Briefing on Special Operations Forces Capabilities

Special Briefing on Special Operations ForcesCapabilitiesNEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United Rosetta Stone V3 StatesDepartment of DefenseDoD News Briefing Robert Andrews,PDASD for Special Operations and Low-Intensity ConflictWednesday, December 12, 2001 - 3 p.m. EST(Specialbriefing on special operations forces capabilities. Alsoparticipating: Army Col. Dave McCracken and Air Force Lt.Col. Gary Holland from the OASD SOLIC and Navy Capt. TimTaylor, director, DoD Press Operations.)Taylor: Goodafternoon. This afternoon we're going to have a briefing onSpecial Operations capabilities. The briefer will be RobertAndrews, who is the principal deputy assistant secretary ofDefense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict.And he'll make a brief presentation and then be able toanswer some of your questions.We have some of his seniorcolleagues with him. Colonel Dave McCracken, from the Army,is here, Captain Bob Schoultz from Naval -- Navy SpecialForces is here, and Lieutenant Colonel Gary Holland from theAir Force. So after --Andrews: I also have SteveHoogland from SOCOM.Taylor: Excellent. Okay. SteveHoogland from Special Operations Command. Mr. Andrews willmake a brief presentation, and then we will take somequestions.Mr. Andrews?Andrews: Thanks a lot.As Timsaid, I'd like to make a short statement and then answeryour questions.I think among the defense intellectuals,or at least among the cognoscenti, we heard a lot ofbuzzwords about "asymmetric warfare" before 9/11. Usuallythe term, as it was applied then, applied to something ouropponents would do to us. Now, obviously, 9/11 was oneexample of that. But asymmetric warfare can cut both ways,and I think that al Qaeda and the Taliban can testify tothat now.I'm proud to have Bob Schoultz, who is a NavySeal, Steve Hoogland, who is our Ranger representative, GaryHolland, who is -- one of his main claims to fame is AC-130gunship driver, and Dave McCracken, U.S. Army SpecialForces, also a Ranger and qualified diver. Unfortunately, wewere unable to have some of our colleagues here from theBritish Special SAS, or the Jordanian operations.I'd liketo make a point and just suggest it to you, that you thinkabout it when you're writing about these people and the jobsthat they're doing. And Rosetta Stone Latin America Spanish I think you might want to thinkabout it when the lessons of this war are being written, andI think that you guys will be writing them, and that is, isthat these people here, and these very special people, havechanged the face of war.Before 9/11, a term called"defense transformation" was a buzzword, very much likeasymmetrical warfare. And very much like asymmetricalwarfare, it was a product of coffee-shop discussions andtheory. But now I think it's real.You're seeing inAfghanistan the Special Operations forces and airpower are acombination that the defense intellectuals are going to haveto digest over the coming months and years. The SpecialOperations forces dramatically increased the effectivenessof the air campaign, and on the ground, they turned theNorthern Alliance into a conquering army.I think one ofthe better articles I've seen about Special Ops came out ofPeter Finn's Washington Post article, I think December 11th.Did any of you here read that yet, about Captain Amerine? Iwas a Special Forces captain in the Vietnam War, and thataccount that came out in the Post -- I thought, gee, I'dgive my eye teeth just to be able to do what that guy wasable to do. At any rate, it was a grown up juvenile's dreamcome true.I think that also, too, what's happened in thepast weeks in Special Operations is we've had a exponentialincrease in the ability of our people on the ground and inthe air to talk to each other, to work together, and thishas been due to a large amount of hard thought, and I'm hereto testify, some hard thumping from my boss, the secretaryof Defense, on this.I'd like to also talk a little bit --how many of you went down at Bragg last Wednesday with -- orWednesday before last -- with the secretary, just beforeThanksgiving? Thought Rosetta Stone Arabic I saw a couple of familiar faces inthe room, here.