Hegseth seeks to elevate top SOF civilian to service-secretary equivalent

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is seeking to upgrade the powers of the department’s top special operations civilian role to the equivalent of a service secretary, a move that would radically shape the power of the special forces community inside the military.

“Despite [its] contribution to the Joint Force and our Nation, resourcing for SOF remains behind current operational and force posture,” Hegseth wrote in a new memo, released today but dated Nov. 2. “It is time for a bold, foundational change.”  

The overall goal of the memo is to elevate the assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD-SOLIC), a role currently held by Derrick Anderson, to a new role of undersecretary of strategic services (OSS). The question of whether SOF should have its own military department has been bandied about over the years, but has never gathered much steam in Congress, where members have instead focused on enhancing the SOLIC office and give special acquisition authorities to US Special Operations Command.

The memo outlines a number of changes Hegseth would like to see, but they break down into effectively two buckets: the changes that need congressional support to happen, and those that can be done internally right now.

The biggest change is the one that needs legislative support: elevating the office to an undersecretary level. As a result, the top of the memo directs the legislative affairs team to “draft legislative proposals” for Congress to make that change.

Hegseth is also directing that the SOLIC role be given the second title of “Assistant Secretary of War for the Office of Strategic Services (ASW(OSS)).” Similar to how President Donald Trump authorized the Defense Department to be able to use “Department of War” as a secondary title, this is an unofficial renaming — effectively, a nickname the department can use, in hopes that Congress will make the actual name change through a future National Defense Authorization Act.

However, there are some bureaucratic changes that Hegseth is able to make to empower the special operations office.

Internally, Hegseth is directing that the office be treated as “Code 2” under the department’s Order of Precedence, which elevates, on paper at least, the SOLIC role to the equivalent of service secretaries in terms of what meetings they should be in and where they rank by seniority.

Elsewhere, he states that the SOLIC role be included in the highest levels of meetings, including the department’s “Senior Leaders Council, Joint Requirements Oversight Council, Secretary’s Weekly Priorities Review, Program Budget Review, Deputy’s Management Action Group, Sensitive Technical Activities Oversight Committee, and Special Access Program governance structures and all other fora that the Secretaries of the Military Departments are members.”

Additionally, within 60 days, 75 civilians will be transferred over to the office, as well as 25 members of the joint staff. And Hegseth has directed the comptroller’s office to find $45 million annually, pulling from the department’s operations and maintenance (O&M) funds, in order to support the day-to-day operations of the office.

There are also clear signs Hegseth wants special operations to get a greater chunk of the budget. SOF advocates, such as Chris Miller, the former ASW-SOLIC who became acting defense secretary at the end of the first Trump administration, have argued for increasing the budget, with Miller writing for Breaking Defense in May that SOF should have $24 billion annually.

Hegseth directs that SOF be “distinctly delineated in the Defense Planning Guidance and Guidance for the Employment of the Force, including providing guidance for increased investment in SOF modernization, major platform recapitalization, and increased readiness to support dynamic operational demands and national objectives.” 

A different part of the memo further directs the military departments to “prioritize service support to SOF requirements wherever feasible, such as providing service common platforms and combat loss recoupment.”

Similarly, Hegseth in the memo directs budget planners to “identify and prioritize opportunities in FY 2027 execution and to consider the currently submitted USSOCOM resourcing and manpower requests in the FY2028-2032 budget development process as top tier priorities for the Department, consistent with the mission areas I have directed them to carry out.”

Kori Schake, a longtime expert who leads the American Enterprise Institute’s defense team, told Breaking Defense she is skeptical of the move.

“Secretary Hegseth does not have the authority to make that change or allocate that money, Congress would have to authorize the change and appropriate the money,” she said. “We’re over-investing in SOF. As the great Field Marshal Slim said, wars are not won by small bands of special soldiers.”