Description
This project examines the wartime command and control of American special operations forces. Lawrence Freedman, Anthony King, and others have recently explored how modern warfare requires senior military commanders to balance political dynamics, innovation and change, and the devolution of authority. This project contributes to these lines of inquiry by identifying and analyzing wartime parallel military control structures that transcend official command arrangements. Using recently declassified documents and interviews with special operations personnel, military commanders, and policymakers, this paper will assess how analogous military control affiliations led to operational success or failure. The effects of these control relationships were felt far beyond the battlefield and served as an important indicator whether mid- and long-term strategic goals were realized. A total of four case studies will be explored. The first two will examine the transformation of Task Force 714 and the reorientation of its successor organization – Task Force 626 – in Afghanistan. The remaining two case studies will probe how Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force – Afghanistan transitioned from major combat operations to advisory and training activities in 2002 and how it incorporated the Afghan special operations enterprise into the coalition's order of battle a decade later.
