Irregular Warfare Podcast - SOF in Competition - Special Project

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Episode 112 is the launch podcast for the SOF in Competition Special Project.  The Irregular Warfare Initiative proudly announces the SOF in Competition Project. The intent is to coalesce the community of SOF policy makers, researchers, and practitioners to understand the role of SOF in addressing contemporary and future national security challenges.  There already exists a global community of SOF researchers and practitioners poised to explore these questions to advance the profession. The SOF in Competition Project t provides a platform for this community to coalesce, to explore the role of SOF, and to invest in leaders and the broader community. If you are a SOF professional, this is your platform. We very much welcome article submissions, ideas for events and partnerships, podcast topics, and volunteers to join the community. Reach out to [e-mail] to explore how to get involved.

The Irregular Warfare Initiative proudly announces the SOF in Competition project. The intent is to coalesce the community of SOF policy makers, researchers and practitioners to understand the role of SOF in addressing contemporary and future national security challenges. With a focus on current events and their underlying historical logics, theories and evidence-based findings, we aim to contextualise the role of SOF and the evolving realities of regular warfare and modern conflict. We invite your participation and engagement as we embark on this project. The need for this

dialogue is growing, the consequences are real. We look forward to building this community together. So for policy makers, in my mind it's about decision making early, swiftly and often. We also feel that SOF could be utilised more and we wanted to outline how. The value of SOF in the broader sense is their ability to essentially solve problems without precedence? Welcome to the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Darnley-Stewart, and my co-host today is Catherine Mickelson. In today's episode, we discuss SOF's role in competition through the lens of unconventional warfare. Our guests begin by outlining the value proposition of SOF across the

competition continuum. From there they delve into the details of unconventional warfare and how SOF supports deterrent strategies. Finally, a guest of the insight into the things special operations require but do not have to enable effective employment in competition. Brigadier Brett Challener has primary command appointments including the counter-terrorism unit Tactical Assault Group East, the 2nd Commando Regiment in Sydney and the 13th Brigade in Perth. He is currently Director-General Implementation for the Strategic Review into the ADF's Reserve System.

Clementine Starling is the Director of the Ford Defence Programme at the Atlantic Council. Her piece titled The Role of Special Operations Forces in Strategic Competition is the focus of today's conversation. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular war professionals. Here's our conversation with Clementine and Brett. Clementine and Brett, welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast.

Thank you, it's great to be here. Thank you very much, it's a pleasure. Clementine, your paper, The Role of SOF in Regular Warfare podcast. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. Clementine, your paper, The Role of SOF in Strategic Competition, comes at a seminal moment in history as two superpowers jocky for global influence. Why was it important to write the paper and what drove the need to communicate SOF's role in competition? Yeah, thanks Adam. And just wanted to say thank you to you and Catherine for having me. And it's really great to be here alongside Brett and I'm looking forward to learning from him. So Alexandra Marine and I wrote this paper really to help elucidate softs

existing but also potential role in strategic competition that we feel is underappreciated beyond the soft community, at least here in the United States, which is where I'm based. We also feel that SOF could be utilized more and we wanted to outline how. So we really started in the paper with asking ourselves, what role do US special operations forces have in delivering on the US national defense strategy and on integrated deterrence, which is a key component of this administration's National Defense Strategy, which really focuses on how the United States should position itself to deal with strategic competitors.

So we started with the public image of SOF today is still very characterized by the direct action finishing force of the global war on terror era. You know, SOF has been highlighted in Hollywood very well and much of that image really remains today and a lot of it remains true, right? SOF is really adept at counterterrorism, really adept at counterviolent extremism operations, and those challenges aren't going anywhere. What we're seeing in the Middle East is it shows that those issues will prevail and remain a really important part of SOF's mission. But SOF does much more than direct action.

SOF does and can do a lot more below the threshold of conflict to make it hard for adversaries to achieve their goals. And the special operator of 2024 is not necessarily just that Hollywood image that we see prevail, not just the physically imposing trigger puller, but also a young man or woman who's an expert at coding or really adapt in language and cultural expertise that is highly relevant to competition

in different parts of the world. And soft activities prior to conflict really deserve a lot of attention and they have a lot of relevance in strategic competition. Operational preparation of the environment, OPE, can really help proactively shape the strategic environment in which US competitors operate. So our paper really wanted to shine a light on that and highlight really some of the strengths that we see software bring to bear. Just a couple to highlight, you know, software conducts operations that are

really joint in nature. They have a global footprint, which is incredibly valuable. Reconnaissance and information support capabilities, really specialized cultural and language aptitude that is highly relevant to understanding local dynamics across the globe and really in-depth knowledge of foreign militaries and societies. And all of that kind of combined can really help support the interagency but also the conventional joint force really entangle adversaries in the competition space pre-conflict, especially in geographic areas where maybe the rest of the joint force is not present or not able to prioritize.

So overall, we wrote this paper with the hope of giving folks a better understanding of SOF's competencies and capabilities, and to really encourage the broader national security community to think about the wider applicability of SOF in competition. And we really tried to make the case that SOF should be employed more often preemptively to avoid escalation rather than just as the finishing force, which is what it's been known as.

We like to offer the audience a baseline of understanding before we dive deeper into the conversation. So, Brett, perhaps building off of what Clementine just said, could you offer your views on the value proposition OSAF affords to not only the joint force but to the whole of government? Yeah, hi, Catherine and Adam. Before I do, could I just come in on Clementine's paper and say, first of all, thank you for the paper. I both enjoyed it and I found a all thank you for the paper. I both enjoyed it and I

found a lot of value in the paper and it was interesting for me because when I entered the special operations community in the late 90s, a lot of what you were talking about in the paper that we should be doing, we were doing. We were doing it habitually and we're doing a lot more of that than the direct action tasking that became more the high profile mission set of SOF during the Afghan and Iraq period shall we say. So I really enjoyed your exploration of that and your reflections on the broader spectrum of capability and while initially I was thinking as I was reading through it, you know we do that we've got those capabilities we are out there as a community involved in

those sorts of mission sets and profiles. I really loved how you brought it together at the end, looking to the future. And the most important thing about that, and really the crux of the paper for me, is highlighting the fact that the value of SOF in the broader sense is their ability to essentially solve problems without precedence. So rather than typecasting the operators or the community as a direct action force or even a force that's got a particular set of, if you like, as you said to Clementine, your Hollywood type skill sets, it's probably everything that you don't think about

and it's everything that isn't ordinary or even expected from a military force. But it is about solving those problems without precedence and I think in line with that it's about generating that speed to a solution. So for conventional forces they're deliberately designed to in relative terms go slow, be methodical, build up, generate mass, generate the density that's required for the sort of warfare that they're designed for. Whereas SOF are very much about what's the effect you want to achieve, whether it's at the strategic level or the tactical level,

and essentially what are the tool sets that we've got available to us. And when we don't have a tool set or we do have a gap, how do we essentially fill that gap through either an effects-based solution, or how do we go and find the talent and then enable that talent to achieve the outcome? And I think both Clementine's paper

captures the essence of that very well. But equally then, Catherine, when we get into the value proposition of soft more broadly, it really speaks to what I think is the heart of soft capability. It stems, I think, from absolutely a culture and a mindset. So I've said we talk about speed to solution. Increasingly it's about upstream impact. So whether that's in terms of upstream geography, in time, in terms of the network, you can imagine it in any number of ways. I often think about the fact, and we're going to get into

unconventional warfare in more detail, but I think about the fact that when you talk about anti-access and area denial as a form of warfare or a component of a campaign and a system, when we talk about countering that anti-access aerodinial system, we think in very conventional terms, we might talk about counter-missile operations, counter-proliferation, counter this, counter that. But what we don't necessarily think about is getting inside the anti-access aerodinial bubble

before it's generated. And just as an example, in my mind, that's where SOF can do some of their best work. I think in line with that, it's about the enablement of others. So particularly for the US audience, I was privileged to serve under Admiral McRaven on various occasions. And one of the things I remember is that he was always telling us, we are the supporting player. We are not the support head player. And so success for us, particularly under his command, was when the force that we're trying to enable, whether it may be a cyber operator, whether it's a conventional force, whether it's actually an interagency partner or even a partner providing aid, when

they were successful, we were successful. So that enablement for me was always a critical aspect of how we approached our value proposition. In terms of the joint force and the whole of government, if I could just finish on this note, one thing that I do think is often we live on the edge of is seeing special operations forces as an economy of force alternative. And certainly Australia has perhaps utilized their SOF in that way in the past. I know that the US has, probably most nations have. To my mind, that's not part of the value proposition. It's that classic case of,

it's something that we could do, but it's not necessarily something that we should do. So, sort of keep that in mind for the joint force. And then, you know, when you think whole of government, it is very much for me about integration. And I'd be very focused on the fact that it's not integration in the tactical or the operational sense. It is about that strategic effect that government seeks to achieve. And in some cases that's clandestine or covert, you know, it's very much within the military paradigm or it might sort of transition into the interagency paradigm. But it might even just be the fact that you've got smart people, men and women,

of all sorts of skill sets and backgrounds who you can put into a strategically complex environment and know that they can communicate, and non-kinetically that is, they can communicate as a human being and engage and connect and solve problems. So to me, that's kind of the spectrum of value proposition, acknowledging that there's so many other things we could address if we had the time.

They're great responses to baseline the conversation. We might get to the meat of the conversation now. The paper unpacks the US 12 soft missions and their relevance to competition. To focus our audience, we might deep dive into a couple of these core missions for today's conversation. We might start with the mission of unconventional warfare or an Australian lexicon special warfare.

Brett, could you offer a brief explanation of the key components of unconventional warfare and why it offers a critical mission towards achieving deterrent strategies? Sure. It's interesting, you know, unconventional warfare, special warfare, irregular warfare, even proxy warfare and so many other titles all kind of blend into a spectrum that to one degree or another obviously describe the same sort of paradigm and environment if you like and equally from the operators perspective or from the special operations components perspective it's variations on a theme. Yeah there is

obviously a range of different elements that make up unconventional warfare and an unconventional warfare capability. If I just pick three knowing that we don't have enough time to go through them all, the first I'd say is you know those carefully selected individuals who have both higher IQ and EQ and not all special operators necessarily tick all those boxes or tick them in the right way, the right balance. There are plenty of exceptional operators out there who you would probably never put into this mission set. Equally there are others who just seem to be a bit of a multi-tool in that respect. So first and foremost, it can be selection within

selection. I know within Australia, we are recently reformed and refined and even refreshed our special warfare capability, as Adam alluded to. And so while we're borrowing some elements of our selection criteria and process from the age old playbook, so to speak, we are equally developing new and tailored approaches that are very much a product of what we see being the requirements going forward. But that high IQ EQ will always be an element of the human component. I think another component is partners and partner forces. You don't do unconventional warfare alone and certainly any special operator who

thinks they're going to be there with their team in isolation generating effects or changing the environment is going to be sorely disappointed at least if they are not generating a partner force. If that's not central to achieving success I'm really not quite sure what is. So that's a critical aspect that we need to be conscious of. And I think we also need to be very aware of what constitutes the competitor or the adversary, the opposition. They don't have to be the enemy. But in some cases, we very much paint them as a state actor. And it might be that they're an autocrat who's been dominating or dictating over a nation for a period of time and there's a resistance force that's being generated and there's obviously a third

country assistance providing unconventional warfare capabilities. That's a fairly traditional paradigm. If we look back to our time in Afghanistan, the Taliban were their adversary who were not a state actor, they were a non-state actor, you might call them a proto-state actor, but they were exercising influence and power, and to some degree political influence and power, if you like, over the population in the areas where we're operating. So being conscious that the adversary can take on many forms, and these days in particular, you can have multiple adversaries who may or may not be operating alongside each other.

So being conscious of that, I think, is critical for the understanding of unconventional warfare. So being conscious of some of those components and knowing that there's much more to it, when it comes to deterrence and for this strange strategy, national defense strategy that's just been released, we talk about deterrence through denial. We're having once again to reframe our traditional understanding of how we apply our elements of national power and our military power to address that. And so if I look more generically, but through that lens of the Australian consideration

right now, we've got to be effective in the gray zone. And Clementine's paper talks a lot about the gray zone. And it's important in unconventional warfare to be able to operate below the threshold of conflict. And it's often the leveler. So whereas you might have a state actor who has got all the capabilities in the world. But as we found in Afghanistan, and being very, very honest, we were essentially kept off balance for 20 years.

As a Western coalition, fighting against a proxy force and a proto-force, it's very important to be conscious that the threshold of conflict was pretty low level compared to what it could have been had we been going against a state actor. You know, I think perhaps moving away from Afghanistan as an example, and we look more into our regions, the opaqueness and almost the hydro-like behaviours of the actors is really important in this. So when we talk about deterrence, you know, you can't necessarily identify that that action or that effect was generated

by that nation or that actor. So you may have your suspicions, you may even have it in an evidence trial, but in the interest of deterrence, once again, you're able to sort of stay below that threshold, maybe even within that acceptable space of, okay, we're playing a game of geostrategic chess under the table, but it's not gone above that point where we feel we have to react overtly and glee that we feel we have to go into open warfare. I think something that's probably a little less talked about

in the current context is, your unconventional warfare and its rolling deterrence can include generating deception or distraction or diffusion. So every nation has priorities, multiple priorities, competing priorities. You only have so much capacity no matter how large you are, no matter how many resources you have at your disposal. The greater ability in competition of one competitor to diffuse the capacity of another's, the greater capacity you have to navigate through the gaps and scenes that we talk about and exploit their weaknesses and play to

your strengths. And unconventional warfare once again is a great leveler in that respect. And then finally I'd probably just offer, in my mind it's still employed as one of a basket of options. So there is a full spectrum of mission sets we can apply and we can apply them concurrently or consecutively and in different combinations and permutations. So I would never be looking at unconventional warfare in isolation as a campaign in and of itself or the method that's chosen by an actor to achieve the outcome. Clémentine, would you like to offer any additional comments based on your experience gathering ideas and analyzing them for your paper? Yeah, thank you. And I think Brett said it very well. And there certainly are different,

I think, definitions of unconventional warfare. And there's the US definition of unconventional warfare, which I think, you know, maybe differs slightly from the Australian one. But, you know, unconventional warfare is actions to enable a resistance movement or insurgency, right, to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power. I think Brett said it really well that unconventional warfare really should be seen as one mission area that is not just as an individual component of soft spoke, but can be applied in combination with a lot of the other core

competencies of special operations forces. It's this really good Rand paper that focuses on special warfare. It's a little bit dated now, I guess, it came out in 2015. And what that paper kind of lays out is looking at special warfare campaigns as you've got unconventional warfare on one side

and foreign internal defense on the other. So looking both at the ways in which special operations forces can conduct destabilizing, it can achieve destabilizing effects as well as stabilizing effects. And I think that framework is very helpful because you can kind of use unconventional warfare and connect it to foreign internal defense, which is really about building partner capacity. You can connect it to military information support operations, MISO, security force assistance, and other core mission sets to really help with deterrence efforts. I guess there are three ways in which I would look

at that. The first is really disrupting adversary plans. Brett said this unconventional warfare and similar activities are really crucial for targeting and disrupting advers plans. Brett said this unconventional warfare and similar activities are really crucial for targeting and disrupting adversaries' critical vulnerabilities. That might be empowering a resistance movement, disrupting supply chains, communications, key infrastructure, really creating operational challenges for adversaries and forcing them to divert resources or reconsider their plans. That imposition of costs and complication, it's adding sand that gets into the wheels of what adversary is trying to do and therefore potentially deterring them from pursuing types of action.

I think the second is then strengthening allies and partners, right, through foreign internal defense and capacity building, you know, helping nations or communities or specific groups really develop the skills and resources they need to counter threats themselves, which not only helps bolster their defense capabilities, but also helps extend the strategic reach of the United States or Australia by really creating reliable and capable partners. And that way you have partners serving as a force multiplier, making it more challenging for adversaries to gain influence or achieve their goals in strategic regions. And then I think the third is kind of really influencing

public opinion in key geographic areas, kind of influence information operations are very vital to shaping the strategic environment. And so we can use certain types of techniques to counter enemy propaganda, reinforce the legitimacy of partner governments, sway public opinion. And that can be done to really undermine an adversary's objectives or support a partner,

help maintain regional stability. So I guess to me, seeing, I think, special warfare is a helpful framework for us to kind of see the ways in which unconventional warfare can be used alongside other core competencies that stuff can apply to strategic competition. Your discussion of adversaries and partnerships and public opinion transitions well into our next question, which I will direct to you, Clementine, first. Could you offer insights into which countries and what types of populations you would see the unconventional

warfarm missions that applied to? Yeah, part of me is almost reticent to answer this question in some ways because I think decisions made around that should be done really wisely and very carefully by folks in government who can carefully assess a lot of different risk factors. But I think in the context of applying, I suppose, special warfare, like unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense, I think Ukraine in particular is an obvious example. Special operations forces are operating in Ukraine and have been far before Russia's recent invasion. So enhancing the capabilities of Ukrainian security forces through foreign internal defense,

obviously, is a key area. Helping the Ukrainians make it more difficult for Russia to really achieve its strategic objectives is an obvious example. I think Taiwan is another. And conventional warfare tactics can be applied to really prepare the nation for potential aggression from China. Building up Taiwan's local defense forces, integrating kind of advanced training and equipment, kind of US soft can really enhance Taiwan's ability to resist an invasion or an occupation.

I think influence operations are also really vital in Taiwan to counter Chinese propaganda, reinforce the legitimacy of the Taiwanese government, and those combination of activities, I think, can help deter China from aggressive action. Not to say that that is the only way. I think there are a lot of conventional aspects that are very important to deterrence as well. To me, when thinking about this question, I guess historical examples come to mind for me that I think are relevant. Unconventional warfare capabilities were effectively used in Tibet. In the 1950s and 60s, it was actually the CIA that I think supported Tibetan resistance fighters who conducted guerrilla operations against Chinese forces.

And those efforts were really aimed at destabilizing Chinese control over Tibet, but also forcing China to divert military resources to address that insurgency. So it kind of served as this strategic disruption. So it was almost less about Tibet, but more about kind of diverting China's focus and thus weakening its overall position. So I think we can leverage unconventional warfare tactics in a similar way, replicate those kinds of successes in modern conflicts by applying pressure on adversaries in that way. Can I riff off Clementine and Carter's role into some supporting views?

First of all, I really like the way she's characterized unconventional warfare and then also how it applies and maybe how it might be applied in different contexts or in different national contexts. I find myself at an age and stage where my first response to many questions like that is it depends and it depends on the context and there is always the historical or even the academic default to well traditionally the historical or even the academic default to, well traditionally, unconventional warfare, guerrilla warfare is conducted in these places. And for many, it might conjure up the image of jungles and jungle camps and jungle training and stuff. But exactly as Clementine said, it doesn't matter whether it's the Ukraine or Taiwan or any other developed nation, the principles

largely speaking are the same. They'll be applied differently and in a contemporary sense. And equally, we're now talking about a multi-domain environment that transcends the physical. So it's no longer just sea, land, air. It's now cyber, it's space. And whether you add information on top or it's up to you. But fundamentally, those elements of unconventional warfare, you had that universal application and I very much embrace that idea that, again, it's a tool in our toolbox. When you learn about it and you get exposed

to certain environments where it might be more traditionally employed, that's good and useful. But to me, that's just the launch point for getting creative. So again, what problem am I trying to solve and what elements of my capability can I bring to bear, particularly in a way that's less predictable? Because even in the special operations community, there is doctrine and there are predictable or there are patterns that are followed. And I did find in my time, 20 years going in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq, that amongst

the Five Eyes nations, we were prone to following patterns and trends. And from time to time, I found myself as an Australian not wanting to do that. I wanted to play to my strengths. You know, we're small. We don't necessarily always have all the enablers. So we rely on individuals and that creativity at the individual level and getting below

the threshold of detection. So not using as much technology, for example, at least at that time. And there was a real energy or there's a real influence, if you like, on us to not necessarily conform but certainly go with the flow to attract the assets and the enablers that we perhaps needed at times. So while I was probably drifting off a little bit there, I just wanted to highlight this point that, A, it's not all about the traditional application

of those skill sets in those traditional environments. It's very much as Clementine stated, it is about the application of unconventional principles in whatever environment you confront. I think there is a greater use or greater need for soft skills, soft skills, and they become a critical component of what distinguishes unconventional warfare from pretty much everything else. And I think in line with that, it's something that we've got to be conscious of being legitimate, an appropriate element of our engagement strategy with friends and partners and allies and others. And sometimes it'll actually be declared or part of a declared capability and other times it won't be.

And the reasons will be many and varied as to why it will or won't be, but just breaking some of those traditional perspectives on unconventional warfare I think is important going forward. I could not agree more, Brett. And this is one of the reasons we wrote this paper, right? Because you said, yes, reading this paper actually from the very origins of special operations forces, like this is exactly what SOF was created to do, right? This is exactly what UK special operations forces were doing in World War II, like in Vichy, France. But I do think, at least in the US context, there is a lack of understanding beyond the SOF community and even frankly, within the soft community and even, frankly,

within the Department of Defense sometimes, that there's such a huge range of competencies and capabilities of special operations forces that can be applied along the competition continuum and should be at every section from piece up until conflict, and that that needs to be done, done frankly in tandem. You don't start from one end and escalate up. It is not linear as you said. Another point that you said, how do we measure success? It's actually really hard to measure, this is the issue with deterrence, right? How do you measure that you've successfully deterred something because the thing didn't happen? And so one of the recommendations in our report was for SOCOM and SOLIC that those that govern Special Operations Forces in the US really have a think about metrics of success and

the way those metrics are communicated. Now that's an easy thing to say, it's a really hard thing to do. But it's absolutely critical, I think, in order to continue to really make the case that special operations forces are having a lot of utility and can have more utility in strategic competition. But I think that's a really central point about how do we change our mindset and have a think about the very valuable effects of essentially having prevented something from happening. And I don't have easy answers to that, but I think our acceptance of that

as something that is part and parcel of deterrence. I'll just concur with you. And I don't think it's peculiar to the US or Australia, any particular nation for that matter. I'd observe that, particularly as military forces and inside that special operations forces, we live in a fairly juxtaposed environment and by that I mean we are tools of the government, you know, we are public servants by other means perhaps, but we are subject to the bureaucracy and the accountability that goes with being a public asset and a public entity or, you know, a property of the public. Now in peacetime in particular, the bureaucracy that is responsible

for governing that is extremely focused on the measurements of success, measurements of performance, the ability to calculate the return on the investment. That's not as critical to us and we certainly have times in our missions and operations where we do have very precise metrics. But we're talking unconventional warfare here and everything that goes left and right of it. And there is nothing specific or acute about it, generally speaking. It is one of those cases of over time. You know, it'll be subjective measurements and assessments that allow us to understand how effective or successful we've been and equally to calibrate and recalibrate as we go. So it requires a lot of trust from our senior leaders,

both in uniform and in government. And it requires, I think, the input from academics like yourself, who can offer perhaps an objective and dispassionate view to at least satisfy the leaders that you don't need an immediate return on your investment or an immediate metric to determine whether something's successful or at least worthwhile. And unconventional warfare is definitely one of those areas. Brett, you mentioned AUSI is a small, creative and that lends itself to staying below the detection threshold. We might build beyond that now.

From an Australian perspective, what types of missions in the Australian soft context would we be best positioned to lead on from across the Western SOF community? So again it depends, but if I do start with that point of cultural bias, when it comes to the Australian, Australians in general and then the Australian soldier or a military member and then SOF operators within them, we're a large nation in terms of landmass and territory, very, very small population. We've always considered ourselves underdogs to some degree. And equally, when we look at the First and Second World War and even in other conflicts

since, we've always taken pride in punching above our weight, whether that's the number of people we were able to send off to the conflict or equally the number of people that we weren't able to send off, but the effect that we were able to achieve, particularly with our people as opposed to our technology or our platforms. And I think that that's very much exemplified within the Australian military service person, but Australian SOF have a particular dimension to that as well. We rely, we put an incredible amount of responsibility on the shoulders of every individual. Yeah, we want to squeeze as much capacity and capability out of each individual that we possibly can. And I've often thought about the fact that in US Special Operations Command, there's 70,000 personnel. Yeah, by comparison, there's less than 2000, particularly

when we come to operators inside the Australian Special Operations Command. Yeah, we cover the same spectrum of operations, the same spectrum of skill sets and capabilities and within ourselves we have the same expectation of being able to perform in terms of quality and to be frank with you on a national level in terms of the defence of our nation and its interests in terms of generating that effect, we have the same expectation. So we've got to do as much as possible with what we've got. And I think the Australian soldier and special operator has always been pretty good at that. I think too, access and placement, which is something that, in fact, it's funny, Clementine

talks about placement and access. When I spent time in the US, I got used to talking about access and placement. That's a really important thing too. So each nation can play to its strengths, whether it's the skill sets that they've mastered over the others or whether it's maybe the environment within which they're used to operating. And we're fortunate to be pretty comfortable operating in most environments, but the Indo-Pacific region is absolutely our home, our backyard. And the environment within which we need to operate both physically, geographically and

culturally is something that we're very comfortable with. And I'm very familiar with the fact that while the US has phenomenal access and placement across the globe, there are some nations where they don't have as much influence or capacity to, flexibility if you like, to maneuver as maybe Australia does. So having that consciousness of who's a better fit for which nation or which environment is a key component of our value proposition inside our alliance and our coalition or our partnership. And we certainly play on that in the region in particular. And I've been very pleased both having spent two years in the US at Joint Special Operations

Command but also then operating alongside the US and Five Eyes partners continuously over 20, 25 years. There's a real comfort amongst us all in terms of putting the problem on the table. And whether we're looking at the geography of it or we're looking at the problem sets and then the skill sets, applying the best of our national treasure and capacity to the collective process of solving the problem. I would probably just finish off by saying, and I know I haven't answered the question

in a lot of detail, but if I try to distinguish between us and our other key partners, size and scale becomes an issue. Enablers, we never have enough enablers. So we're often looking at creative ways to generate, again, the effects by the means or to generate the enabling effect by the means. Our spectrum missions, it's common and consistent.

Our access and placement varies. So in some cases, it's complementary. In other cases, it's covering a gap. So it means that we don't have to typecast ourselves, if you like, into one mission set or one particular geographical space. But it does mean that we have to be ever conscious of what is changing in our environment so that we can continue to play to our strengths. And look, I'll just finish by saying I've been fortunate enough to perhaps be exposed ever conscious of what is changing in our environment so that we can continue to play to our strengths.

And look, I'll just finish by saying I've been fortunate enough to perhaps be exposed to many of the world's best special operations forces. I've never seen any force the best at everything. Every force that I've encountered is certainly the best at something. And it's quite fascinating when they know it and they know how to apply it within that sort of community environment. And certainly that's something that Australia does, I think, and has tried to make an art form of from time to time. So we're certainly not gonna stop doing that anytime soon. And I think in terms of the mission sets

that we're looking at, the one thing I'll finish on saying is back to Clementine's point, the type of people that we're attracting to the command of the community these days, and the people that we're also going to try and recruit are quite different to the people that we certainly focusing on in the past and that's testament to the agile and adaptive nature of the community and equally how fast they're recognizing that speed of change is occurring.

Clementine, would you like to offer any comments on that about soft collaboration specifically across the West or with Australia? Clementine, would you like to offer any comments on that about soft collaboration specifically across the West or with Australia? Yeah, collaboration I think is absolutely key. And I think Brett put his finger on it that each nation has different strengths, right? And we should play to those strengths. I guess it's a little bit harder for me to comment on what I think Australian soft are best at,

but I guess the obvious answer to me is that the Indo-Pacific is absolutely pivotal in the current global security environment and serves as a central theater for strategic competition. So yes, strategic competition is happening globally and not just in the theaters where our adversaries are geographically located. Right. And that is a point that we make really strongly in our reports that if we're only focusing on the Indo-Pacific in Europe, where there's a hot war in Europe right now, and obviously the U.S. is highly, highly focused on China in the Indo-Pacific, but that actually where Russia and China are operating globally has a huge impact on strategic competition.

So the types of activities and investment that they are placing in Latin America, actually quite close to the US's backyard, like in Africa, in the Arctic, all of that matters. But in terms of the context of, I guess, balancing strategic priorities from the US perspective, we have pretty flat growth of defense budgets in real terms, taking into account inflation. So how do you ask the US military to essentially do more with less, or at least do more with the same amount of money? That's a really, really hard proposition. One of the points that we make is that while the conventional joint force should be

prioritizing those two key regions, the Indo-Pacific and Europe and now increasingly the Middle East, how do we make sure we buy down risk in other parts of the globe where we can't really take our eye off the ball. And to me, special operations forces can be used to help support the rest of the force by frankly enabling them to continue to focus on priority areas, keeping a finger on the pulse of strategic competition in far reaches of the globe and frankly in parts

of the globe that other interagency partners might not even have access to. Like, the US might not have an embassy or a diplomatic presence in a certain country, but you can have special operations forces there that have multi-generational relationships with local actors that have that placement and access that is valuable. That, you know, I think people don't realize how much SOF contribute to the intelligence community with the information that they provide. And all of that, I think, helps provide nations

with more options to respond when they choose to. So I've gone a little bit off topic, but I guess to the point of collaboration and the value that Australia brings, Australia is an Indo-Pacific nation. It has been operating in that part of the world for, you know, I guess the US considers itself to be an Indo-Pacific nation to a degree itself. But I think Australia itself possess not only indispensable knowledge and capabilities, but tons of cultural competency that enable it to really navigate complex socio-political landscapes of the

Indo-Pacific. So combining that with the tremendous amount of experience that Australia and soft has in unconventional warfare and a whole range of mission sets, that really positions Australian SOF to really serve in a crucial way in obviously supporting Australian national security interests, but also kind of working alongside the US and other allies to kind of counter Chinese influence that is aggressive or adverse. So I think Australian SOF probably can lead a lot of efforts within the region and I'm sure the kind of coordinating and effective response really requires kind of acknowledging and leveraging those core strengths and then maybe kind of using different kinds of strengths

that US Special Operations Forces bring to bear. Clementine, you reminded me of something and it's along the lines of collaboration, but it goes beyond that and it's about relationships. And there's an essence of relation or connection to unconventional warfare. But to give you a dated example, because it's probably a safe one, in the area of counterterrorism in the early 2000s, every nation was worried about it. And so the interaction between nations wasn't necessarily along partisan lines. It wasn't necessarily determined by the broader relationship between the different states.

It was based on a universal concern over terrorism by non-SAT actors. And so we would have counter-terrorist subject matter expert exchanges, variously hosted in Australia, or occasionally by an ASEAN nation. We would be coming alongside partners from Russia, from China. We'd have Pakistanis and Indians working side by side, and we'd all be giving country briefs on our capabilities, and we'd be sharing some tactics, techniques, and procedures. And you'd have operators, socializing with operators and building relationships. And look, we're not naive to the reality that everyone was probably learning about each other professionally speaking and storing away knowledge for a rainy day, so

to speak. But the reality was, and back to our earlier point, some of the measures of success might be that those relationships actually prevent escalation in the future or provide an outlet for communication that may not have existed. And so it's almost an overt and again, legitimate and acceptable form of unconventional warfare where everyone is in agreement that this is for the greater good. So it might be a slightly contrarian view to the norm, but it's just something that I think is there

that we probably at least need to acknowledge is important. You know, you can't just have the shutters down every time someone who might be on your adversary card or potential adversary card walks in the room. Bret and Clementine, this has been a great conversation today and hopefully very illuminating for our audience. We're going to move on to the final section now. Bret, I'll throw the first question to you.

Based on today's conversation, what are the major considerations for policymakers, academics and practitioners who are interested in the future of SOF? So I gave this a bit of thought and I'm just going to break it down by each of those titles and hopefully just give one thought each. So for policymakers, in my mind it's about decision-making early, swiftly and often. You know, you've got to embrace the constant of change. I heard a great cliche about a year ago that the speed of change will never be this slow again. I certainly feel that that's reinforced on a daily basis. For policymakers, it's make those decisions early, swiftly and often. It's always a challenge for us, no matter what bureaucracy you're

talking about. We've got to get better at it. For the academics, I think what you're doing, and if you are actually the kind of the glue bringing the intellectual consideration together with the practical, then I think that's the answer. You know, marry the theory and the practice constantly and certainly challenge and contest the ideas. I've seen plenty of papers over the years that are pure theory and have been written in blissful isolation.

And they might read well, but they're completely impractical. And even the thoughts that they evoke aren't particularly useful because they're not grounded in any form of reality. So I think what you're doing and how particular think tanks marry those two together is increasingly important. And then for the practitioners, there's a few things I'd probably finish on. First of all, know and truly understand risk. In fact, that's probably one for everyone, know and truly understand risk. I see in Canberra all the time and in different parts of our

community, if you like, your risk can be misconstrued, depending on what we're talking about. But those who know, understand it and have mastered it, it can take it right up, right up to the edge. Our former Chief of Army Lieutenant General Rick Burr, who was a career special operations officer, always would say, you know, you haven't hit my threshold for risk yet. And I think he clearly knew what risk was all about and he knew how far he could take it and he was daring people to go further and further. And I think that was healthy. And therefore it links to, you know, be bold but be realistic in what's achievable.

And I think particularly for the operators, be the warrior entrepreneur. I don't know if that's yet a cliche, but I like that idea. Fail fast, iterate quickly, solve the problem inside your adversary's decision cycle and know that sometimes it can be in minutes, hours, days in terms of measurement. As we've talked about today, sometimes it's the other end of the spectrum and we need to be comfortable migrating between the two. Clemantine, we had already brought up before issues with measurements of success and election cycles impacting these kinds of operations. But what are some of the bureaucratic hurdles

that stand in the way of achieving a diversified portfolio of soft capabilities and any recommendations to start overcoming these hurdles? Yeah, I think I've said it. I think the challenge, the bureaucratic hurdle, I guess, the challenge is helping the broader national security community really know what soft competencies are that are highly relevant to strategic competition. I think across the US Department of Defense, everybody is sticking their claim on here is what we need from the budget and here is how what we are doing is directly important and relevant to strategic competition. And so for special operations forces as the supporting force in this, it's harder to make that case.

I do think SOF needs to articulate clearer measures of success to ensure its strategic impact is understood and valued by policymakers and the public and interagency partners. And that's naturally complicated, especially because SOF activities are classified. So it's a little bit harder to define specifically and measurably how the objectives of missions are helping really support strategic competition more broadly. But I do think we can develop metrics that go beyond input-focused measures to outcome-focused measures that assess the changes in the behavior and the perceptions of targeted audiences and also showing success indicators for pre-conflict activities I think is a really important part of this. This is maybe a second thing I would suggest. It is really, some of this

requires a mindset shift and so much of this is about talent and is about the human domain, right? Both in terms of how special operations forces operate. They're often operating in the human domain. In fact, I think it was Adam who really said that this was in another conversation that we had that software really lead in that human domain. But the other component of this is the talent that actually makes up our special operations forces. And I do think attracting that talent to be the enablers, not just the

operators, is an important shift that needs to take place. I think, given the importance of information and psychological operations to strategic competition, to influence and deterrence, there needs to be more emphasis put on that. In the US, many of the military information support operations billets remain unfilled, which is why we're seeing some of those billets be cut. But those kinds of activities are really critical to succeeding in strategic competition. So I think we also need to do a better job of actually attracting talent into those kinds of roles and explaining what their value is.

And I do think as part of that, we should be levering gender and diversity a little bit more effectively. Gender diversity allows special operations forces to operate in more varied roles. That women can access parts of the local population that men cannot. So that can help lead to favorable outcomes if we can leverage that more effectively. So there's a lot more to be said. I do also think finally on the talent piece and where special operations kind of reinvest in the future, of course, the battlefield increasingly extends into the digital realm and special operations forces do already have a lot of advanced skills in cyber operations and very technical fields.

But I think we need to continue to reinforce the need for a really diverse cadre of operators who are very technically skilled, as well as culturally immersed as specialists in space and cyber and engineering. A whole range of things that brought together those capabilities can really help enable us to not only have physical placement and access, but also

digital placement and access, which expands our ability to respond in multiple domains and at multiple points across the competition continuum. Clementine and Brett, thank you for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast. Thank you so much, Adam and Catherine. It's been such a pleasure. And Brett, I learned so much from you in this conversation. So this is a real joy to be a part of and would love to come back sometime. Clementine likewise, and Adam and Catherine, you've taken me well and truly outside my comfort zone.

I like to live under a rock, and I'm very much struggling with this idea that I'm meant to be an adult, but I feel like a child. So it's great at least to be stimulated somewhere beyond that so thank you. Thank you again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare Podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare Podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We're a team of all volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between

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show to new listeners. And one last note, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those at Princeton, West Point or any agency of the US government. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.