Battling The Bureaucracy: THE ROUGH ROAD TO REBUILDING THE U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCE CAPABILITIES 1976-1989 - Softcover

Today, the capabilities of the men and women of the United States Special Operations Forces (SOF) are recognized as a valuable and unique asset in the national picture. The capabilities we now take for granted were achieved despite the strongest efforts of many DOD senior Flag officers and civilian Appointees to obstruct, deny or delay the creation of these capabilities in the beginning. After every war we are quick to rapidly demobilize these essential capabilities. After our pullout from Vietnam in the mid-70’s we repeated the past. By 1979, the U.S. SOF structure was slim, under strength, over stressed and working with aged and aging equipment in far fewer numbers than prudence required. This was, for the most part, a directed state of minimal resources. It took an unfortunate accident on the desert of Iran in 1980 to create an awareness of the poor state of our Special Operation Forces and the requirement to rebuild, strengthen and enhance these capabilities to counter emerging threats that were largely immune to the capabilities of our conventional forces. It took a combination of citizens – military, civilian and elected representatives to rebuild our national competency and expand our range of options. This book attempts to describe the long path and the many obstacles that had to be overcome to reach our current level of capabilities. This task took more than seven years of extraordinary effort. Today, our Special Operations Forces are a preferred instrument of our national resolve and quite justifiably can be considered both a “Shield and the tip of the Spear.”