Special Ops Tech Pulled in Different Directions.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

TAMPA, Florida--With a pivot to the Indo-Pacific, its fingers still on the pulse of the Middle East, and the potential for expanding conflict in Eastern Europe, Special Operations Command has its hands full.

But that's not unusual, Army Gen. Richard Clarke, SOCOM commandant, said recently.

Some 6,000 special operators are currently serving with partners in 80 nations, he said in a keynote speech at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, which was organized by the National Defense Industrial Association.

Clarke embraced the Defense Department's strategic pivot to the Indo-Pacific as the U.S. military ends more than two decades of focusing on counterterrorism.

"China will become the most capable adversary, and they are rapidly modernizing. The Department of Defense has dubbed them our pacing threat," he said.

In the same speech, he described a recent trip to the Middle East to visit an information operations center. He also highlighted a mission in Syria, where U.S. special operators and their Syrian allies conducted a night raid to eliminate an ISIS leader.

"Our operators executed yet another surgical operation that was even more complex than the [Osama bin Laden] raid that had taken place a decade earlier, using exquisite capabilities, honed from over two decades of combat," Clarke said.

SOCOM is in the process of writing a Special Operations Forces 2040 document that will look at some of the challenges the command will face at the end of the next decade, Clarke said.

"We've got to look at the pacing threat [of] China--that they're going to continue to evolve," he said. If a technology "is not moving us in a position or capability to assist us with the Chinese fight, then we need to look at it," he said.

Clarke also emphasized the command's global reach, mentioning training in February that took place with Norway in the Arctic and in West Africa with partners and allies there.

Pentagon leaders, meanwhile, have said Russian aggression is an immediate problem, but China is the long-term threat.

Lisa Sanders, SOCOM science and technology director, said the command's technology development enterprise is making the shift to weapons and systems better suited to the Indo-Pacific and for contending with peer adversaries. The command already has a reputation for quickly fielding advanced technologies that give its operators an edge. Yet, counterterrorism raids and hostage rescues will remain bread-and-butter missions for special...