#E173: The Global SOF Imperative - Global Special Operations Forces Foundation President Stu Bradin (SOF Week 2025)

For over three decades, retired Colonel Stu Bradin https://gsof.org/bio-stu-bradin/ served on the front lines of some of America’s most critical Special Operations missions from Central America and the Balkans to Northern Africa and Afghanistan. He led Special Forces teams under fire, built NATO’s Special Operations Headquarters from the ground up, and ran multi-national, interagency fusion cells in the heart of combat zones. But in 2014, Stu Bradin saw a different kind of threat emerging: disconnected allies, stovepiped intelligence, and fragmented Special Operations communities. He knew the next fight against cyberattacks, transnational crime, and terrorist networks would require something we didn’t yet have: a global SOF network. That’s why he created the Global Special Operations Forces Foundation (GSOF) https://gsof.org/; the first nonprofit dedicated to uniting Special Operations military, government, and commercial partners across the world. Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ sat down with Stu during this year’s SOF Week to talk about why he founded GSOF, what it takes to bring together over 60 nations and 85 industry partners, and how his experiences building NATO SOF HQ and leading interagency teams shaped the Foundation’s mission. They explored what elite leadership really looks like at the global level, the danger of operating in silos, and why SOF must evolve its mindset as rapidly as its technology. Stu also broke down how GSOF accelerates innovation, helps SOF units and partners connect in real time, and creates space for public-private collaboration that can meet the speed and complexity of modern threats to answer the hardest question of today; what must Special Operations become to win the next fight? This episode is about global leadership, unity of effort, and how one Green Beret’s post-military mission is helping shape the future of Special Operations across the world. Highlights 0:00 Introduction2:02 Welcome to SOF Week3:17 Significance of Global SOF Foundation7:38 Prioritizing Small Businesses11:02 Defining the Next Battlefield19:00 NATO SOF23:05 American’s Propensity to Serve27:33 Winning the Next Fight30:55 Getting Equipment to Warfighters35:35 What it means to be a Green Beret Quotes “What makes us different is we’re international and we’re joint and nobody else is that way.”“Part of what you have to do as a SOF commander in the joint environment is unite your tribes.”“The innovation comes from small businesses.”“Most small businesses fail because of catastrophic success not catastrophic failure.”“If you’re wrapped in metal, you have zero probability of survival.”“You can’t just assume that your enemy is ignorant because they’re not.”“I wouldn’t want to be on the modern battlefield.”“Our deterrent is having the best partners we can.”“We back into wars, we don’t run to them.”“They’re going to be our future whether we like it or not, so we’ve got to make sure that they are armed to do the right thing.”“I think we need to give the NCO corps a lot more latitude.”“If people know you can get to them quickly, they have to calculate for that.”“At the end of the day, most of the stuff we’re fielding right now is not going to survive first contact.” “Ultimately, you have a less trained force.” “SOF, cyber, intel, information and economics. That’s how you’re going to win the competition fight.”“I just think this is the Special Ops time.” The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by University of Health & Performance https://university-hp.com/, providing our Veterans world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Our SOF Week 2025 Series is made possible in part by Accrete.ai https://www.accrete.ai/; solving business’s most complex challenges today through technology of tomorrow. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  For over three decades, Stu Bradin served on the front lines of some of America's most critical special operations missions. From Central America in the Balkans, to North Africa and Afghanistan, he led special forces teams under fire, built NATO's special operations headquarters from the ground up, and ran multinational inter-agency fusion cells in the heart of combat zones. But in 2014, Stu saw a different kind of threat emerging: disconnected allies, stove-piped intelligence, and fragmented special operations communities. He knew the next fight, against cyber attacks, transnational crime, and terrorist networks, would require something we didn't have yet: a global SOF network. That's why he created the Global Special Operations Forces Foundation, the first nonprofit

• 0:45Speaker 00

  dedicated to uniting special operations military, government, and commercial partners across the world. I sat down with Stu during this year's SOF Week to talk about why he founded GSOF, what it takes to bring together over 60 nations and 85 industry partners, and how his experience in building NATO SOF headquarters and leading inter-agency teams shaped the Foundation's mission. We explored what elite leadership really looks like at the global level, the danger of operating in silos, and why SOF must evolve its mindset as rapidly as its technology. Stu also broke down how GSOF accelerates innovation, helps SOF units and partners connect in real time, and creates space for public-private collaboration that can meet the speed and complexity of modern threats to answer the hardest question of today: what must special operations become to win the next fight?

• 1:30Speaker 00

  This episode is about global leadership, unity of effort, and how One Green Beret's post-military mission is to help shape the future of special operations across the world. The Jedberg Podcast is brought to you by University of Health and Performance, providing our veterans world-class education and training as fitness and nutrition entrepreneurs. Follow the Jedberg Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media, listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

• 2:01Fran Racioppi?

  Stu, welcome to the Jedberg Podcast.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thanks for having me.

• 2:05Fran Racioppi?

  We're on the floor at SOF Week. We're in the Tampa Convention Center. This is the brainchild of the combination of SOCOM and the Global SOF Foundation, which you are leading and have been for the last several years. But what an absolutely incredible event.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Thank you. Great team effort. So we got a great team to put this together. A lot of folks involved. I mean, there's probably 1,300 people involved in making this go.

• 2:30Fran Racioppi?

  Well, we're sitting underneath the escalators.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33Fran Racioppi?

  So we've commandeered what was, uh, somebody informed me a few minutes ago, had been a storage room. And I said, actually, it looks a lot better as a podcast studio.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41Fran Racioppi?

  Put your storage stuff behind there. But Jason's over here laughing. But we got, in 2024, you had over 19,000 people. You're expecting to meet that this year. There's over 800 different vendors who are presenting out here on the floor across, you know, multiple venues out here in the Bay. They got multiple floors here in the convention center. And the whole goal of SOF Week is to present to the global special operations community, the capabilities that exist for their organization. So I want to start by asking you about the Global SOF Foundation, the importance of it, and why it's so involved in bringing the global SOF community together.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  So I retired from SOCOM in 2014 with 32 years.

• 3:28Fran Racioppi?

  I did?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, just I'm a quitter. And so I worked for Admiral Bill McRaven for the last, oh, few years that I was in the military. I ran an operational planning team for him at SOCOM. And one of the tasks we had was to support the USGOSpace Intelligence Foundation's GEO in here in Tampa. Of course, nobody at SOCOM, nobody at CENTCOM wanted to cooperate with them. Admiral McRaven sent them to me and said, fix this. And so in the process of supporting them and getting GEO in here in Tampa, which was awesome, we brought in operational commanders to talk about how they use geospatial products and change it, you know, not nerds talking to nerds, but operators talking to, you know, the engineers, you know? So it was really a good experience for me.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  The entire time, the folks at USGIF kept asking me, why doesn't SOF have a professional association, you know? And I'm like, hell, I don't know. I mean, I didn't know what a 501(c)(3) was. Every time I Googled it, I was more confused. And, you know, we had something for SF, we had something for SEALs, but we didn't have anything that was joint. We just didn't have that. And so I was getting a lot of very good offers from private sector to come join it. And I just wanted to keep serving. So we created GSOF. We're 11 years old this year. In 2020, we were designated by the US Department of Defense as a National Military Association. So we're on that shortlist with USAA or AUSA, Navy League, Air Force, Marine Corps Association, all those folks.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  But what makes us different is we're international and we're joint and nobody else is that way. So it's pretty cool that we're doing that. We're also the new kids on the block, which we have a great interaction with all the other professional associations. So we enjoy working together and with each other to help each other out. So not many people see that or know that behind the scenes. One of the cool things about being a National Military Association is you get to support SOCOM and SOLIC with their national convention. And so we met with General Clark and Master Chief Greg Smith and Mr. Jim Boyce, the de-coss at SOCOM. And we just said, we pitched them and we had a lunch at the SOCOM headquarters. We said, we think you ought to change SOFIC to SOF Week. And we just made up SOF Week.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  You could have called it anything else. We just, it sounded cool at the time as easy.

• 5:43Speaker 00

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• 6:23Fran Racioppi?

  Sounds cool now.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so General Clark, I mean, he understood AUSA, he understood the whole national convention. You know, part of what you have to do as a SOF commander in a joint environment is you have to unite your tribes. Sounds real easy, but we all know that, you know, you have all these type A meat eating personalities that, you know, are all rogue warriors at the heart of everything. And so, you know, for the SOCOM commander to convene his entire enterprise, as well as the international community in a single location, well, you know, that's what it's all about and stuff. And so they SOCOM decided to go with SOF Week. We won the solicitation. We ran our first event in 23. We ran our second of this, our third event this year. I think we're on track to hit close to 23,000 people.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Attendees that actually come in and attend the show. We're over 800 exhibitors. What I'm really proud of is I can give you the statistic now. Last year we had 711 exhibitors. Of the 711, 509 did not exhibit in 2023. So you're seeing new capability, new technology. You're not seeing the same old stuff. We encourage, we have 327 corporate partners and global SOF foundation, and we encourage them not to bring the things they've already sold to the government. We're looking for new technology. We're looking for a lot of new things. So we've done pretty good this year. We've got a lot of new things that we've added to the event and we've basically completely reorganized from top to bottom.

• 7:50Fran Racioppi?

  Talk about this small business forum. So sitting actually behind us are a number of different breakout rooms and they're kind of all coded, the small business forum, small business rooms. There's been a big push, I mean, at the federal level and even at the state level. I mean, my security and operations company, FR6 focuses in the small business market and the service disabled set aside market in New England and primarily in New York. But there's been a lot of push in governments in order to get small businesses involved. How come that's become a priority of the organization too?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Honestly, for SOCOM, friend, it has been forever. You know, you're required to have about 30% of small business, but SOCOM does, it's well above the 40% level and everything they do. Look, You've been around, I've been doing this 11 years now and you know, the innovation comes from small business. Right? It's some person in their garage, they're coming up with the flux capacitor, whatever it is that's awesome and neat and new and inspiring. And that thing is, uh, that thing is just, at some point in time, they have to scale. And that's when the bigger businesses come in and they either partner with them or buy them or, you know, so. What you're seeing now is most of your murders and acquisitions for small businesses is with private equity. Because it's lucrative, there's a lot going on in the, the national security world, the defense world. And so you're seeing, that's a new player in the game, private equity.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  They come in with money, they can infuse the situation, uh, whereas publicly traded companies can't do that. They don't have the same level of flexibility and stuff. And so the small business is really, really important because that's where your innovation is. We in GSOF, I think we have 220, about 220 small business partners in our organization. And you're seeing a big push right now by Senator Joni Ernst. She's now the Chair of the Small Business Committee in the Senate. And she's got huge legislation going for it. Most people don't know that about 78% of all the CIBR money goes to publicly traded companies. That's not what Congress envisioned when they created the small business set aside. So, you know, it's taking a left turn. Senator Ernst has got a phenomenal coalition, a bipartisan coalition to fix that. You're going to see it fixed and stuff.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  And it's good for big business, like our big, big corporate partners will, are very much in favor of having the small businesses. They're very critical to their teaming and partnering on major contracts. They also buy them up, you know, I mean, they do. It's why innovate when I could just buy you? Yeah. And that's not, you know, that's business. That's a good, that's good for everybody. That's not a bad thing. A lot of the smaller businesses are, they get awarded a contract and they can't scale. So they get bought up or they partner with a, a larger company that can actually do the scaling and, and so it helps. Most small businesses fail because of catastrophic success, not catastrophic failure. They win a contract and they can't produce the numbers and do this. So it's a really good, you know, it's a symbiotic thing, you know, it's a love hate relationship. It's so.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  But they're very, very important to SOCOM and they're very, very important to GSOF. And if you want innovation to keep happening, you gotta keep supporting small businesses. That's just a fact.

• 10:42Fran Racioppi?

  Ask you about innovation because as you mentioned, we've got over 800 vendors here out on the floor. And it's a whole range of things from the most tactical ammo pouches and kit to missile systems. And UAVs and drones and all sorts of stuff out here on the floor. Innovation has sat always at the forefront of when we talk about military readiness. Preparing for the next conflict. I've been very fortunate to sit down with the current Sergeant Major of the Army. Uh, Mike Wymer, the former Sergeant Major of the Army, Dan Daly, you know, sat down with. General Braga, General Ferguson, you know, we've spoken about innovation and technological advancement in every single one of those.

• 11:23Fran Racioppi?

  Conversations, including my recent conversation with Colonel Gabe Zodi at Fifth Group where we talked about, you know, what does it look like? To change the MOS pattern in the ODA now to actually incorporate a robotics or UAV technology driven MOS. When you look at the next battlefield, it's kind of a two part question here. Number one, how do you define? The next battlefield as we see it and why do we, why is the technological advancement more critical now? Than we've seen in past conflicts?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  So I've been to the Ukraine. I helped stand up their special forces in 2015, helped them build their joint soft headquarters. 10th Group came in right after that and started partnering with them and they've, you know, they did a phenomenal job up until the point in time they got, you know, pulled out. If you go to Gaza and if you look at the Ukraine and I'm not trying to fight the last war, but I'm just telling you what I saw that scared me. You can't mass. If you're wrapped in metal, you have zero probability of surviving. You will be detected and you're going to get hit.

• 12:20Fran Racioppi?

  And if you think tanks and armor.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Everything, helicopters, jets, everything. Like if you are wrapped in metal, you won't make it. It's just, and I watched it. The other thing is EW, electronic warfare. I've never seen anything. I grew up in the 11th Armored Cav as a 19 Delta Calvary Scout. On the east west termin border, watching the Russians watch us. And in the old days, they would just, their EW, they would just jam every band, you know, shut down everything.

• 12:44Fran Racioppi?

  We grew up in Iraq.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  But now it is extremely precise. It's extremely sophisticated. I mean, I'll tell you right now. Almost every drone that we send over there is does not work after thirty days, less than thirty days. I give it thirty days. But by usually by the fourteen day mark, they have figured it out and shut it down. And so what's interesting is in the old days, our engineers would sit back in the United States in an air conditioned laboratory somewhere. You know, with great computing capacity, trying to figure out work abounds. And that you can't do anymore. They've got to be forward and they've got to be close to the operator. Because you don't have weeks and months to do it. And so a lot of the innovation is happening, I'm not kidding you, at the flop.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  It's crazy to see a bunch of nerds up there. It's awesome, though. I mean, you want to see the entrepreneurial spirit, the people, watching people just work through tremendous problems, watch the Ukrainian special operations with the engineers. It's amazing, man. I mean, same in Israel, you know, it's the same situation in Israel. You you can't just assume that your enemy is ignorant because they're not. A lot of these technologies have proliferated everywhere. So again, it's evened up the battlefield quite a bit, but you can't mass anymore. If you do, we have a in the United States of America, we have a problem because most of our military is non deployable. It can't deploy. It's too big. It's too heavy, takes too long to get there. When it does, it has to do it in a permissive environment. Right? Well, who the hell is going to give you a permissive environment to do this in?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Like every doctrine in the world is to deny you permissive entry into the battle space. And so all these huge formations that we think we're going to get in are not going to get in. And then once you get in there, you can't employ them. Because they're too easy to detect with all these long range fires. I mean, they're popping you a thousand miles out. Not everything is precision. Like, you know, when General Berger was the commandant of Marine Corps and he got rid of tubed artillery and tanks in the Marine Corps. They called him everything but his Christian name. People hated him. All these old Marines wanted him dead, killed. And now the guy looks like Nostradamus. You know, because everything is FMV, it's precision, it can go long ways. It's got uh endurance, it could stay on target. A lot of this, you know, this precision fires is just so accurate now that it's just

• 14:52Speaker 02

  hard to survive. I don't, you know, one of the coolest things I saw in the Ukraine were infantry guys on electric bikes at night with NVGs flying down the road. You think it's crazy and the guy. leans over to me in his Ukrainian accent and will tell you that, you know, they can probably get two of them, but you can't get all of them. And in a BMP or a BTR, you get all of them. Yeah. And you're not doing that. So it's just got, folks are being innovative about how they approach the battle space and stuff. And, you know, I just think you're seeing a lot of things, uh, the technology, you're going to see more space-based stuff. I mean, you're going to see AI is going to change everything with predictive analysis. You're going to be able to, within three years, to be able to plan operations, plus within eighty to eighty-five percent probability of accuracy.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  So you're not going to need tons of stuff, like, you know, again, mass was designed to break formations. And now you've got these long-range fires and stuff, and you can be very precise, especially, you know, we are in a non-contiguous environment. For the Rangers, that means non-touching, and so, but- Which is hard for them to do. Yes, but it's, we fought in a non-contiguous environment for, you know, a lot of our wars and stuff. And so that, you know, with that space that's between those contiguous entities is, you know, who governs it? Who secures it, you know, and, and a lot of that's going to be done through autonomous systems. And so, you know, I, I wouldn't want to be on the modern battlefield with now with thermals and people being able to detect you. And I don't see stealth technology coming out in the way I think it should be. It's out there, but it's not being resourced.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  I think the, the value of special operations in all of this is AI can't give you a personal relationship. It can't do it. Only you can do that. And I think that matters tremendously. I think a personal relationships between people enabled by AI and all this technology is a incredible fighting force. I mean, it really is. And then AI can't do crazy. Like if MacArthur went up to AI and said, hey, I want to do the Incheon invasion, the worst location in all Korea to invade. AI would have told him, don't do it. You're out of your mind. Don't, you know, and we've never had the Incheon invasion. And so those are some of the things, but I think when you have personal relationships mixed with technology and, uh, and people that think forward.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  And I think special ops is, look, I mean, look at this venue, man. Nobody does this. There's no other service that does this. You bring in all these different countries, all these different technologies. Does this, I mean, no disparaging, but there's no other, only SOCOM can do this. I've told you no fitness a hundred times. If I was Secretary of the Army or Secretary of the Defense, I'd give him a line item budget to run this every year. I mean, I don't know how many ministers of defense are here, chiefs of defense. They're not here just to hang out in Tampa. They're, they're here because they know this is valuable to them. They understand the value of special operations to their formations. And then they know that this place is just jam packed with technology that, you know, half the stuff I've never seen before. It's cool. I would like to take half of it home and play with it, but they don't let me do that.

• 17:43Fran Racioppi?

  You, you don't have the right authorizations for that.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  No, exactly.

• 17:46Fran Racioppi?

  There's a couple of lines that I want to pull a little deeper on. Number, number one, you talked about the partnership aspect of things. In the conversation, in your explanation, you know, we use and we've heard the term and use it all the time. You have joint and combined. Joint being the interoperability between Green Berets, SEALs, you know, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force. Uh, and we got our Coast Guard brothers are out there on the water protecting it today. And this now the Space Force. Do which, you know, I gotta remember because there's no Space Force when I was in.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:14Fran Racioppi?

  Uh, but then you have the combined aspect of it. And the combined aspect is the international partners. As SOF, we understand that our mission is to operate and work by with and through, because that's our combat multiplier. That's how, you know, we take a 12 man detachment, we put it forward and we partner with, you know, 400, 800 of our partners. And we don't have a 12 man force. We got an 800 12 man force.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 18:38Fran Racioppi?

  And you see that front and center here when you walk the floor and you see different uniforms and everybody walking around. You see that here in SOCOM too. When you have, I think the number is 26 or 27 LNOs, uh, or 28 liaison officers that sit in the headquarters here, whose sole job it is, is to coordinate SOF interoperability between US Special Operations and their host nation's special operations capabilities. Allies have been front and center in the national debate over the last several months. Yeah. I'd say even the last several years. And we really saw NATO come back into the forefront of discussion with Russia's invasion into Ukraine several years ago. You were an instrumental part of NATO in your time.

• 19:22Fran Racioppi?

  32 years of service as well as your time serving at SOCOM and in JSOC, working hand in hand with our NATO partners. Talk for a minute about the importance of NATO, why that's an organization that America has to continue to put at the forefront of our national security policy, and why SOF continues to put the interoperability with our SOF partners at the forefront of that, of their strategy. And you heard General Fenton talk about this a couple of weeks ago in Congress.

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• 20:39Speaker 02

  So I'll give you a quick history of the whole NATO SOF headquarters now called SOFCOM. Real quick, in 2004, at the Olympics in Athens, Greece, it was right after 9/11, and we really didn't have anything SOF-wise. Because in those days, we had a maritime, land, and air component in NATO. We did not have a SOF component. So, which what we needed for that event was a SOF component headquarters. And in those days, only three countries could do it, US, UK, and France. And, you know, I love my French and British brothers, but for them to do it, they would have to shut down every other operation they were doing worldwide. Yeah. Which is not feasible. US could bulk up and do it. So, as an out, 30 days out, Secretary Rumsfeld said, hey NATO, the US will be the framework nation for the SOF component in Athens.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Of course, we did the Olympics, nothing bad happened. A bunch of staff officers came away from that and said, we need a NATO component. That got built by General Jones. But the people behind that was Adam McRaven, General Adrian Bradshaw, and General Ben Wapuga, the French, the Brits. And at that time, they said, there's only three countries that can do all this, and we can't survive if we don't do it. So fast forward to where we are today, it's 2025, there's 17 countries that can now be the NATO soft component. They're certified, they have the capability, they have the equipment. So it's not some, you know, hocus pocus crap. It's there, they can do the mission. And so that's when you look at partnerships and what you do to develop it. Now you've got Europe as a very mature, soft environment. And so the, the real question now is, is that how do we get them

• 22:06Speaker 02

  to do things outside of Europe? And so the big focus right now is the Indo-Pacific. And I tell the Europeans this every single day, that 40% of their GDP flows to or through the Indo-Pacific. And most of them have no means of protecting their national interest in that region. And their soft is fully capable of doing it. Their soft is fully capable of going to the Indo-Pacific, working with partner nations and building those partner nations out. You know, you can't mass and you can't deploy a force large enough to that region in a timely manner to be a deterrent. You just can't do it. Our deterrent is having the best partners we can. And I think having our European partners help us develop our Indo-Pacific partners is the only way you're gonna... Have you ever flown there, man? I flew Thailand three times last year. That will age you and dog you.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Eighteen hours. Thirty. Well, from, from LA. Yeah, it's insane. The whole thing is, and then we think we're gonna fly. I mean, we flew a Patriot Battalion from Korea to the Middle East, and it took 73 C-17s to do one. I mean, come on. That's not... So, you know, you're gonna fight with what you have. And so our big focus needs to be on building out our partners, you know, so they have a credible defense, a deterrent. I'm also big in collective defense. That's when a nation basically turns itself into a defense mechanism like Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, where everybody goes in, Israel, you do your 18 months, you go in the reserves. If you attack the country, immediately your ranks swell

• 23:32Speaker 02

  at to trained personnel. And people have to really, your calculus, when you look at a country that can do that, is totally different. Like, you're like, they are 150,000, but they can be 500,000 in 48 hours. I mean, do you want to bite into that apple? I don't, you know, you have to think really hard about how you do that. I think the only way you do that is to have incredible partners, having the interoperability. And so that's what you've got to focus on with our partners and stuff.

• 23:54Fran Racioppi?

  So do you think that as America, we've had a number of different conversations regarding culture in America, what we've called a propensity to serve? And there's different points of view when we talk about the next generation. You know, you hear people who are saying, well, the next generation is soft, they're weak, they can't do it. But people said that about the World War II generation, people said that about every, every generation said that. And yet, everybody seems to always stand up as Americans and lead the nation. I think there's an argument that can be made that it usually always takes some impetus, you know, some big event that drives people into that service. Do you think that as Americans, we've lost a will or a propensity to serve?

• 24:37Fran Racioppi?

  And now we need some sort of mandatory service?

• 24:41Speaker 02

  I think we've always had this in our history. Like, I mean, you gotta remember, we back into wars, we don't run to them. Like, we do everything we can to avoid a war. And then we come staggering in at the last minute, you know, and our reaction is not, it's violent. You know, I mean, it's way more than it probably should be. I have three daughters, so I kind of understand the young generation, and I, I don't think they're weak. They're smart, they take their information differently, they think differently, but they're no different than we are. They're physically fit, they're smart as hell. I would not want to compete with them intellectually because I would just get annihilated quickly. And I just think that, you know, they are going to do fine. But they, everything's a function of leadership. If you give them good leadership, and if you work with them, you know, they're going to do great things.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  I mean, I, look at what they're, they, they're going to be our future whether we like it or not. So we've got to make sure that they are armed to do the right thing. There's always going to be people that don't want to do squat, they're just going to leech on society, and as far as I'm concerned, you just ignore them and keep moving around them.

• 25:39Fran Racioppi?

  They're not in this room, I can tell.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. You asked me about the, you know, conscript. Listen, you get a lot of different people saying different things, but the US military is the greatest social ladder in the world. You can be the biggest screw up. I tell everybody, if you just do what the sergeant tells you to do, you're going to leave middle class, your family's going to be taken care of, you're going to have a phenomenal annuity, and your family will be taken care of, you're going to be in great shape if you just do what- The sergeant tells you to do. Some people it's hard for them to do that. They're a little hard headed, but usually the sergeants have patience and they'll work with them. But I would like to see more people in the military. I think some of our standards are ridiculous, to be honest with you. When I came in, you know, we weren't looking for choir boys and girls. I mean, a lot of them had bad past, but they were able to get into the military

• 26:25Speaker 02

  and they did what the sergeant told them to do and they became phenomenal, productive members of our society. And I think, you know, I think we need to give the NCO corps a lot more latitude. You know, you can't beat them up or everything, but you know, I mean, we need to give them more latitude in building the force. Um, they might have to be a little bit louder in how they approach things and a little bit more aggressive in how they do it, but this generation responds, they love challenges. I mean, they really do. They love doing weird stuff too, by the way. They just, they'll jump off a bridge. They'll do all kinds of crazy shit. So if you let them. So they're not scared. They're not cowards. You know, but they are different and they receive information differently. And I have faith in them. I'm not a woe is me, you know, it's not that way. It's, I think there's a lot of goodness out there that, I think if we got attacked and there was a catalyst,

• 27:10Speaker 02

  you would see people come from everywhere.

• 27:12Fran Racioppi?

  We talked about the upcoming generation. We've talked a bit about the technology that sits out here on the floor. When you look at the next fight, what do you think it is?

• 27:21Speaker 02

  I think it's small groups of well-equipped, intelligent human beings going at precise locations at precise times, based on predictive analysis.

• 27:31Fran Racioppi?

  On behalf of nation states, terrorist organizations, who's the threat?

• 27:35Speaker 02

  The X doesn't matter. Oh, the threat? You know, we never get that right. So, you know, no one expected nine 11. But you gotta remember when nine 11 happened, we just brought in the chairman because we were going to be space-based and Indo-China focused, Indo-Pacific focused. And then the towers came down and it looked like a land war in the middle of the Middle East. And so we were all, look at us. We got called in as special ops. Everybody goes, oh, you guys don't know anything about, you know, near peer competition. The hell we don't. We've been doing it for 50 years. When nine 11 happened, we transitioned to direct action because our country asked us to do that. It's part of our mission set. Okay, Roger that. Direct action, bro. And we, and the teams took. Off and that's exactly what they did. And then as all that tab down, people like, well, what are we going to do with special operations?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Cause you know, they don't really fit into the, you know, the gray space, you know, the competition, but the hell we don't. Like Russia, China, fighting through their surrogates all over the world. What the hell you think we did for our whole? JFK built SF and the Peace Corps to counter that stuff. But we've been doing this our whole lives. I mean, just open up our history books. This is not new to us. This is what cracks me up. I'm like, I don't know what people's history looks like or where they get their information from, but it's obviously not deep. But you know, anything about the special ops community, it's, it's clear that we are really, really good at this stuff. Now we are really good at man hunting. So you saw Jimmy Reese, the guy that waved us in here, but you know, those guys, you know, were JSOC. They basically formed the nucleus of man hunting.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  We were, you're Emmanuel Noyega and third to seventh, you know, we couldn't find him. He's running around, going to Papal Nuncia, all this stuff. Nowadays, uh-uh. No, no. If you're a bad actor, man, they have incredible means to find you. And so that part, you know, the counterterrorism part is really refined and it's, it's industrialized. And then I think everything else is meeting with our partners, building the, we have to work harder at our language skills. When you're in direct action, you don't have to do as much of that as you, but you've got to do more of that. As I say, you know, the whole dancing with wolves, you know, Tatanka, we've got to get out there with them and find the buffalo. You know, you've got to live with the, you know, the host nation.

• 29:36Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. I mean, well, it's, it's, it's the deterrence piece.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:39Fran Racioppi?

  You know, we create deterrence by having that forward presence with our partners.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Look, I saw, you know, a hundred percent. It doesn't take a lot. If people know you can get to them quickly, they have to calculate for that. They have to calculate for what they can't see as well as what they can see. And if there's a whole bunch of special ops dudes within reach that can strike you and you have to calculate for that. And that takes a lot of assets. It will strip combat power away from all of their, their efforts just to counter that effort. Even if it doesn't move on the chessboard, it will strip away combat power from.

• 30:15Fran Racioppi?

  In congressional testimony a couple of weeks ago, General Fenton talks about procurement process and the difficulty in the procurement process and the need to fight the next battlefield that we're talking about is gonna require a more streamlined procurement process. I feel like, you know, I've heard that for the past 20 years. You know, we've seen all of our senior leadership at every level that we've had over the last year or so say the same thing. How does that actually get done? How do we get the billions of dollars of equipment that sits out here behind us into the hands of the warfighter?

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Only people that can do that's Congress. Article one of the Constitution, raise the army, maintain the navy, that falls to them. The problem is, is once you have a program of record in their district, that thing will live forever. It'll be obsolete, but they will not kill it. Won't let it go because it's voters, it's they're in their district and stuff. And so you've got to take that away from Congress. You can't let them, you've got to have multi-year things. You've got to move away from these huge programs like this. Some of them you're gonna have to, you can't, you know, but at the end of the day, most of the stuff we're fielding right now is not going to survive first contact. Like an aircraft carrier, you can't get it in the inner island. I don't think you can get it in the second island chain. So now you got single-engine aircraft. How many refueling

• 31:30Speaker 02

  flights is it going to take to get to the target? You're gonna be flying tankers in the, that's what's gonna have to happen.

• 31:35Fran Racioppi?

  In a denied area.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  You're gonna move, so you're gonna move an armored division from El Paso, Texas. You're gonna muster it, load it up on a railhead, drive it down to Beaumont, Texas, load it up onto Ro-Rose, ship it all the way across the ocean, take it to a point of debarkation, break it all down, load all the ammo, load all the fuel, and you're gonna do this in a permissive environment. Nobody's gonna bother you the whole time. This is all just peaceful process. Fantasy, absolute fantasy. If you read Chinese doctrine, they absolutely will deny us that. They do not, their goal is to not allow the big blue arrow to mass. We wouldn't do it. Like, why would I let you mass? Why would I let you build your power to hit me? Not gonna work like that. So a lot of this technology, Congress is gonna have to, I'm not an advocate for less of a defense spending. It's just gotta be different.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  You know, and you've got to educate Congress on, hey, we don't need this product in your district. We need your product to make, your district to make this product, right? And so it's tricky, you know, because it votes matter to them, you know, and so, but at the end of the day, they've got to have the moral courage to do it. I don't see the leadership to do it right yet. I love them and they're all great people. You know, they all want to do the one thing about dealing with the hills, national security there, everybody is on board. We're lucky, man. Nobody's rooting for the other team. I made with them all. I was there two weeks, two weeks ago. They all are, I mean, they're all proud of this country and they all want to defend it. But you know, you've got to get a lot of different people to say yes, to make something like that happen. And uh, the people on the national security side on all four of the defense committees, amazing. I mean, true patriots, love their country,

• 33:07Speaker 02

  love the military and everything is, you know, they're due for it. But you know, when they turn to their colleagues, it's an uphill fight.

• 33:14Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Yeah. We've had this appropriation discussion in detail on the hill over the last couple of months as we've gone and sat down with a number of representatives from both sides of the aisle. And I agree with you. I mean, I think to a person, everybody is there and coming to work every day to do the right thing, invest in American defense. And I think everybody shares the same perspective that we've got to do something differently. But I do think you talked about leadership earlier, you know, it comes down to leadership, you know, who's going to stand up and say, you know, this is what we're going to do. This is what the next fight requires. And it might be a little painful right now, but it's required in order to protect America.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  I mean, SOCOM's budget's been frozen since 2019.

• 33:57Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. Meaning they're getting the same amount of money every year.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Well, in real dollars, it's a, you have a different number. It's a, it's 14% less just on the top of it. So, fuel's gone up, O and M. So what's happened is SOCOM's had to strip away money from training and readiness as well as modernization to fund data. And you heard General Finn today, it's, or the secretary, operations are up 200% contingency operations. Well, who's paying for that? There's no fund for that. So all that's being, SOCOM's got to pull all that out of hide. Well, what happens is, is you have less flight, uh, flight hours, less training hours, less ammo, less, less, less, less, less. And that's what happens. And it ultimately you have a, a, a less trained force. And you'll end up getting people killed because of. And so, you know, I just think that, you know, Congress has got to have the moral courage to fix SOCOM's budget.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  I'd double it. People go, oh my God. I mean, I don't mean overnight, you know what I mean? But I would definitely enable SOCOM much more. They're your only deployable force right now. There's a few things out there, you know, that you can deploy. But it's what, it's the strategic force that you can move around on the map and make people stay awake at night.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  The 9th Annual Global SOF Symposium Europe is taking place in Athens, Greece this October 7th to 9th.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  It's cosponsored by the Greek Special Warfare Command with over 800 attendees expected from 30 nations. GSOF Symposium Europe will feature senior defense speakers from across the global SOF community, an exhibition with over 70 industry organizations showcasing their capabilities, and networking opportunities along the Mediterranean Sea. The Jedberg Media Channel will be there hosting the International Senior Leader Defense Panel, recording interviews with our partners and allies, and bringing you the most up-to-date look at how Europe conducts special operations across the world. Join us in Athens this October 7th to 9th. Registration is now open at gsoph europe.org.

• 35:49Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, well, we gotta let you go here in a minute because you got a long day and I know there's people waiting for you upstairs. But I want to ask you, as you look back, you walk through these halls here, you look around, you sit in the conversations with not only our US and American leaders, but our international partners, and you reflect on your career. What does it mean to be a Green Beret?

• 36:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I, look, my father was on active duty. When I came on active duty, this is all I wanted to do. I knew it, you know, I was around Green Berets. My father served with, you know, Ola Lee Mai's in Vietnam. He did two tours there. I knew exactly what it was all about. As a high school kid, I got to run around Camp McCall in the summer times, you know, out there blowing up stumps with the engineers and stuff like that. So I wanted to do this. I'm inspired, you know, because this is our time. Like, and I mean that, this is our time, the special ops time. It may not be like this in 20 years. It may be more space-based, you know, seriously. But right now, this is our time. And I love serving. I got a great team. They're full of zealots. Everyone believes in our mission and believes in this cause.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  I also think we could lose this, you know, this is not a guarantee what we've got. So I'm a huge believer in our international partners. We've got to bring them along. I'm a huge believer in the special ops community. I think it's the best weapon we have. Right now, it's soft cyber intel, information and economics. That's how you're going to win. Win the competition fight, you're not going to win it with armored divisions. And I started out as an armored cab officer. Sorry for all you guys that are freaked out about that, but that is a fact. You know, I've watched them ones burn. They burn if they're 50 tons, they burn if they're 70 tons and they just, they cook the same. And so I just think this is the special ops time. I look back and I'm just proud of the whole formation and stuff. We could get better, you know, but right now we're doing really well as a community. And we just need to keep, you know, focusing on, you know, what we are good at.

• 37:40Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, it's kicking ass.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:43Fran Racioppi?

  Getting ready for it. Stu, thanks for your hospitality. Thanks for welcoming and welcoming to the Jed Burke Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Hope I haven't bored you.

• 37:52Fran Racioppi?

  No, this, this was, I mean, absolutely in, really incredible, insightful. Your perspective on where we sit, you know, today as a soft formation, where we got to go, the threats that are out there and how we're going to prepare our people to do it. You know, we hear a lot this week about people are more important than hardware. You may see a lot of hardware out here, but you know, as we talked about, it does come down to the people.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 38:14Fran Racioppi?

  It comes down to their leadership and thank you for your leadership.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Appreciate you. Thank you.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jed Burke Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Rich Open. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jed Burke Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, extra threads. Send your comments and inquiries to Fran at jedberkpodcast.com. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jed Burke Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.