In October and November of 2001, small numbers of soldiers from the Army Special Forces entered Afghanistan, linked up with elements of the Northern Alliance (an assortment of Afghanis opposed to the Taliban), and, in a remarkably short period of time, destroyed the Taliban regime. Trained to work with indigenous forces and personnel like the Northern Alliance, these soldiers, sometimes riding on horseback, combined modern military technology with ancient techniques of central Asian warfare in what was later described as "the first cavalry charge of the twenty-first century."

In this engaging book, two national security experts and Department of Defense insiders put the exploits of America's special operation forces in historical and strategic context. David Tucker and Christopher J. Lamb offer an incisive overview of America's turbulent experience with special operations. Using in-depth interviews with special operators at the forefront of the current war on terrorism and providing a detailed account of how they are selected and trained, the authors illustrate the diversity of modern special operations forces and the strategic value of their unique attributes.

From the first chapter, this book builds toward a set of recommendations for reforms that would allow special operations forces to make a greater contribution to the war on terrorism and play a more strategic role in safeguarding the nation's security.
Along the way, the authors explain why special operations forces are:
* Distinguished by characteristics not equally valued by their own leadership
* Strategically crucial because of two mutually supporting but undeniably distinct sets of capabilities not found inconventional forces
* Not to be confused with the CIA and so-called paramilitary forces, nor with the Marines and other elite forces
* Unable to learn from the 1993 failed intervention in Somalia and the national-oversight issues it revealed
* Better integrated into the nation's military strategy and operations than ever before but confused about their core missions in the war on terror
* Not "transformed" for future challenges as many assert but rather in need of organizational reforms to realize their strategic potential

Despite longstanding and growing public fascination with special operators, these individuals and the organizations that employ them are little understood. With this book, Tucker and Lamb dispel common misconceptions and offer a penetrating analysis of how these unique and valuable forces can be employed to even better effect in the future.

The national security system has an authority problem. The problem is highlighted by the debate over czars, Presidential appointees who oversee a particular issue area, often without Senate confirmation. The practice of appointing czars is controversial for the wrong reasons. Commentators worry that czars create confusion and circumvent congressional oversight. What deserves greater attention is why Presidents appoint czars in the first place and what, if anything, should be done about it. When the interagency process fails to produce the cooperation among departments and agencies necessary to solve a national security (or other) problem, Presidents often designate a lead individual-or czar-to do the job because they do not have enough time to do it themselves. It is widely recognized that the chief executive needs help integrating the diverse departments and agencies, but past attempts to improve interagency cooperation have generally failed because they paid insufficient attention to the difficult problem of authority. New positions or organizations are often created with great fanfare and directed to ensure a coordinated response to some particular national security issue-intelligence, warfighting, reconstruction, or counterterrorism- only to fail because they lack sufficient authority. Ultimately, the departments and agencies in the national security system see little reason to follow their lead. At the heart of the problem is the inability to reconcile a desire for a clear chain of command from the President down through the heads of the departments and agencies with the need to empower new mechanisms (individuals or organizational constructs) with sufficient authority to integrate efforts across the departments and agencies in pursuit of specified national missions. "Unity of command" from the President on down through the functional departments and agencies seems to preclude "unity of effort" for missions that are intrinsically interagency in nature and cut across those same chains of command. In this paper, we argue that solving the interagency integration problem requires an expanded Chief of Mission (COM) authority. COM authority is granted to Ambassadors to oversee and direct the activities of employees from diverse government organizations working in a foreign country, but it could also serve as a model for empowering other leaders in the national security system to solve problems requiring interagency cooperation. As we explain, the Chief of Mission model requires expansion to work well beyond the bilateral setting of a U.S. Embassy in a foreign country, including more legal authority, process adjustments, and wider application. However, the model does point a way forward to escape the dilemma that the current system imposes on Presidents who want unity of effort without sacrificing unified command.

Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-South) is well known within the U.S. Government as the "gold standard" for interagency cooperation and intelligence fusion, despite its preference for keeping a low profile and giving other agencies the credit for its successes. It is often cited as a model for whole-of-government problem-solving in the literature on interagency collaboration, and other national security organizations have tried to copy its approach and successes. Despite the plaudits and attention, the way that JIATF-South actually operates has only received superficial analysis. In fact, few people actually understand why JIATF-South works as well as it does or how its success might be replicated. This study attempts to fill the gap in knowledge about JIATF-South as a model for crossorganizational collaboration. It traces the evolution of the task force from its roots in the "War on Drugs" in the 1980s, through its original manifestation as Joint Task Force-4 in the early 1990s and its later reinvention as Joint Interagency Task Force-East (and still later, its renaming as JIATF-South), up until the present day. It then examines how JIATF-South actually works with the help of 10 organizational performance variables taken from organizational and management research on cross-functional teams. Investigating JIATF-South's performance through these different organizational lenses, and weighing the importance of each variable in light of JIATF-South's historical experience, yields a compelling explanation for JIATF-South's stellar performance. The results contribute to a better understanding of interagency teams and help answer the pressing question of whether successes like JIATF-South can be replicated elsewhere in the national security system.

The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is National Defense University's (NDU's) dedicated research arm. INSS includes the Center for Strategic Research, Center for Complex Operations, Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, Center for Transatlantic Security Studies, and Conflict Records Research Center. The military and civilian analysts and staff who comprise INSS and its subcomponents execute their mission by conducting research and analysis, publishing, and participating in conferences, policy support, and outreach. The mission of INSS is to conduct strategic studies for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Unified Combatant Commands in support of the academic programs at NDU and to perform outreach to other U.S. Government agencies and the broader national security community.

The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is National Defense University's (NDU's) dedicated research arm. INSS includes the Center for Strategic Research, Center for Complex Operations, Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, Center for Transatlantic Security Studies, and Conflict Records Research Center. The military and civilian analysts and staff who comprise INSS and its subcomponents execute their mission by conducting research and analysis, publishing, and participating in conferences, policy support, and outreach. The mission of INSS is to conduct strategic studies for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Unified Combatant Commands in support of the academic programs at NDU and to perform outreach to other U.S. Government agencies and the broader national security community.

The Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) is National Defense University's (NDU's) dedicated research arm. INSS includes the Center for Strategic Research, Center for Complex Operations, Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, Center for Transatlantic Security Studies, and Conflict Records Research Center. The military and civilian analysts and staff who comprise INSS and its subcomponents execute their mission by conducting research and analysis, publishing, and participating in conferences, policy support, and outreach. The mission of INSS is to conduct strategic studies for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Unified Combatant Commands in support of the academic programs at NDU and to perform outreach to other U.S. Government agencies and the broader national security community.

This study argues that interagency teams were a major catalyst in turning around the Iraq War, and that they will disappear from America's arsenal unless the knowledge base supporting the innovation can be secured. Most explanations credit the dramatic reduction in violence in Iraq between 2007 and 2008 to new U.S. leadership, the surge in U.S. forces, and/or U.S. financial support to Sunni tribal leaders. In contrast, we argue that the United States employed an underappreciated organizational innovation-interagency teams-to put insurgent clandestine organizations on the defensive and give population security measures a chance to take effect. By the end of 2004, Special Operations Forces (SOF) were using interagency high-value target teams in Iraq that were tactically successful-even awe-inspiring-but they were not making a strategic difference. Meanwhile, Army commanders in Mosul, Tal Afar, and Ramadi demonstrated that the insurgency could be beaten with organizations and tactics capable of conducting classic counterinsurgency warfare. They targeted insurgents and terrorists with sufficient discrimination to put them on the defensive, while population-centric security measures and influence operations pacified the broader population. The SOF and Army commanders used a kind of collaborative warfare that involved three separate innovations, each of which required interagency collaboration and all of which ultimately had to merge into a unified approach. The first innovation was network-based targeting. This meant charting the clandestine terrorist and insurgent cells and their immediate supporters in order to attack them, but also using all-source intelligence to reveal the local environment, its social networks, and key decision makers and their motivations. The second innovation was the fusion of improved all-source intelligence with operational capability. Having intelligence and operations working together in common space on a sustained basis produced persistent surveillance, improved discrimination, and better decision making. The third innovation was the integration of counterterrorist and counterinsurgency efforts and the proliferation of this model. All three innovations-networked-based targeting, fusion of intelligence and operations, and counterterrorist-counterinsurgency integration-required unprecedented collaboration between diverse departments and agencies and between SOF and conventional forces. Together, these innovations set the stage for the dramatic reversal of the security situation in Iraq in 2007. We explain the performance of the interagency high-value target teams using 10 variables often cited in organizational literature as important determinants of team success. The qualitative assessments offered by personnel with direct experience on the teams unanimously underscore the importance of common purpose, clearly delegated authorities, small size and collocation, and a supportive organizational context. Teams that did not develop a sense of common purpose were not able to override interference from parent organizations. When, initially, interagency teams did not benefit from clearly delegated authorities, their performance suffered. When the teams later were clearly empowered, their performance improved, but the issue of ambiguous authorities was a constant source of tension and a major reason for the fragility of the teams' performance. The ability of the teams to learn also was important. SOF did a better job of assessing the second- and third-order effects of their operations and made a greater strategic contribution after learning the importance of expanding their collaboration to include conventional forces. Finally, because departments and agencies could hamstring team performance by withholding support, cajoling parent organizations for support was a major preoccupation of senior leaders in Iraq. The U.S. experience with interagency teams justifies several broader observations.

Mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles offer a case study for investigating the current debate over the Pentagon's approach to developing and fielding irregular warfare capabilities. Yet some analysts now argue that MRAPs are not really useful for irregular warfare and are prohibitively expensive. The authors conclude that MRAPs are a valid irregular warfare requirement and that the Pentagon should have been better prepared to field them, albeit not on the scale demanded by events in Iraq. Also, the failure to quickly field MRAPs lies not with the Pentagon's acquisition system but rather the requirements process, reinforced by more fundamental organizational factors. These findings suggest that improving irregular warfare capabilities will require more extensive reforms than many realize. Originally published by the National Defense University