During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) questioned General Bryan P. Fenton, the Commander of the United States Special Operations Command, about navigating growing crisis response demand.
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00:00Thank you. And next we will go to Senator Budd. Thank you.
00:06Thank you, Chairman. Again, thank you all for being here.
00:09General Fenton and Mr. Jenkins, thank you both for testifying before the committee on SOF.
00:14I was grateful for the opportunity to travel with Chairman Wicker last year to JSOC at Fort Bragg
00:20and to talk about the important work that SOF is doing, not only in North Carolina, but around the world.
00:25So, General Fenton, how would you characterize the demand and requirements for Special Operations Forces,
00:32particularly in crisis response? General Fenton.
00:37Senator, first, thanks for visiting our forces and thanks for allowing us to be in the great state of North Carolina.
00:45Our Honor.
00:45Appreciate all the hospitality there. I know all our forces do.
00:49I would offer, in my opening statement, I laid out a couple.
00:52I think in terms of crisis response, we have seen a pace and a scale and duration
00:58that I frankly have not seen in my 20 to 30 years in the Special Operations community.
01:04It is called on more, so there's a requirement that's gone up by 200 percent in the last three and a half years.
01:12That's on or about 15 missions where we've been asked to get out very quickly
01:16and do the type of missions that I mentioned.
01:19Either recover diplomats, protect an embassy, or at some point maybe even recover a U.S. citizen.
01:25I think that I don't anticipate the world to get any less volatile, and that looks like a pattern to me.
01:32And so I think that demand has certainly gone up.
01:34In deterrence, the combatant commanders have asked for special operations in the last two years
01:39at an increase of about 35 percent to do the type of missions that they're looking for us to do
01:45that could involve anything from partner-based training to unilateral operations
01:50that would give them additional opportunities and advantages,
01:55maybe an unfair outsized advantage, and give the adversaries a bunch of dilemmas and challenges.
02:00So I think I anticipate that going up.
02:02And then I just mentioned earlier, terrorism is not done with us.
02:06And I think we absolutely have to stay focused on the threat that ISIS, al-Qaeda, and al-Shabaab pose.
02:12And all three of those missions are absolutely in a soft wheelhouse.
02:17Juno, talk a little bit about you gave some numbers, 35 percent increase in area, 200 percent in other area.
02:23When you're called upon, how often do you have to say no because of that increased demand
02:30and perhaps the lack of readiness or rest or requirements that are needed?
02:39Senator, I think that question is at the heart of something the command sergeant major and I think about every day.
02:44That's risk.
02:45And I think in this case, that risk is a combination of operational risk.
02:50Do we have the capability and the capacity?
02:51And then for the first time, certainly in my memory, fiscal constraint risk, can we actually do it?
02:59I think that drives to the heart of I've had to say no in some instances in deterrence where I feel like I am taking risk
03:07almost 41 times in the last year to combatant commanders that would want special forces operational detachment,
03:15so 12 Green Berets, folks who may want command and control nodes, and I could go on and on
03:22and give you additional examples in a closed session.
03:24But I think it's certainly way too often.
03:27And my sense is that, first, that is risk.
03:30We're not meeting the combatant commander's demands in a special ops peculiar way.
03:35I'm also taking risk in modernization.
03:37In a sense, I feel like I'm saying no to the SOCOM enterprise when we don't have the top-line increase
03:44and the budget needed to modernize not only technology but certainly our humans.
03:50So we think about education for an uncertain world.
03:52That's modernization.
03:54And on top of that, certainly even our authorities.
03:57So I think I say no way too much and in those two categories, to combatant commanders and deterrence
04:02and, frankly, to where we need to be as a SOCOM enterprise to win tomorrow,
04:08just like we've been winning today and in the past years.
04:13Thank you for that.
04:14And lots of other questions, either for the record or the closed session.
04:18Mr. Jenkins, again, thank you for being here.
04:20See if you're tracking this provision in the Senate Fiscal Year 26 NDAA.
04:25Includes a provision requiring the Assistant Secretary of Defense for SOLIC
04:29and the Commander of Special Operations to ensure the annual defense planning guidance
04:33includes specific guidance for requirements and employments of special operation forces
04:39across the spectrum of conflict.
04:41Are you tracking that, sir?
04:43Yes, and thank you for that very much.
04:47So with our interim national defense strategic guidance, we have three lines of effort.
04:52Defend the homeland, deter China, and increase burden sharing.
04:56And the only force that can fill in or blend across all three lines of effort there
05:02is the special operations force.
05:04And in my service-like capacity, I've been able to advocate and make sure
05:08that as the defense planning guidance goes forward and now gets underway in earnest,
05:14that my peers, my counterparts, ensure that SOF is adequately and thoroughly accounted for
05:20in all three lines of effort there, and not just as an asterisk, that we play a major part.
05:25Thank you both again.
05:28Here's my out of time.
05:29Chairman Reed, you're recognized.
05:31Thank you very much, Senator Biden.