Special Operations Forces (SOF) Week is held annually at the Tampa convention center and aims to bring together the defense industry with the special operations community, the idea being that open lines of communication between the military and industry will lead to better results. Perhaps the conference is best known for its live demonstration held every other year in which special operators fast rope from helicopters and assault a boat.
This year, the conference was bigger than ever, with over 30,000 attendees, likely close to ten thousand more people than the previous few years. The reasons for this are largely due to the prevalence of technology on modern battlefields, but also due to the popularization of defense investment over the last few years. What used to be a conference attended by salty retired admirals is now a massive affair, with younger defense officials attending.
The top special ops official on the civilian side spoke on one of the panels. Derrick Anderson is the assistant secretary of war for an office in the Pentagon called Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC), who started his speech highlighting recent successful special operations missions, including the Meduro raid in Venezuela and the rescue of a downed pilot in Iran. He also pointed towards Operation Southern Spear, the Pentagon's arguably illegal campaign of bombing suspected drug smuggling boats in the waters of Latin America.
"Our country has demonstrated American strength in our hemisphere in line with the national defense strategy. These SOF-supported maritime interdiction operations have taken the fight to the narco-terrorists [by] deterring these malign actors and their illicit activities, and sending a clear, unambiguous message that America will do what's necessary to protect our citizens," Anderson said during his speech.
Anderson then laid out his vision for the future of special operations describing it as being organized around five areas: people, policies, pioneering, partnerships and prudence. He put the emphasis on the people that make of the special ops community. "The success of any mission hinges on the quality, training and the well-being of the people who make up our force. That means we must be committed to recruiting, training and retaining a total force of soft talent, and to match this with our actions," he Anderson said.
