During a House Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) questioned General Bryan P. Fenton, Commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, about constraints to accept assistance requests.
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00:00Thank you, General. We'll start with questions now, and I'll start by recognizing myself.
00:07General Fenton, we had our office call about three weeks ago, and you mentioned the challenges of supporting all the requests of SOF that you're getting from the geographic combatant commands.
00:17In your statement, you mentioned a 35% increase from 2023 to 2025. Can you expand a little bit for the benefit of the folks here watching this hearing?
00:27Can you tell us a little bit, give us a better sense of what that number is and how many times you've had to deny requests and the reason that you have to do so?
00:41Representative, I'll start by saying the COCOM demand for Special Operations Forces is up, and I'm sure you've heard that from the combatant commanders that come before you.
00:51I think for a number of reasons in deterrence. First, they know that the highest value proposition in some sense that SOF provides is prior to conflict.
01:00The things we do to prevent building relationships, developing access basing and overflight, providing indications and warnings,
01:08along with everything we're doing to prepare in the event that worst day comes, closing kill webs or kill chains or sensor systems,
01:18giving COCOM commanders options and opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have, and presenting a whole bunch of dilemmas and challenges to an adversary they wouldn't have.
01:27I think that's why we see the demand going up, and that comes in the form of asking for Special Forces teams, Marine Raider teams, NSW teams,
01:35command and control elements, AFSOC, and that's that 35% increase.
01:40To your point on where we've had to say no, I'll give you a number.
01:44Last December, in one of the global force management tanks, I had to say no 41 times to request just like that.
01:51It hurt my heart. It's a high compliment that this SOF team has that value proposition to the entire department.
01:57We couldn't do it.
01:58We couldn't do it, in my sense, and I'll wind this down for you, is two reasons.
02:02There's certainly a capability and capacity piece against the great humans that do that work,
02:07and as you know, we've been reduced in the past a couple years by up to 5,000.
02:12But there's also now a fiscal constraint that's pulling at us based on an increasingly decreasing top line,
02:20a decreasing top line that now comes into play.
02:23So at times, even if I could put the person out there, fiscally, the cost is prohibitive.
02:29And I'll pause here.
02:30Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. We're going to do our best to fix that.
02:34Secretary Jenkins, SOCOM's budget has been relatively flat for the past decade.
02:40In your combined written statement, it is less than 2% of the budget
02:44and one of the few DOD organizations that has not seen an increase,
02:49although overall budget has increased significantly.
02:52How are you using your service-like secretary position to campaign for a higher budget for SOCOM,
02:58and how much do you think SOCOM needs?
03:01Well, thank you, Chairman.
03:02We love those kind of questions, so thank you very much.
03:05In my service-like capacity, it is very much my responsibility in Roe 2 campaign
03:09to keep those sharp elbows out so that I can advocate on behalf of our soft enterprise.
03:14And just last week, we had the opportunity to brief the new deputy secretary of defense
03:18and had a very warm reception in terms of examining what we would have to propose for 8% cuts
03:24because every organization is being asked to propose those.
03:28And we found a good reception in terms of we want to keep you whole the best that we can.
03:32So it's our responsibility to make sure that we interact with our service counterparts.
03:37That's where we see maybe danger is a strong word, but that's when they consider cuts,
03:42there are so many downstream effects to us that aren't often taken into account
03:46when the Army considers a cut or the Navy or so forth.
03:50So that's where we really hedge and defend our budget so that we make sure when services are proposing other cuts,
03:58we can step in early or before and make sure that we guard our equities as well.
04:02So it's an ongoing campaign.
04:04We have a regular warfare out against our adversaries,
04:06and we also run similar regular warfare within a department to protect our equities.
04:12Do you have any idea what that number looks like?
04:14I don't know the top number just yet.
04:16It hasn't been identified.
04:18I'd have to leave that to the deputy and the comptroller as well.
04:21But I know that those are actively being considered right now.
04:24Okay, thank you.
04:25My time is essentially up here, so I'm going to yield and recognize ranking.