His major concerns: "The biggest concern that I have involves our people. We are a people-based force, so it's the human dimension that's most important to us. We are dependent on the military services for high-quality people, so as a result of the downsizing that has occurred, we're drawing from a much smaller population. Our requirements have basically stayed the same, so the challenge that we have is maintaining the same quality of entry-level people out of a base that's much smaller. At the same time, we face the challenge of retaining the experienced people we have. We can't afford to lose them, given the level of training we've put into them. It really boils down to taking care of people and having meaningful work for them. We're fortunate in that we have, in general, exceeded the Service averages in retention.

"My second biggest concern is maintaining our current readiness and ensuring our future readiness through our modernization programs. That's a challenge because of our budget constraints. We're working very hard to prioritize our available funds most appropriately and to come up with the efficiencies we require, in order to maintain our warrior focus and train to a very high standard while investing in the future--taking some risks now so that the next generation of SOF [Special Operations Forces] will have leading-edge technology."

High operational tempo rates for units and personnel tempo rates for selected specialties: "OPTEMPO and PERSTEMPO are less of a challenge now than they were, although our people have been heavily committed around the world. We've managed OPTEMPO/PERSTEMPO effectively. We set some marks on the wall a couple years ago; for example, 180 days a year [away from home station] as a danger point for our people. You have to remember that people join SOF because they are highly motivated individuals who want to deploy and do things, people who are really 'leaning forward in the harness.' At the same time, we realize that, for our future health, we've got to manage this so we take advantage of the energy our people have while pacing them for the long term. We've got everyone down below the 180-day mark now. Our most deployed specialities today are in the 160-170-day range, and we watch those statistics very carefully."

Combat search and rescue: "CSAR is [designated] a service responsibility, but we have typically provided it in recent years for other services' operations because they haven't developed, and invested in, that capability. We have been doing CSAR continuously from Brindisi, Italy for the entire duration of the Bosnia operation and have had to support the Air Force in Turkey off and on. The services have been placed on notice by the JCS Chairman to [rectify the situation], because when we conduct CSAR for everyone, it's done at the peril of the SOF mission--in other words, there's a tradeoff.

"Air Combat Command is making forward progress in assuming more of the CSAR mission for Air Force operations. What we're hoping is that, as we transition to the CV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft and our MH-53J Pave Low helicopters and some MC-130Ps begin to leave the force, some might migrate into the Air Force inventory for the search-and-rescue mission."

Concepts for future SOF: "As we look at what is happening on the conventional forces side, we see a move toward more precision, greater strategic mobility, smaller organizations, and massing effects, not forces--all of which are very much what has defined SOF up to now. So as the conventional forces move in our direction, a legitimate question for us to ask is, what is it we're going to do in the future that's going to add value and keep us special? I think we have some good answers to that. We have developed a future SOF vision that encompasses four essential characteristics.

"The first is greater strategic agility. As the services reduce their forward-based forces, we are looking at having enhanced joint basing forward. In the future you'll see joint SOF--Army, Navy, and Air Force SOF elements--forward-based in the Pacific, Southwest Asia, Europe, and even Latin America under a theater SOC [special operations command], with foreign language skills and cultural awareness appropriate to that geographic theater and a knowledge of the operational area, because they will train and rehearse there regularly. You will also see major platforms forward-based. The first tilt-rotor CV-22s we get, for example, will go to the Pacific theater, where you will also find Army special operations helicopters, along with tanker support, under a joint special operations air component command that will provide command and control both in peacetime and in wartime. The end result is that our strategic agility will have less to do with getting on C-17 transports in the US to deploy overseas and more with being able to move rapidly in any direction within an overseas theater to deal with crises.

"The third attribute you will see is that we will continue to be a little bit out in front of everyone else in the information-dominance business because of our forward presence and our leading-edge technologies, particularly in communications and sensors. When you get into psychological operations, command and control warfare, and information warfare, we are a very good resource. One of the charts I use says, 'It's less Clausewitz and more Sun Tzu today.' Sun Tzu said the acme of military victory is to defeat your enemy without having to fight. A lot of that comes from the ability to use information--deception, psychological warfare, electronic warfare, all those kinds of things--and SOF is particularly suited for that.

"The fourth attribute is what we call global access, an ability to go anywhere on the face of the earth or under the sea. Our modernization programs are giving us ever-increasing capability--capability unmatched in any other service. Right now, SOF can get to about 80 percent of the world's surface. Within the next decade, we will be able to go to 100 percent of the places on this Earth, whether adversaries want us to be there or not--in some cases without their knowing we're there; in other cases where they can see something happening but don't know that we're behind it; and in others where they try to stop us but can't."

Last summer's controversy over SOF training of foreign troops under the JCET program in countries with poor human rights records: "The idea behind JCETs is to use SOF to help meet the geographic CinCs' engagement responsibilities and, at the same time, to fulfill SOF requirements to train in foreign countries where we speak the language and understand the culture to hone our regional expertise. Under the [1991 law], SOF are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of JCET missions. We're not there to give foreign troops equipment or resources, we're there to operate in their environment. As a by-product, they get some training. We budget for JCETs, because they are a part of our training program. The geographic CinCs tell us the countries where they would like us engaged, and the US ambassadors in those countries are [in the loop]. If the ambassadors have ever had a problem with units the CinC wants us to train with, they've had ample opportunity to voice their objections, because the embassy must approve country clearance for our special operators.

"In order to leave nothing to chance, we now have a formal system in place where we announce our intention to undertake a JCET mission three months before it occurs, and report what we did in the past three months, to OSD [the Office of the Secretary of Defense], which provides that information to Congress. And we coordinate now, through the geographic CinCs and the ambassadors and their country teams, with the State Department so they actually review each foreign military unit with which a JCET is planned to see if there's any reason, such as human rights violations, to object to the training."

SOF's priority mission of counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction: "We've made a lot of progress. The tough thing about counterproliferation is that, the more capability you get and the more you learn about it, the bigger the problem becomes. We've put a lot of resources against the mission, and we've had a lot of help from OSD. I can't say much about our efforts because of classification restrictions, but the fact of the matter is, we truly are looking at the bull right between the eyes. This is an important area that we have accorded a very high priority."

Force structure: "We came through last year's QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] in very good shape. The one thing the QDR wanted us to do was to deactivate two Army National Guard Special Forces battalions, but we successfully rebutted that recommendation, basically because we have such a tremendous demand for Special Forces from the geographic CinCs. European Command, in particular, asked for two more SF battalions to cover Africa and the former Soviet Union."

The evolution of SOF during Schoomaker's career: "I came into SOF in the late 1970s, when we were perhaps at our lowest point. We had no Ranger Regiment, no 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, no JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command], and no special mission units. I participated in the Desert One hostage rescue attempt in Iran in 1980, and that became a watershed event. The problem we had at Desert One was that we had great capability in some areas but didn't have good capability in others, one of which was the ability to get there--the global access that I talked about earlier. We didn't have joint command and control. That's why JSOC was created, to provide some standing capability. We didn't have the close links with the intelligence community that we enjoy today. We didn't have [MH-53J] Pave Low helicopters, PC [coastal patrol] ships, [MC-130] Combat Talons, air-refuelable helicopters, night-vision capability, or robust communications gear. It's really incredible how far our SOF have come since 1980 in terms of joint capabilities and equipment.

"We have this saying, 'Don't confuse enthusiasm with capability.' A lot of units are flashy and talk big, but it doesn't count unless you can do it. I'm very proud when I think of the very real capabilities that SOF provide today and their great utility in day-to-day operations." *