-and-
2025 Theme: Global SOF: The Asymmetric Strategic Option for a Volatile World
Sources: SOF Week and Department of Defense
Photos: Courtesy
Held in Tampa, Florida, SOF Week is an annual conference for the international SOF community to learn, connect, and honor its members. The event is jointly sponsored by USSOCOM and Global SOF. The 2024 edition attracted over 19,000 attendees–almost 7,000 more than Joint Task Force Southern Border has troops engaged in protecting the homeland.
The event touted exhibition halls spreading throughout the venues, organized by functional areas for easy navigation. Plus, a growing outdoor industry demonstration program.
Nation’s Leaders Turning More to Special Ops in Volatile Environment
May 6, 2025 | By Matthew Olay
Department of Defense
The role of special operations forces in global conflicts has steadily increased amid what the U.S. Special Operations Command’s top leader called the most complex security environment the United States has faced in decades.
Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, Socom commander, discussed the current and future role of special operations forces while delivering keynote remarks today at the start of Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida.
“For the most pressing problems facing the nation, senior leaders are turning to SOF [and] it’s all against the backdrop of the most complex, asymmetric and hybrid threat security environment we’ve seen in 38 years of service,” Fenton said.
He was joined by Socom’s senior enlisted leader, Army Command Sgt. Maj. Shane Shorter.
Fenton said today’s threat environment includes adversaries operating in isolation, multiple threats converging, and a rapid pace of technological change that hasn’t been seen in the past.
“Special operations forces are the asymmetric strategic option for this volatile world; it’s the theme of this conference for that very reason,” he said, adding that SOF is a “scalpel” in “a world demanding precision.”
Shorter said adversaries such as Iran, China, Russia, North Korea and various terrorist groups have begun merging efforts in what Socom labels a “fusion of foes.”
“Threats aren’t just coming together through convergence, they’re collaborating,” he said.
To counter this fusion, Fenton said SOF must operate asymmetrically — that is, through “unconventional,” “irregular” [and] “asynchronous” efforts — across its three primary missions: crisis response, counterterrorism and deterrence. These efforts also include ongoing training and transformation to ensure future success.
“I think everyone in this room knows that we don’t train and get it right once. … We do it over and over and over again until we can never, ever get it wrong,” he said.
Fenton added that SOF’s global network of partners provides a critical advantage. For instance, special operations personnel representing 60 countries attended SOF Week 2025. He also noted that the crisis response mission demand for SOF has gone up 200% in the past three and a half years, which he called unprecedented.
Additionally, Shorter said the demand for SOF as a deterrent has increased globally by 35%.
“It’s not by luck that we’ve been able to meet this demand — it’s capability, it’s training to standard, it’s dedication and it’s harnessing the power of partnerships,” Shorter said.
Looking ahead, Fenton said SOF must continue doing what works while adapting quickly to changing threats.
“We’re going to keep doing what we do best, and we know we [have to] transform to meet this changing and complex environment. We [have to] do it at speed and we [have to] do it to dominate,” Fenton said.
He emphasized that SOF partnerships will continue to play a key role in building interoperability and shaping the environment before conflict even begins.
So, while adversaries have begun merging efforts and becoming a “fusion of foes,” Fenton said he is relying on the strength of another fusion — the personnel attending SOF Week 2025.
“The fusion of what we have in this room — interagency, industry, academia, practitioners and policymakers — is tied together and galvanized towards irregular and asymmetric options,” he said, adding, “We’re the scalpel, but when the time comes, we can bring the hammer too.”
Experts Say Special Ops Has Made Good AI Progress, But There’s Still Room to Grow
May 7, 2025 | By Matthew Olay
Department of Defense
The United States’ special operations forces community has made commendable progress in embracing and integrating artificial intelligence into the battlespace over the past year, but it still has room to grow to keep pace with adversaries like China.
That was one of the key messages from today’s fireside chat at Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida. Technology experts explored SOF’s use of AI and its ability to adapt and integrate it for defense, as well as leverage it to deliver innovative technology for national security.
U.S. Special Operations Command’s most significant AI-related inroads over the past year have been software-related, according to Akash Jain, a leader in the private sector AI industry whose company partners with DOD.
Jain said following a “pivot” to embracing certain AI technologies last year, Socom has been making significant progress with software. “I think, with the push by senior leaders … an incredible, incredible amount of progress on the acquisition and implementation side for software,” Jain said. “…stuff that’s moving really fast and can now become something that everybody across SOF enterprise can use at scale,” he added.
Jain said he would rate Socom’s overall progress on AI development for the past year as a “six or seven” on a scale of one to 10, noting that he sees areas where the command can continue to grow, including the need to further integrate AI into legacy hardware systems.
Thomas Tull, another AI private sector industry leader, agreed that Socom’s renewed push in AI development has been productive. “…have all leaned forward and said, ‘This is what we’re doing, full stop, and we are committed to it’; so, I think you’re seeing rapid change for the positive,” Tull said.
In terms of AI-related areas where SOF could work to improve, Tull said there’s an ongoing need to develop “digital fluency,” meaning an ability to not just use AI technology but also understand how it works and then be able to apply it effectively and creatively.
To that end, Tull said Socom has received a head start on improving the command’s digital fluency, with roughly 400 of the command’s leaders recently completing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-affiliated six-week course on the topic.
“I think enhancing digital fluency so that, as you push technology down, you have a workforce that not only is comfortable with it, but frankly, demands it,” Tull said.
Tull also said that, while he’s glad to see how Socom has embraced the need to integrate AI, the level of that embrace must be absolute to keep up with the pacing threat from adversaries like China. “You’re talking about the ability to pull ahead stay ahead; and I’m not sure that you can catch up,” he said.
He added that Socom should one day view AI as “the same as breathing or walking” and that it should eventually be part of every decision the command makes.
Both Tull and Jain agreed that SOF continuing to push industry to develop further advancements in AI is a key to future success on the battlefield. “…demanding, keep innovating. That’s one of the things that I think separates SOF — globally — is that there is this relentless drive to not be satisfied, to invent new things, to be willing to go first,” Tull said, adding that he encourages SOF to be just as demanding when it comes to AI’s development.
“Break stuff, come back to us tell us what you need,” he said.
Jain called AI’s future development an “all-of-American industry” endeavor, and no distinction should be made between the defense industrial base and the non-traditional defense base. “With AI, I think we have a generational opportunity to kind of set in motion what the future is going to look like,” he said.
“So please keep pushing with us and partnering with us. It’s been incredible how we’ve seen that progress over the last year.”
Senior Official Outlines Future Priorities for Special Ops
May 8, 2025 | By Matthew Olay
U.S. Department of Defense
Colby Jenkins, performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, outlined his priorities for the future of the special warfare community while delivering remarks today during Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida.
Jenkins cautioned the audience that America’s adversaries are converging across regions and “the thresholds between peace and conflict.”
“We do not need another threat briefing; we need action — focused and unrelenting,” Jenkins said.
He added that such action recently came in the form of guidance from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who kicked off SOF Week 2025 with keynote remarks, May 6. Hegseth said his focus is on defending the homeland, deterring Chinese aggression while maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region and shifting burdens to partners and allies.
“SOF delivers persistent presence, asymmetric advantage and strategic effects across all three priorities every day, everywhere,” Jenkins said, adding that SOF is also the only force in the Defense Department that delivers across all three lines of effort.
He then listed five priorities aimed at meeting Hegseth’s guidance: designing the future force to prevail in future conflicts, maximizing the performance and resilience of SOF personnel, ensuring training and readiness meet future needs, aligning capability development to strategic priorities, and strengthening resource oversight and the institutionalization of accountability.
Regarding the first priority concerning force design, Jenkins said there needs to be a shift from static formations optimized for crisis response and counterterrorism to “adaptable, tailorable, multidomain SOF formations” meant to prevail in high-end conflict.
“The future of SOF is relentless: smaller teams, faster decisions, smarter systems harder targets,” Jenkins said.
As for performance and resilience maximization when it comes to SOF personnel, Jenkins said future operators will need to be agile, resilient, physically and mentally capable, and able to thrive in isolated, high-pressure environments.
“We cannot afford to simply maintain the old standards,” he said. “We must sharpen them, modernize them and expand them without losing the warrior ethos that define our special operations.”
He also said the goal will be to build and preserve a force where human performance, and not just that of technology, will prove to be a critical advantage over adversaries.
“Because in the end, it is not the weapon, the drone, or the system that wins the contest. It is the person who knows when and how to use all of that technology and who refuses to quit; that person secures victory for us,” Jenkins said.
On the topic of ensuring training and readiness meet future needs, Jenkins said the battlefield of the future will be more complex, contested and ambiguous than anything SOF has faced before.
Because of that, he said, future SOF will have to operate in challenging environments while integrating cyberspace and electronic warfare. They will also need to conduct irregular warfare alongside allies, partners and indigenous forces across all phases of competition and conflict.
“Traditional training models and infrastructure focused primarily on physical skills and kinetic action will not be enough,” Jenkins said, adding that it will be necessary to rethink training for the future threat environment.
Regarding aligning capability development to strategic priorities, Jenkins said “innovation for innovation’s sake” isn’t enough.
“We must drive innovation with purpose, laser-focused on building the capabilities that allow our forces to impose costs, create dilemmas and deny advantages to our adversaries,” he said.
Jenkins added that SOF must harness artificial intelligence to accelerate decisive advantage.
On the final priority, Jenkins said strengthening resource oversight and institutionalizing accountability are necessary in an era of increasing operational demands and constrained budgets.
“Resources are not just dollars on a spreadsheet; they are the fuel for readiness, resilience and victory,” he said, adding that every dollar spent must sharpen readiness, enhance capability, or increase strategic leverage.
“We have an incredible opportunity right now to make sure that our enterprise has the resources that it needs and can divest of operations or resources or platforms that we no longer need. So, let’s take advantage of that,” Jenkins said, adding that no funds should be “wasted on bureaucracy that does not deliver warfighting advantage.”
After highlighting future priorities, Jenkins appealed to the SOF community for their own ideas regarding shaping the future.
“Whether you are in industry … government or the SOF community itself, you are part of this effort,” he said. “Help us develop the capabilities that give our operators the advantage they need at the speed they need.”
Jenkins said that winning future fights will not come from doing more of the same but from thinking differently, acting decisively and working together.
“This is our moment to forge the future of special operations,” he said. “A future where small teams create strategic impacts; a future where resilience, adaptability and speed win the day, a future where American strength and American values prevail. Now let’s get to work.”
Statement by Chief Pentagon Spokesman and Senior Advisor, Sean Parnell, on Implementing Policy on Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness
May 8, 2025 | Department of Defense
The Secretary is encouraged by the Supreme Court’s order staying the lower court’s injunction, allowing the Department of Defense to carry out its policies associated with “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.”
Today, the Department will issue guidance to the Military Departments and Services ending the accession of individuals with a current diagnosis or history of, or symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria and all non-medically necessary treatment.
Approximately 1,000 Service members who have self-identified as being diagnosed with gender dysphoria will begin the voluntary separation process.
The Department will extend the voluntary separation period for 30 days for Active Component Service members, and 60 days for Reserve Component Service members, and proceed with processing for involuntary separations after those periods.
The memo can be found here.
