Special Operators Well Suited For Strategic Level of Warfare.

• Author: Bayer, Michael J.

The heart of the National Defense Industrial Association's mission is to provide ethical forums to connect government and industry to ensure warfighters in the nation's service have the platforms, services, capabilities and technologies they need so they never engage in a fair fight against any competitor. For those in the defense industry, your profession is also a national service, only from a different angle.

Over the last several months, NDIA has been focusing the national conversation on the return to great power competition to the investments the U.S. defense industrial base needs to enable the greater responsiveness and resilience that now requires. For that reason, we have dedicated this issue to that part of the Joint Force that is on the leading operational edge of executing the 2022 National Defense Strategy--the men and women of U.S. Special Operations Command.

The nation calls on them for the most dangerous and sensitive missions, and they sustain a heavy operational tempo. While special operations personnel comprise less than 3 percent of the joint force, they account for almost 50 percent of U.S. deployed forces.

During this spring's congressional budget hearings for the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict and SOCOM, the recurring topic was the strategic adjustments the command's civilian and military leadership are making to better posture the force to execute its missions in an era of great power competition. In doing so, the community is returning to its root core competencies of integrated deterrence and campaigning against strategic competitors, core priorities of the National Defense Strategy.

Integrated deterrence entails working seamlessly across the spectrum of conflict in all warfighting domains and theaters and engaging all instruments of U.S. national power and those of our allies and partners.

We commend to you the newly released Joint Chiefs of Staff document, "Joint Concept for Competing," which focuses on the strategic level of warfare. It articulates that the United States must adapt to the realities of long-term strategic competition or risk ceding strategic influence, advantage, and leverage to our adversaries.

The concept additionally emphasizes using military capabilities to proactively probe adversary systems for vulnerabilities, establishes behavioral patterns that can be exploited in a crisis to conceal U.S. intentions until it is too late for an adversary to respond to them...