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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.
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Tag: Joint Force

Banner image for Guns AND Butter: How SOF’s enduring relationships provide value for the Joint Force.

July 23, 2026

Guns AND Butter: How SOF’s enduring relationships provide value for the Joint Force

The United States’ most significant advantage against its adversaries in the competition space is its allies and partners, who have become more vulnerable to adversarial influence. U.S. allies and international partners have increasingly succumbed to (and even welcomed) partnerships under China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) or arms sales with Russia. The battle to seize control of narratives in the information and human dimension will be paramount to maintaining the U.S.’ competitive advantage.

Banner Image for Special Forces Deep Operations Image use in figure 1. Ukrainian Battlefield Geometry, Source: Watling, Emergent Approaches to Combined Arms Manoevre in Ukraine, 2025. Graphic design: Alex Whitworth Art & Design

April 17, 2026

Special Forces Deep Operations

Not long after open-source reporting on Operation ABSOLUTE RESOLVE (OAR) broke, to include the article “The Medvedev Corollary” shared by the 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) Commanding General, our soldiers began dissecting the operation. They discussed the implications for Special Forces (SF) deep operations in large-scale combat operations (LSCO). During a battalion forum, an 18-series Soldier raised a concern he and his team had been pondering. They had trained for infiltration and target development against integrated air defense systems (IADS) components, and enabling joint strikes, assuming air access would be contested or denied. Yet OAR showed that the U.S. could rapidly defeat air defenses through integrated air, cyber, and electronic warfare assets, leveraging a joint conventional force (CF) and special operations force (SOF) force package.01 The follow-up question was blunt: If this can be done without SF, what exactly is SF’s mission in LSCO? Simply put, if the joint force can, at times, penetrate anti-access / area denial (A2/AD) systems, how does that affect the necessity and purpose of SF deep operations in LSCO? What elements remain essential to SF’s mission?

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