Employing U.S. Army Special Forces to Defeat America's Emerging Threats
Abstract
Following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq while targeting al-Qa ida (AQ) and other transnational terrorist organizations in order to neutralize America s security threats. U.S. Army Special Forces (SF) supported Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) by conducting Unconventional Warfare (UW) operations. After the overthrow of the Taliban and Saddam s government, SF transitioned from UW to Foreign Internal Defense (FID), creating the Afghan and Iraqi Army Commandos who led the way for their new governments security. Today, the U.S. and our Special Operations Forces (SOF) focus heavily on Surgical Strike missions, specifically Counter Terrorism (CT) and Direct Action (DA) operations as we continue to target AQ and other terrorist organizations. This focus on Surgical Strike operations and underutilization of SOF in Special Warfare operations such as FID and UW may limit DOD's ability to defeat emerging threats. This paper will examine Special Warfare operations, specifically FID, Preparation of the Environment (PE) and UW and how the application of these missions can efficiently support long term U.S. national security objectives.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA592980
Entities
People
- Alan J. Shumate
Organizations
- Duke University