Special Operations Command faces personnel shortages.

• Author: Pappalardo, Joe
• Position: SPECIAL OPERATIONS

The U.S. Special Operations Command, reeling from the demands of the global war on terrorism, is taking steps to replenish its dwindling stock of specialized operators, according to its commander.

Some of the most skilled personnel slots may face future shortages, including civil affairs operators, psychological operations staff, special forces units and combat controllers, SOCOM commander Gen. Bryan Brown told the House Armed Services Committee.

The shortage has already led to a shift in staffing that has prompted moving operators from other theaters into the Middle East as a stopgap. "If you try to talk to some special operators at CENTCOM they'd be speaking Spanish (as a second language)," Brown said, referring to Central Command, the combatant command headquarters that covers the Persian Gulf.

So far, the areas of most concern are psychological operations and civil affairs forces, Brown said.

PsyOp units are tasked with disseminating information to foreign audiences, spearheading weapons collection efforts, encouraging enemy surrender and directing civilians away from battle zones. Three-quarters of SOCOM's psychological operations personnel are from the Reserves. Civil affairs units help reconstruction and stabilization efforts, a fight for "hearts and minds" that entails the identification and prioritization of infrastructure construction. In his testimony, Brown said that civil affairs and PsyOp troops were essential in facilitating elections in Afghanistan and Iraq and were vital in coordinating relief to tsunami ravaged areas in Asia. The steady drain of combat operations, Middle Eastern infrastructure rebuilding efforts and indigenous force training are stretching SOCOM resources.

Army Reserve civil affairs and psychological operations units have been mobilized for up to 24 months, making SOCOM more reliant on the few active duty units to meet these needs, Brown said. "Future rotations for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom will be constrained by the number of personnel in the specialties."

Brown said his command has added four reserve PsyOp companies and two active ones, as well as two reserve civil affairs battalions and two active civil affairs companies. "While the use of provisional battalions, created for the war effort, is a concept we are exploring, compressed civil affairs specialty training is not the best solution to this problem," he testified.

Asked if civil affairs should be moved from SOCOM...