In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) spoke with military commanders Vice Adm. Frank Bradley and Lt. Gen. Anderson about the impacts of drones on the battlefield and the effects of cutting special forces funding.
00:00Senator Kane. Senator Cotton. Gentlemen, welcome. Congratulations. Thank you for your continued service. Thanks to your families for their service and sacrifice as well. Admiral Bradley, special forces were targeted for reductions in forces and funding in recent years by the past administration. Could you explain what it takes to turn a conventional soldier, sailor, airman, or marine into a special operator? How many years does it take to build that kind of expertise?
00:30Senator, thank you. First, I have to say we have the benefit of being able to draw from the best and the brightest across this great population of the United States. Our services do the principal recruiting and we have the opportunity to be able to draw from within those recruits, but special operations provides a very, very valuable recruiting tool for those services as well. Once a candidate assesses into a service and has the
01:00initiative to want to volunteer to come to one of our selection assessments programs, a rigorous process both of their resume, of their psychological resilience, of their physical capabilities begins, followed by some amount of training and really grit determination.
01:18On the backside of that, that may take anywhere up to a year, depending upon the program. Then additional advanced training will continue. And then finally, the operator or the member will be assigned to an operational unit where, frankly, another amount of apprentice to master progression begins.
01:41And so for a fully up and round operator to reach leadership status, it's not uncommon for that to take six or seven years.
01:50So if special operations forces were to face cuts, you don't just lose capability, you lose a lot of time as well. That's correct?
01:58It does take time to build that operator. Yes, Senator.
02:02Versus say, just for the sake of comparison, the Army can send someone from the first day of basic training through infantry training to an infantry platoon in maybe six months.
02:18Obviously, they're a brand new private, just out of training, but six months versus many years. I think we should be mindful of that contrast.
02:26Next. What's your assessment on how drones are changing the modern battlefield?
02:32Every day, there's new reports of new developments in drone warfare in Ukraine.
02:36We saw a couple of months ago, Ukraine launch audacious attacks from inside of Russia with pre-positioned drones.
02:42It appears that Israel may have done something similar inside of Iran.
02:46I know you've probably given this a lot of thought in your current job and looking ahead to your future job.
02:51Senator, I don't think it's unfair to call this a revolution in military affairs.
02:58The changing, accelerating pace of technology, the ubiquitous information environment, and the advent of man-machine teamed autonomy on the battlefields of the world today are absolutely changing the character of warfare in our very eyes.
03:15Within special operations, and I believe the initiatives, frankly, that you have initiated here with the FORGED Act, the SPEED Act across the way,
03:24and the President and the Secretary's initiatives to drive innovation within the department are critical to allowing us to use the innovative spirit of our operators
03:34to be able to capture those problems and opportunities we see on the battlefield and turn them into new man-machine teamed approaches.
03:43General Anderson, given your current role, and also the threat of drone attacks from terrorist groups in your future role, what are your thoughts on this question?
03:52Yes, Senator, I appreciate that.
03:54It is transforming the battlefield.
03:56We are at a critical inflection point in history, much like the industrial age matured in the early 20th century.
04:01The digital age is maturing now.
04:03As Admiral Bradley mentioned, it's not just the drones we see today.
04:07It's what does it mean when we have autonomy and AI behind those drones and we have swarm attacks.
04:12That is not necessarily science fiction.
04:15That is in the future.
04:17So we have to take this very seriously, not just taking on the drone operations, but also what do we do to counter them and defend against them.
04:25So this is a grave concern for me as I look at the African continent as there are vulnerabilities out there for our forces,
04:31but it's also a vulnerability for our partners as well.
04:35And I guess I should say that it's not just potential terrorist groups.
04:38It's also potential insurgencies, uprisings, clashes of the kind that we see with unfortunate frequency in Africa as well.
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