Braxton Taylor
In a not-so-distant future, the United States may face a combination of National Defense Strategy competitors in a shooting war while still holding terrorist groups at bay and responding to yet more crises across the globe. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which things go badly, quickly.
The opening days of combat see U.S. and partner ground forces engaged in close combat, recognizable to World War I and II veterans yet infused with waves of uncrewed land, air, and maritime surface and sub-surface systems. U.S. stocks of hypersonic weapons, small drones, loitering munitions, and autonomous systems are gone within 72 hours. Some weapons and systems simply fail to work, sabotaged at some point via vulnerable supply chains for semiconductors and electronics. Despite U.S. arms makers’ efforts to increase production capacity, they cannot match the pace of combat expenditure. And the contested transit time between the point of final manufacturing and the point of need, combined with ongoing enemy sabotage, reduces resupply efforts to irrelevance.
This scenario is as plausible as it is dire, thanks to the ever-increasing complexities of global geopolitics, international supply chains, the lack of national industrial capacity to produce the materiel required to win a future fight, and the changed character of warfare that features the rapid employment and adaptation of relatively inexpensive drones, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems.
The challenges cannot be solved by the military alone. They require concerted effort across government, industry, allies, and partners. The U.S. government can lead efforts to address and avert these challenges, but the time and space to do so is rapidly dwindling.
Fortunately, within the Defense Department, the U.S. Special Operations Command is well-positioned to provide some of the necessary assistance and connective tissue between a wide array of traditional and non-traditional government, industry, and academic partners. By stitching together this network of collaboration, and highlighting opportunities for private capital within an expanded industrial base, the Special Operations Forces can be part of a unified approach that creates new and unsolvable strategic dilemmas for competitors.
A fusion of foes
The Chinese Communist Party seeks to subvert the international rules-based order and supplant U.S. influence. To do this, they harmonize diplomatic, informational, military, and economic levers, from military aggression in the Indo-Pacific to the wanton theft of intellectual property, to transnational repression against China’s ethnic diaspora. They aim to undermine Western values, longstanding military and economic relationships, and potential beneficial outcomes.
Russia, Iran, and North Korea pose their own increasingly intertwined challenges. They are combining their strengths and capabilities—military, political, financial, technical—to create new dilemmas for the U.S. and its partners and allies.
As examples, Ukraine is not just fighting Russia. Iran provides materiel and weapons support; China provides materiel support; and the North Koreans have sent troops. In Yemen, Iranian-backed Houthis disrupt commercial shipping lanes, with targeting help from Moscow.
Further complicating all this is the increasingly fluid nature of warfare, driven by rapidly emerging and increasingly capable digital technologies. Cheap, uncrewed systems allow state and non-state actors without a competitive Air Force or Navy to contest maritime and air domains. The cycle of innovation, from development to employment to enemy adaptation, is now measured in weeks. Cheap weapons can kill expensive ones, and attritable forces can rout exquisite ones.
Toward a better industrial base
When the U.S. economy transformed into a production behemoth that could overwhelm U.S. foes in World War II with aircraft carriers, bombers, and tanks, it built upon a solid skeleton of manufacturing capacity. Too many technologies of the wars of today and tomorrow—autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, and batteries— rely on overseas materials and factories, and indeed on ones controlled by potential adversaries. Fixing that relies on strengthening partnerships, using private capital, and building friendly production ecosystems.
At the U.S. Special Operations Command, partnerships increasingly determine how far we go, how fast we go, and when we get there. These are not just the traditional military partnerships, such as training events, joint exercises, military education exchanges, and military alliance structures. They also include newer partnerships with research institutions and industry help to counter the growing array of irregular challenges. With Special Operations providing the connective tissue, working side-by-side at the coffee-breath close level, we can create a unified approach towards deterrence.
The command is also working to help companies in the U.S. and its partners and allies to find the private capital they need to bring to market key innovations in sensors, artificial intelligence, uncrewed systems, and quantum computing.
The entire ecosystem must develop friendly production and consider expanding the traditional U.S. defense industrial base with non-traditional companies, and where appropriate, alongside that of allies and partners. This starts with looking at the components of dual-use technologies and ensuring they do not rely on a potentially compromised—or hostile—actor for critical resources or stages of production. Commercial decisions have increasingly strategic consequences for security. We must find ways to incentivize U.S. firms to onshore or “friend-shore” the industrial production of batteries, small robotics parts, electric vehicles, commercial drones, and autonomous systems. Meanwhile, the U.S. government should continue to identify and highlight assessed supply chain risk, using analysis from interagency efforts to facilitate improved decision-making and inform conversations with industry.
The opening scenario of this article represents what could happen if the United States fails to adapt to geopolitical realities, address increasingly glaring vulnerabilities, and adjusting its strategic approach. Partnerships, coupled with private capital, and used within the ecosystem of an expanded industrial base will drive unstoppable advancements and unmatched deterrence.
This year’s Special Operations Forces Week in Tampa, Florida, is just one way the U.S. Special Operations Command is working to link the global special operations community with industry, government, interagency, and academic partners. Featuring more than 60 partner nations, numerous U.S. government and partner senior leaders, over 800 companies, and 40-plus non-profits, SOF Week aims to more closely knit this network behind a shared purpose.
General Bryan P. Fenton serves as the 13th Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command.
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