$34 Million For New Joint Special Operations University Campus In FY13 Budget Plan

Posted Feb 16, 2012 by Howard Altman

Updated Feb 16, 2012 at 05:18 PM

Almost a year ago, the Joint Special Operations University was opened across the street from MacDill Air Force Base with a small ceremony.

During a tour of the facility, university President Brian Maher told me that the new building – dubbed “the schoolhouse” – was likely temporary. He said he was hoping for a new, 87,000-squre-foot facility inside MacDill’s gates that would cost about $34 million.

Yesterday, I got an email from Congresswoman Kathy Castor’s office, reminding me that the money, - actually $34.409 million, plus another $15.2M for a Special Operations Force Acquisition Center – was included in President Barack Obama’s FY 2013 budget.

If approved, construction should begin before the end of FY13, but there is not expected start date now, Socom spokesman Ken McGraw told me in an email.

The project is estimated to take 16 months, he said.

The university’s course list includes Counter Threat Finance Educational Seminar, Irregular Warfare Course, Joint Civil-Military Operations Campaign Planning Workshop, Joint Contemporary Insurgent Warfare Course, Joint Special Operations Forces Senior Intelligence Leaders Orientation Seminar and Joint Special Operations Irregular Warfare Advanced Course.

Not all the participants are military. Some are from the State Department, CIA and the United States Agency for International Development. All the agencies can learn from each other, Maher said last year.

The university has a $10 million annual operating budget. It’s goal is to “educate special operations forces executive, senior, and intermediate leaders and selected national and international security decision makers — both military and civilian — through teaching, outreach, and research in the science and art of joint special operations,” according to its mission statement.

In addition to providing courses on campus and elsewhere, the university commissions publications for special operators, with titles such as “Innovate or Die: Innovation and Technology for Special Operations.”

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony last year, former Socom commander Gen. Peter Schoomaker - who helped make the JSOU concept a reality – told me that education was part of Socom’s mandate when it was created. It is the only command to have such a mandate. All the other commands – Centcom, Africom, etc., rely on the education provided by the services.

Having come up through Socom’s ranks at a time when the command was developing, Schoomaker says he realized that the future of warfare would be in special operations and in order to operate in that arena, the warfighter needs a specialized education.

And not just in tactics.

Special ops forces are not all about killing. Most of what SOF does is training internal defense, front-line diplomacy and cultural awareness.

“You have to be able to see the world through the eyes of a tribal chief or insurgent leader,” he said.

Education is especially important, said Schoomaker, when you are dealing with a non-traditional enemy in a world where even small groups have as much information at their disposal as entire nations did in World War II.
Information doesn’t have to be accurate, said Schoomaker, to have an effect.

The opposite, he said, is often true.

“The most horrendous stories stay stuck like Velcro,” he said.

The JSOU concept was incubated at a time of military budget cuts.

Schoomaker said he argued the lean times are the worst times to cut education.

“You need to grow a seed crop of leaders for the future,” he said. “It is money well invested.”