The official USAJFKSWCS website will migrate at the end of October 2026.

Please note that only minimal updates will be made to the current site during this transition. For any questions or assistance, please contact the Public Affairs Office at pao_swcs@socom.mil.

Special Warfare Journal Banner

Banner illustration for An Institutional Home for ARSOF Robotics:  Establishing a SORD-Training Company for Standards, Training, and Doctrine (Illustration by Special Warfare Journal staff.)An Institutional Home for ARSOF Robotics:
Establishing a SORD-Training Company for Standards, Training, and Doctrine

ARSOF requires a dedicated institutional organization to develop, standardize, and sustain robotics training, doctrine, experimentation, and Special Operations Robotics Detachment (SORD) support. Currently, these functions are scattered across schools, MOS pipelines, ad hoc initiatives, and unit-level efforts. Each group builds SORD capabilities independently with its own standard and its own assumptions, which means the force has many versions of "trained" and no agreed definition of it. Standardization of institutional training is an explicit role at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS). A SORD Training and Integration Company (SORD-T) within SWCS would provide the missing connective tissue between MOS pipelines, advanced robotics courses, operational detachments, and emerging technology. This article is not focused on any singular course it presents a force-design proposal, focusing on a sustainable, neutral, institutional home for robotics capability generation.
Results:
Tag: Jedburgh

June 20, 2025

Drop, Improvise, Win: The OSS in China

At 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 16, 1945, six men flew into the unknown. By sundown, they’d been beaten, stripped, and installed in the nicest hotel in Mukden. None of them knew this was in front of them just seven days earlier. The end of World War II surprised the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). On Aug. 11, 1945, two days after the nuclear attack on Nagasaki, the OSS received the mission to dispatch Mercy Mission teams into China.01 The Japanese had badly treated American prisoners of war, and there were concerns that Japanese officers might execute prisoners rather than return them to American control. As an additional concern, the Soviet Union had invaded Manchuria in northern China on August 9 and were racing towards camps holding American prisoners.

Special Warfare Journal Logo