctly, the responsibility of the geographic combatant commander to be held responsible for everything that happens in his or her, AOR, except for those things that are very time sensitive and blessed by the President and Secretary of Defense. And SOCOM does what they do magnificently well. So perhaps I didn't hear what Admiral Olson said properly in the first place, but the more something is indirect, the more time you have, in my opinion, absolutely. Special ops should be giving a global view, but in my opinion, it ought to stay in its current configuration. To the extent it is direct, that's where I'm personally comfortable looking for more effective and efficient things. So if I'm hearing it right, we're coming at it from different parts of the planet. We'll get to questions. I'm gonna just ask one scene setting question here and to clarify a couple of points that were on the slide here. And one is we're talking about the effective employment of SOF, speed and agility or components of the effective employment and knowledge, obviously, is another one. And there are multiple ways to affect this employment. These employment options are the hands-on of the GCC Special Operations Capabilities. There's the UCP, there's law, there's changes to Title X. The National Command Authority and the current structures are in Title X, changing the law with quite, quite congressional action. Changing the UCP does not. And there are other things inside DOD that can be done to affect us as well. This conversation happens to focus on one aspect or one potential change to this. But when we talk about the National Command Authority, that's something that no commander, no military, uniform military person can do unless there's some sort of significant change to the law that I think would never happen. But let's just drill down and then we'll go to questions. Let's talk about this question then, in the example I used in my remarks. If a military organization is based and operating in the Middle East, there's moving drugs and other illicit goods from Latin America through smuggling routes in Africa and on to Europe, how do you address this under the current architect? So can each of the panelists just address that and basically the ultimate question is, is the first one up here, is the current architecture, or once we've described that, is it sufficient to handle that? Because that's what the strategic guidance says we're gonna see in the future. And then we'll go to audience questions. So now we're keying. Yes. Okay. Thank you. It is sufficient. John Pacer? What's going on right now? I don't know that a change of who has the throttle is gonna change the sharing of information across the world. I hope, I trust, that the special operators are in fact sharing information. And I'm perfectly fine with the co-com because I don't know what to do and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I'm fine with co-com. Proposable. I see no reason not to do that and I would hope that Special Ops always is sharing information internal as well as with the intel community. So I don't know that a change to who the stuckie is for particular operation would change whether or not the folks who are responsible for gathering global data have better data or not. but I could be educated, but I just don't know it. First of my knowledge, there is no proposal. There is discussion, so we keep talking about a proposal that I don't think that anybody's at that stage yet. I do think there are conditioning discussions taking place. First, I would, next I would say that in order for sort of your scenario, a thing moving across GCCs, the process now is inadequate. It requires multiple conversations with multiple, this would happen anyway, but now the conversation is trying to stimulate the geographic combatant commander to get his staff working on the process of submitting a request for forces that will then go back to the joint staff and the joint staff will then come back to SOCOM and ask them if they have forces available to support it. I mean, the whole idea was SOCOM to begin with, they wouldn't have afford it if they didn't have forces to support it, so why should we go through that process at all? Why can't we just have the commander of special operations command talk to the geographic combatant commanders, say, we see this happening in your theater, the ultimate impact won't be in your theater, but there's activity in your theater, let's agree, to move these forces down under your upcom. I'll start the request from my headquarters, so it'll be a coordinated effort across this country and this country and this country and this country. We'll take the coordination for action, we'll take submitting the request for action and we'll get the troops there faster than if we went through the other process for you to initiate the request. I think that's, in my view, what it is we're talking about. I mean, I will make up an example here, but I don't have to make it up too much. There's an international conference taking place in Tampa International Special Operations Conference next month, 80-something countries where the special operations forces will be there. I had the opportunity to host one of these four years ago. We had 70-something countries show up and there will be a lot of back room discussions about, hey, we could really use this from you guys. Can you help us out with this? Can you send a couple of guys to help us train this? Can you help us send a couple of guys to help us do this? Right now it is up to the commander of SOCOM in response to those to say, nope, I can't do any of that. But if you go back and work through your thing within the geographic combatant commander and get him to submit a request for forces to the joint staff, then maybe I can send you forces. We're, in my view, he ought to be able to come out of that conference with a list of prioritized efforts, work it out with the GCCs and the joint staff and just get that action going. But in my view, that's what it is we're talking about is accelerating a process, not circumventing it, not changing operational control of anything, not changing country team purview or GCC purview over anything, just really building a more coherent global special operations network, if you will. And I have zero problem with exploring that. As long as at the end of the day, the special operations commander, like any other commander, has to ask for the force to be moved and has to have it approved. And if that streamlines it, it's either gonna be the special operator coordinating with the GCC or the GCC coordinating with the special operator. If one of them has a better view on a situation than somebody else and initiates the process and that helps, I think that's worth pursuing. Yeah, I see that as a distinction, but not a difference. There has to be a request initiated somewhere. It goes someplace else. There will be, unless we, I don't know that, I'm not suggesting or recommending this to everybody, unless we throw the whole 136 chop chain out and someone can just say, yep, which actually happens. So sometimes if it's, and we've all had God Voko and you can move stuff right now if you need to, if it's sufficiently urgent. So who makes the phone call? Who submits the paper? Can this request become mired in the quote, churn of a geographic combat command? Yes, sir. I would submit to you that on occasion, that is not necessarily detrimental to the overall good. There may be things going on in that aforementioned geographic combat command, of which the special operations commander, smart as he is and as informed as he may not be aware or sufficiently attuned. And so therefore, let's say, Sink PAC goes, yeah, you wanna seal platoon, but they're busy. Now, if they're standing gate guard, that's a bad on Sink PAC, but in a phone call between SOCOM and Sink PAC could Sink SOC and Sink PAC. If I keep saying it, none of folks are gonna, all right, just got an advocate walk in the room. Anyway, I see it as a distinction, but not a difference. All right, we'll go to questions. Again, please leave it to a question, your name and your affiliation. We'll go to the very sort of individual at the back. Hi, it's Michael Schrag with MIT and there's one thing that I think hasn't been addressed. It's the issue of your capabilities are changing. The SOCOM capabilities are changing. Your warriors are very good systems designers, weapons designers, platform designers. So I think the rate of change is accelerating and I think that creates even more trade off issues between the local area, the ground commander and SOCOM. I would just like the panel to address. If SOCOM's capabilities increase relatively faster than traditional, do you think the demands on SOCOM are gonna be even greater and increase the need for greater agility and greater involvement both on an indirect and direct basis because you guys are the early adapters and early utilizers of things that really are force multipliers. Thank you. My opinion is that the demand for special operations will increase and this is partly for some of the, because of some of the things that you mentioned, mostly because the Secretary of Defense's strategic guidance says that we will be out in the world supporting our friends and partners with teams in a way that enhances their sovereignty or increases their ability to do what it is they need to do, always better if they do it than for us to have to do it for them. And special operations forces are well suited to that. I don't know the exact numbers. But I think if you go, if you sort of track the force deployments from the United States that have been say brigade size or larger going back 20 years, it's a relative handful. And some of those are for disaster relief. But the other ones, generally named operations, relatively large scale operations. In the meantime, special operations forces have been, I mean the services provided forces to this too, but we've just been out in small numbers in many places. And I think that's the new normal. It will just place a continuing high demand on special operations forces probably in increasing demand. And some of that is related to this international growth of special operations. There are more counterparts for special operations forces to work with than there were a decade or two ago. This global community, this international community is beginning to gel a bit and next month's conference is a good manifestation of that. Let's go to the gentleman right here, the blue shirt. Hi, my name is Harvey Rishikov. I'm the chair of the AB standing committee in law and national security. I particularly wanna thank you three gentlemen for all your service and your sacrifice, particularly General Pace, who always came to the National War College and always spoke to our classes whenever we invited him. My question is the following. This, you've tiptoed up to another major issue and the other major issue, which in my line of work we're sort of focused on, which is title 10 authority and title 50 authority. And increasingly, as you know, the scenarios you've laid out tiptoe up to the issue of what's traditional military activities versus what is borderline classic intelligence and intelligence using kinetic power. So another admiral used to be Admiral Blair, used to talk about the need for title 60. That is the true way to figure out how to resolve this problem. So I'm curious now that you're wearing a mufti, what your sense is about that potential problem and the problem that many of us see that the emergence of special operations and activities very capable, very, as you've pointed out, quite a tool in the toolbox for the senior policy makers. So I'm curious to see what your gentleman's response is. And Oz, you should jump in too if you have a thought about this. We're gonna answer that question in the context of the panel topic though. Thank you, Hargan, for that question. If you're gonna raise the level of the issue, let me raise it even further. Thank you, sir. To the National Security Council functioning, which functions amazingly well in the courses of action, putting in front of the president a way to go about whatever it is he has to take a look at. And the one-star, two-star, three-star, forced levels are all very collaborative and it gets in front of the president eventually at the National Security Council and eventually the president's comfortable enough and he makes a decision. And the instant he makes a decision is when the process starts to break down because great Americans who are the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Treasury and the Secretary of Homeland Security, et cetera, all go back to their buildings and start working on their piece of the problem. And the problem is, unlike the military joint command, which wouldn't be where it is today if we didn't have go order nickels. Unlike that, there's nobody short of the president of the United States with choke con over everybody who has a responsibility. So if two strong personalities in two different departments don't see eye to eye, unless the issue is so important as to bring it to the president, it just festers. I can give you lots and lots of examples of that and I won't, okay, but you can guess for yourself. So the bigger issue isn't so much Title 60, it's ought there not be a go order nickels like law for how the interagency process works so that at the end of the day when the president says, I want this done and I want state in charge. I want this done, I want Treasury in charge. I want this done, I want DoD in charge. And then just like a military operation in D.C., the meetings are, if it's state, in D.C., the meetings are held and the State Department guy or gal is running the meeting in the region because the combat command has a facility, the meetings are at his facility, but the State Department person is running a meeting in the country because the ambassador's got the facility, it's run there and state's given guidance. Now, it took 20 years for the military to figure out how to play together and share our toys in the joint world. And when we first started out, a Marine who wasn't happy with the order he was getting from an Air Force guy or whatever, would take that issue to the command on Marine Corps and if he felt it was worthy, he would take it into the tank and a tank would figure it out. They did that many, many, many times, but in the six years I was Vice Chairman and Chairman, not once did we have an issue like that because it had all been figured out in the preceding 20 years. Would there be issues initially on this? You bet, but if, in this case, the State Department was giving orders to have things happen and the military guy didn't think it was right, he could bring it to the Secretary of Defense and if the Secretary of Defense thought it was right, he could take it to the National Security Council and had that decision. Now, we've got to be careful because there is a chain of command from the president down to the PSC pace, which is inviolate and we've got to be careful. But most of the things, 80% of the things that you need to get done, you can get done with somebody else other than the military guy being the guy making the large vector decisions. And if we had something like that, we wouldn't have to worry about Title 60 because that'd be assumed in how it is we set up the joint inter-agency process in the first place. Thank you, Ozzy. Given that we've got the panel here today, I wanted to bring it back to a larger question that we were discussing. And the affiliation. Jeremy DeVaney, BVNT Capital Markets, thank you. Bring it back to a bigger question that we had earlier today. We recently had the president initiate his new strategy under the current budget. Given that sequestration is likely to happen according to the panel that we had earlier, how is soft and the emphasis of soft going to change as the strategy changes through sequestration? And does the panel see the future of soft changing because of funding levels? Do they currently have the funding to achieve the mission? And will they have to reevaluate that mission if the funding levels change? Who wants to jump on that one? I'll be a wind-dumb if you want. The dollars allocated are gonna be the dollars allocated. Preferably, you would start with a strategy. If you had a strategy, then you go to the military in the building and say, okay, here's the strategy. We want you to do one of these and two of these and three of these. And we got lots of folks in the building. They have lots of folks in the building who do that for a living and can say, okay, if that's your strategy, we're gonna need this many ships, this many planes, this many troops and it's gonna cost you this many dollars. And everybody's gonna go, that's too much. And we're gonna say, that's right, it is too much. Now, now that we know that you have a strategy, which is the starting place, not a budget that you buy what you can, but a strategy that you understand what it's gonna cost. And then you look at, you don't have that much money, you start taking things off the table and you understand how you're then accepting more and more risk over here on your strategy. But you have a basis and an understanding of what you're doing, okay. At the end of the day, if sequestration hits and the dollars come off the table, as an infantry guy, I'm gonna be looking at you now and saying, look, if I get killed taking this hill, I don't have to worry about the next one. I'd like very much to be worried about both hills, but if you only give me enough money to worry about this one, then the current hill I'm worried about is the counter-terrorism fight and I'm looking to make sure that Special Ops has got all the resources they need. If 10.4 billion is the number I heard in the budget is what they need, if, in Peter's opinion, if money comes off the table, that 10.4 billion ought to stay where it is because that's the fight we're in right now. The other money is properly used for the full spectrum forces, if I can use that term, so you have the capability to do what we need to do as a nation. But if you get down to where you are working dollars and not strategy, then you have to start buying with your dollars the things that you need today and whatever money you have left over, you buy the things you need for tomorrow, in my opinion. I'd like to weigh in on that. I think it's much, in my view, it's not about the health of Major Force Program 11. I think that it will keep on keeping on. In my view, it's how the services who are responsible for the other half of Special Operations capabilities prioritize their support for Special Operations forces. And the spotlight has been on the kinetic operations against high value targets. National prestige is often at stake in those kinds of operations. Everybody lines up to support those with the full capability and budgets required. The dispersed small operations around the world are much less visible. The spotlight is never on those. And so instead of having a spotlight on soft shift to other places, I think the spotlight on soft will just dim. And as Special Operations forces disperse. And so I think the issue is, will Special Operations retain the same high priority in the service budgets in the future that they've had for the kinetic operations that they've been involved in for the last decade? We should avoid the temptation to make it a binary decision. You can see some folks would characterize it as you're either force off or you're four conventional forces. You either want F-35s and more satellites or you want more Special Operations. It cannot devolve, degrade to that level of discussion. It goes to the chairman's point, I think. For those guys who are out there, guys and girls who are out there, it's not an either or, it's both. And so how to best manage the resources available under the budget given to us by our Congress, that's the real hard part. It can't be either or. Okay, go ahead. Kim Dozier with the AP. Admiral Olson, could you give us an example of how much time you think could be shaved off of a deployment of a small Special Operations team to a given area, is it from months to weeks? Second, could you give us an example of, say in Mali, what could a small team have done to get ahead of the sound of guns there? And finally, for all of you, do you think that this change should also be applied to counter-terrorism slash direct action in that the SOCOM commander should be given more of a role, a guaranteed seat at the table in some of these discussions where right now you always have the chairman, but you don't necessarily have the SOCOM commander. Thanks. You get your monies out of these questions, all right? Admiral Olson, sir? You know, Kim, I don't think the question is how many specific days are gonna be shaved off of a specific deployment? It's about is there a coordinated effort or are there separate efforts that then have to be brought together with the deployment of forces into different geographic combatant commands? You can make a case about the timeframe and I think roughly I would say it takes some weeks to get a deployment order through the process and hopefully it would be some weeks that are shaved off that. But I don't have an absolute sense for that. I think it really is about, as I said, a much more coherent approach to where forces go and when they go there with a vision, not in response to activity, but with a vision about what the potential for their need in a place might, in some places they don't even know what the need might be. They need to get somebody there to determine what the need is. Talk into a local force or a counterpart. And that would be much brighter on the scope of the commander's special operations command. I think it also shouldn't be lost on us that the commanders who best understand how to use special operations forces are the special operations commanders. They wouldn't pretend that they should command aircraft carriers or fly jets, but they do believe, in my view appropriately, that they ought to have the strongest voice in the employment of special operations forces, advising and supporting geographic combatant commanders and how to do that, largely the theater special operations commanders, take care of that role. In terms of any specific country and how to get ahead of the sound of guns, I think there are many cases where an understanding on the ground prior to a crisis has helped accurize the response to that crisis. It's just made it a better response. Send this, don't send that, send them then, don't send them then. And so a concrete example about how you would have, to try to prove a negative is difficult, but I do think that it just makes the whole organization, the big we, much wiser in the employment of force. Yeah, anyone on the seat at the table, making decisions, chairman with the SOCOM commander or just chairman? My sense is the SOCOM commander has a pretty good seat at the table now. The special operations command over the last decade, I think, has moved into a place where it is not only the occasional, it is not the occasional visitor to most of these venues, it is a regular presence in most of these venues in between the four-star and the three-stars of special operations command. My sense, again, I'm not speaking for the current leadership of SOCOM, but my sense is that we had the avenues for communication that were required. Yeah, and you're kind of asking the judge if he runs a fair court. But I considered it one of my primary responsibilities was to make sure that everybody who had equities had a seat at the table. And that after was the Pacific command, the Pacific commander was either president or his rep was, if it was special ops, et cetera. So I do believe that the current system pays attention as it should to making sure that everybody's voice is heard. In fact, it's the chairman's responsibility to make sure that when the advice is being given to the president and to the secretary of defense at the national security council and homeland security council that not only the chairman's opinion, but especially dissenting opinions are put on the table to include especially any combatant commander's opinion that may be different. And that was an obligation, a sacred obligation I believe of the chairman to make sure all voices were presented to the president for a decision. Kim, to be clear here, nothing that I'm saying is meant to imply that I think special operations command should be bigger, that it should be more powerful, that it should be a service or anything like that, that it shouldn't get out of its skin. It is in a very good place as fewer than 3% of the people, less than 2% of the budget of the department of defense in a supporting role. It doesn't have to, it depends on the services for its infrastructure. My opinion is the commander of SOCOM shouldn't be a member of the joint chiefs. I mean, this is not a discussion about that. This is a discussion about accelerating the process by which the commander of special operations command can support the geographic combatant commanders because he may see things that they don't see. And that's it. All the way in the back. The Tenechron Randy Page and the Marine Corps Fellow at the Atlantic Council. It sounds like the admiral or at least the proposal is talking about maybe a global synchronizer. There is no proposal. Well, an idea of about being a global synchronizer of activity specifically soft. The global war on terror special operations community was, I believe designated as that global synchronizer for the global war on terror. Are we talking about a broader application of being that global synchronizer? But my specific question is, did anything really change when special operations command was designated as that global synchronizer? Or was it just your task to do this? And then everyone kind of went about their business. Yeah, I know as I set up front, everything about this is nuanced. SOCOM was never designated the global synchronizer of any sort of activity. SOCOM was designated the global synchronizer for planning. So SOCOM was, what did change was that SOCOM was given the authority to have a meeting to look into the future about global application of special operations forces with respect to countering a violent extremist threat. That's what specifically changed. I think there was a sense out there, frankly, because some said it, that the commander special operations command was synchronizing global activities. But in fact, there was no authority ever granted for us, the special operations commander to reach into any geographic combatant commander's theater and direct in any way, what a force might or might not do on any given day. That authority always remained with geographic combatant commander and SOCOM didn't have any synchronizing role. But I do think what we're talking about here, and there is no proposal, but what we're talking about here is sort of expanding that concept of synchronizing planning to synchronizing deployments. Again, in supported geographic combatant commanders, they keep op-con, et cetera, et cetera, but having a synchronized approach to force allocation, not just planning for force allocation, there's a big bridge in there that hasn't been crossed. Okay, great. Yes, sir? Yes, Bill Courtney, CFC. With the demand for SOF going up, budgets going down, to what extent is there a possibility for substituting some conventional forces for some SOF missions? And if so, what implications would that have for the various kinds of command relationships? Yeah, I mean, I think every opportunity to have non-special operations forces except a handoff of missions from special operations forces, we ought to explore. There is a lot of potential for other forces to accomplish a lot of the missions that special operations forces have conducted in the past. I think we ought to aggressively pursue every opportunity to do that, where it's right to do so. There are some forces that, some missions, some operations that should never be handed off and some that could be handed off, I think fairly easily, and a history of doing that over the last several years, I think, where special operations has moved out of several mission areas, not mission areas, but out of several operational employments as, and I wish we had a better term for conventional or general purpose forces. I don't like either of those, but I'll just say big Army, Navy, or force Marine Corps forces to come in and take a battlefield handoff of some of those operations or reduce the requirement for special operations force by providing robust support to the special operations forces in a way that allows a smaller special operations presence. So I think that's very important, and I think it's more important as we look forward because you set up front as people feel more constrained by the budgets, one of my concerns is that there will be a temptation to improperly use special operations forces to conduct missions that ought to be conducted by somebody else. They tend to their utility infielders with guns, they are easier to deploy, they can do a lot of things, and I think it's a real concern that they will be used to solve problems that aren't special operations problems. You know, I agree with Admiral Wilson, but the other side of the coin is exactly the same, which is if we don't fund enough special ops and we by default then have to use troops who are not properly trained and equipped for that particular mission, that is also a place you don't want to end up. So I take the budget guidance that I saw for FY13 at face value, which is that one of the priorities is special operations. And I believe that the folks who have the responsibility today to make those recommendations and decisions are going to fund special operations forces to the level that is required for them to be able to do today's mission. And then the question in my mind is, will there then be enough left to be able to do the full spectrum training you need to do so that we don't inadvertently tempt another nation to try us out? When I had the responsibility I always said, and I would continue to say, we need to have a full spectrum force that nobody wants to mess with because they know they're gonna get their butts kicked. And if you have that force, that forces your potential enemies into the asymmetric role. And if they're in the asymmetric role, then you need to fund our special operators to be able to fight them and prevail in the asymmetric environment. And that to me is the proper mix for our nation to the extent that we might encourage another nation to expand their conventional force because ours is weaker than it was, it's perceived to be weaker, to the extent that we might encourage another country to build this nuclear force, because ours has come down to whatever the level is that might encourage them. I think we just have to be very careful of those kinds of decisions that make us look less capable and therefore encourage something on the conventional side which is geometrically more expensive in life and treasure than where we are right now. We're just spending enough to not have to fight in that mode and then spending enough to be able to fight in the asymmetric mode, if that makes sense. Okay, I'm sorry. We need to remember, as hard as it is to get into some places, it's almost always harder to get out. The problem is magnified if we're using higher end elite forces. We've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of special operations forces in the Philippines, tried to get them out, tried to replace them, couldn't do it. It was unable to do it. Might have been the guy trying to get them out but there was a great, the government of the Philippines. There are agencies in the federal government who were not just reluctant but adamant. They did not want any change because things were running pretty smoothly. Last question, I'm on the front. Oh, Hank Gaffney from CNA, just one quick comment. When I hear all these comments about all these shrinkages and budgets and forces and all that kind of thing, I would remind people, we end up with the biggest budget by far in the world with very nearly the biggest forces in the world and this notion that we're gonna run out of things seems pretty fantastic. But I have a very specific question as the last question. One thing that was not cleared up with this title 10 versus title 50 thing, which is, we heard about the Osama bin Laden raid when basically SOF was assigned to CIA under their command. The question that I have is once that's done, how much does the rest of the defense establishment know about that operation and should they? I think only the combatant commander in the area needs to know about it. I don't think the rest of the force needs to know about it. I think there are certain operations like that one especially as prime example. I don't need, if I'm a combatant commander, I need to know as a combatant commander, but if I happen to be operating that area, I don't need to know that. The more people who know, the more likely that something's gonna leak. So there is a level that needs to know. I think that's a combatant commander's level. Oh, by the way, just for fun, Hank, I can, with the budget, I can with the same numbers tell you that either the budget is going up by 6.8% between now and FY17, or it's going down by minus 1.6, or it's going down by minus 22%, or it's going down by minus 73%, depending upon which way I use the numbers. So those numbers are just funny numbers. The bottom line is, and I wanna say it again, start with a strategy, understand what the strategy costs, and take risk off of your strategy. Don't start with a number of dollars and buy the best force you can with that amount of money. Well, on that, on the budget note, I want to thank, on behalf of CSIS and for Mechanic for General Pace, Admiral Keating and Admiral Olson for participating in this lively discussion. Thank all of you for attending and thank the Mechanic our sponsor. A round of applause for our panel. Thank you.