US special operations commander says the next war may require the military to ‘creatively destroy’ old ways of training

• Special Operations Chief says military needs to abandon some old training methods

• Pentagon under pressure to change sides 20 years after Global War on Terror

• Admiral says future wars will likely require new priorities and tougher trade-offs

to adapt new battlefields That could mean the U.S. military needs to clear its training calendar to make room for new priorities, a top admiral said.

“We’re going to have to stop doing some of the things we used to do,” Adm. Frank Bradley, who leads the Army’s Special Operations Command, said last week at the annual SOF Week event in Tampa, Florida.

Bradley recalled how as a young sailor he and his teammates measured water depth using a line weighted with a block of lead, writing their measurements on pieces of plexiglass with grease pencils, but as methods and technology improved the Navy began to adopt other tools for training.

“There’s only so many hours in the day and so many days in the week, and some of those hours you need to sleep to be ready and fit,” Bradley said. “And so you have a limited amount of time to prepare and train, and so we’re not going to add new things to the calendar for our SOF lineups or any lineups. We have to creatively eliminate parts of that schedule to make room for the new things we need to do.”

As the Pentagon seeks to transform training, technology and acquisition processes that calcified during the 20-year Global War on Terror, it may be difficult to dispense with irrelevant training.

Educational requirements are not always flexible; Some training requires senior approval for program changes, and some is seemingly outdated apps could still be valuable to the troops, which means cuts need to be made wisely.

There is pressure within the military to test new technologies. drones, counter drone technologyand electronic warfare and absorption modern warfare lessons From conflicts such as the war in Ukraine.

Many of the warfare methods and planning assumptions on which the United States relies Iraq and Afghanistan Gen. Frank Donovan, head of U.S. Southern Command, said at last week’s event that it was no longer being applied for.

“What we had in Iraq and Afghanistan was more; more vehicles, more [forward operating bases]More [dining facilities]more logistics, more unrestricted communications, relatively good weather, you know, clear skies, no trees, all that,” Donovan said. “SOUTHCOM doesn’t have any of that.”

“We haven’t really fought under arms in a long time,” he added, speaking generally of large-scale conflict. Courage and human ability withstand harsh conditionsHe added that it will continue to be important.

For special operators, that means balancing training on evolving technology with things like swimming in high waves to somehow surprise the enemy, Bradley said.

“Our leadership teams have to do this prioritization exercise on a daily basis about how they prioritize the most important commodity they have, the most important capital – intellectual capital. Where people spend their time and focus to grow and prepare for the next role,” he said.

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