SOFCON 2024 Schedule - Coming Soon

  • 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