Monday, 1April 2024
4:00PM - 6:00PM: Casual social at GM room Horchow Hall
55 Hillhouse Ave. New Haven, CT 06520
Tuesday April 2nd 2024
Yale JACKSON SCHOOL FOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Special Operations Forces Conference “SOFCON” 2024
April 2, 2024 – Greenberg Conference Center, 391 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511
0900-1000 Opening Keynote
1000-1100 Panel 1— Integrated Deterrence and Ukraine Lessons Learned:
Insights and Strategies
1115-1200 Student Paper Presentations and Workshop
1200-1300 Lunch
1300-1400 Panel 2 —DOD Policy Outlook: Preparing SOF to Capitalize on Change
1415-1500 Student Paper Presentations and Workshop
1500-1600 Pannel 3—Technology, Competition, and SOF: Are We Adapting Fast Enough?
1615-1700 Closing Remarks
1900-UTC Social (optional) at Mory’s
Opening Keynote — BG Jasper Jeffers III, Joint Staff, J-37 Introduced and moderated by Connor McEvoy (PRK Fellow)
Panel 1—Integrated Deterrence and Ukraine Lessons Learned: Insights and Strategies
To what extent does it make sense to conceptualize Russia’s decision to reinvade Ukraine in 2022 as a failure of deterrence? What should be the roles of SOF in integrated deterrence? What has the war taught us about those roles specifically? And what are the primary lessons for SOF in Ukraine generally?
Panelists: RDML (ret.) Patrick Piercey (EUCOM, PACOM), Kyle Atwell (Army SF, Princeton, West Point), Joey Gagnard (USASOC)
Moderator: Will Myers (PRK Fellow)
Panel 2—DOD Policy Outlook: Preparing SOF to Capitalize on Change
In order to compete with and campaign against great power competitors like China and Russia, what are the proper roles for SOF to play as a tool of national security policy? What should SOF military formations prioritize and what should civilian leadership prioritize? Where can the SOF community accept risk in order to change? Does the SOF community need new authorities?
Panelists: AMB Harry Thomas (State Department, SOCOM), Tianchi Wu (Office of the ASD SO/LIC), Jimmy Hatch (NSW, Yale)
Moderator: Dan McCausland (PRK Fellow)
Panel 3—Technology, Competition, and SOF: Adapting Fast Enough?
What leading edge technologies—ours and our adversaries—are most relevant to how SOF will fight going forward? How technologically literate is the SOF force? What technological competitions between the U.S. and its adversaries matter most right now, and how will they impact SOF?
Panelists: David Breede (SOCOM PEO-TIS) , Catherine Herridge (Independent journalist, fmr. CBS) , COL (ret.) Monte Erfourth (SOCOM J5)
Moderator: Peter Bowman-Davis
Student Paper Topics
Yale undergraduate and graduate students focusing on special operations this semester will share thoughts on topics such as: the global increase in “denied terrain” and the impact on SOF missions; the use of SOF as a “strategic distraction”; limiting the digital signatures of SOF operators and formations; using AI to calculate SOF mission risks; and others.
Closing Remarks — Phil Kaplan, Yale Jackson School, fmr. Treasury Department