Meanwhile, during the same month as Operation Gothic Serpent, Navy SEALs were participating closer to home in Operation Support Democracy, the blockade and embargo of Haiti, following a military coup that ousted freely elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. By 1994, SEAL teams had boarded hundreds of ships attempting to smuggle cargo into Haiti. An expanded joint SOF and conventional force operation similar to the invasion of Panama in 1989 was planned to capture the Haitian junta when a peace effort led by former President Jimmy Carter successfully brokered a deal with the Haitian military leaders, causing the invasion to be cancelled.

The Balkans has historically been known as the “powder keg” of Europe. In 1991, Yugoslavia disintegrated into the autonomous republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. In April 1992, the region erupted into a civil war between the rival ethnic states. Shocked by the violence, which included “ethnic cleansing” of regions, both NATO and the U.N. responded militarily and with sanctions. SOF forces were an integral part of the effort at every level, from military to psychological operations and civil affairs.

By 1995, the number and pace of special operations missions had increased to a point where SOF commanders began to express concern about high levels of operations tempo, or unit deployments, and their impact on personnel retention, family relations, and effectiveness in the field. Since fiscal year 1990, USSOCOM had an average annual operating budget of about $3 billion, and managed a force of almost 47,000 personnel: 30,000 active-duty service members, 14,000 Reserve and National Guard personnel, and 3,000 civilians. Of the 30,000 active-duty service members, 14,000 were special operations qualified personnel assigned to deployable units. When Gen. Henry H. Shelton assumed command of SOCOM in 1996, SOF operations had increased by more than 51 percent, and its operating budget had been reduced by more than 6 percent. With the peacekeeping commitment in Bosnia (Operation Joint Endeavor/Joint Guard) as well as missions in Sierra Leone, Albania, and Liberia, and no end in sight regarding further demands on SOF, Shelton addressed the immediate frontline needs by having USSOCOM develop “force module packages.” Supplies were pre-configured for specific missions and packaged for quick-response delivery. This substantially pared down mission preparation time while still offering the correct force mix. The General Accounting Office or GAO (now the Government Accountability Office), would help USSOCOM address other needs.

The House Subcommittee on Military Readiness, Committee on National Security authorized the GAO to conduct a study to determine if SOF were “being used in a manner that best supports national security objectives.” Led by Mark E. Gebicke, director, military operations and capabilities issues, the GAO team spent 18 months, from October 1995 to March 1997, conducting its review.

The GAO team’s study was extensive. It visited and interviewed commanders and units in Washington, D.C.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Florida; Coronado, Calif.; Virginia; Fort Carson, Colo.; Fort Lewis, Wash.; Hawaii; Panama; and Germany.

During its investigation, it distributed questionnaires to almost 200 senior-level officers and enlisted personnel. Its report, delivered on May 15, 1997, revealed an astonishing change in attitude among senior military commanders since 1991.

The report found that during an average week, between 2,000 and 3,000 SOF personnel were deployed on 150 missions in 60 to 70 countries. Most importantly the report noted, “Officials at the major commands we visited expressed a high degree of satisfaction with SOF support of their regional requirements. They said the CINCs [commanders in chief] consider SOF the force of choice for many diverse combat and peacetime missions. For example, officials at the European Command said that SOF are critical to the CINC’s ability to conduct engagement activities with an increasingly smaller force. For crisis response in the current low-intensity security environment, the staff considered SOF as the most important. Officials in both the European and Pacific Commands said they plan to employ SOF first when a potential crisis develops, forming a joint SOF task force to assess the situation, advise the CINC, and prepare the area for follow-on action, if necessary. More significantly, officials at the Southern Command said that nothing could be done militarily in the theater without SOF. They stated that the Command’s area of responsibility, which comprises many countries that do not commit much funding to their militaries, was ‘made for SOF.’”

The reasons CINCs made SOF their first responders was their extensive training, relative maturity, language skills, and cultural orientation. This made them well suited to perform a wide variety of missions, ranging from direct action and rapid response to foreign internal defense, that supported CINCs’ peacetime strategies.

On the one hand, this transformation from being the redheaded stepchild of the armed forces to being the force of choice by CINCs was gratifying. But the title of the GAO’s report pointed out the downside: “Special Operations Forces: Opportunities to Preclude Overuse and Misuse.” The report stated that “60, 56, and 86 percent of the Army, Navy, Air Force respondents to GAO’s questionnaire, respectively, said they believe readiness has been, or threatens to be, adversely affected by the current level of unit deployments” and “SOF unit leaders believe that SOF are performing some missions that could be handled by conventional forces.” SOF commanders generally agreed that the missions that offered the greatest potential for the use of conventional forces were humanitarian assistance, embassy support, and support to other government agencies. The Department of Defense received a draft copy of the report before it was submitted, agreed with its accuracy, concurred with the report’s recommendations on strategizing priorities, monitoring mission usage and training needs, and identifying missions that could be performed by conventional forces, and initiated changes by the time the report was formally submitted in May 1997.

While the GAO was conducting its study, AFSOC was addressing the need to develop a new air doctrine that had been delayed by Desert Shield/Desert Storm and the increasing number of mission demands made by the different commands: tactical combat air support, also known as close air support. Basically, AFSOC identified that existing doctrine, culminating with the “Broken Arrow” mayday call diverting all air assets in a theater to assist a ground unit in danger of being overrun by enemy forces, was itself broken. AFSOC revised and expanded the doctrine, integrating from the beginning air assets tasked with every anticipated need a ground mission would have.

“Our military objective is to degrade and damage the military and security structure that President Milosevic has used to depopulate and destroy the Albanian majority in Kosovo.” This statement, made by Secretary of Defense William Cohen on April 15, 1999, heralded the start of Operation Allied Force in the former Yugoslavia. As Operation Allied Force was primarily an air campaign, AFSOC was deeply involved. The 193rd Special Operations Wing of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, the only airborne psychological operations broadcasting unit, was an important part of the campaign. Its EC-130E Commando Solo, specially modified to make civil affairs broadcasts in AM, FM, HF, and TV, flew over Serbia and countered Serbian radio and television broadcasts, and its MC-130H aircraft conducted extensive leaflet drops. An AFSOC AC-130U provided armed reconnaissance. AFSOC’s special operators and aircraft played a significant role in bringing the conflict in Kosovo to an end. Following the conclusion of Allied Force, special operations civil affairs units entered the country to assist in recovery and restoration efforts.

Across the board, from combat, to embassy defense, to humanitarian missions, SOF made significant, and at times pivotal, contributions in the field and around the globe. Perhaps more impressive is the turnaround in attitude SOF caused among the service branches, occurring in less than four years. Though the increased tempo and wide variety of demands placed enormous stress on everyone, SOF personnel and SOCOM met and overcame every challenge. That decade-long tempering would prove invaluable within two years of the start of the new century and new millennium.

SOCOM at 25 Part 1: The Battle for Capitol Hill

SOCOM at 25 Part 3: USSOCOM Since 9/11

SOCOM at 25 Part 4: The Future

This article was first published in The Year in Special Operations: 2012-2013 Edition.