The move comes amid a broader modernization push by special ops forces and the Defense Department to add new digital tools and robotic platforms to their arsenal.

In a new subsection for “Advanced Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence,” the amended BAA for technology development noted that SOF is keen on “modular, open integration” of cutting‐edge solutions incorporating AI and machine learning to enable enhanced autonomy in unmanned systems.

“Specific areas of interest include but are not limited to agentic AI and vision language action (VLA) models to achieve more sophisticated autonomous behaviors like adaptive learning; neural radiance fields (NeRFs) for 3D scene representation and navigation; generative AI for simulation and data augmentation; advanced automatic target recognition (ATR) algorithms with edge node refinement and autonomous model retraining; advanced machine learning operations (MLOPs) to support data management, model training, validation, and monitoring,” officials wrote.

They noted that proposed solutions need to be designed with well‐defined interfaces and adherence to open standards to promote interoperability and integration into existing architectures.

Earlier this year, the command re-released its “SOF Renaissance” strategic vision, which observed that innovations in AI, autonomous systems and cyber tools are reshaping warfare and enhancing targeting and strike capabilities.

The document calls for commando forces to be early adopters of these types of technologies. SOCOM has been on the cutting-edge before as an early DOD user of the Maven Smart System, for example.

“The distinction between optimizing and generative AI is crucial and will be a game changer. Swarms of low-cost drones and remote explosive devices, using AI and autonomy, blur traditional human-machine boundaries on the battlefield. SOF must also use these systems to improve decisionmaking and situational awareness,” officials wrote in the strategy.

Vice Adm. Frank Bradley, the current commander of Joint Special Operations Command who’s been nominated by President Donald Trump to be head of SOCOM, said the use of innovative drone capabilities and tactics in places like Ukraine and the Middle East have ushered in a “revolution in military affairs.”

“The changing, accelerating pace of technology, the ubiquitous information environment, and the advent of man-machine teamed autonomy on the battlefields of the world today are absolutely changing the character of warfare … in our very eyes,” Bradley said last week during his confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He added that legislative proposals such as the FORGED Act and SPEED Act, and other initiatives to reform DOD acquisitions and speed up the fielding of new tech, are “critical to allowing us to use the innovative spirit of our operators to be able to capture those problems and opportunities we see on the battlefield and turn them into new man-machine teamed approaches.”

The amendment to the BAA comes just two weeks after the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office announced the award of $200 million contracts to multiple vendors for “frontier AI” projects.

“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” CDAO Doug Matty said in a statement accompanying that announcement. “Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems.”

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Sonic Spear, beginning in April with elements peppered into other exercises throughout the year, will be SOCOM’s first opportunity as a combatant command to host such an event as opposed to tabletop exercises. The gathering will test the command’s ability to synchronize joint special operations effects from seabed to low-Earth orbit in support of the joint force and integrate those to support a joint task force commander, according to a command spokesperson.

Overall, the event will help validate how service components to SOCOM provide forces to it and geographic combatant commands, exercising those offerings and integrating them into a truly joint special operations force presentation, they added.

Special ops forces, much like the conventional units within the U.S. military, are taking a harder look at how to integrate capabilities seamlessly across all the domains of warfare. Commandos and conventional forces have historically been too siloed in their approaches to employing capabilities, looking at single domains rather than a more integrated arrangement.

The exercise will also help SOCOM look at different technologies, such as robotics, and the future investments it might need in those areas.

“Let’s look at our investments. We have a lot of autonomy investments happening across the force. We want to hold ourselves accountable … Robots can do what we told them to do. They can drop track quality data into the Joint Fires Network, theater agnostic, and then all those actions put together can support, again, the SOF effects that support joint SOF maneuver,” Lt. Gen. Francis Donovan, vice commander of SOCOM, said Feb. 20 at the Special Operations Symposium hosted by NDIA. “Sonic Spear 25 is our first go at this. That’s where we’re going to look at again, seabed to low-Earth orbit, what are our gaps and seams? Let’s push our autonomous investments, some other investments we’re making … and what do our forward forces need to be able to control ourselves, control our robots and then link in with the joint force.”

This all builds towards SOCOM’s eventual model for an emerging O-6 — colonel or Navy captain — level multi-domain special operations task force.  

Special ops historically has integrated multiple O-5 — lieutenant colonel or Navy commander — and O-6 forces from individual components under a general or admiral. The new model under development will look to integrate those joint special operations forces at the O-6 level to enable them across each domain, to include space and cyber.

With the need to integrate capabilities seamlessly across domains, combined with adversary actions that will disperse friendly forces, the forthcoming task force will allow commando formations to conduct synchronized operations at levels historically held at higher echelons, the SOCOM spokesperson said.

“That is our first step to moving forward of a SOF force presentation model that looks a little different from the past. We’ll eventually have a multi-domain special operations task force at the O-6 level that can synchronize SOF effects, seabed to low-Earth orbit in support of the joint force. Yes, that’s what we’re building towards. But we have to start somewhere,” Donovan said of Sonic Spear 25.

While this year will be relatively rudimentary as the first instantiation, he said officials hope to evolve it — adding in electromagnetic interference, for example — culminating in 2027 with “a joint SOF force offering.”

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The so-called cyber-special operations forces-space triad or “irregular triad,” is a partnership between the three disciplines to deliver capabilities and outcomes greater than the sum of its parts, leveraging the unique access and authorities of each contributor. While officials explained this fusion of capabilities came about in tabletop exercises years ago, the Army began putting it into practice with its relevant components and it’s now making its way to the joint four-star combatant commands.

The strategic environment for the U.S. military is significantly more complex now than it has been in years past, requiring more and different options to deter adversary activity around the globe.

“Some of our adversaries are demonstrating a degree of skill and effectiveness in their employment of irregular warfare that the United States has difficulty matching and the United States has difficulty dealing with,” Mike Nagata, corporate strategic advisor at CACI and a retired three-star general with decades of special operations experience, said Thursday during a panel at the Special Operations Symposium hosted by NDIA. “Many of our competitors and many of our adversaries are adopting modern, powerful digital technologies faster than the United States is. They are not hesitating to use it.”

Experts explained that America’s adversaries have sought to use unconventional, irregular and hybrid tactics as a means of combating the conventional strength of U.S. forces. Much of this is taking place below the threshold of armed conflict.

“Our adversaries, particularly the Chinese but really all of them, are pursuing irregular strategies … It’s a combination of political warfare, economic warfare and irregular warfare. They are pursuing strategies to achieve objectives without having to go to conventional conflict,” said Ken Tovo, president and CEO of DOL Enterprises and a retired three-star general. “Our challenge is, are we ready to play on that field? While we have talked about irregular warfare, and especially in this community for many years, the reality is there’s a lot of things that have actually inhibited our execution of effective irregular warfare strategies around the world to achieve our objectives.”

Current officials explained that the modern triad provides an existing operational concept that is operating currently and can act as a deterrent capability.

“The irregular triad that we’re talking about here is an operational concept,” said Lt. Gen. Richard Angle, commander of Allied Special Operations Forces Command at NATO and Special Operations Command Europe. “It brings together multi-domain capabilities. This concept can, in fact, enable deterrence, because that’s what we’re talking about.”

Officials explained that the three disciplines aren’t as siloed as they may seem, noting inherent integration currently exists.

For example, the Marine Corps and Navy cyber service components to U.S. Cyber Command are also their service components to Space Command. Additionally, Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command serves as the coordinating authority for cyber for U.S. Special Operations Command under Cybercom’s Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber enterprise. Similarly, 16th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, a service cyber component to Cybercom, is the coordinating authority for cyber for U.S. Space Command under its Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber.

“The area that I’ve been most proud of is the fact that we have aggressively taken this from a conceptual discussion to one where we’re doing operational activities together and doing it routinely and how we are able to come together to bring our respective strengths,” Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander of Cybercom, said. “Overall, where we’ve come together has been driven by we can produce better outcomes together in those situations, particularly on really hard problems, and the fact that the initial investments we’ve made to do that have produced outcomes just reinforces the need for us to be able to collaborate in our planning and also in how we approach problems together. Because it gives different options to the secretary than we would have been able to do independently.”

Angle, who also has cyber experience having previously served as deputy commanding general for operations at Army Cyber Command, explained that through deterrence by denial, the triad can make it difficult for adversaries to achieve objectives below the threshold of war.

But, he said, it has to be employed more often if it is to be successful in the future for deterrence, or if deterrence should fail, for managing escalation and crises.

“You need to employ this capability now if you want options later. You can employ it now at low cost, at fairly low risk with potentially high payoffs. By doing so, you can actually lower the risk later because you’re now holding critical adversary capabilities at risk,” Angle said. “The conversation we have to have is here’s also the risk of not taking action. Because if you don’t employ these capabilities, you won’t hold that critical adversary capability at risk when the time comes. We are doing a lot of things inside of this triad, but we have to find a way to do more. We have to find a way to get to the point where we’re doing things and the adversary is reacting to what we’re doing and we’re not reacting to what they’re doing.”

For Haugh, while there have been positive discussions among the relevant stakeholders and good operational applications, he’d like to improve upon what opportunities exist for tighter linkage.

“Today, we have started to put the right pieces in place. Much of what we could also talk about is, when we miss opportunities, why do we miss them? In many of those cases, it’s about the kit that’s available to us at that moment and are we fully using the opportunity for us to be innovative from a technical solution standpoint that fits the timeline of the opportunity of placement and access and the ability to come together around a specific problem,” he said. “I think there’s some things we could talk about what we’re each doing in that area where we could be also more purposeful to be able to fully leverage our respective authorities and how we innovate and how we acquire.”

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During the post-9/11 Global War on Terror, U.S. commandos squared off against relatively low-tech adversaries. However, with the Pentagon’s focus now turned toward competition with nations like China and Russia and the proliferation of advanced technology, the SOF community faces new challenges.

Officials are pointing to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict as an example of how warfare is evolving. In that clash, both sides have been using drones, electronic warfare, cyber, counter-drone tools, deception techniques, social media and other means to find enemy forces and obscure their own locations.

“I think we’ve seen this in sort of a microcosm of the Ukraine fight, it’s going to be more about dealing with being seen and what that means in terms of your signature, as opposed to maybe a previous way of thinking of being not seen at all. And so … in the multi-domains we’re going to have to operate it means having the right, if you will, footprint in the digital environment. It means knowing that if an adversary can see you, that you’re not something that necessarily generates any more interest,” Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Maier continued: “The fascinating thing looking at some of our less sophisticated adversaries … is they almost all have social media presence, right, things that we wouldn’t have thought about 15, 20 years ago, maybe even five years ago. And that means there’s a lot of chaff out there. And I think finding ways to use that noise, you know, sort of security through obscurity, is going to be how we have to think about this. [There’s a] lot of effort to really build, in many cases, the technology, but oftentimes, it’s the different thinking, the different tactics, techniques and procedures that we’re going to have to use against adversaries that — let’s face it, China, Russia, Iran are much more sophisticated in identifying our activity than ISIS and Al Qaeda were, and so we’ve known that for a long time. There’s a lot of emphasis and a lot of investment in that space.”

The Defense Department is trying to work through those challenges via experiments, he noted.

“What I can talk about here is really thinking about it in a different way than just assuming we’re always going to have the advantage and that some of these capabilities that are so ubiquitous now … and so easy to access, aren’t going to be threats to us. They are. And it’s less of the perfect widget or the perfect way of doing things, and more of, I think, a series of layering approaches we’re going to have to take. And we’ve seen some good success in our internal departmental experimentation that if we really put a lot of emphasis on it, we can achieve degrees of obscurity that I think we’re going to need, not only in … sort of steady state of campaigning, but certainly in cases where we’re going to need a period of uncontested space in a crisis or conflict to do the things we need to do,” he said.

Last month, U.S. Special Operations Command released a new strategy document, dubbed “SOF Renaissance,” which noted the need to be prepared for “hyper-transparent battlefields.”

The strategy’s development came as commandos are preparing for and conducting a variety of missions, not just raids against terrorists. That includes assisting foreign partners — U.S. SOF are present in more than 80 countries — with honing irregular warfare concepts, and countering adversaries’ strategies and activities below the threshold of armed conflict.

Key focus areas for the command include assured access, shaping operating environments prior to conflict, all-domain deep sensing and supporting the Joint Force with SOF capabilities, among others.

“I think SOF has started to come into the fore again, still doing counterterrorism [and] crisis response — those have been the persistent missions — but increasingly where we can support other elements, largely in a support role for those strategic competition elements. And here campaigning is the bread and butter of SOF. So when we talk about the integration of technology in a way that advances not only our ability to operate, but often provides many of the fixes that we’re struggling with as an overall force, we talk about that as solving the challenges of the Joint Force. SOF plays a big role in that. That could be in some of the more, you know, in vogue elements like AI or … machine learning. We’re doing that at a level that brings operators and technologists together quite effectively. But it could be in some of the old traditional ways of being that sensor out there and providing the necessary input to decision makers to better understand the situation,” Maier said.

The “silent warrior” concept fits with that vision, he noted.

“Going forward, in many instances, sure, there’ll be opportunities and probably we’ll be called on to do more of the direct action that have been more the calling card … of SOF in the CT fights, [but] I don’t think that’s going to be the future bulk of our effort. And I think we will be enabling lots of other aspects of the government and hopefully partners and allies, to be that more visible face,” he said.

The special ops community will need resourcing for transformation, the new strategy noted.

“As we look to the future, we can see a changing world where SOF is required to conduct full spectrum Special Operations that illuminate challenges and offer new options to the Joint Force in campaigning, crisis, and conflict,” officials wrote. “Ensuring this transformation in the face of today’s strategic landscape requires innovative force designs regarding how SOF will fight in the future. This demands a joint, all-domain, SOF formation that utilizes time-tested SOF concepts, approaches, and techniques, with modern-day technology and SOF-Space-Cyber convergence… all while adapting to the complexities of a converging threat and changing character of war. Finally, SOF experimentation and wargaming aim to introduce futuristic concepts in evolving operational environments, with a particular focus on capabilities tied to how SOF fights.”

Special ops forces must be early adopters at the Defense Department of innovations in areas such as AI, autonomous systems and cyber to enhance irregular warfare capabilities in complex operating environments, the document emphasized.

“AI and uncrewed systems are changing warfare through increased automation and autonomy. This leads to more precise targeting and reduced risk to human personnel. The distinction between optimizing and generative AI is crucial and will be a game changer. Swarms of low-cost drones and remote explosive devices, using AI and autonomy, blur traditional human-machine boundaries on the battlefield. SOF must also use these systems to improve decisionmaking and situational awareness,” officials wrote, noting that SOCOM “views the relationship of data, analytics, and AI not just as a tool, but as a strategic imperative to create advantages for the Joint Force.”

In future conflicts, commandos are expected to serve as a so-called “inside force” to support other U.S. military elements and operate within sophisticated adversaries’ weapons engagement zones.

Defense Department officials are promoting a concept known as the SOF-space-cyber “triad.” Traditionally, in U.S. military parlance, the term “triad” referred to strategic forces consisting of nuclear-armed missiles, submarines and bombers. The new or modern triad is focused on supporting conventional and irregular forces.

“The SOF-Space-Cyber triad represents a powerful convergence and synergy in modern warfare, combining the unique capabilities of special operations forces, space assets, and cyber operations. This integration enables on-the-ground intelligence, access, global communication, surveillance, information warfare and network disruption. Together, these elements create a force multiplier factor that enable the Joint Force to conduct operations with reduced risk of escalation,” officials wrote in the strategy.

Officials in the special ops community want SOCOM to remain a pathfinder for new capabilities that other elements of the Joint Force can adopt.

The new strategy noted that SOF had a pioneering role in bringing the Maven Smart System artificial intelligence capability into the U.S. military.

Last year, Palantir was awarded a $480 million deal for the system to be used broadly across the Defense Department. The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) plans to proliferate the technology to warfighters. Work under the new contract will initially cover five U.S. combatant commands: Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command/NORAD, and Transportation Command.

Meanwhile, SOCOM aims to bring new innovations and vendors into its acquisition fold.

The SOFWERX hub, located in Tampa, Florida, near where Special Operations Command is headquartered, helps connect technology providers with acquisition officials and special operators.

Last month, the Defense Department announced that SOCOM’s acquisition, technology and logistics directorate is launching a commercial solutions opening to support the program executive office for SOF digital applications.

Maier said he talked to SOCOM commander Gen. Bryan Fenton earlier this week about challenges associated with onboarding new tech, including solutions from the commercial sector.

“We’re continuing to try to stress the system that is still fundamentally built on a previous model — you might call it the hardware model. We’ve moved to the software space,” Maier said.

SOCOM has seen successes in linking operators with officials in the acquisition world, he noted, but it faces some of the same constraints as other DOD components when it comes to procurement and working with commercial vendors.

“We’re endeavoring to continue to reinforce the idea that this is operator led, as opposed to spending a lot of time developing a requirement, then it goes out for bid and we’re shooting a couple ducks behind the duck we’re trying to hit. I do worry, though, that some of the structures are built on a previous model and you can only evolve them so much, and we’re going to have to find ways to do things differently,” Maier said.

“We’ve got to do it with the necessary safeguards, but we want our operators who are seeing the problem upfront or talking closely to their allies and partners who might be dealing with the problem to be sitting side-by-side with industry or the right parts of the commercial sector to build solutions. We always pride ourselves from the special operations world of being those pathfinders. We’re going to have to make sure that we’re not believing our own sort of … hype and showing that we’re actually providing capabilities that then the Joint Force can take, maybe make a program of record, maybe scale up and use otherwise. If we’re only doing it for SOF, that’s not going to be effective. And if we’re doing it too slowly to even help the Joint Force, that’s also not going to be effective.”

That principle should apply to how the special ops community develops capabilities for operating in environments that are contested from a surveillance perspective, he suggested.

“A lot of this is going to have to be SOF working closely with the intelligence community to come up with those solutions. It’s not only about the next widget per se or the next, you know, first-person viewer drone,” Maier said. “It’s going to have to be some of these tools that enable us to have that security wrapper around the things that are necessary for us to operate in semi or totally contested environments.”

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With the conclusion of the Global War on Terror and the return to great power competition in 2018 — prioritizing nation-states over non-state actors for the first time since 9/11 — U.S. Special Operations Command has been asked frequently what its role in this new paradigm will be.

Socom was the workhorse during those early 21st century conflicts, pioneering new tactics, perfecting how to hunt down individuals and terror networks, and ultimately, conduct deadly raids.

With the shift to great power competition, outside commentators and lawmakers alike have wondered how these skills and this force will translate in a new geopolitical era.

“We’re looking increasingly to be focused on really shaping the environment so that if there is a fight against a near-peer adversary or an adversary like a China or a Russia, we’re able to shape the conflict before it even occurs, and in many cases, hopefully establish deterrence to ensure it does not occur — or if it does occur, it occurs to our advantage,” Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said Thursday at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

While this shaping effort will still have applicability within the traditional kinetic realm of warfare where bullets fly, Maier empathized that it will mostly be in the non-kinetic space where special operations forces will have a big impact in setting up the joint force for success, namely, in what officials term placement and access.

“Of course, there’s the physical domains, the sea, land and air, but increasingly SOF is a key player in the non-physical domains — be that space, be that cyber, the information space, the electronic warfare space,” he said. “It’s having that placement and access to be able to sense when, at times, things are going in a negative direction, being able to know that and then having the capability to respond if need be.”

Placement and access refers to the unique ability of SOF to be on the ground and close to hard targets given their unique ability to be forward in an undetected manner.

“I think if you take the case of, say, cyber or space — and we spent a lot of time in recent years talking about a nexus between SOF, cyber and space — the effects, the incredible exquisite capabilities that space and cyber in our [combatant commands] bring, is sometimes challenged by the lack of proximity. SOF can really help with that last tactical mile, being in that right place at the right time to really unleash some of this capability,” Maier said. “SOF has ability to close kill chains, i.e. solve problems for the joint force to gain placement and access in areas that maybe isn’t as easy to do from a conventional standpoint either because the platforms and assets they’re bringing or are going to attract a lot of attention or they’re just unable to access certain areas because of the defenses that [an adversary] potentially has.”

The Army has pioneered a vision of what it deems the modern triad — which is much different than the nuclear triad of bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines geared toward strategic deterrence that emerged during the Cold War era — that combines special operations, cyber and space. This new triad aims to also contribute to deterrence by combining these capabilities to be more than the sum of its parts.

Officials have begun talking more about its applicability at the joint level with closer partnership between Socom, U.S. Cyber Command and U.S. Space Command.

“When I talk about SOF helping to fill some of the gaps that the conventional force is really struggling with, I see it in some of these ability to gain closer, more proximate access to targets or to key points of military objectives that we’re going to need to affect and hold at risk,” Maier said.

As part of being able to gain unique accesses to targets, SOF forces will have to invest in new capabilities and tactics to hide from sophisticated nation-state threats that were not needed as much during the counterterrorism fights. The environments in Iraq and Afghanistan were relatively permissive. However, high-tech foes will have sensors and integrated air defenses that will make it easier to detect and thwart SOF action.

“We weren’t dealing with advanced conventional capabilities [in the counterterrorism fight], things like integrated air defense systems. We’re going to have to be able to penetrate those systems, and a lot of that’s going to be low visibility or hard to spot or moving fast enough that it can’t be acted on by the adversary set,” Maier said.

He also noted SOF forces must be able to operate more stealthily in the maritime environment from seafloor to subsurface and low-visibility surface — or else they won’t be filling needs for the joint force.

Officials are looking more and more at SOF-peculiar needs, capabilities separate from the conventional force that apply to special operators and their requirements, with low visibility being a top priority.

In addition to low visibility, SOF forces must be better at operating in a challenging electronic warfare environment, something they got a taste of in Syria operating alongside Russian forces.

A prior commander of Socom in 2018 called Syria the “most aggressive” electronic warfare environment on the planet.

“Some of the things we’ve had to deal with [in Syria], again, in primarily a defeat ISIS and counterterrorism context, have fast forwarded our ability to think about this in a contested environment where access is denied and we’re not able to gain the type of proximity we feel like we need,” Maier said.

The key to shaping and having that placement and access is the partnerships U.S. SOF have around the world. By partnering with other nations, these forces will already be present on the ground in theater where they’re able to shape the environment ahead of time.

“Being in the right place at the right time working through allies and partners, of which we have far more than any of our adversaries, we’re at any given point in 70 to 80 different countries around the world as an enterprise,” Maier said.

A spokesperson from Socom in written responses to DefenseScoop said in the last year there has been an increased demand from combatant commands for SOF capabilities in support of campaigning in the gray zone, or the threshold below armed conflict. This builds upon the relationship U.S. special operators have with partner nations, “which facilitate the placement and access necessary for SOF to prepare the operating environment daily, across the globe, below the threshold of armed conflict.”

“After 20+ years of primarily focusing on counterterrorism, SOF is returning to its roots as a force that prevents and prepares, transregionally, to enable the Joint Force to prevail in the event of conflict. SOFs value in these earlier phases ultimately provide options to our senior leaders with agile and tailored capabilities. SOF continues to deliver the best force possible for the personnel and budget provided,” the spokesperson said.

Information operations

Integrated deterrence is a key pillar of the Department of Defense’s national defense strategy that envisions a layer of policies, partnerships and capabilities to dissuade adversaries’ malign behavior.

Information ops will serve as a key enabler of realizing that type of deterrence, Maier said.

“When you think about integrated deterrence, that’s about the cognitive space and that’s about foreign leaders, our adversaries thinking that they don’t want to go to war with us or the cost will be exorbitant and they shouldn’t do that. Information operations plays a key role in amplifying and accelerating some of that,” he explained.

However, recent cuts to Army SOF, namely in psychological operations and civil affairs, will hurt the joint force’s ability to be successful in conducting information ops.

“Within the joint force, Army Special Operations brings a lot of that capability. We’re talking about psychological operations. They’re the real experts in crafting messages, doing these type of information activities in the information environment for military effects. That’s going to be effective of some of the cuts we will take in Army SOF,” he said.

The Army chose to make cuts — roughly 3,000 SOF personnel — as it is making hard choices about modernizing its force to better posture itself for great power competition and make investments in other capabilities and troops. In the Army’s thinking, these psychological operations and civil affairs personnel aren’t as needed in a great power competition fight as other needs — such as indirect fire protection, counter-small drone batteries and maneuver short-range air defenses.

“The Army overall felt the need for a whole host of reasons to draw down into its force structure. Army Special Operations is the largest component of the joint special operations enterprise. From the SOF perspective, we’re going to have to pay our dues, to some degree. We’re going to have to take some cuts because the bigger Army required it,” Maier said. “My concern as the ASD for SO/LIC is when you lower the overall denominator of what you can bring in, you’re going to have a hard time growing to future challenges. I think we haven’t talked about as much here, but we talk a lot of time in the department about the information environment being so critical. Army psyops, Army, civil affairs are among the best capabilities we have across the joint force.”

Maier also noted that the DOD has been playing catch up in the information operations space, given it was not as necessary in the counterterrorism fight.

“We have not invested as a department nearly as much as probably I would like or compared to some of the other domains like cyber and increasingly in space. I think there’s reasons for that — some has been because it was focused on the counterterrorism fight principally and it was really hard to discourage true believers from coming off their ideology,” he said. “As we reflect forward to an environment where we have adversaries who invest far more than we do and see it as a comparative advantage for themselves and operate by much different rules, we tend to try to be truthful when we do things. They have no compunction to do so.”

While competitors have a higher risk calculous to put out misinformation and disinformation, the U.S. should be more targeted when choosing to apply information capabilities to greater effect, he said, adding that he’d love to see more information capability in the conventional force and other parts of the department.

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“I actually push back on the notion that that [U.S. Special Operations Command] should be the lead for irregular warfare. I think we need the rest of the department to embrace it as well,” Chris Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said at the NDAI SO/LIC Symposium Tuesday.

Maier said that at the most basic level, irregular warfare takes place below the threshold of large-scale armed conflict, or what experts refer to as “the gray zone.” Gray-zone activity has significantly increased in recent years as adversaries have sought to undermine the U.S. and its allies without triggering a robust military response.

What makes irregular warfare so difficult, Maier asserted, is the DOD is focused primarily on major military operations.

“In some of the biorhythms of the department, there’s not a lot of focus on individuals or small units doing asymmetric things — it’s on big formations doing big things,” he said.

“I kind of use the model of counterterrorism a little bit here, where, when we were really focused on counterterrorism as a department, as a nation, yes, SOF was the lead, but SOF wasn’t the only ones doing it. The services were providing tremendous support in the form of enablers, but also operational impacts,” he continued. “I think we need to get to a place where SOCOM may be the intellectual lead [for irregular warfare], may in some cases even be the operational lead, but we’re going to need the rest of the department to embrace this, fund this, enable this. They’re going to have to do a lot of this themselves.”

Top officials at last year’s conference questioned whether there need to be changes to how the DOD conducts irregular warfare and information operations now that the department’s main focus is on great power competition.

Maier believes the DOD is has a lot more work to do when it comes to addressing irregular warfare and asymmetric issues like the gray zone.

“There’s many synonyms for it, which should tell you we don’t even really know in some cases precisely what we’re talking about,” he said.

Moreover, when it comes to information operations, the U.S. has lagged behind others, primarily due to the different risk calculations from senior policy makers on how to use information, according to Maier.

Terrorist organizations don’t use the information space like nation-state actors such as China, Russia and Iran do, Maier said. As a result, there has been varying risk calculations at senior policy levels as to how much the U.S. military should go tit for tat in the information environment.

“How much should the Department of Defense as a core military organization be doing that influence? Some of what we’ve attempted to tighten up over the last couple of years is ensuring that we’re using our information tools towards military objectives. This has given us frankly, a little bit more space then to be able to do things more innovatively from our senior policy makers,” he said.

What sets the Pentagon apart from many of its partners and allies is that the majority of information billets reside within special operations units, making it harder to fill them. This has become especially true given recruitment issues throughout the services, particularly the Army, which had to make cuts to its special operations forces.

“When we talk about Army SOF cuts, it’s not going to be probably news here, but we took some of the unfilled billets off the table, because that made sense to do, not take human beings out and some of those came out of our psyops enterprise because we haven’t been able to fill some of these billets for years,” Maier said, acknowledging these cuts. “If we’re not using these forces in a way that really contributes to our future and our SOF value proposition, we’re probably not going to fill those as much. Then we’re in this situation where we’re not filling them as much, so we’re not able to then project that power in unique and exquisite ways that we need to that. At the end of the day, you’re going to have to be informed by that risk environment we’re in.”

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The traditional term “triad,” in U.S. military parlance, refers to the air-, land- and sea-based legs of the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal. The Army began conceptualizing a new triad over a year ago as a partnership between the unique — and global — capabilities of space, cyber and SOF.

“I think we’re beginning to explain it better. I think it’s still largely a concept at this point. And while I give huge credit to [Lt. Gen.] Jon Braga and [Army Special Operations Command] for really leading within the Army, I think Special Operations Command at that kind of joint SOF level, is increasingly demonstrating leadership in this space,” Chris Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said at the NDIA SO/LIC Symposium Tuesday.

“I think we are going to need to fill out more of what we mean by this and … really show what this means and show how [it] closes kill chains or solves problems for the joint force beyond just something that is unique,” he said.

Officials had discussed the notion of the triad beginning to blossom at the joint level between U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Cyber Command and U.S. Space Command. However, Maier noted that although the SOF and cyber relationship is well established, space might be harder to integrate.

“I think we have more success in a lot more places we can point to on SOF-cyber, because, frankly, cyber has been around longer and it’s more user friendly,” he said. “Space is, I think, from my perspective — and I say this as humbly as I can, because I’m certainly not a space expert — but I think that’s going to be the harder piece of this triad to bring in.”

Special operations forces have long utilized cyber and related signals intelligence capabilities to track targets by gaining access to their cell phones and other devices as well as using other cyber tools to perform various tasks.

There is an appetite to flesh out the new triad concept at the joint level, Maier said, noting that leadership of each community is on board with it.

The Army, for its part, has said it aims to double the amount of experimentation with the triad over the next year, advancing the model and techniques to inform future doctrine for operations and the service’s warfighting concept for 2030-2040.

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The triad consists of a partnership between the unique — and global — capabilities of space, cyber and special operations forces.

“The [Army] chief and the secretary talked about the character of war changing. I would also say the nature of deterrence is changing,” Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, commander of Army Special Operations Command, said during a presentation at the annual AUSA conference. “The tools that the adversary is using are changing and we need to stay ahead of the adversaries by converging these three disciplines right here for a larger holistic asymmetric advantage against our adversaries. You better believe our adversaries are investing in these types of capabilities.”

First imagined over a year ago, this partnership began informally to deliver more options to commanders in an integrated fashion. But it has now blossomed into an integrated package with wide joint and international contribution, potentially leading to a formal triad at the four-star combatant command level between Special Operations Command, Space Command and Cyber Command.

“This is not just an Army thing. We’re working on this to really be a thought leader for the joint force, by the convergence of these three different capabilities in front of you,” Braga said.

One of the key pillars of the National Defense Strategy is integrated deterrence. And this modern triad aims to provide options for commanders to deter activity below the threshold of conflict in a manner that likely won’t escalate into actual hostilities.

The traditional triad, in U.S. military parlance, consists of ground-, air- and sea-launched nuclear weapons,

“This triad’s a different triad. Okay, this one’s a modern-day triad. I think it’s baked in irregular warfare and all three of our formations contribute to assuring and coercing … to provide asymmetric, non-attributable options, flexible deterrent [and] flexible response options for the joint force. That’s what we’re trying to do as we experiment here going forward,” Braga said.

The power of the triad, officials say, is it is greater than the sum of its parts.

Army Special Operations Command provides unique access at the tip of the spear for both space capabilities or cyber access. Space and Missile Defense Command provides missile defeat and other unique space capabilities. And Army Cyber Command provides cyber capabilities as well as data analytics to better inform operations of the other two legs.

While Army Special Operations Command is in charge of conducting psychological and information operations, Army Cyber Command can help inform where threats and messages are coming from to inform those efforts.

“What I’m going to tell [Braga] is, where is it coming from, how is it coming, how is it being delivered, who is doing it, is it automated, can we target it depending on what the operation is and what kind of effect we’re trying to have,” Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commander of Army Cyber Command, said. “This is at the layer that becomes 1s and 0s at some point and we can give you that feedback in terms of to shape what it is that you’re doing. And this is why this comes together, this threesome comes together really well.”

Officials said they plan to double the amount of experimentation with the triad concept over the next year, advancing the model and techniques to inform future doctrine for operations and the Army warfighting concept for 2030-2040.

Officials described how the synergy between each component has grown extremely close the more they’ve worked together and exercised.

“I call this structured collaboration. It is structured because we do plan what it is that we’re going to be doing in advance and what types of innovation we want to do. There’s a charter between us. We rotate it. Then we are working with the respective theaters in terms of the activities that we’re going to be doing,” Barrett said.

Others noted the “automatic” collaboration.

“Two years ago, if we were doing an exercise and we were doing our mission analysis and running up to the exercise, we never would have thought about how do we organize space, cyber and SOF. Now, it’s automatic,’ Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said. “Mission analysis within my team is, hey, how are we leveraging the triad capabilities as part of our mission analysis? How do we leverage that? That is at the forefront now where two years ago, we didn’t think that way necessarily. We might have cobbled it together, but now it’s really a part of the formal mission analysis.”

Last year, the three organizations saw seven events collectively from field experiments to technology exchanges. Over the next year, the goal is to have more than 14.

“That’s led to identifying gaps, capabilities, equipment, TTPs — tactics, techniques, procedures. We’re informing doctrine in our schoolhouse, we’re doing educational exchanges out there. This is happening at the tactical to the strategic level,” Braga said.

Braga noted last year they deployed for the first time a two-star level task force to fit into a combatant command exercise for Pacific Sentry through a Special Operations Joint Task Force contingency.

He also explained they’ll be embedded in the Army’s Project Convergence experimentation.

“A lot of great lessons learned last year, both with our international partners that contributed towards this, that actually provided some unique lessons learned as we integrated them into the Army Project Convergence run by Army Futures Command,” he explained.

Braga also described three key mission threads they sought to game out with 89 partners across interagency, joint and international partners.

The first is multi-domain operational preparation of the environment. This will be critical for enabling operations if a wider conflict breaks out, as accesses and targets need to be developed and identified ahead of time.

Second is enabling network access either from the human dimension, the cyber realm or the space layer.

“All these things we’re talking about still come back to the terrestrial layer where the land force component, the special operations component, the cyber and the space and missile defense component have a nexus there,” Braga said. “It all has to come back down to the Earth and all has to be tied back to a human. [It] provides opportunity for us.”

Third is defeating enemy networks.

“Together, we have an outsized impact against the adversary’s capabilities when you’re talking about their capabilities in SOF, space and cyber, which is why it’s inherent we have to work together, why we’re experimenting together, we’re learning together,” Braga said. “Again, we’re changing it from the form and function of equipment to how we interoperate downrange.”

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Consequently, the need for localized, high-speed connectivity capable of securely integrating voice, video, surveillance, sensor and GPS data on the ground plus a high-capacity back-haul to command centers has never been more critical, says Troy Mitchell, a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer with special ops experience, in a new report.

“The clock is against you,” says Mitchell, now a client partner for government at Verizon. That’s where a new generation of lightweight, high-capacity communications equipment, capable of creating a 7-kilometer-wide, high-speed 5G network footprint on the ground — combined with high through-put satellite feeds — promises to add a new dimension of capability for special forces working in remote and austere environments.

Mitchell outlines those capabilities in a new report produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and sponsored by Verizon. The report highlights how “multi-access edge computing” or MEC, combined with portable 5G wireless and satellite communications gear, now going through military demonstration tests, is poised to give special operations teams greater speed, agility and capabilities.

“5G combined with low orbital satellite connectivity makes it possible to erect secure virtual bridges from the edge to the cloud, giving decision makers a superior common operating picture that can literally save lives,” explains Bryan Schromsky, managing partner, 5G Public Sector, Verizon in the report.

“With 5G, it’s now feasible to inject cloud computing and AI capabilities into the decision-making process on the battlefield and give commanders a competitive advantage,” says Schromsky.

The report also highlights how 5G can give special ops teams the ability to create customized logical networks and partitions or network slices. This allows special operations units to establish secure, end-to-end network connections tailored to environmental spectrum and security requirements, including the potential transport of secret and classified data.

Read the report “Enhanced special operations communications in austere environments.”

This article was produced by Scoop News Group for FedScoop and DefenseScoop and sponsored by Verizon.

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“Secretary [Christine] Wormuth said the No. 1 thing, the No. 1 thing the Army of 2030 needs to do is to see more, faster, farther and more consistently at every echelon than our adversaries,” Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, commander of Army Special Operations Command, said at the annual AUSA convention earlier this week. “The cyber, space, [Special Operations Forces] triad does exactly this by providing the joint force with the enhanced capability to rapidly see, sense, stimulate, strike, assess and effect across the spectrum from integrated deterrence during competition to high-end conflict.”

The U.S. nuclear triad — which consists of bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines — that emerged during the Cold War era was geared toward strategic deterrence. The Army’s new modern triad is aimed more at contesting malign adversary activity occurring on a daily basis by integrating and converging the unique capabilities of each component.

Braga said the modern triad isn’t meant to replace the nuclear one, but rather, enhance integrated deterrence — a key pillar of the Biden administration’s national defense strategy — by providing more options for policymakers.

“It is our professional responsibility to provide our best military advice to policymakers that would contribute to deterrence perhaps in a different way,” he said. “Cyber, space and SOF all possess … unique but independent capabilities. Each component can rapidly gain intelligence, attack critical vulnerabilities. And we must leverage all of these components in order to impose doubt, cost … upon our adversaries.”

What is less clear is, however, is how these capabilities will be integrated and provided to joint commanders when needed.

“I would say that’s part of the experimentation,” Braga told reporters when asked what this triad looks like in practice and how it integrates its capabilities on the battlefield for commanders. “Right now we have SOF, space and cyber working side by side. We’ve done this recently, physically co-located in Fort Bragg. We’re physically working together in support [of] Project Convergence as well and have been doing that the last year. And then there’s other exercises that we’ve been doing … I’d say it’s been both episodic and then we’ve been growing in physical co-location of different entities.”

Others explained that it depends on the mission.

“If you’re doing Project Convergence, you’re going to be out at their ops center. If we’re supporting one of [Braga’s] operations, we’re going to be co-located at Fort Bragg,” Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commander of Army Cyber Command, told reporters.

Project Convergence is the Army’s campaign of learning that is intended to facilitate Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

The Army’s new multi-domain operations doctrine, which was officially unveiled this week, directs the service to combine and integrate land, air, maritime, space and cyber in all facets of operations.

Officials also explained that given each entity of the triad is essentially global and works for global combatant commands, they are joint by nature and must work across services and interagency, which is especially important in the cyber realm.

While Army Cyber Command provides high-end cyber operators to conduct operations on behalf of U.S. Cyber Command, it only is responsible for conducting those ops for a select number of combatant commands — Central Command, Africa Command and Northern Command.

Offensive cyber capabilities are conducted on behalf of Cybercom through what’s known as Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber. These entities provide planning, targeting, intelligence and other cyber capabilities to the combatant commands to which they’re assigned. The heads of the four service cyber components also lead their respective JFHQ-C. These organizations oversee combat mission teams and combat support teams.

Army Cyber does, however, provide tactically focused cyber and electronic warfare personnel globally through the 915^th Cyber Warfare Battalion that conducts more proximal radio-frequency types of operations, and has global control and oversight of the Army’s portion of the Department of Defense Information Network.

When it comes to the unique capabilities each component of the triad provides, leaders described how SOF provides irregular warfare, Army Cyber provides increased awareness and intelligence to the network along with integrated cyber, electronic warfare and influence packages, while Space and Missile Defense Command provides space capabilities and intelligence at the theater level.

Army Special Operations Command is creating a two-star headquarters at 1^st Special Forces Command on irregular warfare, transforming headquarters elements to converge on adversaries. Additionally, 1^st Special Forces Command is experimenting with a deployable two-star special operations joint task force headquarters to better interoperate with the joint force during high-end conflict. Exercises are slated for next summer in the Indo-Pacific, Braga said.

Meanwhile, Army Cyber Command provides insight to commanders on what their battlespace looks like from a digital perspective.

“How well are your networks responding, what does the attack surface look like, what does the influence sphere look like, what are the trends that the adversary is doing in that information sphere, and so on and so forth,” Barrett said. “What I really think Army Cyber delivers are some comparative advantages of a few key areas … There is a track record of integrating cyber, EW and influence operations. We’ve done it before. Now we can deliver this to my partners over here having the reps and sets of doing that.”

Space and Missile Defense Command assists with space-based intelligence.

“When integrated with SOF and cyber, whether that’s the accesses that each of those commanders can provide us, whether it’s space capabilities that I’m going to provide them, it’s going to have a deterrent effect on the adversary and it will provide non-lethal effects to our adversaries,” Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, commander of Space and Missile Defense Command, said. “When we talk about active campaigning, we look at what we’re also able to provide intel support to space, provide that information, whether it’s to SOF or whether it’s to cyber or whether it’s to supported commander.”

Moreover, by integrating capabilities, units that deploy forward can help provide additional intelligence and access needed for another unit, creating a more holistic and even symbiotic relationship with increased capability for commanders, officials say.

“There are some places that they go that maybe I can’t get to. This is where I would say, ‘Hey, can you get me close to something so that I can do X, Y and Z?’” Barrett said. “They offer me a positional advantage and then can I let then see the environment in a way then perhaps they were not able to do — or if they’re downrange and a special operator perhaps doesn’t have the time to take a look at all the data that we’re seeing, can I offer him something very fast and very informative to his team’s decision-making that might inform their operations?”

When pressed to provide specific examples of how the triad has performed, officials declined to offer a recent example — likely for classification reasons — but referenced the counter-ISIS fight during the mid-2010s.

Joint Task Force Ares was part of the campaign in which Cybercom sought to not only attack ISIS through cyberspace, but also to integrate cyber effects into battlefield operations.

“We combined lethal and non-lethal effects for much, much more of a holistic effect that provided the gains on the ground in the physical domain, but it also provided gains in the information domain that both Cyber Command was able to do with non-lethal means. And then there were some kinetic means that were put into effect for exponentially more impact and actually had an even larger impact than any of us actually expected and predicted before we went down that journey together,” Braga said.

“That’s really informed a lot of my thinking going forward,” he added. “Combining [cyber capabilities] with actions to the maneuver force on the ground, I think this really was groundbreaking for leading a lot of different thoughts for how the maneuver force could actually employ this in combined arms maneuver and in a very kinetic fight. But combining those two together I think has shaped a lot of thought moving forward.”

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