Hard-Shelled,
SOF-Centered

The Synergy of Might and Mind

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Gordon Lee is a research communicator at RAND.

The message received by U.S. Navy Captain Robert Harward at Camp Rhino outside Kandahar in late February was cryptic but urgent: "Mullah K has left the building. He's on the move."

With that message—sent by the operators of a Predator surveillance drone circling above the rugged hills of Afghanistan's Paktia province—Harward, the top-ranking Navy SEAL in Afghanistan and a former RAND Navy Fellow, gave the green light to a lightning-fast operation that resulted in the capture of a key Taliban leader, Mullah Khairullah Kahirkhawa.

"We planned, designed, and executed that operation with one hour's notice," said Harward, who sat down with RAND Review for his first on-the-record interview since returning to the United States from Operation Enduring Freedom.

"Once we heard he was moving, my guys went off and put together a plan in 30 minutes. And 30 minutes later, it was all over. The whole operation, coordinating 40 U.S. and Danish special forces, was a great example of how all the training we've had in combined and joint operations can work and succeed in the field." The effort involved U.S. Air Force Special Forces, Danish Special Forces, U.S. Navy SEALs, and U.S. Army conventional air assets.

"It was a real testament to teaming," said Harward.

The Afghanistan campaign convinced him that Special Operations Forces (SOF), if given appropriate and timely support by conventional forces, will play an increasingly important role in the war against terrorism. "Afghanistan confirmed what I studied and was thinking about while I was at RAND," Harward said. "In the future, the conventional navy's support of and involvement with SOF will be a growth industry."

From Calm Thought to Quick Action

Harward has spent 18 years as a member of Naval Special Warfare (NSW), the branch of the U.S. Navy that encompasses elite SEAL commandos and special warfare combatant crew members (individuals who are specially trained boat operators). His assignments have included Kuwait and Bosnia. His string of overseas deployments was interrupted in 1998­1999, when he accepted an assignment as a RAND Navy Fellow in Santa Monica, Calif.

AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/U.S. NAVY U.S. Navy SEALs discover a large munitions cache in one of 70 caves explored during a search-and-destroy mission in the Zhawar Kili area of eastern Afghanistan in January. The SEALs subsequently called in air strikes to destroy the caves and above-ground complexes, which had been used by Al Qaeda and Taliban forces.

While Harward was at RAND, his research focused on redefining the role of Naval Special Warfare in the 21st century. He identified a potentially larger role for SOF in future military engagements and called upon the navy to consider devoting more of its conventional assets to such unconventional missions.

In August 2001, he was named commander of NSW Group ONE, based in Coronado, Calif., and was charged with overseeing all NSW personnel and activities on the West Coast, in the Pacific, and in Southwest Asia. It was from that post that he was tapped for his command in Afghanistan.

The mission to capture Mullah Khairullah was one of more than 75 missions performed by U.S. and allied special forces overseen by Harward from the U.S. base at Camp Rhino and other sites in Afghanistan. From October 2001 through April 2002, he commanded what was officially known as the Coalition Joint Special Operations Task Force­South. The 2,800-man task force was one of two set up by the United States to monitor Al Qaeda and Taliban forces, raid their hideouts, capture commanders, collect intelligence, and engage in a host of other disruptive activities.

The operations Harward oversaw were some of the most sensitive and dangerous in Afghanistan. One was a mission in early January to investigate the Al Qaeda hideout at Zhawar Kili. Expected to last 12 hours, the mission turned into an eight-day ordeal as U.S. forces scoured the 70-cave complex adjacent to Pakistan. Another mission involved a days-long surveillance and raid of Ali Kheyl, a multistoried fortress perched at 14,000 feet, not far from the city of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. "That place was straight out of an Indiana Jones movie," Harward said. "We expected to see Steven Spielberg at any minute!"

More Than a Movie

The unique SOF nature of the campaign led to a novel command structure and a completely new role for the navy. It was unusual for Naval Special Warfare to command a joint task force. "Normally, we would be the navy component [of a task force]. In this case, we were the lead commanding element."

In that capacity, Harward commanded not just navy SEALs but all SOF personnel assigned to the task force from the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Turkey. His authority extended beyond SOF personnel to include U.S. Marine Corps helicopters and ground forces.

"This allowed us to do things we'd never done before," Harward said. "You saw SEALs operating 500 miles inland, using army and Marine Corps helicopters."

The new arrangement, with its integration of joint forces in the field, also allowed Harward and his team to make quicker decisions and operate with shorter planning cycles. The U.S. Special Operations Command strives to have its special forces use a 96-hour planning process; ideally, SOF personnel should identify a target four days in advance of hitting it. However, in the hunt for fleeing Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, U.S. commanders had to dramatically compress the cycle to as short as an hour or two, said Harward. "This altered how we planned for flight crew rest hours, how we used intelligence assets, and how we utilized air assets."

An unfortunate result of the shorter planning cycle was that it intensified the challenge of identifying, sorting, and verifying targets—a process that has never been easy. Many organizations—other military services, other government agencies, Afghan allies—were involved in vetting and approving targets. Sometimes they worked through the process quickly and accurately; other times, not. "Targeting is never perfect and can always be improved," Harward said. "It always needs to be worked on."

The Afghan campaign, its SOF leadership, its joint and coalition nature, its operational agility, and the premium it placed on accurate information—all of these qualities epitomize the type of warfare that will be needed to subdue global terrorism, said Harward.

"Afghanistan was SOF-centric, and more and more warfare likely will be SOF-specific."