Special ops are critical to this strategy both to kill terrorists today (direct action) and to train friendly forces to kill terrorists by themselves tomorrow (the indirect approach). The model for this synergistic "yin and yang" is recent operations in Afghanistan.
"What you're seeing is a merging of those two approaches," said Christopher Dougherty, a senior fellow researching special ops at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "In Afghanistan, what the realization has been is that two things need to be coordinated," he told AOL Defense. "You can't have the 'black' side going off and doing their own DA [direct action] missions separate from what the 'white' BPC [building partner capacity] folks are doing."
The institutional result in Afghanistan has been the establishment of a single "Coalition Joint Special Operations Task Force" (CJSOTF) overseeing both direct and indirect missions by both US and NATO forces. Overall, Central Command, which oversees both Afghanistan and Iraq, has seen a massive increase both in special operations units and the planning staff to direct them. Outside CENTCOM, however, the regional special ops headquarters -- called TSOCs, Theater Special Operations Commands -- are notoriously understaffed.
"They're not up to the task, at present, of commanding these types of operations," said Dougherty. "It's been a pretty persistent problem."