But there are other reason SOF is an affordable must-have, they argued.
“We’re moving toward more austere basing. The main operating bases, the Baghram’s, the Balad’s, and other places, we think this is largely going to be a thing of the past,” said co-author Jim Thomas.
Among the recommendations: strengthening SOF commands within the regional combatant commands by adding more manning; and transferring or permitting more operational control of SOF forces from SOCOM to the regional combatant commanders.
“This has been an area that has really been neglected in the past 20 years,” Thomas said. “That’s starting to change now.”
They called for more partner SOF training, but did not appear to have crunched the number to determine if the Pentagon has enough trainers for such a mission. Dougherty said the United States should leverage — train the foreign trainers to train the SOF forces in their own regions.
“I think we need to stop thinking about just the number of U.S. SOF,” he said.
Take a look for yourself, the report is posted at CSBA’s website.