Q&A: Colonel Wesley L. Rehorn
JOINT TRAINER:
Ensuring Understanding Between SOF and Conventional Assets
-COLRehorn-photo-13-Aug-07.jpg)
Colonel Wesley L. Rehorn
Commander
Special Operations Command
Joint Forces Command
Norfolk, VA
During his 31 years of service, Rehorn has served in a variety of command and staff assignments in light infantry, airborne and Special Forces units. He began his career as a squad leader in the 1st Battalion 26th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, in Goeppingen, Germany, before returning to the United States to serve as a drill sergeant. Upon receiving his commission, he served as platoon leader, executive officer and company commander in various units in V Corps in Germany.
Upon graduation from the Special Forces Qualification Course, he served as a battalion assistant operations officer, then commanded a Special Forces high altitude low opening (HALO) A team for three years in 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Devens, Mass. Rehorn then served as the aide-de-camp and executive officer for the deputy commanding general of the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. He later served as the 2nd Battalion operations officer, Special Warfare Training Group also at Fort Bragg before assuming duties as commander, Military Freefall School at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. Rehorn next served in Special Operations Command, Europe, before assuming command of B Company, 1st Battalion 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). As the J7, then J3 of Special Operations Command Joint Forces Command, Norfolk, Va., he directed the joint training of special operations forces and conventional forces headquarters in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, he was selected for battalion-level command and subsequently served as the garrison commander at Fort Story, Va.
Rehorn is a graduate of the Special Forces Qualification Course, Ranger School, Command and General Staff College, Armed Forces Staff College, and the Army War College. He has a bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State University, and a master’s degree from both Kansas University and the U.S. Army War College.
Awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal (four awards), Army Commendation Medal (four awards), Army Achievement Medal (two awards), Joint Meritorious Unit Award (two awards) and Army Good Conduct Medal. Rehorn has also earned the Special Forces Tab, Ranger Tab, Military Freefall Master Parachutist Badge and Instructor rating, Master Parachutist Badge, Expert Infantryman Badge, Russian Freefall Badge, German Parachutist Badge and the Army Drill Sergeant Badge.
Interviewed By SOTECH Editor-In-Chief Jeff McKaughan
Q: Good morning, Colonel Rehorn. Let’s start off with a little background of SOC JFCOM.
A: The unit had a significant mission change about 1997 when General Peter Schoomaker and General Gary Luck looked at what at the time was called SOC ACOM [Special Operations Command Atlantic Command]. When ACOM changed over to JFCOM [Joint Forces Command] they lost the primary portion of their area of responsibility. When that happened, the first inclination was to dismantle the SOC and use the slots in other places.
Everyone then realized that there was a great lack of joint special operations training capabilities. As you know, SOCOM has Title 10 responsibility for the individual tactical level training like HALO, free-fall, SCUBA, medical and languages. But at the command and control level there was not anyone that could do that.
So, they redesigned the organization to become a primary training entity.
Q: What are your primary missions?
A: We really have three missions. Our primary mission is obviously training joint special operations headquarters—our JSOTFs. We are also responsible for training conventional forces in the integration of SOF.
Our second mission is to be the SOF advisor to the commander of JFCOM.
Our third mission is to integrate SOF initiatives or developments within JFCOM writ-large, primarily the J9, J8 and the Joint Warfighting Center.
Q: Since the time of the original change to now has that organizational structure pretty much stayed the same from then to now?
A: We are arranged in a normal J-code scenario—J1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The only difference is that in most theater special operations commands— which we are one—the largest, most active J-code section is the J3. In our organization, it happens to be the J7. Our J7 is led by, at this point, an Army colonel, and he controls the joint training team which is sort of the junior member of the JWFC—Joint warfighting center. They have a DTC—deployable training center—and they train primarily conventional organizations. We leverage their presence as they leverage ours in training conventional forces but when it comes to purely SOF, our JTT is the lead.
Q: You said that one of your primary missions is to train conventional forces in the employment of SOF assets. Can you go into more detail and characterize the major considerations when you do those missions?
A: One of the first things that we do for the conventional forces is we host a portion of a larger exercise called the MRX—mission readiness exercise—when corps-level staffs for two- and three-star JTF commanders are being prepared to deploy into a combat zone. We attempt to get the actual SOF commanders that they will be interfacing with in that area to participate in that MRX with them.
We design scenarios that force the two commanders to look at the seams and gaps that they would normally have whether they are command and control issues, communications issues, LNOs [division liaison officers], transition/transfer of authorities, crossing combat AOR lines, etc.
We have a permanent venue or relationship with all of the deployed SOF so we are aware of the differences between the command and control structure in the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. We can prepare both the JTF two- or three-star level commander and the O6 JSOTF commander for the situations that they will have to deal with when they are on the ground.
Q: Is the MRX more of an instructional/lecture situation, a roleplaying environment or a computer-driven exercise?
A: It’s actually more of a facilitation. We help design the MSELs [master scenario event list], the injects [inject is something the control group gives to the training audience to prompt them to take an action] of the exercise and we put the commanders in situations that they have to deal with it. We facilitate their reactions to those situations to best meet their mission requirements. So we are not an instructional force at all.
Parallel to this, at these MRXs, and when we go to JSOTFs, from our experience we present at these senior leadership seminars the things that have been going well, the things that have been going poorly, but we don’t attribute those to any organizations—unless they are positive. This allows the commanders, both the JTF level—when we engage the conventional force—and the JSOTF level when we’re engaging the O6s preparing to be a JSOTF—to form their staff. This allows the commanders to say, this is how I want to handle this IT situation, this IN situation, or here is the planning cycle I want to work with. We don’t tell them how to do anything, we just present them with the situation, show them what has worked in the past, what has not worked, and let them develop their staff functions.
Q: When the participants start moving in a direction that experience says has not been very successful, do you nudge them in a different direction?
A: One of the great advantages we have is that we have a senior mentor, which currently is General Gary Luck (Ret). We also have the availability of other retired general officers. When we are working with the MRXs and the JTFs we have the senior mentors who help guide the participants.
Primarily, we have two assets in our joint training team. One is our observer trainers [OT] who are all military. The majority of them are SOF or have some background in IT or IN, logistics, administration or medical as we cover all of these areas.
In addition to these OTs who are working right with the staffs, we have ATs [analyst trainers; civilian counterpart to the OT] and those are primarily contractors. Almost all of them are SOF. They have between 20 and 35 years of individual background and they are sitting in the back assessing what is going on and helping the OTs design a response to facilitate a better solution.
Q: One recent initiative was the establishment of a SOF Community of Interest. What is the background of this program and where you would like it to go?
A: We have had a number of meetings on this very subject. Basically, the question my chief of staff and I asked when we arrived was that we represented all of the SOF assets within Joint Forces Command and where is the coherent SOF message coming into JFCOM and out of JFCOM?
We realized that there were a lot of people who were hired or expected to be SOF experts but had very little connectivity with either the SOC or SOCOM. What we tried to do was develop a community of interest where all of the people that were touching SOF equities or initiatives within JFCOM could come together and meet once a month and share what’s going on. It’s given us a much better overview of the meeting tempo.
It has been very successful so far. We have representatives from almost every section of JFCOM. Meetings have been averaging about 20 people so far.
Q: As an adage, train as you fight is well-used and well-known. Can you give me any examples of how that is being practiced within your command and how that relates to deployed SOF operations?
A: The biggest thing on that is our training cycle. We will get with an organization that is going into the box well in advance of their deployment. We will ask their commander, “What are your training challenges, what portions of a JSOTF do you feel uncomfortable with or need some assistance with.”
We will design a training program specifically for that command and we also design specifically for that AOR.
So we will do the senior executive level seminar with commander which helps him form his staff then we will do functional component training which basically goes to J1, 2, 3 and 4 and we help train them separately. For that same deployment, or possibly later, we will do a full fledged STAFFEX and try and run them through all of the things that have caused problems in the past.
When we’re done, we give that commander only an after-action review on how his unit did. We don’t validate or certify the unit—that’s the commander’s responsibility. What we do after that is attempt to get a two- to three-man augmentation team to go with that unit incountry. Within the first 90 days we will send out a staff assistance visit to ask the commander if there are areas where he might need additional assistance or support.
That staff assistance visit works back to our lessons learned or best business practices from the prior seminars. What this does is gives us a constant loop of updating our entire curriculum for each AOR— because each AOR is different—and each set of problems they face.
We also publish all of our lessons learned and put it out to the force.
Q: What means or format do you publish this information?
A: Primarily in one of three ways. The first thing we do is give the information to two databases to be included electronically. One is to SOCOM and the other is to the Joint Center for Operational Analysis [JCOA] lessons learned here at JFCOM. These are both pull systems— people have to go in and look for it.
We are constantly refocusing our curriculum to include everything that we’ve learned.
The third piece is that we actually produce a lessons learned publication called Insights, which is published about every four or five months.
Q: We’ve talked about the methods you use in training and seminars, do computer-based simulations have a role in your process? Do you have any field-related exercises? Do you try and have a balance between theory and hands-on?
A: To some extent we do use simulations and we do use computers, primarily for our STAFFEXs. We tend to replicate both higher headquarters and lower headquarters. For example, we just did an operation with a special operations unit in Europe where we virtually represented the tactical level units below them, including the enemy, and also replicated the responses of the higher headquarters above.
In about 1998 or 1999, we developed a program called the Web Information Center [WIC]. This was designed for the disadvantaged user, primarily SOF who was deployed forward who needed a small pipeline to be able to communicate with the home base unit.
Since the development of the portal, which is what the majority of garrison-based organizations have gone to, we had to migrate the width to what’s called a DPA, which is a deployable portal application. This is something we believe that SOCOM is going to pick up as a program of record. This will allow the disadvantaged or temporary user for a contingency operation to use a smaller pipe and reach back to the portal system to make it functional.
Long term residents, like Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, have been there long enough and can develop large pipes. Contingency operations just can’t do that.
The third piece of that is our responsibility to the J9 JFCOM to have involvement in all of their initiatives and add SOF input and equities that we think SOCOM may be involved with.
Q; It sounds like the command has had some development on its own, but in this regard, do you have much direct relationship with industry partners to come up with mission solutions?
A: The WIC was developed in-house. We used our own contractors that were internal to the command. In essence, we don’t have a lot of direct relations with industry. We leverage those contractors that are present in the J9 at JFCOM or to some degree at SOCOM. We would tell them what we are looking for and ask if they have a solution or can get a solution.
Q: With the current levels of force deployments and rotations of both SOF and conventional forces, how has that impacted the way you conduct your mission?
A: The biggest factor is that up until about 2000, the majority of SOF general officers and potential general officers felt that an O6 level command—both Army and Navy—would never serve as a JSOTF. Primarily for two reasons: The first is because of the rank structure within a Special Forces Group and the number of people in the organization overall.
After 9/11, when 5th Special Forces was stood up to be the first JSOTF, our training program went into overdrive. I think before that people thought it was fairly interesting, we were fairly new but after that it became almost mandatory to receive that training before they deploy.
As a matter of fact, on the very first JSOTF stood up after 9/11 there were 17 people from SOC JFCOM who were the core of Task Force Dagger stationed in Uzbekistan prior to the invasion of Afghanistan.
I think the difference is now not only because of the dramatic increase in the number of JSOTFs, but also because of the dramatic increase in the relationship between SOF and the conventional forces. Before 2000 any relationship between SOF and the conventional forces was fairly uncommon. Now, because of the battle we’re in and sharing the battlespace it’s become mandatory for the conventional forces to have SOF integration training before they deploy.
Q: What is your relationship with the MARSOC units that will do the foreign internal defense training?
A: Not with MARSOC, primarily because they are performing the mission at the tactical level. We’re really focused at the operational level. However, we are embarking on supporting a NATO SOF initiative to develop an operational level command and control capacity for NATO SOF at the request of Rear Admiral McRaven, commander of SOCEUR.
We are also involved in a partnership for coalition training for non-NATO entities primarily within SOCSOUTH and SOCEUR. We’ve been asked to engage and help develop an operational level command and control capacity, which we are working on right now.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: We have a unique command because we support Title 10 responsibility not only to JFCOM but also to SOCOM. We receive money and personnel from both commands and try and meet both of their training priorities which is very unique.
I have a large core of expertise. The majority of our people have been in the command on the average of about eight years. This creates a great base of knowledge and also of dedication to the mission. It’s a great mission. Most of my contractors and civilians were former members of the command.
We have an extremely high operational tempo and I couldn’t be prouder of the people of the command the work they do. ♦
A: The unit had a significant mission change about 1997 when General Peter Schoomaker and General Gary Luck looked at what at the time was called SOC ACOM [Special Operations Command Atlantic Command]. When ACOM changed over to JFCOM [Joint Forces Command] they lost the primary portion of their area of responsibility. When that happened, the first inclination was to dismantle the SOC and use the slots in other places.
Everyone then realized that there was a great lack of joint special operations training capabilities. As you know, SOCOM has Title 10 responsibility for the individual tactical level training like HALO, free-fall, SCUBA, medical and languages. But at the command and control level there was not anyone that could do that.
So, they redesigned the organization to become a primary training entity.
Q: What are your primary missions?
A: We really have three missions. Our primary mission is obviously training joint special operations headquarters—our JSOTFs. We are also responsible for training conventional forces in the integration of SOF.
Our second mission is to be the SOF advisor to the commander of JFCOM.
Our third mission is to integrate SOF initiatives or developments within JFCOM writ-large, primarily the J9, J8 and the Joint Warfighting Center.
Q: Since the time of the original change to now has that organizational structure pretty much stayed the same from then to now?
A: We are arranged in a normal J-code scenario—J1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The only difference is that in most theater special operations commands— which we are one—the largest, most active J-code section is the J3. In our organization, it happens to be the J7. Our J7 is led by, at this point, an Army colonel, and he controls the joint training team which is sort of the junior member of the JWFC—Joint warfighting center. They have a DTC—deployable training center—and they train primarily conventional organizations. We leverage their presence as they leverage ours in training conventional forces but when it comes to purely SOF, our JTT is the lead.
Q: You said that one of your primary missions is to train conventional forces in the employment of SOF assets. Can you go into more detail and characterize the major considerations when you do those missions?
A: One of the first things that we do for the conventional forces is we host a portion of a larger exercise called the MRX—mission readiness exercise—when corps-level staffs for two- and three-star JTF commanders are being prepared to deploy into a combat zone. We attempt to get the actual SOF commanders that they will be interfacing with in that area to participate in that MRX with them.
We design scenarios that force the two commanders to look at the seams and gaps that they would normally have whether they are command and control issues, communications issues, LNOs [division liaison officers], transition/transfer of authorities, crossing combat AOR lines, etc.
We have a permanent venue or relationship with all of the deployed SOF so we are aware of the differences between the command and control structure in the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. We can prepare both the JTF two- or three-star level commander and the O6 JSOTF commander for the situations that they will have to deal with when they are on the ground.
Q: Is the MRX more of an instructional/lecture situation, a roleplaying environment or a computer-driven exercise?
A: It’s actually more of a facilitation. We help design the MSELs [master scenario event list], the injects [inject is something the control group gives to the training audience to prompt them to take an action] of the exercise and we put the commanders in situations that they have to deal with it. We facilitate their reactions to those situations to best meet their mission requirements. So we are not an instructional force at all.
Parallel to this, at these MRXs, and when we go to JSOTFs, from our experience we present at these senior leadership seminars the things that have been going well, the things that have been going poorly, but we don’t attribute those to any organizations—unless they are positive. This allows the commanders, both the JTF level—when we engage the conventional force—and the JSOTF level when we’re engaging the O6s preparing to be a JSOTF—to form their staff. This allows the commanders to say, this is how I want to handle this IT situation, this IN situation, or here is the planning cycle I want to work with. We don’t tell them how to do anything, we just present them with the situation, show them what has worked in the past, what has not worked, and let them develop their staff functions.
Q: When the participants start moving in a direction that experience says has not been very successful, do you nudge them in a different direction?
A: One of the great advantages we have is that we have a senior mentor, which currently is General Gary Luck (Ret). We also have the availability of other retired general officers. When we are working with the MRXs and the JTFs we have the senior mentors who help guide the participants.
Primarily, we have two assets in our joint training team. One is our observer trainers [OT] who are all military. The majority of them are SOF or have some background in IT or IN, logistics, administration or medical as we cover all of these areas.
In addition to these OTs who are working right with the staffs, we have ATs [analyst trainers; civilian counterpart to the OT] and those are primarily contractors. Almost all of them are SOF. They have between 20 and 35 years of individual background and they are sitting in the back assessing what is going on and helping the OTs design a response to facilitate a better solution.
Q: One recent initiative was the establishment of a SOF Community of Interest. What is the background of this program and where you would like it to go?
A: We have had a number of meetings on this very subject. Basically, the question my chief of staff and I asked when we arrived was that we represented all of the SOF assets within Joint Forces Command and where is the coherent SOF message coming into JFCOM and out of JFCOM?
We realized that there were a lot of people who were hired or expected to be SOF experts but had very little connectivity with either the SOC or SOCOM. What we tried to do was develop a community of interest where all of the people that were touching SOF equities or initiatives within JFCOM could come together and meet once a month and share what’s going on. It’s given us a much better overview of the meeting tempo.
It has been very successful so far. We have representatives from almost every section of JFCOM. Meetings have been averaging about 20 people so far.
Q: As an adage, train as you fight is well-used and well-known. Can you give me any examples of how that is being practiced within your command and how that relates to deployed SOF operations?
A: The biggest thing on that is our training cycle. We will get with an organization that is going into the box well in advance of their deployment. We will ask their commander, “What are your training challenges, what portions of a JSOTF do you feel uncomfortable with or need some assistance with.”
We will design a training program specifically for that command and we also design specifically for that AOR.
So we will do the senior executive level seminar with commander which helps him form his staff then we will do functional component training which basically goes to J1, 2, 3 and 4 and we help train them separately. For that same deployment, or possibly later, we will do a full fledged STAFFEX and try and run them through all of the things that have caused problems in the past.
When we’re done, we give that commander only an after-action review on how his unit did. We don’t validate or certify the unit—that’s the commander’s responsibility. What we do after that is attempt to get a two- to three-man augmentation team to go with that unit incountry. Within the first 90 days we will send out a staff assistance visit to ask the commander if there are areas where he might need additional assistance or support.
That staff assistance visit works back to our lessons learned or best business practices from the prior seminars. What this does is gives us a constant loop of updating our entire curriculum for each AOR— because each AOR is different—and each set of problems they face.
We also publish all of our lessons learned and put it out to the force.
Q: What means or format do you publish this information?
A: Primarily in one of three ways. The first thing we do is give the information to two databases to be included electronically. One is to SOCOM and the other is to the Joint Center for Operational Analysis [JCOA] lessons learned here at JFCOM. These are both pull systems— people have to go in and look for it.
We are constantly refocusing our curriculum to include everything that we’ve learned.
The third piece is that we actually produce a lessons learned publication called Insights, which is published about every four or five months.
Q: We’ve talked about the methods you use in training and seminars, do computer-based simulations have a role in your process? Do you have any field-related exercises? Do you try and have a balance between theory and hands-on?
A: To some extent we do use simulations and we do use computers, primarily for our STAFFEXs. We tend to replicate both higher headquarters and lower headquarters. For example, we just did an operation with a special operations unit in Europe where we virtually represented the tactical level units below them, including the enemy, and also replicated the responses of the higher headquarters above.
In about 1998 or 1999, we developed a program called the Web Information Center [WIC]. This was designed for the disadvantaged user, primarily SOF who was deployed forward who needed a small pipeline to be able to communicate with the home base unit.
Since the development of the portal, which is what the majority of garrison-based organizations have gone to, we had to migrate the width to what’s called a DPA, which is a deployable portal application. This is something we believe that SOCOM is going to pick up as a program of record. This will allow the disadvantaged or temporary user for a contingency operation to use a smaller pipe and reach back to the portal system to make it functional.
Long term residents, like Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, have been there long enough and can develop large pipes. Contingency operations just can’t do that.
The third piece of that is our responsibility to the J9 JFCOM to have involvement in all of their initiatives and add SOF input and equities that we think SOCOM may be involved with.
Q; It sounds like the command has had some development on its own, but in this regard, do you have much direct relationship with industry partners to come up with mission solutions?
A: The WIC was developed in-house. We used our own contractors that were internal to the command. In essence, we don’t have a lot of direct relations with industry. We leverage those contractors that are present in the J9 at JFCOM or to some degree at SOCOM. We would tell them what we are looking for and ask if they have a solution or can get a solution.
Q: With the current levels of force deployments and rotations of both SOF and conventional forces, how has that impacted the way you conduct your mission?
A: The biggest factor is that up until about 2000, the majority of SOF general officers and potential general officers felt that an O6 level command—both Army and Navy—would never serve as a JSOTF. Primarily for two reasons: The first is because of the rank structure within a Special Forces Group and the number of people in the organization overall.
After 9/11, when 5th Special Forces was stood up to be the first JSOTF, our training program went into overdrive. I think before that people thought it was fairly interesting, we were fairly new but after that it became almost mandatory to receive that training before they deploy.
As a matter of fact, on the very first JSOTF stood up after 9/11 there were 17 people from SOC JFCOM who were the core of Task Force Dagger stationed in Uzbekistan prior to the invasion of Afghanistan.
I think the difference is now not only because of the dramatic increase in the number of JSOTFs, but also because of the dramatic increase in the relationship between SOF and the conventional forces. Before 2000 any relationship between SOF and the conventional forces was fairly uncommon. Now, because of the battle we’re in and sharing the battlespace it’s become mandatory for the conventional forces to have SOF integration training before they deploy.
Q: What is your relationship with the MARSOC units that will do the foreign internal defense training?
A: Not with MARSOC, primarily because they are performing the mission at the tactical level. We’re really focused at the operational level. However, we are embarking on supporting a NATO SOF initiative to develop an operational level command and control capacity for NATO SOF at the request of Rear Admiral McRaven, commander of SOCEUR.
We are also involved in a partnership for coalition training for non-NATO entities primarily within SOCSOUTH and SOCEUR. We’ve been asked to engage and help develop an operational level command and control capacity, which we are working on right now.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: We have a unique command because we support Title 10 responsibility not only to JFCOM but also to SOCOM. We receive money and personnel from both commands and try and meet both of their training priorities which is very unique.
I have a large core of expertise. The majority of our people have been in the command on the average of about eight years. This creates a great base of knowledge and also of dedication to the mission. It’s a great mission. Most of my contractors and civilians were former members of the command.
We have an extremely high operational tempo and I couldn’t be prouder of the people of the command the work they do. ♦