(Rousing picture of imaginary Sea-Air-Land Commando team. Image staged by Nerdpride aka Crazy children.)
I am a huge fan of Navy SEALs. The above picture is one that you might have seen in the outpouring of adulation over the raid that killed that scumbag bin Laden in Abbottabad, and the other astonishing demonstrations of cool professionalism.
They shot dead the pirates who hijacked the MV Maersk Alabama and held her skipper, Richard Phillips in a lifeboat. Then they put a period in the al Qaida leader, and last month rescued hostages Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted from some Somali thugs.
The Boys from Coronado and Virginia Beach are clearly on a roll, and God bless them. They have provided a long arm of the law for the Administration, and along with the capable drone-launched anti-personnel rockets, a cost-effective means of dispatching bad guys all over the world. While one might wonder at the implications of this new world, there is no doubt of the courage, expertise and elan of the Special Operators.
I should note, of course, that the picture above is NOT of SEAL Team SIX. It is a very cool image and has been around for several months. It even popped up on one of the professional boards I listlessly copy in the tidal wave of information about things that don’t mean much to me any more. Fooled a professional.
The picture was actually staged by a kid in Malyasia who goes by the handle “Nerdpride aka Crazychildren” with twelve-inch GI Joe-style action figures. If you doubt it, look at the clearly plastic arm of the figure on the right. I saw a caption that attributed the artificial limb as a sort of triumph of Special Operations and the return of a wounded warrior to active service.
You can understand how the SEALs have become an international sensation and a particular source of pride for the American Public who increasingly have no idea who the rough men who do their bidding in the night really are.
My heart goes out to the families of the dozens of Special Operators who were killed when their Chinook was shot down while conducting a rquick response raid in the Tangi Valley last August, or the desperate fight in Operation RED WINGS that took eight SEALS on the slopes of Mt. Sawtalo Sar back in 2005.
If you care, you might want to visit the Foundation established to help the families and survivors of one of the worlds most dangerous professions: http://www.nswfoundation.org/
As we move into a world where America is no longer engaged with heavy forces in Iraq, and is edging towards the door in Afghanistan, the real conflict is erupting in the budget struggle in the Pentagon.
The Services fight each other with implacable determination, but one gets the sense that there is a certain dazed disbelief in it all. The mainstay of the Air Force, the F-22 Raptor, was capped at a fraction of its intended acquisition number. The F-35, supposed to be the low-end of a new F-15/F-16 mix, is in deep, deep trouble.
Can you believe for an instant that rational people are talking about flying the B-52, first flown in 1952, into the decade of 2040? That is starting to scrape a century in the air. It is lunacy.
The Army and Marine force structure is on the block- can anyone imagine sending the Green Machine to Iran? China? The notion seems a bit absurd.
The Navy, bless its head, remains committed to the construction of ships- targets- that are expected to operate for a half-century.
So, with all that, I was not surprised to see that the Administration appears to have come around to the thoroughly Rumsfeldian notion that small, highly mobile and lethal forces are the future of warfare.
The Times of New York this morning saw fit to lead with the story that DoD is going to turn “increasingly to Special Operations forces to confront developing threats scattered around the world.”
(July 11, 2011 – Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images North America)
Staff reporters Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker claim that ADM William H. McRaven, U.S. Special Operations Command, is pushing for “a larger role for his elite units who have traditionally operated in the dark corners of American foreign policy.”
The argument is that re-wickering the Unified Command Plan would give special operations forces more autonomy in responding to crisis situations around the world, and loosen the death-grip of authority that the regional Combatant Commands exert. The term of art is “supported command,” vice “supporting command,” and the proposal is intended to provide more flexibility to policy-makers.
These things do not happen in a vacuum. Admiral McRaven ran the operation that got bin Laden when he was commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, and clearly everyone in the chain of command (with the possible exception of USCENTCOM) liked the way the operation got results.
The Times ominously notes that the change would permit SOCOM to expand into regions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where it has not had a major independent presence.
They won’t under this change, either, but it is clear that the idea of lighter, faster and lethal has come around again. We ask a lot of our Special Warfare people, and for the moment, that may be the force mix we can both afford and need.
But of course, we never get the next war right, and probably are not going to this time either. I remember how gratifying it was to have the Abrams Main Battle Tank in the inventory when Uncle Don Rumsfeld was telling us that we no longer needed heavy forces.
I concede that we have to change and get smarter about what we can afford, and what the future force must provide in terms of capability to implement the national security strategy of the United States.
I am going to donate some money to the SEAL Foundation. These warriors have given beyond the last full measure of devotion.
From what I can tell, they are going to be busy for a very long time.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com