In Focus with Curtis Fox: Reorienting Army Special Forces for the Modern Threat Environment

Editor’s Note: In this final installment of our weekly column on the “Practice of Unconventional Warfare,” former Green Beret Curtis Fox delivers a hard-hitting critique of USASOC’s current structure and offers a bold roadmap for reform. With the return of strategic competition and rising global instability, this piece argues that Special Forces must urgently realign with their core missions—Unconventional Warfare, Foreign Internal Defense, and Direct Action—while shedding outdated command layers and burdensome bureaucracy.

From reimagining force composition to revitalizing training and deployment practices, Fox challenges institutional inertia and calls for a leaner, more agile force ready to confront the threats lurking in the modern gray zone. It’s a sobering and insightful close to a provocative series.

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With strategic competition returning as the highest priority in the Department of Defense (DoD), the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and the Special Forces Regiment are needed now more than ever. However, real reforms are needed to ensure that SFOD-As on the ground can meet the mission.

The Army is implementing painful cuts in USASOC, and leaders need to carefully consider how the Special Forces Regiment delivers value to its primary UW mission.

USASOC needs to return the Special Forces Regiment to the mission portfolio that it is actually staffed to perform. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alphas (SFOD-As) can conduct Unconventional Warfare, Foreign Internal Defense (FID), Direct Action, Special Reconnaissance, and Counter-Terrorism. Special Forces is not prepared to conduct Information Operations, Counter-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or Security Force Assistance (SFA). Counterinsurgency is an implied mission, and its explicit call-out is redundant.

1st Special Forces Command is a redundant bureaucracy, and it can be cut. USASOC is not an operational command. It is a force provider just like Naval Special Warfare (NSW) Command, Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), and Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). The Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs) manage all Special Operations Forces (SOF) under their respective Geographic Combatant Commands. USASOC does not need a deployable division-level command of its own. If/when the 1st Special Forces Command is deployed, it will simply complicate the chain of command in theater.

The Special Forces Regiment should embrace collaboration with the Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) and create a mutually reenforcing relationship. This would not only free up over-taxed and over-stretched SFOD-As, but ensure that FID and SFA missions yield sustainable results.

USASOC should insist that command and control procedures at the TSOC go through an exhaustive review and revalidation before authorizing teams to deploy abroad. When deployed, TSOCs should establish a battle-rhythm/Op Tempo with teams on the ground. The TSOCs also need to respect the expertise of the officer on the ground, and when in doubt, defer to the team.

The Army needs to come up with criteria and procedures for risk acceptance prior to the deployment of troops to theater. If the TSOC must micro-manage teams through the Concept of Operations (CONOPS) process and excessive “command-and-control” practices, then why are we sending these men away from their families?

USASOC needs to conduct a hard assessment of the value of forward operating bases (FOBs) and reestablish a status quo that facilitates the SFOD-A’s freedom of movement, freedom of action, and access to local communities without cumbersome command-and-control procedures from on high.

“Safety first” is a great attitude for losing wars.

USASOC should consider altering the traditional Special Forces Company. Each line company does not require 6 traditional SFOD-As. The 6 man and 3 man Special Forces detachments have proven their worth in the special troops battalions. The line companies need to reduce the representation of traditional SFOD-As and establish a few smaller units that offer 80% of an SFOD-A’s mission capabilities with reduced manning requirements and a lighter footprint.

SFOD-Bs need to eliminate staffing requirements for exclusively Special Forces qualified individuals. SFOD-B staff should include 15 airborne infantrymen that cover a plethora of administrative support tasks in garrison and offer surge capability for additional firepower downrange.

SFOD-As need enablers to conduct the full military operations cycle. Meeting the Army’s force reduction mandates by cutting mission support specialists will be debilitating, and NSW and MARSOC are going in exactly the opposite direction. USASOC has made the wrong choice here.

Each Special Forces Battalion HQ (SFOD-C) should audit its internal processes and consider how to remove the administrative load on their line teams so that they can spend more time training.

USASOC needs to have a hard conversation with the Army regarding how it develops officers and rotates them through broadening experiences. Officers should be allowed to build regional and foreign language expertise through the FAO program. Officers must also be allowed to develop close working relationships with the US Embassy Country Team and foreign government counterparts.

The 18Xs require military experience, and Sergeant Majors should take special interest in their growth. Contractually require 18Xs to serve out 8 years of active duty, and following their graduation from the Q-Course, send them abroad for 4-6 months of training experiences in allied elite units with adjacent missions. The 18Xs will bring back invaluable training experiences and maturity.

USASOC needs to treat the Q-Course school house (1st SWTG) like the crown jewel. At present, many Green Berets are unwillingly torn from their teams and sent to teach in the training pipeline. This disrupts team cohesion, delivers inexperienced cadre to the Q-Course, and exposes students to jaded and frustrated instructors. Only the best Green Berets should have contact with students. Teaching is too important to be a rite of passage for all—especially not to meet arbitrary career development mandates from the Army. 1st SWTG can leverage GS-12 civilians as primary instructors and contractors for supporting instructors.

Strategic competitors like China, Iran, Russia, and the DPRK (North Korea) have made it clear that they have no intention of competing with the United States through overt military confrontation. They prefer to discretely and deniably project power through the proverbial Gray-Zone.

China will create artificial islands in the South and East China Seas, using Coast Guard and militia fleets to harass internationally flagged vessels as they traverse these waterways. Russia will send Wagner (or Afrika Corps) mercenaries to support coups in places like Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Iranian Quds Force will finance and train Shiite militias in Syrian and Iraq (Popular Mobilization Forces) and provide arms to Houthi, Hamas, and Hezbollah proxies. Cuba will send intelligence officers to serve in Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro’s presidential protection detail. The DPRK sporadically fires off ICBMs to coerce diplomatic engagement from the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan.

Transnational violent extremist organizations (VEOs) like ISIS, JNIM, and Al Qaeda remain well-funded and active. In addition to sponsoring and facilitating insurgencies and global terrorism, they may strike against US interests at any time and without significant warning. Lebanese Hezbollah operatives will use Latin America as a base of operations for narcotics-based money laundering activities.

The age of mass communications, information dominance, digital media, and global commerce has not created a brighter future. The world is more opaque than it was during the Cold War. And it is in the shadows that we must learn to do battle. Army Special Forces is an ideal tool for this new world—provided we can embrace healthy reforms.

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You can read the previous column here.