FEBRUARY 24, 2025 – Special Operations Command follows the defense secretary’s top three priorities of warfighting to win, readiness of its people and lethality through modernization, said Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, Socom commander, speaking yesterday at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 35th annual Special Operations Symposium in Washington.
The world’s become a more volatile place, he said. There’s been a greater demand signal for crisis response and a focus on preparing for great power competition.
“Over the last three years, the demand for special operations forces to assist combatant commands or functional commands and their campaigns has gone up by 35 to 40% and the demand just keeps going up,” Fenton said.
Socom has a bias to action and a joint force focus, he said. “We cannot be complacent. We cannot let the nation down.”
Reviving the warrior ethos and bolstering the profession of arms is paramount, Fenton said.
Special operations training is probably the most arduous in the Defense Department, he said.
“We don’t train once and get it right on the range and walk off. We do it over and over and over. That’s a really different mindset,” the general said.
Special forces operators are versatile. They’re technically proficient, fluent in languages, understand different cultures, innovative, problem solvers, unafraid, used to working in very arduous conditions, eager for challenges and value autonomy.
“They’re a different breed of human,” he said.
U.S. special operations has learned a lot from the war in Ukraine including unmanned vehicles, robots and other items needed to be built at speed, scale and at the right price point, Fenton said.
Ukraine has no navy, yet it sunk a portion of the Russian fleet with autonomous systems and it flies a thousand one-way strike drones daily against Russian forces.
The Defense Department needs to get to this production level, perhaps jointly with allies and partners, he pointed out, admitting that Socom can be impatient waiting for change.
Socom is delivering a bang for its buck, he said, noting that it makes up 3% of the joint force but has less than 2% of the budget. “We’re tiny and lean and mean.”
Lastly, Fenton said there’s tremendous value in partnering with special operations forces allies, industry, academia and interagencies.
By David Vergun, DOD News