contingency operations again expose systemic weaknesses in the current arrangement.
Operational Disconnects
The organizational split between Active and Reserve CA in 2006 was largely driven by then-Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s opinion that the failures of OEF/OIF required a shift in CA force structure to better support the conventional Army’s needs
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to not distract the focus
of the Special Operations community from its Direct
Action focus. Despite a clear preference to remove CA
from the Special Operations community due to the
strain of managing the readiness challenges of reservists, USSOCOM argued that CA was a capability that
belonged within Special Operations Forces (SOF).
As a compromise, nearly all Reserve CA was shifted out of USASOC in late 2006. As explained by Brigadier General Hugh Van Roosen in his 2009 Army War
College paper, this had a significant effect on the integration, readiness, and doctrinal clarity of Reserve CA
as it “consistently violated three of its four SOF truths
and imperatives. These include: humans are more important than hardware; quality is better than quantity;
Special Operations Forces cannot be mass produced;
and, competent Special Operations Forces cannot be
created after emergencies occur.”2 After eight years of
continuous deployments under this arrangement, the
result has been a parallel CA community, with Active
and Reserve units training and deploying separately
and little shared knowledge between them before,
during, or after respective deployments.
The removal of USACAPOC from USASOC and
the explicit relegation of Active CA to SOF missions
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