The decade-and-a-half long war on terror is taking a significant toll on the nation’s best-trained soldiers and the Pentagon doesn’t have any plans to relieve them, a new government study concluded.
The number of Special Operations Forces (SOF) deployed weekly has more than doubled since 2001, adding pressure to an already difficult job, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO cited testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in May by special forces commander Gen. Joseph L. Votel, warning that “the high pace of deployments has resulted in both increased suicide incidents among the force and effects on operational readiness and retention due to a lack of predictability.”
Votel added that “high-stake missions” and “extraordinarily demanding environments,” place special operations soldiers and their families “under unprecedented levels of stress.”
According to the GAO’s study, which was mandated by the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon is not doing enough to address “the underlying problem—the high demand for SOF.”
“DOD has not formally assessed opportunities to transfer or share certain activities between SOF and conventional forces since 2003,” during the first drawdown in Iraq, the report stated. Since then, Special Forces have engaged in activities that could be carried out by normal troops, “such as performing noncombatant evacuation mission.”
The GAO also examined funding levels for US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which had more than tripled since 2001 to $9.8 billion in 2014.
The funding numbers, however, don’t account for the additional support the Pentagon provides SOF in the form of salaries, benefits and equipment, which the department pegs at roughly $8 billion a year on top of SOCOM’s budget.
And both totals are likely understated since, as GAO claimed, the department doesn’t keep reliable accounting on SOF expenditures.
“Transparency—shedding light on the amount of spending, what it is spent on, who receives the funds, and what the results of that spending are—is essential to improving government accountability,” the report advocated.
