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America's New SOF Commander Wants to Predict the Future
 [Defense One] Tampa, Fla. -- Getting "left of bang" in a ready position to deal with new threats in their early stages is the most important challenge for the future of U.S. special operations forces, according to their new commander, Gen. Raymond "Tony" Thomas.The little-known Army Ranger, new to the 4-star spotlight atop U.S. Special Operations Command, sees America’s elite troops transforming from a reactive to a proactive force, one that operates globally, but still with a light footprint. Thomas’s vision is a force that is predictively employed, rather than reactively deployed. "It is in the area of left of bang where we must strive to be more relevant in the future," he said. Thomas has been working counterterrorism operations for most of his career. He led the first Ranger contingent into Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks and in 2008 reportedly survived a bomb attack on his vehicle while conducting operations in Mosul, Iraq. Today, the 1980 West Point graduate is looking to expand SOF’s global presence with more forward access into more countries, operating more continuously with partner governments and militaries. "Left of bang is less a technological approach than a people-access approach: being there ahead of time, having relationships there ahead of time, identifying problems before they become crises, developing that partner capacity, prior, not after, a response. We are too often on the other side of that," Thomas said Tuesday, at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, or SOFIC, in Tampa. Posted by: Donald Trump 2016-05-25 |
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