The Joint Force mafia has a dream of the services losing all identity and going purple. The thinking is that the competition between the services is destructive and wasteful.
I believe that they're the same crowd that gives out medals to everyone at athletic events. Kinda taints the desire to be the best don't it.
But I digress.
One area where they've made the greatest strides to achieve this joint force utopia is SOCOM.
In my mind its not a matter of when but rather of how long it takes for SOCOM to become its own unique, service irrelevant force.
I don't know whether that will be a good or bad thing...What happens when there are no more SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, USAF Special Ops or Marine Special Forces? Just simply US Special Ops.
I'm really unsure. What I believe will happen is that you will see the services simply re-invent these same units to perform those missions for the Combatant Commander. Remember SOCOM is also pushing to operate outside the sphere of influence of the CC's..the SOCOM Chief of Staff or whatever they call him will be conducting wars world wide.
Will they get a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Or will they fall under the Director of the CIA? Or even the State Dept? Or will they report directly to the President?
Will they fall under intelligence or law enforcement? Intelligence will give them greater lattitude in mission sets but law enforcement will perhaps open the door to more countries. Will they perhaps be split in two...a dark and light side. It boggles the mind.
I can't wait to see it.
I doubt it happens. US Army Special Forces are rather unique in focusing upon working with other nations and emphasizing language skills, cultural training, etc. Even if SOCOM was purple the units would still have their unique skill and mission sets.
ReplyDeleteAs for issues like whether it makes sense for our two Tier 1 units to be purple I've no idea. CIA's SAD recruits from both Delta and Team 6 but how purple they are again I've no clue.
To some degree I think SOCOM going purple hurts recruitment. Also a unit like the 75th while assigned to SOCOM and often is used to backup missions it still has a strategic wartime function of capturing airbases, among other tasks. Frankly the US Army uses Ranger training as a leadership tool and taking the unit away from the regular army entirely doesn't seem to make any sense.
If anything the first thing I'd do to make the DOD more purple would be to get rid of the USAF. Take about 2/3rds of tactical aviation and divide it up among the other services. The heavy transports can go to transportation command jointly run by the other services, same thing for heavy bombers, AWACS, etc. I'd keep the blue uniform though but limit it to Space Command. It's where the Air Force wants to end up anyway.
I'm not being tongue in cheek. We have very little ability to take a hard look at force structure, especially in terms of tactical aviation, and arrive at the number of units the nation requires. Instead we have minimum levels for various services. Frex, we don't need 1,763 USAF F-35A's. We're getting them to preserve USAF force structure. A more realistic number would be 1 wing per each of the 10 USAF AEF's or roughly 1,100 total aircraft inclusive of training units, spares, etc.
There are some wonderful people serving in the USAF but at the macro level the service is dysfunctional and doesn't realize it's really a supporting service. Cost effective and cheap to operate aircraft that directly support ground troops are often the first things cut to preserve more sexy aircraft the Fighter Mafia wants to fly. Just my opinion...