For special operators, having expertise in new and emerging technologies is just as important as physical fitness and other aspects of fighting, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, said on Tuesday.
“This environment demands exactly what Wild Bill Donovan said 80 years ago: We need PhDs who can win a bar fight,” Navy Adm. Frank M. Bradley said at this year’s SOF Week exhibition in Tampa, Florida.
Bradley was referring to a famous quote attributed to Army Maj. Gen. William Joseph Donovan, who led the Office of Strategic Services, the U.S. intelligence service during WWII and the predecessor of the CIA.
Now, more than ever, special operators need to be “both lethal but also technically fluent” by knowing how to use the latest technologies and the software that runs them, Bradley said.
By definition, special operators are required to be “brilliant at the basics,” such as being able to shoot, move, communicate, and render medical aid to wounded comrades, Bradley said. But the definition of those basic skills is evolving along with the character of warfare.
“To communicate today requires understanding of network architectures,” Bradley said. “To move requires evading multispectral surveillance. You can’t be brilliant with the modern basics on this muscle memory alone. You need the technical education and training to be able to master the electromagnetic spectrum in the virtual domain, as well.”
As important as technology is, one fundamental truth about special operations forces will remain: “Humans are more important than hardware, and I dare say software as well,” Bradley said.
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However advanced technology gets, it will not replace special operators themselves, Sgt. Maj. Andrew J. Krogman, the top enlisted leader for SOCOM, said during Tuesday’s event.
“There’s no algorithm, no autonomous system, no amount of technology that fixes that process without the person in the center,” Krogman said.
He then advised the audience to watch a demonstration scheduled for Wednesday in which special operations forces will showcase their capabilities.
“Remember it every time somebody in this building pitches you a promise that’s there to replace the operator,” Krogman said. “It won’t, and we won’t ever.”
