WASHINGTON—The Pentagon is about to restructure the way it fights Islamic State and other terror threats, deepening its reliance on the U.S. Special Operations Command, whose forces have carried out some of the most prominent U.S. military missions in recent years, defense officials said.
The move is designed to modernize the U.S. fighting effort and to better coordinate limited resources, including drones, intelligence, troops and funding, the defense officials said.
The new approach also reflects a recognition that the long-term challenge posed by Islamic State and other networks are global and not well-suited to the geographical boundaries defined by the Pentagon and its regional combatant commands, defense officials said.
“There was this recognition that we have this integrated network and we can’t deal with it in geographic stovepipes,” said a senior defense official.
“It was this realization that everyone began to have, ‘Uh-oh, we have a problem here.’”
The Tampa-based Special Operations Command—or Socom—has been behind the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, secretive training missions inside Syria, and raids around the Middle East. Unlike the geographic commands, Socom functions in regions around the world, making it a natural choice to coordinate a global fight against Islamic State and others.
Check out the rest of the article at the Wall street Journal
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.