Editor’s Note: While War on the Rocks has a high standard for allowing pseudonyms, this is an unusual case: U.S. Army Special Operations Command requires its uniformed personnel to use pseudonyms when writing for public consumption (Policy 23-16).

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Over the course of more than a dozen combat deployments, it is undeniably true that being dumb has sometimes been of benefit to me. Generally, however, I have found much more success in being smart or at least educated. Warfare is an exercise in brutalism, but those who wage it need not be brutes. Amid guidance hyper-fixated on “lethality”, one should be careful not to lose sight of what makes the U.S. military so formidable. An embrace of lethality is not an abdication of intellectualism. In the aftermath of a renewed social media dispute about the relevance and format of American professional military education, perhaps this tide of vague anti-intellectualism or anti-academic fervor is ultimately the result of frustration borne throughout America’s desultory forays into the Middle East and a misguided extension of an attempt to place blame or accountability.

The most able practitioner of war, however, requires more than just the hard skills of their lethal trade, ingrained though they may be in their bodies and minds from years of combat. They should always pursue knowledge and critical thought, in all realms, to fully flesh out their natural combat intuition. Future conflict may be surprising. Special operations forces should preempt surprise by broadening their strategic understanding while never abandoning their core skills and tasks. They should do and know more.

Lethality is a puzzling concept. A limerence for defining it will be frustrating for practitioners, academics, and policymakers alike. It is a moving target, not a goal, nor an end-state, nor a metric, but an iterative continual refinement of the ways in which we kill, remove, damage, or destroy the layers of the enemy’s offensive and defensive apparatus. The layers of this combination, the appendages of an adversary’s war machine, and the arenas and ways through which this is accomplished are all contextual and will shift and evade us over time and space. We should relinquish the obsession with distilling it into a neat and tiny package. War, this necessary and dirty business, demands more. We should not be tempted to distill the business of killing into an elevator pitch.

In military parlance, a “functional kill” on a piece of equipment, such as a tank, means that it is no longer combat-effective- — in this example, using its weapons — but does not imply the death of any actual people. In a world of great power competition and the haphazard flexing of various forms of power, is the functional kill of an adversary’s spaceborne early warning network considered a measure of lethality? Conversely, was it lethality that enabled the U.S. military to conduct its largest ever non-combatant evacuation operation from Afghanistan in 2021? The answering of these questions should not be relegated solely to war college-educated officers, capable though they may be. Education, both professional and cultural, is required in diversifying our understanding and implementation of modes of lethality. Policy, strategy, and theory are not arcane knowledge that should remain relegated to the officer corps or late stages of professional military education. Rather, the modern operator should view an understanding of policy, theory, and history to be as critical to their employability as the “hard skills” of their profession such as marksmanship, physical fitness, and battle drills.

The discussion of overhauling professional military education, writ large, is not a new one. In the current milieu, a variety of valuable contributions to this subject have been made, both within War on the Rocks and elsewhere. What is generally left out of these conversations is a discussion around the utility and necessary modernization of professional military education for the enlisted and non-commissioned officer corps. This omission is largely understandable, for a couple of reasons. First, formal education is rightfully baked much more firmly into the foundation of officership. Secondly, it represents a cultural artifact that any non-commissioned officer will readily recognize: Formal education is for officers and grunt work is for the enlisted.

As an infantryman of nearly 20 years, I have both observed and lived the reality of this cultural baggage. There is some value to this distinction, to be certain. In the modern era, however, this disparity in expectation of intellectual capital is ultimately an artificial and harmful construct. If I can not hold my own in discussions with my paired commanding officer on topics such as regional policy and escalation management, in addition to being the tactical subject matter expert, then I am unnecessarily limiting the ways I can be effective throughout a range of operational environments or levels of warfare. This is referred to as maneuver space within the military lexicon. My role as a senior enlisted leader involves understanding the relevant policy and strategy enough to illuminate ways in which my subordinates can apply their expertise in pursuit of the commander’s intent. Addressing this requires a change within our culture as well as within the enlisted professional military education ecosystem. More schooling alone will not fix collective expectations of what is capable of being achieved.

Victims of Success

It is difficult to recognize and break the trend of recency bias, and this is especially true for servicemembers who fought a particular type of war for many years. Joint doctrine published by the Joint Chiefs of Staff designates 12 core activities for special operations forces across all domains and warfighting functions. The primary character of warfare during the past 20-plus years necessarily prioritized some core activities over others, across all branches. This fact is neither good nor bad — it simply reflects the reality of warfare imposing itself upon those who would wage it.

The catalyst of the conflicts, the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, set the stage for an outsized special operations role. The course of conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria necessitated the rise of counterterrorism as a strategic pillar of American military employment. The primacy of counterterrorism, a core mandate of special operations, catalyzed the mission focus of both special operations and conventional forces into an unhealthy convergence: Some roles and missions performed by special operations in previous decades were relegated to conventional forces, while commanders and policymakers routinely utilized special operations forces in place of conventional forces or for conventional missions.

These trends, which developed gradually over time and were encouraged by relationships of convenience, shaped special operations forces in particular and measurable ways. A nearly 50 percent increase in manpower across Special Operations Command from 2001 to 2014 did not curb an increasing rate of deployment for its troops, nor did it help in alleviating the “mission creep” across the military as special operations forces became an increasingly utilized tool of choice. The increased reliance on special operations during the Global War on Terror ultimately affected readiness, retention, and morale in a community that became increasingly focused on direct action as the primary mission. Combat reality dictated special operations employment; however, there now needs to be a deliberate uncoupling between conventional missions and the special operations remit to adapt concepts of lethality to a shifting global environment.

In the aftermath of a partial conclusion to the Global War on Terror, some might wonder what leading role special operations forces are able to play in a renewed era of great power competition. In imagining future conflict, special operators should be wary of assumptions that unnecessarily limit their intellectual or creative horizon. Some might also, unfortunately, learn the wrong lesson: A good warfighter needs only to focus on direct action and its related skills, to the detriment of their greater intellectual depth.

Special Operations Command, in its comprehensive review released in 2020, recognized that a focus on special operations force employment and mission accomplishment was a causal factor in the degradation of, among other things, leader development and readiness. In learning from this, a more comprehensive methodology that focuses on a force employment that is necessitated by both leader development and cognitive readiness can be developed. A focus on force employment and mission accomplishment is by itself not alarming. When pursued toxically, incorrectly, or at the cost of ethical standards, however, the review shows us how both the force and the mission can suffer. There is much contemporary research contributing to a reimagining of the role and purpose of special operations forces in the modern era, and that body of work can be built upon by contributing a bottom-up perspective to better empower the enlisted core of our community. The Fourth Age of SOF thoroughly documents the organizational and intellectual agility of special operations forces, while simultaneously calling to “reinvest in special warfare capabilities” that otherwise suffered in the Global War on Terror shift to counterterrorism and direct action. Their wording is telling: A reinvestment is not a new investment, and a cultural realignment of special operations forces’ utility should begin with the recognition that small teams of specially trained and selected warriors have always been present in the framing of great power competition.

Nor is the idea of increasing the strategic effectiveness of small, decentralized teams a novel one. Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, made a call for this exact capability in his seminal white paper on mission command: “smaller, lighter forces operating in an environment of increased uncertainty, complexity, and competitiveness will require freedom of action to develop the situation and rapidly exploit opportunities.” Written in 2012 in the middle of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the white paper was clearly prescient. However, it is a document written by a commander for commanders. The bridging of the concepts contained therein and the institutionally recognized need for a “special operations forces renaissance” falls primarily on the shoulders of the enlisted and non-commissioned officer corps.

This intellectual realignment is not a new burden but is a return to foundational imperatives. The Army Learning Concept for 2030-2040 recognizes the strategic advantage of a “culture of continuous improvement and increased proficiency at every echelon.” Special operations forces, who are more resourced and uniquely trained than a conventional counterpart, should lead the way in exemplifying this change.

The Hunt for Maneuver Space

A reframing of the lethal capacity of special operations forces across the spectrum of strategic competition is necessary. As people, we are our own best advocates, and there is no better incubator for this paradigm shift than the ranks of special operators. An increased focus on understanding strategic-level thinking and policy, combined with recentering the role of special operations within deterrence, escalation management, and great power competition, ultimately lays a comprehensive foundation for achieving the Joint Chief’s vision for education to achieve intellectual overmatch.

The military evaluation of risk within great power competition may at times depart significantly from the framework used during the Global War on Terror. Diplomatic signaling, military posturing, and unintended escalatory action might replace concerns typically associated with conflict against violent extremist organizations. Such a nebulous yet high-stakes environment, sometimes of strategic importance, demands further exceptionalism from small unit special operations formations as well as the individual operator. They should have a nuanced understanding of relevant U.S. policy, to include gaps therein, so that they have not only an ingrained familiarity with escalatory risk management but also a tactically minded eye for exploitable weakness. Understanding the existing policy space within which an individual or a small team can operate, unilaterally or through partners, provides a freedom of maneuver that is achieved not through disciplined initiative but through foundational intellectual understanding of a complex environment.

It is important for the individual operator to understand that they have always had a role to play in the greater game of escalation management, from inception to contemporary imaginings. George Kennan, in the section of his memoirs focusing on his time at the National War College, believed that the maintenance of “small, compact, alert forces, capable of delivering at short notice effective blows on limited theaters of operation far from our own shores” was necessary in the calculated game of escalation management against a nuclear-armed foe. This does not neatly spell out specific requirements, yet the recognition of necessity provides opportunity for the creative utilization of special operations forces.

The rapid projection and employment of lethality is a hallmark of many special operations units, and this capability itself can hold a place within strategies of deterrence. Of course, Kennan does not have sole ownership in defining escalation, deterrence, or effective strategies within them, but it is important to note his foresight in identifying the necessity of what would, over time, come to be very similar to modern conceptions of special operations forces. Notably, a common perception of power projection as the massing of sizable military formations in the pursuit of large-scale combat is here subverted for the softer, more precise touch necessary to provide policymakers with scalable solutions amid the specter of nuclear war.

The era of Cold War containment, within which Kennan was integral, demanded military options below the threshold of nuclear and conventional war. The Department of Defense needed, in the parlance of the times, “a dynamic national strategy; – an action program designed to defeat the Communist without recourse to the hazard or the terror of nuclear war.” The proximal context surrounding this idea was Communist containment, and more specifically the means and ends of American counterinsurgency. The demands of the times led Defense and policy leaders to pivot significant resources, in both organizational as well as intellectual capital, toward the broad problem of counterinsurgency as a chosen method of flexible military response to great power competition. While it is perhaps hasty to think that there is a clear modern-day equivalent to containment-era counterinsurgency, the energy behind this pursuit in the 1960s is admirable. The character of strategic competition has changed, but the need for agile and niche special operations solutions has not.

The linguistic and intellectual framework that the U.S. Government adopted to discuss the global geopolitical arena, including policy, strategy, and terminology, is relevant if special operations forces wish to remain at the leading edge of combat application and lethality. This is no less imperative than the importance of knowing small unit battle drills, technical manuals for weapons systems, or the requisite standard operating procedures that guide a unit’s particular mission sets. Enlisted special operators often find themselves serving in a joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational environment, although much research has typically focused solely on how this applies to officers.

If the continuum of conflict is a valid framework, then lethality, always a friend of conflict, should similarly exist on a spectrum that defines its modes, means, and ends. Understanding the framework and language used to describe this environment is imperative for special operators wishing to provide lethal options within difficult problem sets, for which they are particularly well suited to doing. If forces endeavor to join the fray in gray zone conflict, then they should be able to conceptualize gray zone lethality. Working within this gray zone, this purgatory between unclear decisions and desired outcomes, is the natural environment for special operators. In the first stages of a complex and dynamic conflict unfolding with a peer competitor, small elements of American special operators may find themselves as the most proximal military element. In having the education, intellectual dynamism, and operational creativity to navigate and provide recommendations within this environment, they earn the requisite trust of effective mission command.

It is a fact, however, that resources are limited and training, equipping, and funding should be focused on certain things. Not everyone can do everything. Resources should be focused and allocated appropriately, but tactical creativity and the pursuit of strategic relevance should not be stymied if the United States wishes to maintain intellectual overmatch.

Reimagining Lethality

Conceptualizing and pursuing lethality should begin at the lowest levels of special operations units, which are unique in their empowerment of servicemembers at all levels. Like many cultural or organizational changes, shaking loose prior assumptions about the employment and purpose of special operations forces will begin most effectively with the individual operator. Non-commissioned officers, specifically, should understand that in artificially circumscribing their own utility to limited tactical employment and direct action, they hamstring the entire enterprise when confronted with new frameworks of conflict. The reality is that there are unique inflection points, escalatory measures, and core tasks that blur the line between strategic effects and tactical options within, or adjacent to, the broader special operations remit. This does not take away from the importance or role of conventional military forces.

Lethality might be more easily quantifiable across conventional military formations, but special operations forces should maintain a more cerebral, iterative refinement of continuously shifting vagaries of lethality. There is no collective better suited within the American military than special operations forces to practically navigate, and act aggressively within the confines of, this milieu. They often work in spaces that form a connective tissue for nascent or tenuous diplomatic and military relationships, extending American influence or interests to far-flung and would-be partners. Within this liminal operational space also exists critical adversary infrastructure or vulnerable enabling capabilities. Understanding the offensive and defensive considerations of such systems is paramount to special operations forces conceptualizing their role in relationships with partners, the protection of American interests, and the vulnerabilities of strategic competitors. Across the spectrum of conflict, special operators can evaluate these interconnected and partner-adjacent vulnerabilities with an eye toward lethality that perhaps bleeds into different instruments of national power.

The ability to see beyond and move past pre-established norms of employment rests not on the shoulders of academics or policymakers, but rather on the special operations practitioner and their creative intellectual dynamism. They should endeavor to train this foundational skill like any other and rest it upon a nuanced interpretation of lethality. Creativity has long been a hallmark of the selection process and training methodology of Army special operations, from the inception of the Office of Strategic Services, and proper tactical creativity has a firm grasp of the tools and resources available, to include policy, strategy, and systems interconnectivity.

Mentally agile tactical practitioners are a humble community: they understand what they know and what they do not know. Academic theory and military doctrine should not be implemented in such a way within professional military education as to limit the creative horizon of leaders at any level. To do so is fundamentally at odds with the greatness of the ideal which Ralph Waldo Emerson refers to as the American Scholar. In preparing for the unknown future conflict, the professional non-commissioned officer should understand relevant doctrine but should not be limited by it — an intuitive grasp of the environment overlain by said doctrine may suffice.

Diversifying Education

Senior special operators should be expected to be as knowledgeable, if not nearly so, as their officer counterparts on the meaningful application of their lethal craft in the pursuit of national interests. This serves to delineate roles rather than blur them, as each side will metabolize and implement this knowledge within their own lanes of responsibility and expertise. Enlisted should be trusted to be enlisted and officers to be officers, yet they should be empowered equally. This is not an argument for parity between the formal education levels of the officer and enlisted corps, an idea logistically infeasible and culturally undesirable.

In recognizing this, the looming false dichotomy can be dispelled: Advocating for increased education and intellectualism among special operations leadership does not equate to copying the officer model. In practice, it means that the force should endeavor to broaden the intellectual maneuver space among its most empowered, specially selected, and rigorously trained population. This can manifest in professional military education modernization, broadened access to flexible degree programs, and minute cultural changes to further the trend of a hallmark of the American military: an empowered and decisive non-commissioned officer corps. What should not be done, and which is pursued at risk of peril, is to shutter the cooperation between motivated servicemembers and great American institutions of higher learning.

Unfortunately, professional military education opportunities are significantly more limited for enlisted servicemembers compared to their officer counterparts. This can be hedged against with the inherent strengths of non-commissioned officers: a much higher level of expertise, relationship networks, and subsequent development of a Rolodex of multi-domain lethality. The service branches and their subordinate special operations commands should actively develop this capacity through increased incentives and opportunities for enlisted personnel to pursue civilian education programs, so that they can better internalize the relevant policy environment while utilizing their unique placement and skills to maneuver within its gaps.

There is nascent momentum within enlisted professional military education. In 2021, then-Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ramón Colón-López, along with the senior enlisted members from each military branch, published their vision for a new approach to enlisted development. The piece recognizes the necessity of jointness, but the force is far from an effective implementation. Enlisted professional military education opportunities vary significantly across the branches. Some education centers are attempting to modernize, such as the Barnes Center within the Air University, which, as of 2025, updated its curriculum and intellectual frameworks to address deficiencies in the conduct of joint operations and recognized developments in the conduct of warfare. Generally, the service branches do not distinguish between professional military education for conventional forces and for special operations forces.

The only environment currently meeting the intent of the 2021 white paper is the enlisted offerings within the Joint Special Operations University under Special Operations Command. The Senior Enlisted Academy, unique in its jointness, should serve as an enviable model in the education of joint special operations personnel. Its focus on strategic thinking, policy acumen, exposure to the joint force, and dynamic intellectualism can serve as a framework for the development of a more rigorous education pipeline for more junior servicemembers. There are programs approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for conventional joint professional military education, but they are assignment-oriented and limited in scope and availability. Regrettably, the current enlisted model across the force views true joint education as complementary, or duplicative, rather than as a replacement for service-specific options. Conventional forces might be understandably reticent to divide the non-commissioned officer professional development path in such a way, but it would ultimately serve to better prepare younger leaders at all levels of the special operations and joint enterprise.

On the civilian education side, there should be a reckoning between the ostensibly irreconcilable operational tempo of enlisted personnel and their desire for advanced studies. This is a manning issue at its core and is therefore the bread and butter of the senior enlisted cadre. A diversity of opportunity would help to ameliorate this problem. Partnerships with reputable universities and the development of flexible degree programs, perhaps modeled around an executive graduate program, should be pursued at the branch and special operations command level.

Currently, opportunities exist, but vary based on unit, organization, and assignment, though the trend is already moving in the correct direction. The Army’s Sergeants Major Course offers its graduates a Bachelor of Arts degree if they so choose. This represents a viable coupling between civilian education and professional military education, as it does not incur an additional time sacrifice on behalf of the servicemember. The Sergeants Major Course also has partnerships with other academic institutions to provide streamlined degree options. The same is true of the Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Enlisted Academy. I would argue, however, this methodology should also apply at earlier stages of a servicemember’s career. Mandatory professional military education can be accredited enough to apply partially towards certain degree programs, while the remaining requirements can be offered through partner institutions in flexible manners that fit into the diverse scheduling requirements of the enlisted force. This would perhaps offer easier paths for those interested in formal education, but should not be viewed as the only viable option for encouraging a more educated force.

In creating these opportunities through agile degree programs, with a manageable mix of resident and distance learning portions, senior leaders provide options to their subordinates without having to answer the manning problem on their behalf. A special operations team leader may not be able, or willing, to leave his position for 10 months for a resident executive master’s program, but perhaps a longer program with an occasional residency portion would be manageable. In keeping in line with the principles of mission command, the intra-unit management of this ostensible scheduling conflict is itself an exercise in disciplined initiative. The burden is two-fold: Organizations, specifically senior leaders, should relinquish some grip on how closely they hold their subordinate leaders and allow them to pursue short-term broadening opportunities, while interested and motivated junior and middle leaders should be comfortable in leaving their own subordinate leaders in charge while they pursue such endeavors. At its core, this is a leader development opportunity.

There is no “one size fits all” solution. If the Army is serious about educating its force, then it is owed to them to have flexible options instead of continuing to primarily rely upon significant personal and professional sacrifice.

There are many paths that may be pursued. While civilian education opportunities should be both diversified and pushed down to lower levels, they should not be the only option. College is not for everyone. The professional military education pipeline for special operations forces should also continue to professionalize and bifurcate from its conventional service counterpart, without subjecting servicemembers to duplications of labor, to better align with senior leader visions.

Ultimately, I am not particularly concerned with how others define lethality. There is utility in undertaking a doctrinal and colloquial common understanding of the term, but it should never be viewed as definitive or all-encompassing. The most intimate practitioners should continue to understand war as not just a bestial, instinctual undertaking but also a cerebral one. The personal stain of warfare will continue to elude those who have not waged it, been adjacent to it, nor been ravaged by it, despite the absolute necessity of civilian and warrior classes that tell their stories and opine on the nation’s use of lethal force on their behalf.

A democratic republic with a free press should always treat seriously the killing done in its name, and refuse the temptation to place its warrior class on either a pedestal or a gallows. As one who has dealt and will continue to deal in lethality’s trade, I am permitted some creative license in its interpretation during times when preconceived notions inevitably fall short of the challenges of conflict. I hope others feel the same. By the grace of fortune, I can hone my lethality through cerebral pursuits which the uninformed or unimaginative might deem superfluous. I, a lone grunt who loves improving his fighting position and scouring his hatchet, should strive to use all my tools, processes, and systems to not only imagine the possible battlefields of the future but also proactively position myself effectively within them. That is lethality.

Calvin Richards is the pseudonym for a sergeant major in the U.S. Army serving at U.S. Army Special Operations Command. He is a veteran of over a dozen combat deployments as well as additional operations in other theaters of conflict. He is currently pursuing a graduate degree in policy through American Military University. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.

**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

Image: Marleah Miller via DVIDS