- By Nathan Hodge
- June 5, 2009 |
- 8:43 am |
- Categories: Army and Marines, Military Life, Spies, Secrecy and Surveillance
- Courtesy Of Wired Blog NetWork
Are you a native speaker of Hausa, Sinhala or Pushtu? Are you an expert in some obscure corner of the north Caucasus or southern Sudan? U.S. Special Operations Command may have a job for you.
In testimony yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee, Adm. Eric Olson, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, described an effort to boost the command’s in-house language skills and regional expertise — including a possible effort to recruit “scouts” with native language abilities.
Special Operations Command has already carved out career paths for individuals who are comfortable working in foreign cultures: Army Special Forces, for instance, has basic language proficiency requirements. But Olson suggested the special-ops community is looking for people with much deeper expertise.
“We have a long way to go in recognizing and incentivizing such expertise as an operational necessity before we can truly develop and sustain real experts in specific key regions around the world,” he said. “I call this ‘Project Lawrence,’ after T. E. Lawrence of Arabia.”
Among other options, the command is looking to Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, a little-publicized pilot program that has allowed legal non-permanent residents (i.e., non Green Card-holders) with special language skills to join the Army. The program has been phenomenally successful in some ethnic communities: Koreans, for instance, have flocked the program, catching the Army somewhat off guard. Some of the most highly qualified candidates from the program, Olson said, will serve in special operations units.
Olson said the command is also looking to other historical models, such as the Korean KATUSAs: A program that allows South Korean augmentees with English-language skills to serve with U.S. Forces Korea. With a long-term U.S. military presence in places like Afghanistan (and yes, Iraq), one could imagine similar programs taking shape as those countries develop more professional militaries. Expanding this program would, in some respects, bring things full circle: Many early members of the Special Forces were Lodge Act recruits, refugees from the Eastern Bloc who were staunchly anti-communist.
[PHOTO: Wikimedia]
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