Special operators must change to win war.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana

Despite their successes in recent conflicts, U.S. special operations forces need to alter their approach to win the war on terrorism, according to top military officials.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations at the Joint Staff, sees SOF as a community that needs more ethnic diversity, and must find better ways to organize the information collection process.

"We have traditionally organized ourselves as A-reams, SEAL platoons, special tactics squadrons, PSYOPS--as narrowly focused capabilities," he told the National Defense Industrial Association special operations conference.

Schwartz advocates creating "purpose-filled" organizations. Tactical units should possess both human intelligence and signals intelligence capabilities, scientific and analytical skills. Information operations should be emphasized, and, most importantly, SOF units should have "a cultural advisor or facilitator function," he said.

SOF needs to recruit and select personnel with the right language and ethnic background for the regions around the world where they conduct operations. Knowledge of the cultural, social and behavior patterns of the adversary "would be an incredible power for SOF," he said.

"Consider developing a cadre of personnel that are fluent in the tools required to gather and process all kinds of information--a cadre that brings to bear a cutting-edge database and software tools that recognize patterns for information too dense to interpret," he added.

Informational operations also must be more effectively managed at the tactical level. "These are not skill sets that we have come to accept in this community," he said. "This is emblematic of the fact that our main struggle has to do with information."

SOF needs will be met best by "tapping into information that can only be provided by locals. We must improve our ability to exploit that," Schwartz said. To break through cultural barriers, SOF units must include troops from multiple ethnic backgrounds.

"We have an industrial age approach to human capital, it is customized for recruiting certain aspects of the population, but it is not suited to working ethnic, computer backer or other non-traditional skills that are needed," he said.

The U.S. Special Operations Command should be able to attract the right people. "If the SOF, 10 years from now looks like you and me ... we have failed," he told an audience that consisted primarily of white males.

The command also has to rethink both the...