Special Operations Forces Training and Readiness
The increasing demands placed on U.S. special operations forces have created new challenges for training and retention that were described at a congressional hearing last year (pdf).
“Recruiting since 9/11 has not been a problem for Special Operations Forces,” said Gen. Bryan D. Brown, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. “Every seat in every school is full to start the course.”
But only “about 23 percent graduate from the course,” said Gen. Brown. “They fail the course for all kinds of reasons, one of them being their inability to pass the [foreign] language portion.”
“And so if you can hit a target at 600 meters, that is great, but unless you can speak a language that we ask you to learn, you are still not going to graduate and wear a Special Forces tab.”
Background on the status of Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps special operations forces was presented in the January 2007 hearing volume that was published last month along with detailed answers to questions for the record. See “Current Manning, Equipping and Readiness Challenges Facing Special Operations Forces,” hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, January 31, 2007.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.