Marine special operations are called Marine Raiders - the nation’s newest SOF community - and can do everything from reconnaissance to commando raids. The Air Force special operations is trained to rescue pilots and call in airstrikes. The Army has Special Forces - nicknamed Green Berets because of their iconic hats, Rangers, and soldiers specializing in civil affairs and psychological operations. SOF units are made up of service members from every service. SOF will build partnerships with militaries around the world and focus on great power competition - namely countering China and Russia, even as they change how they fight from capture and kill attacks to psychological warfare and influencing local politics. The other side is harder to describe.”īut life after America’s longest war for special operations is one of opportunity and provides a return to smaller missions that are just as strategic, if not more, than the big, headline-making battles of the past 20 years. We’ve raised our counterterror capability to an exquisite level. “ Joint Special Operations Command’s mission of counterterror is never going away. Army Special Forces colonel who specializes in irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. SOF is experiencing an identity crisis, says David Maxwell, a retired U.S. The operation was conducted to disrupt and destroy drug labs owned by the Taliban in the area.

Special Forces Soldiers, attached to Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, alongside Afghan agents from the National Interdiction Unit, set fire to a field of marijuana found outside of a compound housing a drug lab during an operation in the Ghorak district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, in 2016.

Shadows of the empire evolution