Air Force Special Operators are Preparing for Great Power War nationalinterest.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalinterest.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Air Force Special Operations Forces: Readying for a Russia or China War?
The rise of great power competition means that the entire military is spending less time training and planning for nation building and counter-insurgency.
Air Force Special Operators have a lot of jobs. They can attack from V-22 Ospreys behind enemy lines, conduct high-risk aerial reconnaissance when confronted by advanced air defenses and fly dangerous fixed-wing close air support missions. In fact, all of these are all mission possibilities more likely to be taken up as the Special Operation ramp up preparations for major power warfare.
“The AFSOC that we have is not the AFSOC we will need in the future,” Lt. Gen. James Slife, Commander, Air Force Special Operations Command, told The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in a recent video interview.
U.S. Special Forces are Rapidly Preparing For Great Power Conflict
Close-in attacks and hostage rescue operations could easily bring great value in the kind of close-quarter battle likely to unfold in any kind of large-scale mechanized force on force engagement.
Here’s What You Need To Remember: Air Force Special Tactics Squadron warriors painted Taliban targets for air attack assets in Afghanistan, and similar yet slightly more protected or hidden operations would likely be in great demand should there be massive, large-scale warfare.
U.S. Air Force Special Operators are slightly shifting tactical focus to prepare for major power warfare, raising interesting questions regarding the additional mission scope they will be picking up following fifteen years of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.