Special-ops units and drones may increase in future military

BY JEANETTE STEELE

SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011 AT 10:21 P.M.



Members of a Navy SEAL team train at Fort Wainwright in Alaska. / Photo from U.S. Marine Corps

It was a band of 25 brothers, Navy SEALs, who took down Osama bin Laden last week — not a Marine battalion or an Army division.

As the United States gradually moves away from its major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what will its future military force look like — more like that SEAL squad working in secret and in tandem with theCentral Intelligence Agency?

Defense analysts predict there will be even more emphasis placed on special operations forces, a military community that has been gaining manpower but also running practically flat out since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“It’s hopefully going to be the new model. When we look at this mission, a relative handful of troops were able to accomplish what is quite clearly the biggest victory in the war on terrorism,” said Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C.

The focus may be used as an argument to subtract conventional forces from the terrorism fight and to shrink their numbers overall, even as America looks toward the growing military threat in Asia and the Navy shifts warships and helicopters to San Diego and the Pacific.

“My personal view is that it certainly makes more sense to have a small footprint and achieve the direct objective, rather than to use 110,000 soldiers to go after one man,” said Glenn Carle, a former CIA interrogator in the Middle East and author of a book about that experience.

Since 2001, the military’s Special Operations Command has seen its budget more than quadruple — from about $2.3 billion in 2001 to $9.8 billion today. Its ranks have expanded from 45,500 a decade ago to 61,500 today, according to The Associated Press, citing Pentagon figures.

“This raid by the SEALs basically will put a face on this development that you’ve been moving toward anyway,” said Lawrence Korb, also of the Center for American Progress. “Special forces have been going up in terms of their size, which obviously means their share of the budget has been going up. Whereas the manpower in the Air Force and Navy are going down.”

New faces at the Pentagon and CIA may continue the blurring of lines between military and intelligence operations.

Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Afghanistan war, has been nominated to lead the CIA, while CIA Director Leon Panetta has been named the next defense secretary.

The CIA is also a major player in the world of unmanned aerial vehicles — or drones — one of the most effective tools in the terrorism fight and developed by the San Diego divisions of Northrop Grumman and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

These drones find, monitor and photograph people and objects of interest, hovering over a target for hours without having to refuel or change crews. General Atomics’ Predator can be employed directly in combat; the CIA has used it to launch missile attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and, more recently, Libya.

President Barack Obama’s administration said it considered using UAVs to attack the compound where bin Laden was killed on May 1. Instead, the SEAL raid was launched based partly on long-term surveillance information from drones.

The Pentagon has said UAV programs are likely to be spared large funding cuts amid a major push in Congress to reduce overall spending. That suggests local operations for Northrop and General Atomics will remain strong if not grow.

Defense analysts said the worldwide drone market is projected to double in size — to more than $11 billion by 2020.

As more government dollars are being poured into special ops and unmanned surveillance, some analysts voice caution about the trend while others acknowledge the United States may not need 11 aircraft carriers, at about $4 billion each, and ground brigades stationed in foreign countries.

Mackenzie Eaglen of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., points out that the U.S. is depending on big Air Force bombers and Marine landing-platform ships for its role in Libya.

“All these are types of capabilities that many people in Washington have said we don’t need anymore,” she said.

Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said the United States has already made the necessary investment on special operations forces.

“It’s a niche capability,” he said. “We’ve got the best in the world, but you can’t beat China with that kind of capability.”

Staff writer Gary Robbins contributed to this report.

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