Despite some improvements in combat readiness, the U.S. military has “marginal” overall capability to meet the increasing global security challenges it faces because all four of the armed services are too small and much of their major combat systems are too old, according to the latest of the annual assessment by the Heritage Foundation. 

The Navy and the Marine Corps share that overall rating of “marginal,” with both assessed as “weak” in capacity, which translates into force size, and “marginal” in capability and readiness, even though both of the naval services have focused on improving readiness, the 2020 Index of U.S. Military Strength, released by Heritage on Oct. 30, said. 

Although Army readiness is rated as “very strong” due to a major increase in the number of its brigade combat teams that are considered combat ready, it also gets an over score of “marginal” because its capacity is rated as “weak” and capability as “marginal.” The Air Force is rated as “marginal in all three of the categories and overall. 

The ratings for the four services are little changed from last year’s index and come in the face of the index’s finding of an overall threat to U.S. vital interests of “high” from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and global terrorism. Heritage rates the behavior of Russia and China as “aggressive” and their capability as “formidable.” 

Because of the overall weakness of the services, Heritage said the military “is likely capable of meeting the demands of a single major regional conflict … while also attending to various presence and engagement activities, but that it would be very hard pressed to do more and certainly would be ill equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous major regional contingencies.” 

As it has in the past, Heritage faults the four services, the Defense Department and Congress for the lack of funding and direction to substantially increased the size of the military and to modernize its equipment, which are the oldest on average since before World War II. Force size is a major criteria for Heritage in its ratings. 

 For example, it says the Navy needs a battle fleet of 400 ships, while the Navy’s current battle force is 290 ships and its long-term goal is 355. The key shortfalls Heritage cites, compared to its recommendations, are two aircraft carriers, 16 large surface combatants, 41 small surface combatants, 16 attack submarines, 13 amphibious warships and 25 combat logistics ships. It also finds naval air far short of the desired size. 

For the Marine Corps, Heritage believes it needs 36 infantry battalions, while it has only 24. Both the previous and current Marine Corps commandants have said they need to reduce the infantry to add capabilities in information warfare and cyber. 

The size of the current fleet, the high cost of new ships
and the likely lack of growth in future budgets will make it difficult for the
Navy to reach the current goal of a 355-ship battle fleet, the Navy’s number
two civilian leader said.

And that problem would be made even more difficult by the
continuing resolution, which prevents starting new programs that could reduce
costs, such as the proposed frigate, Navy Undersecretary Thomas Modly said Oct.
25, addressing a conference hosted by military reporters and editors.

Modly also expressed concern about the impact on “the
warriors and families” of nearly 19 years of constant war and the fact that the
U.S. has allowed its potential adversaries — particularly China and Russia — to
erode the military advantage and gain global influence.

“We have to operationalize what does it means to be in great
power competition,” Modly said. And the U.S. will “have to take a page from our
adversaries’ play book” by learning how to conduct asymmetric operations,
similar to Russia’s seizure of Crimea without actual conflict, he said.

Modly went through the top 10 issues that keep him up at
night, three of which dealt with the problem of buying and sustaining enough
ships to get the size fleet the U.S. Navy will need for the possible future
conflicts. The effort to get from the current 290-ship force to the 355 goal
faces “a math problem,” he said, because future defense budgets are not likely
to grow enough to buy all those ships.

Modly conceded that Navy leaders were not sure that “355 is
the right number” and would have a better view of that when the new force
structure assessment is finished sometime next year. He also noted the high
cost of overhauling ships, which frequently have more problems than expected.

Obtaining the needed fleet is made more difficult by the
rising costs of ships and other programs, he said. “We have to figure out a way
to drive down cost.” But he continued, “it’s going to be difficult to do that,
particularly when the Navy is throwing so much of its assets into expensive
platforms,” citing the $13 billion price tag on the new Gerald R. Ford aircraft
carrier.

That is why the sea service is putting so much effort into lower-cost vessels, such as the littoral combat ships and the proposed guided missile frigate. But he said, the plan to award a contract on the frigate program could be “handicapped” because the continuing budget resolution prevents new starts. The CR “will have significant impact and not in a good way. I hope Congress will realize that it’s their job,” Modly said, to fund the government and will do it.

Modly was questioned about the strong criticism Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer leveled this week on Huntington Ingalls for the problems with the Ford carrier. He said the Navy has no tactic of attacking industry, but “we’re asking you guys to understand the frustration we have. We, the department, have a lot of responsibility for what went wrong with the Ford. What the secretary said was there has to be shared responsibility.”

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Despite the commandant’s stark warning
about the vulnerability of current amphibious warships, the Marines are not
moving away from amphibious operations. But to operate in the future highly
contested littoral waters, the amphibious force must be more numerous, adding a
lot of smaller, cheaper and “risk worthy” vessels and unmanned systems, senior
Marine and Navy officers and civilian analysts said Oct. 23.

Those officers and experts and other groups of uniformed and
civilian officials also argued that providing logistical support for amphibious
operations in waters threatened by the modern deadly weapons employed by peer
competitors, such as China and Russia, will require starkly different systems
and tactics.

And in an extensive series of panel presentations during the
second day of the National Defense Industrial Association’s conference on
expeditionary warfare in the era of great power competition, the speakers
appealed to industry representatives in the audience to help provide the new
technologies and platforms the naval forces will need to fight and win in any
future conflict.

Much of the discussion was shaped by the Commandant’s
Planning Guidance issued this summer by the new Marine leader, Gen. David
Berger, which highlighted the threat to traditional large, complex and
relatively expensive amphibious ships, if they have to operate within the reach
of the long-range precision weapons and submarines fielded by China and, to a
lesser extent, Russia and Iran.

“We are not walking away from amphibious operations,” said
Brig. Gen. Benjamin Watson, commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting
Laboratory. He noted that the new operational concepts proposed by Berger –
Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and Littoral Operations in a Contested
Environment — require amphibious operations. “The commandant is not calling for
a smaller amphibious fleet, but a larger one” with “smaller, less expensive and
more risk-worthy ships” to complement the larger ships, Watson said.

Maj. Gen. Tracey King, director of expeditionary warfare,
said he “hears a lot of talk inside [the Pentagon] that we’ll never do another
amphibious landing. We don’t want to do another Iwo Jima … but we will do
amphibious operations again.”

The new amphibious missions will involve “distributed
operations,” a Navy-promoted concept that provides “the advantage of mass with
distributed forces,” King said. That will require larger numbers of smaller
units with “risk worthy platforms and connectors,” because “we’re absolutely
going to take some body blows.”

Asked by an audience member how they measure “risk worthy,”
Watson conceded “we don’t know” whether it is defined by lives or by the cost
of the platforms, noting that the current amphibs “are these expensive platforms
that we, as a nation, cannot afford to replace.”

Two panels addressed the challenges of providing logistical support to naval operations in the contested waters, with Lt. Gen. Charles Chiarotti, deputy commandant for installations and logistics, admitting that “Marine Corps logistics is not postured to sustain the future fight.” They will require “hybrid logistics,” that blends the legacy assets with what new systems they can acquire to provide Integrated, maneuverable logistics “in concert with the Navy.”

Other speakers from logistical support organizations and program managers cited the need for very different logistical platforms, including a variety of unmanned surface, subsurface and aerial systems, some of the existing smaller, cheaper vessels, such as the Expeditionary Fast Transport, Expeditionary Mobile Base and Littoral Combat Ships, and even Military Sealift Command and commercial cargo vessels.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s proposal to build a lot of different, smaller and cheaper ships — including unmanned vessels — to substitute for or augment large amphibious warships is not yet clearly defined, but presents the possibility of greatly expanding the available force, two veteran naval analysts said Oct. 22.

And an alternative future shipbuilding plan is needed because the cost of building and sustaining the 355-ship fleet proposed in the latest 30-year plan might be unsupportable given the high cost of such a force and the growing national budget deficit, they added.

Addressing the National Defense Industrial Association’s expeditionary warfare conference, Ronald O’Rourke, the senior naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, and Eric Labs, the Congressional Research Service’s naval analyst, called the force structure and operational changes proposed in Berger’s guidance the “most significant strategic document” since the From the Sea naval concept of the 1990s.

A dramatic element of Berger’s guidance was the recognition that the current large and expensive amphibs probably are too big and vulnerable to be sent into the waters heavily defended by China and are too few in number to support the distributed operations and other nontraditional expeditionary missions that would be required. From that conclusion, Berger said the Corps would no longer use the long-cherished goal of a 38-amphib fleet as a force planning guide.

Labs said the Navy’s plan that supposedly would produce the 355-ship fleet by 2034 would cost much more than the historic average shipbuilding budget, and the soaring cost of sustaining even the existing fleet of 290 ships might make that goal unreachable. O’Rourke quoted Navy Undersecretary Thomas Modly as saying the sustainment costs could hold the fleet’s growth to 305 to 308 ships.

O’Rourke said Berger’s proposal for a significantly
different amphib fleet was driven by the threat from China’s defenses but also
could be enabled by the changing technology, including unmanned systems. The
mix of alternative platforms Berger suggested has not been defined, he noted.

Labs agreed but offered the idea that if the Navy would seek new ships that would cost $600 to $700 million each — less than even the cheapest current gators — it could buy a fleet of 68 to 78 ships by 2034 for the same $75 billion the Navy expects to pay for 28 ships.

Both said the savings on unmanned vessels might not be as much as some believe, because despite the name, such ships have to have people involved in their operations and maintenance. Because the unmanned vessels would not be repaired or maintained at sea, they would require a larger support infrastructure ashore, Labs said.

This story was corrected from an earlier version.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — U.S. Navy and Marine Corps requirements and
capabilities leaders are working together to produce an Integrated Naval Force
Structure Assessment, which will replace the Navy assessment that usually shapes
the shipbuilding plan, the two top requirements officers said Oct. 22.

And the assessment will be driven by the capabilities needed
to operate integrated naval forces in the highly contest environments expected
in the emerging “great power competition,” said Vice Adm. James Kilby and Lt.
Gen. Eric Smith.

“Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is the guiding principle
for what we’re doing in the Navy,” and that “ties in very closely” with the
Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE) concept,
said Kilby, who is deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements
and capabilities. DMO means “the ability to distribute your forces and to be
able to concentrate effects at the right time,” he said.

DMO also reflects a shift to a focus on sea control, Kilby
said. For the last 20 years, the naval forces have focused on power projection,
he said. “It’s time to rethink that model” to “how do we support each other.”

“We will build one force optimized for the expeditionary
force,” designed to ensure access for the fleet, said Smith, who is deputy commandant
for combat development and integration. His directions come from Marine Commandant
David Berger’s guidance that dictates “where the Marine Corps is going in
support of the fleet,” he said.

DMO, “it’s our concept” and addresses “what the Marine Corps
does to support the fleet in littoral operations in a contested environment.”
The integrated assessment also will support the Marine’s concept of
Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, which envisions small, mobile Marine
forces taking positions within the enemy’s area with which to support the
fleet’s effort to gain sea control.

In developing the integrated assessment, Smith said, “we’re
doing a tremendous amount of work together. What’s not helpful,” he continued,
is that “once again we’re under a CR,” or continuing resolution, instead of
normal funding. “That means no new starts, tread water,” he said. “I can’t
tread water against a pacing threat.”

Addressing a two-day National Defense Industrial Association
conference on the future of expeditionary operations, the two leaders said they
and their staffs are working tightly together to shape this new assessment.
They will submit their proposals to the naval services’ leadership as an
“interim” assessment, which will be refined for release early next year, they
said.

The shipbuilding plan that emerges from this integrated
assessment could be significantly different due to Berger’s dramatic statements
in his guidance that the traditional large amphibious warships may not be
survivable in face of the area-denial weapons being deployed by China and his
support for a large number of other ships, which would be smaller, cheaper and
more expendable.

Kilby, however, said that in the amphibious forces, “the
things that have existed in the past will exist in the future. We will need
big-deck amphibs” and the LPD-17 amphibious transport dock ships, “which are
more capable than in the past due to sensors.” But he said they also will need
connectors, not just to get Marines ashore but to sustain them. The assessment
will look at whether they need faster connectors, or low-signature assets. He
said there also was a need for intra-theater support ships.

Both officers said the new force assessment would call for
more unmanned vessels.

Kilby noted that the Navy is looking at a range of unmanned vessels, ranging from small to large. He suggested the large unmanned ships could serve as magazines, with large number of weapons, while smaller vessels would serve as sensors and to deceive an adversary as to where attacks were going.

Smith said the unmanned systems are “hugely important” to the commandant’s vision for future expeditionary operations. “If we can produce a truly autonomous vehicle that has a range of say 1,000 miles … that can carry the cargo I need to sustain an EABO,” Kilby said.

Aware that in the increasingly tense global security
environment the U.S. Navy’s sealift and logistical support fleet may have to
sail through seas contested by a near peer adversary, U.S. Transportation
Command recently sent five unarmed transport vessels through simulated hostile
waters in a convoy similar to those used during World War II’s dangerous
“battle for the Atlantic.”

The five ships, crewed by civilian mariners, “executed
tactical formation maneuvers” to counter the threat of hostile submarines or
sea mines, TRANSCOM said in a release. The civilians were assisted by
experienced Navy Reserve officers under a new program created in recognition of
the possibility of attacks against the sealift and supply ships, which would be
crucial in any major overseas conflict.

The convoy exercise was conducted during an unprecedented “turbo
activation” in late September in which 33 vessels from the Military Sealift
Command (MSC) and the Maritime Administration (MARAD) fleets were mobilized on
short notice to test whether the ships — most of which are considered aged —
were mechanically ready to sail and that enough qualified mariners would be
available to crew them during a national security crisis.

“The turbo activation was an exercise to prove that the material
readiness and crews’ skill level of our surge sealift ships make it possible to
respond to world events on short notice,” said Cmdr. Vincent D’Eusanio, the
tactical adviser (TACAD) who sailed aboard one of the ships in the exercise.

“We had to know if our ships would be capable of delivering
supplies and equipment to our deployed troops serving overseas when required,”
said D’Eusanio, who also is MSC’s TACAD program manager.

The TACAD program was initiated in 2017 “based off of years
of experience and past lessons learned,” D’Eusanio said in the TRANSCOM release.
“During World War II, we lost lots of merchant ships and mariners. Some of this
was a result of not knowing how to sail a merchant ship in a hostile
environment. When the Navy began to train mariners to counter threats, like the
German U-boats, our losses dwindled.”

Most of the TACADs are Navy reservists who sail as mariners
in their civilian careers. D’Eusanio is a licensed chief engineer with the
Staten Island Ferry when not on Navy duty.

The TACADs are assigned to educate the civilian crews “about
how to sail in a contested environment … provide tactical advice and facilitate
communications with the combatant fleet to allow our mariners to successfully
operate in unfriendly waters,” D-Eusanio said.

After sailing from their East Coast ports, the five MSC ships rendezvoused in the North Atlantic, formed into a convoy and performed tactical maneuvers while sailing through the simulated contested waters. The crews were trained to reduce their electromagnetic signature to avoid being detected and targeted by enemy missiles or aircraft, said Capt. Hans Lynch, MSC’s Atlantic commodore who led the East Coast mobilization.

They also were instructed how to darken the ships at night to reduce the chances of being spotted by the enemy. Lynch said the activation was not only a good test of the materiel condition of the ships and the availability of trained mariners but also the ability of the U.S. Coast Guard and the American Bureau of Shipping to provide technicians to determined if the ships were ready to sail.

“Everyone did really well,” he said. “None of the ships had major issues due to not being able to be inspected or getting people required to the vessels.”

The emergence of more capable missile threats — more precise
and maneuverable ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles — requires more
capable sensors in space and total integration of all missile defense systems
and sensors in space, on land and at sea, the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) director
said.

That systems integration is particularly important to the
national defense network because “we are running out of islands” in the Pacific
and “there is a lot of space to cover,” Vice Adm. Jon Hill said Oct. 7 at a
Center for Strategic and International Studies forum.

Looking at the Pacific theater, Hill said MDA has been
testing integration of the U.S. Army’s land-based THAAD and Patriot missile
defense systems. “If you tie in the ships that are off the coast, you can
defend against all sorts of threats,” he told the forum.

Hill noted that in the original MDA charter, “we’ve always
been focused on the North Korean threat, focused on the growing Iranian threat.
Now we’re moving to these other threats and different adversaries,” he said, an
apparent reference to Russia and China.

“What we’re finding as we move into the future, our
adversaries are taking a different path” in missile capabilities, with more precision
guidance, hypersonic and cruise missile, he said. “Then you get into the
unpredictability of maneuverability. It’s very challenging. It challenges your
architecture, your fire control, challenges the methods by which you engage.”

“I do believe we are at an inflection point, for our forward-deployed
forces and our friends and allies.

We have to think differently,” Hill said.

Hill showed graphics and explained the latest test of the
Ground-Based, Mid-Course system, which is the main national missile defense
capability with sensors in space, radars on the west coast and in the Pacific
and interceptors in Alaska and California. The March 25 test involved a
simulated ballistic missile with decoys. The simulated warhead and a decoy were
destroyed by two interceptors, guided by a TPY-2 radar on Wake Island, the
sea-based X-band radar and an Aegis-equipped U.S. Navy ship in the Pacific.

The interceptors in that test used the old kill vehicle. Hill
said MDA is still working on detailed requirements before issuing a request for
proposals to industry for the next-generation kill vehicle, after cancelling
the previous attempt at a new interceptor.

He described a recent visit to the Aegis Ashore site in
Romania, where construction is completed and is manned by U.S. Sailors and
Romanian personnel but is not yet operational. When completed, it will join the
Poland-based Aegis-Ashore site and the four Aegis-equipped Arleigh Burke-class
destroyers based in Rota, Spain, as part of the missile defense of NATO allies.

Recently retired Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M.
Richardson advocated getting the Navy out of the dedicated BMD mission, to free
the four destroyers for broader missions.

Hill said MDA recently made the final production decision
for the new SAM-3 Block IIA missile.

He declined to answer questions about the recent
North Korean launch of what may be a submarine-capable missile and the new
missile systems displayed in China’s 70th anniversary parade, referring those
issues to intelligence agencies.

The return to an era of ‘great power competition’ and the
emergence of peer military threats “demands in no uncertain terms that the
services need to change to meet the challenges of the new world.” For the
Marine Corps, that change means redesigning the Corps into a naval integrated
force, the commandant of the Marine Corps said Oct. 3.

Although the details of what the future Marine Corps must
become will be developed through a period of experimentation, wargaming and
testing, “in broader terms, it is an integrated naval force. To be competitive
in the Indo-Pacific region and in the Mediterranean and elsewhere around the
world requires a truly integrated naval force,” Gen. David H. Berger said at a
Heritage Foundation forum.

“We have not focused on that aspect for 20 years. We have to
get creative” and examine “what can the Marine Corps … do to help a naval
commander fight his fleet. How does that contribute to a joint fight?”

Berger described Marines seizing land within the enemy’s
“weapons engagement zone” and using long-range precision fires — or putting
Marine weapons on Navy ships — to help the naval commander fight for sea
control.

Redesigning the Corps is his primary focus, Berger said, and
the process will be to look at the threat in 2030 and plan back from there to
determine how the Corps must change.

“The strategic realities will cause us to think differently.
The realities of the world cause us to throw out old assumptions and start
afresh. We cannot assume that today’s equipment, the way that we’re organized,
how we train, how we select leaders, all of our warfighting concepts, we cannot
assume they will remain relevant in the future. My assumption is they will
not,” the commandant said.

Based on his observation and that of others, Berger said the
current Marine Corps “is not optimized for great power competition. It is not
optimized to support a naval campaign. It is not optimized to support the fleet
through missions like sea denial. And it is not optimized to deter a pacing
threat.”

Because the fiscal 2021 defense budget has been submitted to
the White House, any major changes will not show up until the following year or
later, he said. And his assumption is that those future budgets “will be flat
or declining, not rising.”

In his sweepingly provocative planning guidance released
shortly after he took over as commandant, Berger said he was willing, if
needed, to cut the size of the Corps to have money for the modernization of
equipment that will be needed to counter a peer threat.

In his speech and answers to questions, he repeated his
focus on shifting from reliance on the few,  large, relatively expensive amphibious
warships, which he said would be vulnerable to interdiction by Chinese
long-range precision weapons, to a large number of smaller, less expensive
manned ships and a wide range of unmanned surface, subsurface and aerial
systems.

“Mass will have a quality all its own. … And low
cost doesn’t mean cheap,” Berger said.

Most of the ships mobilized in a severe “stress test” of the
Maritime Administration’s and Military Sealift Command’s ability to get their
aged fleets under way in a crisis did “pretty well,” but the commander of the
U.S. Transportation Command wants to accelerate the programs to modernize that
crucial force.

“If it were up to me, we’d be doing it faster,” and he discussed that objective with Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, said Oct. 2.

“We’re in the process of working with the Navy.”

In late September with little advance notice, MARAD and MSC
mobilized 32 of their transport and support ships from both the forces normally
on alert status and those in the Ready Reserve, which take more time and effort
to get under way.

The exercise was a test of the capability of ships that are
considered ancient by commercial standards and the availability of civilian
mariners qualified to operate such ships, which include some of the last
steam-powered vessels in the world. Independent analysts and some Navy officers
have warned that the aged vessels and the declining numbers of qualified
mariners could hobble the Navy’s ability to transport and sustain forces
committed to an overseas conflict.

Of the 32 ships activated, “I would say most of them did
pretty well. We’re waiting for final results. But in terms of sea trials,
initial reporting, it was in the 80% to 85% range” of activating ships to task,
Lyons told a Defense Writers breakfast. “Of those 32 ships, the average is 43
years old. In commercial industry it’s about 15.”

He added: “It was a great pressure test. We’ll look at the
numbers, also get the quality assessment” in a detailed report that could be
available by the end of October.

Asked if he was making any progress on the three-tiered
program Congress has approved to modernize the sealift and prepositioning
fleets — by upgrading the newest ships, building some new ones and buying a lot
of used commercial ships — Lyons said “yes,” but he wants to accelerate the
effort.

“What I’d like to do in the authorization to acquire used
vessels is to accelerate that. … I know there is work now at the [Navy]
Department to fund the seven,” which include two new and five used. “I’m
pushing to accelerate. The Navy program now needs to be plussed up. … But the
secretary and others are in favor of finding the money.”

Lyons also expressed concern with the progress on efforts to
solve a far different problem that has drawn widespread criticism from Congress
and service families — the perpetual failure of commercial movers hired by the
services to get household goods from one home to another in a reasonable time
and in good condition.

The command issued a request for proposals two weeks ago and has gotten a lot of interest from firms willing to take on what would be a nationwide contract to provide the tens of thousands of household moves every year, Lyons said. The major failure in the existing program was the inability to hold contractors accountable and to lack of a national system with common standards and the ability to inform managers in different regions of a poor performing contractor elsewhere.

“Inside the Department, we don’t have clear lines to hold them accountable for delivering the service. … And most of all, we have to have a consistent pattern of quality of delivery,” he said.

The former commander of Special Operations Command and the
Navy SEAL leader who directed the raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden said he is “not overly concerned” about the current crisis with Iran, but
he is worried that the attack on Saudi oil facilities “may ramp this up a bit.”

Retired Adm. William McRaven added: “Everyone needs to calm
down a bit. We need to think through this,” try diplomacy and, “If that doesn’t
work, there’s always the sense of proportionality.”

“We don’t need to be involved. But if we feel something more
forceful is needed, we better make sure it’s proportional so we don’t get a
spin up and escalate the situation. If the Saudis escalate, it could lead to
war. We don’t want that,” McRaven said Sept 18 as he addressed a forum on
special operations forces (SOF) at the New America think tank. “We’ve been
dealing with the Iranians for decades. We know how to deal with the Iranians.”

He noted that a U.S. cruiser shot down an Iranian airliner
and “killed 298 innocent folks” in 1979 during the Iran-Iraq war, but it did
not lead to a U.S.-Iranian war. “Strange as it may sound, I think people in the
[Persian Gulf] are rational actors. Nobody wants to go to war. … We have to
figure out how to work it out.”

In response to a question during the forum, McRaven said he
“absolutely” was concerned about the lack of experienced officials on President
Trump’s national security team, because it diminishes the traditional process
by which the layers of experts and advisers develop options for the president.

“When you don’t have that process, or the process doesn’t
work effectively, or you don’t have the depth of experience you need at
different levels, then the president doesn’t have the best options. The
president is never going to be the subject matter expert,” McRaven said.

He also said he “never thought negotiations with the Taliban
were a good way to go” and predicted that if an agreement led to the withdrawal
of all U.S. troops, in “six months or a year, all the blood and treasure we
have put into Afghanistan would have been reversed” and all the progress made
in educating girls and giving women more opportunities would be lost.

Earlier in the day, Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan’s ambassador,
said Afghans had been concerned about the U.S. led negotiations because Afghan
officials were not involved, and she was “relieved” when Trump ended the talks.

Asked about the rash of scandals involving special
operations personnel, particularly SEALs, McRaven suggested the 18 years of war
in which SOF has borne a disproportionate burden must have had some effect. But
he said Army Gen. Richard Clark, the current SOCOM commander, “did the right
thing” by firing three senior SEAL leaders, which sent the right message to the
force.

In other session during the day-long forum, House Armed
Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and a Republican member of the committee
agreed that Congress needs to ensure that SOF gets the resources it needs to
conduct its vital missions and worried that the growing focus on “great power
competition” with Russia and China would result in cutting SOF funding to pay
for big war weapons, such as the Air Force’s B-21 strategic bomber.

Other panels of active or former SOF personnel and civilian
officials suggested that SOF needed to seek greater ethnic and cultural
diversity in the ranks to deal with the evolving global security situation,
which would include a continuing threat of global extremists and terrorists.