This is the last article of a three-part series elaborating on U.S. Special Operations Command’s line of effort to expand and reinforce generational relationships with allies and partners at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.
FORT LIBERTY, N.C. – The fourth special operations force (SOF) truth is competence. Competent SOF members cannot be created after emergencies occur. It is also true that useful, leverageable relationships cannot be developed after a crisis emerges. The ability to build and maintain relationships with tactical-level SOF partners from different countries and cultures, in preparation for crisis or contingency, is central to the value proposition of Army special operations forces.
Language skills and knowledge of the culture creates strong credibility and speeds the process of embedding with the foreign partner. The line of effort to expand foreign partnerships is not only a priority for the SOF enterprise but for the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, as well.
Expanding our relationships and building capacity for newer relationships requires new capabilities. To meet the needs of the operational force while fostering new and emerging partnerships, the new training and education opportunities are developed at the 2nd Special Warfare Training Group’s Language, Regional Education and Culture Directorate (LREC). The language school is the second largest in the Department of Defense.
Lt. Col. Benjamin R. Bringhurst, director of LREC, a program under the 2nd Special Warfare Training Group (Airborne), explained how the education and skills taught in LREC support the line of effort to expand and reinforce relationships with allies and foreign partners and increase our access, placement and influence.
“Allied Special Operations Forces relationship building and maintenance are a huge part of Army SOF’s value proposition to the Department of Defense and to the nation,” Bringhurst said. “During steady state operations, and even during the Global War on Terrorism period while heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, ARSOF built and maintained relationships with allied nations across the world.”
Bringhurst added that “when a crisis emerges, the ARSOF operator has the invaluable ability to immediately reach out to long-standing partners at the tactical and operational levels within the relevant country, gather ‘ground truth’ information, and leverage that relationship to further U.S. objectives.”
“SOF can provide this capability because when a crisis happens, ARSOF has already been in this country, building relationships, for years, often decades prior to the crisis,” he said.
ARSOF Soldiers invest a baseline of six months to acquire a foreign language, which helps to create mutual trust and understanding, build partnerships, and forge alliances.
The LREC program instructs 13 languages: Persian Farsi, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Chinese Mandarin, Modern Standard Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Korean, Ukrainian, French, Spanish, and Indonesian.
Presently, the first Ukrainian class began in first quarter of fiscal year 2024. The LREC program is currently developing curricula for Japanese and European Portuguese.
Additionally, students participate in a cultural role play exercise hosted by the U.S. Marine Special Operations Command language program.
This exercise provides immersive training in a culturally accurate environment with role players fluent in each target language, where students are exposed to a variety of cultural and professional interactions.
Bringhurst highlighted LREC’s contributions to the students’ overall training.
“To this end, the only place within the qualification courses in which skills specific to cross-cultural relationship building are taught is within the Language, Regional Education and Culture directorate,” he said. “ARSOF graduates leave the LREC directorate with language skills and cultural perspective, prepared to maintain and expand the Global SOF network of allies at low cost, low political risk, and with a minimal national commitment of manpower and materiel. Their results speak for themselves in regions as disparate as the Philippines, Colombia, and Ukraine.”
As demonstrated throughout this three-part series, the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School continually supports foreign partner immersion and embedding. As part of initial acquisition training and education, language skills, cultural education for ARSOF, and immersion into training and education for foreign allied partners are critical in generating the special operations Soldier.
For more information about the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, visit www.swcs.mil.
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