Shifting focus to threats from China and Russia starts with people, not tech, US special operations leaders say

• The US military is adjusting to what it sees as the two most pressing national security threats: China and Russia.
• US Special Operations Command emphasizes the importance of people over hardware in its operations.
• Special operators are focusing on new threats but still having to maintain a counterterrorism posture.

China and Russia. In that order, these two rivals are the two most pressing national security threats the US faces today. Taking note, the US military is adjusting for a new era of near-peer warfare against these adversaries after more than 20 years of counterterrorism operations in the Middle East.

As the military's tip of the spear, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is also changing for this new era of warfare.

In a talk earlier this year with the Defense Writers Group, Army Gen. Bryan Fenton and Army Command Sgt. Major Shane Shorte, respectively SOCOM's commander and senior enlisted advisor, shared their views on how the special operations community is changing and adjusting for a new era of warfare.

What they highlighted the most is that during this period of change, some things remain constant.

The special operations community tries to live and die by its five core values. Perhaps the most important of these is the adage that "people are more important than hardware."

At the heart of any special operations unit is the idea that it is the operators and support personnel that make the difference. Equip them with swords and spears, and they will likely still somehow manage to pull their mission off, or so the argument goes.

'People are More Important than Hardware'

"The most important line of effort that we have in our headquarters is still our people," Shorte said. "We're not a platform-centric organization, we're a people-centric organization."

This core value is one of the many reasons why special operations units place so much emphasis on their selection and assessment processes. Weeding out the inadequate or incompatible candidates leaves a small cadre of physically hardened and mentally tough commandos who have the right attitude to accomplish the objective.

The selection and training processes for special operations are arduous because, as Fenton said, they only want people who "really want to be at the leading edge."

Fenton emphasized that SOCOM's successful transformation for a new era of warfare will hinge on its people. The special operators of today and tomorrow should be ready for a changing operational environment.

"If we have one more dollar to spend, we're spending it on our people, and then we'll wrap the technology around them," Fenton stated.

Before becoming the head of SOCOM, Fenton led the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Nominally part of SOCOM, JSOC is comprised of the tier 1 units of the special operations community—the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron, as well as the Army's Intelligence Support Activity. Fenton comes from the intelligence side of JSOC and also has experience in the Indo-Pacific area of operations.

Special operators think about "how we're going to be prepared, not only in equipment or some level of technology to meet the world, but how are we thinking about the world differently," Fenton said.

"We have to hold these different ideas in our head and actually still complete the mission, even though it doesn't look the same as it did 20 years ago. But the outcome has still got to be the same. We've got to succeed for the nation," the head of the spec ops command added.

The two men said that the bulk of America's special operators are focused on threats posed by China and Russia and are studying these potential adversaries. Additionally, they are watching the war in Ukraine closely as it provides invaluable lessons on how warfare is evolving with modern technology like drones and also offers an opportunity to, at least indirectly, experiment with new warfighting concepts due to their very close relationship with the Ukrainian commandos.

Shifting focus isn't easy though as the continued challenge of other persistent threats continuously pull the US back. Although China and Russia present the biggest national security threats to the US right now, counterterrorism remains an ever-present danger. As evidenced by the Islamic State's terrorist attack in Moscow in March, terrorists around the world possess the means and desire to carry out large-scale violent attacks against soft targets, and rogue actors like the Houthi rebels have shown they can threaten things like trade routes on which the global economy relies.

So, the SOCOM of tomorrow will still need to maintain a credible counterterrorism posture that will anticipate and counter terrorist threats anywhere in the world.

Changing and adapting to something as complex as a new era of warfare or a rapidly evolving battlespace is never easy. And it is that much harder for a large organization with tens of thousands of people. But SOCOM depends on just that—people—to ensure that it will be ready for the challenges of tomorrow.