Air Force Special Ops Prepares for Massive, Great Power War

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By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

(Washington D.C.) Air Force Special Operators have a lot of jobs. They can attack from V-22 Ospreys behind enemy lines, conduct high-risk aerial reconnaissance when confronted by advanced air defenses and fly dangerous fixed-wing close air support missions. In fact, all of these are all mission possibilities more likely to be taken up as the Special Operation ramp up preparations for major power warfare.  

“The AFSOC that we have is not the AFSOC we will need in the future,” Lt. Gen. James Slife, Commander, Air Force Special Operations Command, told The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in a recent video interview.

In general terms, the Air Force Special Operations Community (AFSOC) is now experiencing a strategic pivot away from years of counterinsurgency back toward its earlier operational functions which primarily involved providing support to larger joint forces.

“AFSOC had been a force that was largely geared to short term crisis response and contingency operations, and was generally used to serving a supporting role to the broader Joint Force. After September 11, both of those things changed. We needed to become something fundamentally different,” Slife said.

Following the strategic, tactical and operational shift which emerged following 9/11, Air Force Special Operators were thrust into what Slife referred to as “the better part of 20 years without a break.”