Demand for special ops forces outpaces supply: commanders worry back-to-back wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are stretching the force.

• Author: Tiron, Raxana

Senior officials at the U.S. Special Operations Command are grappling with a looming force structure crisis. At their current level, special operations forces can meet today's demands, but it will be difficult for SOCOM to sustain the pace, given the rapid growth in their worldwide commitments.

Nearly 20,000 special operators are involved in ongoing conflicts in Iraq (more than 12,000) and Afghanistan (about 8,000). That is nearly half the entire special operations force of 47,000.

Special operations forces can't be mass-produced on short notice, said Army Lt. Gen. Bryan Brown, SOCOM's deputy commander. "The worst thing we can do tight now is to try to add a bunch of people. We have a thoughtful system that has proven itself. We need to increase our recruiting and the troops."

People cannot simply be assigned as special operators and be rushed through the training process, he emphasized. It rakes at least two years to train a member of the Army's Special Forces, for example. According to a SOCOM spokesperson, the Army is continuing to recruit and train Green Berets even during the escalating operation tempo.

SOCOM is not structured to meet the growing demands of the war on terrorism, said Marshall Billingslea, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

Despite funding increases, "we are going to fight the war on terrorism with the resources that we have today for the next year," he said. In fiscal year 2004, SOCOM received a $1.5 billion budget boost, which brings the command's annual budget to $6.7 billion.

Regional Commanders

"There is a level of activity going on a daily basis, which only gets noticed in a crisis," said retired Army Lt. Gen. William Tangney, former deputy commander of SOCOM. A large portion of SOF troops generally are committed on a daily basis in support of the regional commanders.

In the case of the Army's Green Berets, for example, before the conflict in Afghanistan starred, a couple of hundred operators were deployed to South America to fight the war on drugs. The Seventh Special Forces Group deals with South America. The First Special Forces Group was deployed to countries in East Asia, while the 10th Group was assigned to support U.S. European Command, with operators working in places like Bosnia and Kosovo. The Fifth Group focused on the Middle East, while the Third Group has responsibilities in Africa.

Special operations units are heavily involved in both Afghanistan and Iraq on a larger scale, "but they are still to be able to deal with their contingencies" in other parts of the world as well, said a SOCOM spokesperson.

"Afghanistan spiced-up the op...