Excerpt: “Three realities facing the DOD over the next decade lend themselves toward leveraging USSOF more in strategic competition. First, the growing need to counter globally active and increasingly cooperative aggressors, while the broader Joint Force remains focused on the Indo-Pacific and Europe, underscores the value of leveraging USSOF to manage competition in other regions. Second, the desire to avoid war and manage competition below the threshold of conflict aligns with USSOF’s expertise in the irregular aspects of competition. Third, unless defense spending and recruitment dramatically increase over the next decade, the Joint Force will likely have to manage more security challenges without a commensurate increase in force size and capabilities, which underscores the need for the DOD to maximize every tool at its disposal, including the use of USSOF to help manage strategic competition.”
Report (PDF)
(34 pages)