Z.26: The Ship of Theseus

I was supposed to draft a piece this week about Jennifer Pahlka’s brilliant Substack post on ‘A Three Horizons Framework for Government Reform’. The post coincided with a quote from a strategist friend of mine, and Pahlka’s ‘Future state’ vs. ‘Status quo’ paradigm is the perfect lens to leverage.

But then fellow army officer Ned Marsh went and published his two-part piece in the Irregular Warfare Institute (IWI) (Part one, and two).¹

The article, which argues Green Berets (GB) have lost their way, has kicked up a significant buzz, and garnered a flurry of replies. Thus, my system reform article is going to have to wait. If Special Forces (SF) insider baseball isn’t your interest, you’ll need to wait for my next post.² But if GB on GB violence is your jam, read on.

I guess we’re gonna do this…

This post is not going to be a take-down piece of Ned’s argument.

There are already others who’ve posted their own thoughts, with solid arguments. Retired commander Dave Maxwell posted his piece on the reborn Small Wars Journal. While I don’t share his particular focus with definitions, I do think he’s right to highlight the need for any reform to preserve the SF identity. Retired chief Maurice Duclos got IWI to run his rebuttal. He is right to highlight the criticality of our partner, but his belief that the army is going to PCS small units to foreign countries is off. I personally think Justin McIntosh has the best take on his Substack. He highlights that Ned’s original argument is undermined by strategic policy set by political leaders, not by anyone in uniform, regardless of headgear.

All these authors echo arguments made by Ed Croot in his 2020 piece (written while he was a student at Duke and later published by JSOU). Ed Croot argued the SF Regiment had been a ship without an oar over twenty years of GWOT, buffeted by storms and waves determined to take us off onto wherever their course wanted.

This was the article that Gordon Richmond researched as part of his piece last fall calling for the SF regiment to take on the call for introspection and direction. Gordon found the regiment has faced identify crises before. In fact the current argument is endemic to our branch:

Identity debates seem to surface cyclically after major strategic shifts. Leaders should view them not as aberrations but as predictable inflection points, moments that deserve doctrinal clarity and conscious stewardship.

The ‘Silent Professionals’ at SW

Gordon ran his original piece in Special Warfare (SW), where it sticks out as one of the few journalistic pieces in a decade of little more than fluff. There were even years when SW didn’t publish anything at all.

At the same time, the conversations inside the branch have been underwhelming. Marsh may decry how Lieutenant General Cleveland’s ARSOF 2022 was ‘filed and forgotten’, but ARSOF 2030 never event warranted being forgotten. It was vapid, and so it was just ignored.³

For years, the real SF regimental conversations have been elsewhere. Gordon found them on LinkedIn, podcasts, and professional writing venues. Both Gordon and Zachary Griffiths, the originator of the army-wide Harding Project, have been trying for years to transform SW back into a real branch journal. Candidly, I have mostly rolled my eyes at their efforts.

Thus far SW hasn’t shown any interest in the SF debate. They haven’t acknowledged Marsh yet, while plenty of other venues have published responses. While SW journal has resumed posting after their hiatus, few of the articles seem to have caught hold of the regiment.

For context, look at last week’s Harding Project. Their ‘Friday Formation’ provides a list of the week’s most impactful articles from across the army. It lists over a half-dozen different venues: Small Wars Journal, Modern War Institute, Army Press, The NCO Journal, War on the Rocks, Mops and Moes, From the Green Notebook, a smattering of Army journals, and of course, IWI. What’s not featured? A single article from SW.

Today our military is undergoing an inflection point which is not SF unique. Tankers are talking amongst themselves about what cheap strike means to their branch. Aviators are fighting to keep pilots in helicopters after their neglect of drones has found them unprepared and possibly irrelevant. Air Defenders find themselves suddenly back in vogue, which unfortunately includes threats to their large immobile radars.

GWOT is behind us, and today conflict like Epic Fury have one undeniable lesson for all the army’s branches: We need to figure out a new way to fight. SF should be designing its own way forward and SW is the perfect venue to host it.

On Beards and Boards

For the SF branch, Gordon’s post from last fall has a great ‘ beard’ paradigm.

• White Beards: the earliest generation, who spent the bulk of their active careers before 9/11.

• Gray Beards: spent pre-9/11 as junior enlisted or company-grade officers.

• Black Beards: came of age during the GWOT, which defined their careers.

• Beardless: Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Syria played only fleeting, if any, roles in their careers.⁴

Of all the authors I listed above, almost all of them are white beards (Maxwell) or grey beards (Duclos, McIntosh, Croot).⁵ Croot at least wrote while he was serving, but the only active serving GB who has taken on the future of our regiment is Gordon.

I’m not besmirching the white and grey beards. I thoroughly enjoyed debating over coffee with a grey beard last week. These former solders are as critical to keeping the history of our regiment as they are to helping us find our way forward.

SW should be the ship’s pilot that steers us toward the future.

I don’t use the ship metaphor lightly. While in Okinawa, one of the better PDs I ran discussed how the ‘Ship of Theseus’ helped us define our battalion. The philosophical dilemma is ideal for this very moment. Old planks and aged sails (white beards) have been replaced with new ones (beardless). Our former captains (Grey beards) have gone ashore, never to return to sea, leaving it to the latest generation of GBs (black beards) to chart our way ahead. The SF ship still must sail.

But SW is not currently captaining the ship. They have not responded to multiple calls to chart a way ahead. White and grey beards are doing more for the regiment than SW is. But the retirees can only do so much. The real work has pass to aged ‘black beards’ like Gordon, Zach, and I, and to the newest ‘beardless’. We are the current ship’s crew, though admittedly Gordon and I are outside the USASOC tribe. Perhaps that’s a feature?⁶

Taking the Helm

Do I have thoughts on Marsh’s post? Plenty.

Do I have ideas on what a SF way head should and should not include? Over a dozen.

I’ve also got notes on Maxwell’s, Duc’s, Richmond’s, McIntosh’s, and even Croot’s arguments. But as I said, this post is not going to do that. Instead, I’ll share those ideas as Substack Notes separately. The goal is as much to persistently thump the regiment to do something as it is to keep the focus of this post where it should be: SW magazine.

I still think SW is the ideal venue to keep the regiment talking and listening to itself. The magazine can choose to take on this role or remain relegated to little more than SF Group bathroom reading. That’s for the magazine to decide.

But regardless, the SF Regiment needs to have this debate. A ‘black beard’ needs to kybernetes this shit. We need to involve all the ‘beards,’ and this challenge cannot be solved in a single weekend at Fort Bragg.

Some of the conversations likely need to take place on SIPR. Unfortunately, despite the army giving me SIPR teams two years ago, SOCOM still hasn’t managed to figure it out. Whatever the solution, we need a space like Think, Drink, Write, Fight on a secure network to share the latest AARs and TTPs.⁷

Word is SWC is getting a new commander.⁸ Might be the perfect easy win for him to take on.

1. Full disclosure, I was an IWI Fellow in 2023, and the Deputy Director of Fellowship in 2024. Ned was a peer battalion commander, and hat tip to him for his IWI posts.

2. ‘Special Forces’ are a branch in the Army. They are not ‘Special Operations Forces’ which is an umbrella term for all special military units under SOCOM. This tiny difference is why you can easily find articles falsely describing Navy SEALs as ‘Special Forces’. Is it pedantic?

3. I was part of the team who helped publish ARSOF 2030, so I’m indicting myself here.

4. While I’m technically a ‘black beard’ all serving members are currently beardless. It’s a metaphor, just go with it.

5. Pahlka’s not a GB, but her age precludes her from trying out. I’m curious how she’d do though, but I’ll save that argument for Note #13.

6. More on this in Note #4.

7. TDWF is the CUI version of NSTR. Both forums were spawned by Nick Frazier with the sole goal of furthering the exchange of ideas amongst members. If you’re on SOCOM NIPR and want an invite, his me up.

8. The US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS) is where all Army SF is trained. It also has the worst acronym in the Army, which is why we just call is SWC for short.