Special ops forces seek to manage digital footprints, achieve ‘security through obscurity’

Advanced adversaries are acquiring intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and other tools that will make it easier to locate American troops. To counter that, U.S. special operations forces need to hone their ability to achieve “security through obscurity” on “hyper-transparent battlefields,” officials say.

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.”