Are U.S. Special Operations Ready for the Drone Era?

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In this episode of the At the Boundary podcast, Dr. Tad Schnaufer was joined by Lt Col. John "JAY" Patrich to talk about the need for innovation when it comes to strategic drone attacks, with a focus on the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, and in light of Lt Col Patrich’s recent decision brief on drone warfare. 

Lt Col Patrich dove into the need for creativity and innovation of drones to achieve air superiority or air denial, particularly within the air littoral space. The vast array of drones (in size and capability) lends itself to making progress with innovative research that could change the approach of irregular warfare. The rapid evolution in how Russia and Ukraine have been using drones in combat was a key topic, as were possible future near-peer conflicts and their potential to push drone innovation in a new direction.  
  
 To round out the conversation, they explored the necessity of policies to guide drone uses, and the necessity of drone education for those within the government and military who are tasked with acquiring and maintaining the drones. 

Links from the episode:

• Register for the Florida Security Forum: Port and Maritime Security

• Port Security Interview with Port Tampa CEO, Paul Anderson 

• What Can WWII Teach Us About Future Conflicts with China? GNSI Research Initiative with guest Dr. Craig Symonds

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Episode Transcript

Tad Schnaufer (00:00):
Well, Jay, welcome to the podcast. Thank
you. Glad to be here. Well, youknow you have an upcoming
decision brief going to bepublished here with GNSI, and
this covers Special Operationdrone doctrine and operations,
you know, and what that mightlook like for the future in a
near peer conflict. Why don't webegin at first as we look at
special operations forces andtheir use of drones. How does

(00:21):
that compare to conventionalforces and their use of drones?
Where's, where's the bigdifference here, and why focus
on special

Jay Patrich (00:26):
operations?
Absolutely. So there are a lotof similarities. Obviously, I've
been in Special Operations for14 years, or something like
that. Now. I've been doing dronethings the entire time, and I've
seen sort of us progress from wehad MQ one, that was basically a
prototype that they fieldedimmediately, just because the

(00:50):
capability was critical to theMQ nine, RQ four, all doing
different kinds of intelligence,surveillance, reconnaissance
missions. And these are largerdrones right through our
audience as we're progressing.
It was primarily big capitalfleet, ship style drones, things
that are theater level, assetsthat geographic combatant

(01:11):
commanders and Task Forcecommanders are managing, as
opposed to something that'splatoon or battalion level. We
go and they are doing a lot ofwork in the global war on
terror, especially with respectto manhunting, and our Q fours
are doing things like, you know,characterizing I adds all that

(01:32):
we go through. And we beganworking on smaller ones, right,
either anywhere from a handhelddrone that someone can keep in a
backpack to something that youkeep that's 300 400 pounds you
keep in Pelican cases. It uses,you know, it requires a couple
people to manage and set up andlaunch and maintain. And we

(01:55):
start seeing these thingsprogress. And then 2022 rolls
around, and Russia invadesUkraine. And I doubt that people
fully understood the impact thatsmall and medium sized drones
are going to have on thatconflict, but people are
studying it now for sure. Andwhen we look at that, we didn't
really they the Ukrainians, andnow to the Russians, to a lesser

(02:17):
extent, are using them in novelways that we weren't using them,
especially from the Western,especially United States side.
So we see them doing things tomitigate, or basically go after

(02:38):
the overmatch that the Russianhat Russians had on their fifth
Gen fighters, their large bomberfleet that the Ukrainians did
not have. They're using smallerdrones to keep those things
either out of the fight entirelyor keeping them farther away
from the fight, reducing theirutility, mitigating that
advantage. So as we look, whenwe look at the state of today in

(03:02):
the US, we have a significantlywide family of drones that the
US is employing all the wayfrom, you know, Army company
command, small held handheldsthat are used to look over the
next ridge line, those kinds ofthings, short range spotters for
artillery, all The way to we'restill using MQ nines, RQ fours.

(03:23):
And then they have the Air Forcehas the collaborative combat
aircraft, which is a loyalwingman AI driven, effectively,
fighter plane that goes with thetraditional man fighters. So I
see advances happening. And as Ireference in the upcoming work,
I see a large amount ofliterature and research being

(03:44):
done on the technical aspects ofthese drones. So how fast do
they go? Are they verticaltakeoff and landing, or do they
require some other launch andrecovery capability? What I
don't see is a lot of creativeresearch going into how might we
use these in the future in adifferent way than we're using

(04:06):
them right now. So there aresome parts of the military I
think that are facing apotential failure of
imagination, right? So we havegroup three, which are the
medium size drones that we canuse, and we're making a lot of
innovations on the technicalaspects of those drones. What

(04:26):
radio do they use? What munitioncan they carry? How quickly can
we iterate on those machines?
I'm not seeing us use those inways that are different than we
use the MQ nine fleet thatexists today. So we're making
this incremental improvement towhere we do the same job with a
different tool, as opposed toexploring what the new jobs are

(04:49):
for the tools. And so back toyour question, the difference
between conventional and SOF, ifyou're asking about drone Dock.
Doctrine. There really isn'tany, and I don't think that you
necessarily need specific dronedoctrine, but we need some sort
of guidance policy on what whatwe might want to achieve with

(05:09):
these drones, as opposed to justgetting better and newer
technology to do old jobs. Soand I liken it to the business
use of AI, which you're seeing,some AI that is an interesting
employment, some AI thatorganizes your calendar for you,

(05:29):
and then, like the rental carcompany will come out and be
like, Oh, we have our new AIcapability. And I wonder that's
sort of what you see withdrones. You see, i These drones
are the future. They're going tobe critical in future conflicts.
I need some drones. Get outthere and buy some drones. But
it's not, it doesn't come withand here is how we will change

(05:52):
the way we fight. So,

Tad Schnaufer (05:56):
right? Since that imagination piece, and so you
know, you talked about the MQnine, which is the Reaper
drones, or the RQ four, which isa Global Hawks. These are large,
almost aircraft size drones,right, larger than many
aircraft. So as they've gottensmaller, we still have those
drones in operation the US,particularly, they're expensive,
and we're not a little bit riskaverse with them. We're not

(06:17):
willing to necessarily get thoseshot down in mass, as you would
have these smaller quadcopterdrones, like in Ukraine, where
both the Ukrainians and theRussians are producing millions
of year. So are yourecommending, or at least
looking forward, seeing how theUS can acquire and then employ
these smaller drones in mass,and in mass, when we're talking
about hundreds or 1000s of themon the battlefield at one

Jay Patrich (06:39):
time, I would say, I would push back on our risk
aversion to those platforms,because you can look at the
Middle East, especially Yemenand the Red Sea, and see how
many of those we've allowed tobe shot down. Sure, and I would
argue that they do have morerisk tolerance because they view

(07:02):
them in comparison to mannedaircraft. To answer your
question, am I looking into howwe should get or develop these
en masse? That is beyond thescope of the research that I
intend to do, and that's justbecause, you know, a simple
search on any of the academicdatabases, you will find reams

(07:29):
and reams of research, advancingthe generative manufacturing,
advancing how we create and howwe use These, how they are, how
they swarm, how they interactwith each other. So
additionally, I don't know howto do those things, but I am
interested more in because allthese people are doing all this

(07:53):
great work, and all of these,you know, hundreds of
manufacturers in the UnitedStates and China and elsewhere
are making better and better,more advanced drones. I'll just
let them do that. But I do wantto figure out. I don't want to
miss an opportunity to innovate,right? I don't want to keep I
don't want to use aircraftcarriers like battleships,

(08:14):
right? And that's kind of whatwe're doing. In some ways, there
are lots of advancements going,like I said, with collaborative
combat aircraft, which I thinkis a critical capability.
Critical capability, nocriticism, but it is a new kind
of fighter plane. And I see thatthere are many scenarios where
we are using small drones tojust look over the next next

(08:36):
ridge line, or we use them inthe same way that we would use
any other guided munition, asopposed to something different,
like the way they are. So if theUkrainians were just sending
drones at, you know, just randomtargets, or using them like
artillery, they probably wouldnot have this, the same effect

(08:59):
that, or the same success thatthey're seeing, because the
Russians can just overpowerthem. It's a war of attrition at
that point. But they're usingthem in new creative ways, which
I think is really interesting,right?

Tad Schnaufer (09:10):
So what are some of these new creative ways you
could imagine that these droneswould be used, particularly,
like we said, focusing on yourdecision briefs, focusing on
special operations forces,

Jay Patrich (09:19):
USF, right, right?
Yeah. So over the past 20 yearsor more, now, we've been laser
focused on the global war onterror. We've not had to deal
with integrated air defense.
We've not had to deal with apeer out adversary. We've not
had to deal with an enemy airforce, any of those things. And

(09:39):
I wonder, and I don't humbleenough to admit that. I don't
know what the answer here, but Iwonder if now is the time to
start shifting SpecialOperations focus back to a
regular warfare I believe thatsome of that has occurred, and.

(10:00):
They, if you look at SOCOMliterature, they have a focus on
campaigning now, which I thinkis is a good step. And I wonder
if there's more that can be doneto move into that irregular
warfare campaigning, especiallyacross the Special Operations
Air Forces in both usasoc,United States Army Special

(10:23):
Operations Command and AFSOC,the air force component to
SOCOM. So I'm looking, arethere? What should we expect to
do? You can also look at the AirForce new one Air Force Concept,
their new force designstructure, and it's broken into
those mission areas. And missionarea one has close in under

(10:44):
fire, moving. Who does thatsound like to you? That sounds
like Air Force, or it soundslike Special Operations
operators. So I would ask, then,what would they be expected to
do? What effects would they beexpected to create? Is this a
soft seed scenario. Are we doingsuppression of enemy air
defense? Are we doing it in anew way? Are we empowering

(11:09):
existing capabilities so thatthey can have effects that they
weren't able to have before? Arethey able to use small teams to
make these operational levelimpacts? And you mentioned air
superiority before. So SOF, youknow, you could say that SOF has
no role in air superiority, andI would say that that's not
accurate. I would say that theythey have a small role, but

(11:33):
there are scenarios in which SOFsoft impact will be outsized in
especially if we're consideringpulsed operations, like the seat
the Chief of Staff, the AirForce talks about, people are no
longer talking about, like airsuperiority, air supremacy, like
one would think about in DesertStorm, where we're the only one

(11:55):
flying. We can do anything wewant in the air. Nobody else can
do anything. The adversary's gotno play. We should expect to
have moments of air superiority.
We should expect to have areasthat we have air superiority
that are against another areawhere we don't have air
superiority. So I think there'sspecial operations role in that.
I don't see us committing tojust counterterrorism in the

(12:20):
permissive environment, and thenirregular warfare, and then when
major combat kicks off, ussitting on the sidelines going,
you guys got it now, I don'tthink that's in the soft DNA

Tad Schnaufer (12:34):
well. And you mentioned, we should mention
when we're talking about droneshere, we're specifically focused
on air aerial drones

Jay Patrich (12:41):
in this case for me, yes, but I think the lessons
are the same, sure. So if it's amaritime autonomous vehicle, I
think they need to look at itand make sure that they're not
just using it like a mine or atorpedo, that they're doing
something different, especiallywithin the realm of ISR or
implanting cyber devices or, Imean, it's whatever is up to

(13:06):
your imagination, I think,

Tad Schnaufer (13:08):
right? So, like you said, trying to achieve
different effects, using dronesas the instrument to do so. And
one thing we're seeing withdrones in Russia Ukraine is that
most of them are happening inthe air littoral space, this
concept of air littoral. Couldyou describe what that space is,
and what does that looking likein the next near peer conflict?
Is that where a lot of the aircombat is going to take place,

(13:29):
and it's

Jay Patrich (13:29):
air littoral To answer your second question, I
think the answer is yes, this.
So this space cannot be ignoredfor any future fight. You can
see it in Ukraine to answer thefirst part of the question, the
air littoral, I think, is areally good name for what we're
describing. So you can look atthe the Navy. There's a blue
water Navy out in the ocean,deep water, and you can equate
that to high flying aircraft,bombers, fighters. And then

(13:52):
there's the littoral Navy, whichis just rivers and more shallow
water, you know, close to theclose to the shore. And we
equate that effectively to a lotof people just use 10,000 feet
and below, 10,000 feet down tothe surface. And so if you look
in Ukraine right now, the airlittoral environment, 10,000

(14:15):
feet and below is just buzzingwith drones effectively all day.
And those drones are doingdifferent things. They're doing
ISR. They are doing deep strikeor strategic attack, we might
say, in doctrinal terms. Andthey're doing not air
superiority, but air denialstrategies to say, you know, I'm

(14:38):
facing, I'm facing a superioropponent, an opponent with far
more and better aircraft thanme, with an integrated air
defense system that I don'thave. So it is unlikely that I
will be able to achieve airsuperiority over that opponent.
So the best I can hope for isair denial. To say that if I
can. Use the air to go afteryou. You can't use the air to go

(15:01):
after me. And that's sort ofwhat I was mentioning at the
beginning, where, with enoughdrones and enough
unpredictability, enoughcapability, you can go after
aircraft that are on the ground.
And a lot of people are doing alot of research to deny this
capability, but it is a realcapability that people are

(15:22):
having a really hard time with.
Dealing with a drone swarm. Theyare hard to track. They don't
necessarily emit if they're GPS,only if they're able to navigate
that way. So these capabilitiesare really hard to deal with,
and an aircraft is incrediblyvulnerable on the ground, so
that does things like make youmove your strategic forces
further away from thebattlefield, which gives you

(15:46):
logistical problems. It givesyou time on target, decrements
or degradation, and even in somecases, if there's enough drones,
the threat of collision could beenough to drive people further
back from the forward line oftroops, and just create those
strategic dilemmas for theadversary.

Tad Schnaufer (16:08):
Because in the decision brief that will be
coming out shortly, you youdiscussed that initial initial
but the Ukrainian attack onRussian aircraft on the ground
deep with inside Russia, andthis is a operation which soft
forces would be particularlyskilled and, you know, prepared
for. So could you go into alittle bit of how that attack

(16:28):
inspired your your work here

Jay Patrich (16:30):
absolutely. So I'll admit to not being an expert on
those. I've just read a lot ofsimilar things that everyone
else has, but it was inspiring,and I was looking at, instead of
just looking at the dollaramount of damage that was done,
or thinking about where they theRussians now have to move their
strategic bomber fleet. Whatchoice, you know, making the

(16:53):
adversary make choices that theydon't want to. I was thinking
more about the men and possiblywomen that accomplished that
feat, and what kind of peoplewere they? And then, to my I
don't know if they in the inUkraine, they would consider
those people special operations,but that is a very well suited
mission for United States,special operations, who can

(17:14):
maybe have language skills, whoare moved forward, who are not
who are willing to be deepbehind enemy lines, or well past
the forward line of troops whocan set up these things. And
they can set up, set them up increative ways, using the, you
know, the back of a truck wherethey're all docked, and then
they all activate at the sametime the roof of the truck

(17:35):
retracts, they come out. They goafter, you know, they use $1,000
drones to go after billiondollar strategic bombers, and
when I see that operation gooff, I want to make sure that we
don't miss out on thecapabilities to pull off those
big strategic wins with thesmall teams that just use

(17:59):
boldness creativity do things ina different way, using existing
technology,

Tad Schnaufer (18:05):
right? So even in the next if there's a major peer
to peer conflict, you can seethese soft elements potentially
operating deep within enemyterritory with a large amount of
small drones that can have, youknow, multi billion dollar
effects on the enemy militaryinfrastructure,

Jay Patrich (18:21):
absolutely, or, you know, it's that strategic attack
that we, we could, the UnitedStates could try to do those
things with jasmine, right? Butthat's, I'm sorry, it's for lack
of a bird, a really good, longrange missile, okay, they could

(18:41):
use that, but perhaps thosedon't work, or perhaps the
magazine of those strategiclevel assets is dwindling,
right? But we still can makequad copters much faster than we
can make high end missiles, so Ican see Special Operations
making those impacts. Andperhaps it wasn't a strategic
bomber fleet, perhaps it was anarea surveillance radar that

(19:02):
allows the conventional forcesto come in and get those moments
of air superiority, to get thoseoperational level wins that
really can turn the tide or,Yeah, either the strategic
attack thing, or the suppressionof them, enemy air defense, like

(19:24):
I mentioned, with theirsurveillance radar. Or I'm going
to say right now that I don'tknow what it could be. I'm not
sitting there reading adversarycapabilities, but I want to make
sure that we begin the differentthought that it takes to move on
from I think they call itpathway dependence, right? So we
have been using drones to do acouple things for a really long

(19:48):
time, and we got good at it. Andso when we continue to innovate
with the smaller drones, we theyfly farther, they fly longer,
they fly with beyond line ofsight. Control, they fly with
automation. I want to make surethat we don't use those
innovations to get theseincremental improvements on HVI

(20:10):
hunting right. And if there's,if there's nothing else for them
to do, which I think isunlikely, then okay, we'll go
back and and get really, reallygood at HVI hunting, so we don't
have to use the very expensiveMQ nines. HVI being high value
individual, yeah, so findingthose terrorist leaders doing
that counter insurgency, goingafter old school al Qaeda people

(20:33):
where they live, to make surethat we don't have another 911,
another Madrid subway bombing,keeping the pressure on those
violent extremist organizationsso that the conventional forces
can turn their efforts towhatever the nation needs them
to at the time, as opposed tospending our conventional forces
times keeping pressure onviolent extremist organizations.

Tad Schnaufer (20:55):
We'll see that demand for both really continue,
as you see in the Middle Eastnow, with these different
Iranian proxy groups stilloperating there, and in some
areas of that are lackinggovernance, the resurgence of
Islamic terrorist groups. But wealso see the need for the near
peer availability to deploythese teams forward, deep behind

(21:17):
enemy lines. And we're seeingalso the defense piece of it. So
we have this littoral aerospace,you know, below 10,000 feet, or
however you want to define it,even in Europe today, we had,
just the last couple months,many European airports being
shut down from drones, and theycan't identify, necessarily,
where they're coming from. Is itcivilian drones, or those
Russian agents, or those peoplethat Russia has just paid to do

(21:39):
this, just to be disruptive. Sowhat does that look like even,
maybe not even in a near peerwar, but in this kind of hybrid
war sense?

Jay Patrich (21:46):
Yeah, I think that's that's very, very
interesting. And there, I'm gladto say that part of the reason
for my work in this upcomingdecision brief is the
acknowledgement that there are alot of people working on that.
One of the when the small we'lljust call them smalls, when
smalls became a really importantnational security issue, a lot

(22:09):
of people started working on howto defend against these Smalls.
Do you jam them? Do we? Arethere kinetic effects that we
can take after them? And that'sgood. And the people who are
working on it are the peopleprobably that are most
vulnerable to it. So the army isvery interested in not having
grenades dropped on them byquadcopters. And I totally

(22:31):
understand. So since they areworking on it, I wanted to focus
on Okay, instead of defendingagainst them. How will we, the
US, use them and share that withour allies. Do we start doing
aviation foreign internaldefense again? So foreign
internal defense is a coreSpecial Operations activity
where, you know, go to partnernation and help them build up

(22:54):
resistance to whatever it isthat is aligned with our
national security objectives andour so do we start doing
aviation for an internal defensefor allied drone forces? And I
mean, the most obvious choicefor that would be Taiwan, right?
So is that a is that a new Iguess it wouldn't be new. Is

(23:18):
that a mission that we should goback to? And I don't really know
the answer. There are a lot ofpeople who have a lot of thought
on that and how expensive andhow valuable it is, but those
are the kinds of things that Iwant to explore, and that's
really the purpose of thisdecision. Brief, is to pose
questions for future research.
And there's, you know, I onlyget 10 months here, so there's
likely not all the I won't beable to get to get to all of

(23:39):
those questions, and the peoplewho have read it, I've gotten a
lot of really good feedback, andthere are parts in it that they
say I would just push back onthis, or I disagree with this
component, or I don't think thisis going to pan out. And to
that, I say, Thank you and good,right? Because that's this
decision. Brief doesn't producesolutions or doesn't, doesn't

(24:01):
recommend actions for decisionmakers. Right now, I have more
research that will come off comesubsequently to this, in which
I'll hope to try to answer maybeone or two of the questions,
right? Or at least get closer,probably not answer. But

Tad Schnaufer (24:19):
well, and one thing about this field,
particularly since the war inUkraine started, is the rapid
evolution of it. So if you lookat the drones that the
Ukrainians and Russians wereusing at the beginning of the
conflict in 2022 and how thosehave evolved. So you go from
just basic quad copters, rightoff the shelf, and now they're
being modified, you know,greatly to now they're using,
you know, fiber optic cables sothey cannot be jammed. So this,

(24:40):
this is a field that's rapidlyevolving, so your research will
likely keep up. Have to keeppace with it, not nonetheless,
just catch up.

Jay Patrich (24:49):
I hope it keeps evolving and and that's an
example of the creativity thatI'm talking about with the
Ukraine's like or the currentUkrainians, excuse me. And when
I knew. Actually heard aboutdrones dragging fiber optic
cables. I thought, you know, ifsomebody brought that to us,
we'd say, Not in a millionyears, right? But it is a tool

(25:10):
that is solving a problem forthem, either tactically or
operationally. I want to makesure that we are in the same
headspace to where we look atnot just what technological
solutions are available, butalso what Creative Employment
and CR and I would say at theend of it, I talk about, you

(25:33):
know, doctrine, organization,materiel. I think, I don't think
if we are going to use dronesfor more irregular warfare
topics and major combatoperations. I don't think that
we're structured for that rightnow. We are set up to deploy

(25:55):
forces based on the global forcemanagement allocation plan that
the Joint Chiefs put out sothose we in FSOC, at least, we
are set up very well to satisfythose requirements, and those
requirements are almostexclusively counterinsurgency
and counterterrorismrequirements, so I don't get to

(26:16):
make choices about what Ourpriorities are, but if the
priorities change to where wewant to use the special
operations drone forces to makeirregular warfare contributions,
I think that it is likely thatwe'll have to reorganize at
least some way, especially ifyou want innovation to come out
of the The tactical level. Rightnow the there's not places or

(26:44):
Centers of Excellence oranything like that that do that
advancement. It is done out ofhide, in addition to all of the
training requirements andeverything that it takes to go
forward to satisfy that giftmap. What's a

Tad Schnaufer (26:58):
gift map the global force

Jay Patrich (26:59):
management allocation plan. It's the Joint
Chiefs plan of how we sendforces places.

Tad Schnaufer (27:04):
So in Ukraine, we've seen that the pressure,
obviously, of the war, thisexistential threat, the rapid
changing of the front lines atthe beginning of the war, now a
little bit more stagnant. ThatThat, along with really a low
sense of bureaucracy within theUkrainian forces, allowed them
to adapt rapidly so they weren'tafraid, in a sense, of taking
something off the shelf andadapting it. Obviously, the
United States is a much morebureaucratic structure for

(27:27):
acquiring new technologies andthen for fielding them, and then
for actually putting them on ina front line unit. So do you see
that and possibly hindering thisevolution, maybe within the US
structure, or do we just need tobe able to move faster?

Jay Patrich (27:42):
There's ups and downs to all of this, I think.
And so the bureaucratic natureof what we've got right now has
benefits. Everybody loves torail against it, and I do too,
but with the size of ourenterprise, you can't exist
without it. Thankfully, rightnow, we're not in major combat

(28:03):
operations with a peer, which iswhy I think it's critical that
we start working on this rightnow, so that we don't have to
figure out new tactics when weare under fire. I think
Secretary hegseth memo about AI,or, excuse me, drone dominance
that he put out a while ago isgood. But that was actually one
of the inspirations for thiswork as well. So in Secretary

(28:26):
hegseth memo, I think it pushessome authority to make
purchases, procurement, in thebureaucratic term, to buy drones
down to the battalion level,which is the Lieutenant Colonel
level. So these, these men andwomen, have been in the Air
Force or the army for 16, 1819,years, something like that.

(28:49):
They've been infantry officers,they've been armor officers,
they've been artillery officers.
What have you Special Operationsofficers? What do they know
about buying drones, what policyor guidance have they been given
for, what effects they areexpected to achieve with these
drones? And the answer to myknowledge is not much. And so

(29:12):
we'll get back on that pathwaydependence thing, that failure
of imagination. So if I'm ainfantry battalion commander
right now and I get theauthority to buy some drones,
I'm going to buy some long rangespotting drones. I'm going to
ask if they have some that havekinetic capabilities for me to

(29:32):
go after somebody who's holed upin a building or on the other
side of something, or if I can'tget artillery quickly, those
kinds of things. So that's goodbecause that that person can use
those for positive effects onthe battlefield. But wouldn't it
be better if they knew a littlemore about how drones might be

(29:55):
employed, what the bestpractices are, and also. So are
there a different effects thatthey are expected to achieve?
Are they supposed to use theirdrone money for drone defense,
or are they supposed to bebuying offensive drones? And I
don't know the answers, and Iwonder if they do.

Tad Schnaufer (30:12):
It's interesting.
And obviously, with any newtechnology, there's a learning
curve there. And like youmentioned your whole piece here
looks to engage the decisionmakers in a sense of we need to
start thinking about this now,because you don't want to be
trying to figure it out on thebattlefield. It's better to
figure it out at a CombatTraining Center at Fort Polk or

(30:32):
out in the desert in California,compared to actually doing it on
the battlefield. So thisimplementation will be, will be
coming. But typically, it's thepressure of the conflict, kind
of, going back to the Russia,Russia, Ukraine piece, that
actually makes it happen.

Jay Patrich (30:50):
It's the pressure of the conflict. Or general
Mackenzie said it best.
Sometimes it takes civilianleadership for us, in the D in
the military to make bigchanges, and the one he
referenced was GoldwaterNichols, right? So I don't think
there's any reason to think thatmilitary leaders in the 70s were
interested in reorganizing andcreating combatant commanders

(31:17):
and creating so common thosekinds of things, and it took
civilian leadership. Right now,I don't know that there's any
pressure for civilian leadershipto make those choices, or that
they even know that that's achoice that I think should be
made. So I would be interestedin who's thinking about that

(31:40):
right now? Is anybody doing anywork on this stuff? And I don't
know the answer. And when thiscomes out, I would love to hear
from some people who are workingon this. I keep thinking that
somebody's going to email me andtell me, I'm an idiot, and
people are working on this, andwe've got this capability
already, which I would love tohear.

Tad Schnaufer (32:01):
Well, we'll see about those emails. I can't
wait. So one of the, you know,other points to note is that
we've seen, obviously, thediscussion of drones has been
huge over the last few years.
But you know, the commander inthe Pacific just a few months
ago talked about, if China wasgoing to make a attack on
Taiwan, they turn the straightof Taiwan into a drone
hellscape. So obviously, there'sthis idea of just using drones

(32:23):
in mass on in futurebattlefields. Are you saying
that soft forces would need todo anything different than that?
Or just, I

Jay Patrich (32:33):
would say soft doesn't often operate in mass.
That's more for conventionalforces. There are fewer of us,
we're a smaller portion of thebudget, especially when compared
to the larger air force and thelarger army. So something like
blunting the advance across thestraight is I'm sure that SOF

(32:55):
will have a contribution justbecause we're not, not going to
sit on the sidelines, but thatkind of thing is more
conventional, so I picture moreif a longer conflict occurs and
making those small teaminsertions Having effect moving

(33:20):
getting out, or at least gettingback, and then doing it again,
reconstituting. And so rightnow, I don't know that we're set
up for that kind of thing. Ithink that's what mission area
one in the Air Force, in the newone air force, force design is
describing. But they don'treally say that, and they don't

(33:41):
task FSOC, Air Force, SpecialOperations Command, they don't
task AFSOC with anythingdifferently. Neither has SOCOM.
And so if SOCOM is interested inthose capabilities, then I think
that we should start working onthem, as opposed to continuing
to advance our abilities to goafter a single terrorist leader
or financier things like

Tad Schnaufer (34:00):
that, right?
Because it's also a question ofmoney, of using these large,
expensive systems, compared to,again, a couple $100 quad clock
copter that can operate in thelittoral space. So it's kind of
getting away from where the UShas been recently, with being
the most advancedtechnologically, which means
very expensive and systems thatyou don't necessarily want to
lose tons of them on thebattlefield.

Jay Patrich (34:24):
I'll say that I am not advocating for going away
from that. I think, you know, westill need an F 35 we need an F
47 I wish they hadn't stoppedmaking F 20 twos sequestration
happened. And I would say thatif we look at smalls, meaning
like I am thinking about groupone, two and three, which means

(34:46):
all the way from the handheldbackpack carried drone to a 400
700 pound vertical takeoff andlanding quadcopter. That's the
size of a dining room table,right? Yeah, and I think that
you need that suite ofcapabilities because you don't
know what the mission will be.
There will be some things thatwill be appropriate for a

(35:07):
handheld, hand launchedquadcopter. There's some things
that will be that will requiremore electricity, will require
the capability to carry a largermunition, those kinds of things.
So I think that it's importantthat we focus on that, that
broader spectrum, and thosegroup three, the larger of the
ones that can still be prettyexpensive, but to the tune of,

(35:30):
like, $700,000 as opposed tohowever much an F 35 costs.

Tad Schnaufer (35:38):
Yes, so with all that in mind, where do you want
to take this research after thispublication?

Jay Patrich (35:47):
Yeah, thank you. I am working on an article right
now that looks at sort a littlebit of the history of Special
Operations innovation, thatlooks at what's happening in
Ukraine right now, and sort ofmoves forward with the concept

(36:09):
that there that drones areimportant for regular warfare.
And so I'm working on that paperright now. I hope to have that
done this year, and then we'lllook to at the various venues to
which we can try to get itpublished. So I am going to more
narrow focus on maybe one of theconcepts and reference some of

(36:33):
the other concepts. So focusingon irregular warfare, what
that's like? What are the what'sgoing on in irregular warfare,
what's been in the past, what'sbeen going on, and then how
drone forces could be employedin gray zone, kind of irregular
warfare, stuff with reference toand then, if we ended up in

(36:59):
major combat operations, here'show, here are some ways that
they could be utilized, with thegoal of saying, we need to
continue to look at our forcedesign. We need to look at how
we innovate. We need everybodywants to say, innovation comes
from the lowest level. Or, I'veheard a lot of times like

(37:19):
there's an airman in yourformation who can innovate on
these things and that, yeah,they can. They can innovate
within their sphere, right? Butwe also need some policy, some
guidance, so that the day to daywork of counterterrorism and all
the other stuff that we end updoing doesn't have an outsized

(37:44):
influence on the innovation workthat we do so that we can get
off that pathway dependence andmove to some more creative
solutions for what our nextconflict may look like.

Tad Schnaufer (37:56):
Well, it's excellent. You know, we look
forward to seeing this is thisis republished, and we'll keep
an eye out for your other papersas they come come out during
your fellowship. Yeah, thankyou. Thanks, Jeff, yep.