/.../The Army, Marines and Special Operations Forces (SOF) "significantly contribute to the activities central to influencing the 'human domain' short of war" the paper states. "Such as peacekeeping, comprehensive military engagement, security force assistance, building partner capacity, and stability operations."
These are all topics that Odierno and McRaven have hammered home recently. McRaven especially has worked to modify the image of his SOF troops as musclebound door kickers and trigger pullers, instead focusing more on the range of capabilities they have traditionally provided, primarily in training and advising foreign forces.
A report released last week by the Center for Strategic Budgetary Analysis (CSBA) went a long way in backing up this new campaign. Commissioned by the Office of Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict to inform the QDR process, the report's author, Jim Thomas, said during a kickoff event on May 10 that SOF is "going to be operating under much more restrictive rules of engagement" in coming years, which has huge implications for the kind of intelligence that the US will need before undertaking an operation.
The report also provided a critical bullet point: In the 2,000 raids conduced by SOF in the year before the famous killing of Osama bin Laden at his Abbottabad compound, 83 percent resulted in a target captured or killed and 84 percent were conducted with no shots being fired.
It's a fact of the operational life for SOF forces that the SOCOM wants to trumpet as it transitions into a post-Afghanistan future that will likely focus on the "human domain" as opposed to high-profile kinetic action.