By MISSY RYAN, SHANE HARRIS AND PAUL SONNE | The Washington Post | Published: April 17, 2021 WASHINGTON The military and intelligence agencies are racing to refine plans for countering extremist groups in Afghanistan following President Joe Biden s planned troop withdrawal, but current and former officials warn it will be far more difficult to head off threats to U.S. security from afar. Biden said the United States would reposition personnel and equipment once the Pentagon pulls its forces out of Afghanistan ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. We ll not take our eye off the terrorist threat, Biden said as he announced his decision, to end a war that is now America s longest, a goal that has eluded earlier presidents.
SPECIAL OPERATIONS: Call In A Specialist For Instant Relief
April 16, 2021: U.S. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) once again leads the way in problem solving innovation. A recent success was the developing of a system that determines when the best solution to a problem is to send a data or OR (Operations Research) specialist to a SOCOM unit overseas. This occurs when SOCOM unit overseas has encountered obstacles in dealing with intel, Information Warfare or organizational problem they have been unable to solve quickly enough. For over a decade it was believed problems like this could effective be solved using “reach back” techniques that involved consulting with these senior or very specialized problem solvers back in the United States or some regional headquarters via email, chat or even video conference to work out as a solution. Finding that these communications techniques, while effective in many cases still took a lot of time (days,
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Delta Force is the Army’s special mission unit for counterterrorism and hostage rescues.
Created in the late 1970s in the image of the British Special Air Service (SAS), Delta Force has been at the very tip of the U.S. military spear for decades.
The Unit, as Delta Force operators refer to it, has been involved in all major and minor U.S. military operations and campaigns since its formation, including in Iran, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
Delta Force is part of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) alongside its Navy counterpart, SEAL Team Six, and some other special mission units that specialize in intelligence gathering and covert and clandestine transportation.
Here s what Biden said in his speech. While we will not stay involved in Afghanistan militarily, our diplomatic and humanitarian work will continue. We’ll continue to support the government of Afghanistan. We will keep providing assistance to the Afghan National Defenses and Security Forces. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Obama announced something similar in 2014, when he declared that, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion. Obviously, it did not. Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq and then Afghanistan, and tried to pass that off as withdrawals. The mission was renamed and American forces were redefined as being there to support the Iraqi and Afghan forces.