During the past two decades, SOF have conducted innumerable counterterrorism and direct-action activities around the world in places like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The taxing operational tempo and unforgiving dwell time of operational units resulted in former USSOCOM Commander Admiral William McRaven standing up the Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) initiative to ensure readiness, longevity, and performance of SOF and to strengthen family readiness. How effectively has POTFF addressed the needs of special operations personnel during the long wars?
While talent management remains an enduring priority for SOF, the contemporary environment offers unique issues that the SOE must address. The end of the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the rise of strategic competition mean that SOF may need to reprioritize its missions and capabilities. Has the new challenge of strategic competition changed how USSOCOM should approach sustainability of the force? Are there operational and organizational paradigms that need to be reconsidered to better develop SOF for the challenges of the future operating environment? Who is the current SOF practitioner and how did that practitioner evolve? What are the key attributes of the future SOF professional, and do they differ from the key attributes from historical SOF professionals? If SOF must operate within an environment of strategic competition, how can they be encouraged to cultivate ‘strategic interest’ or ‘strategic empathy’ in the world early in their career progression?
Furthermore, what are the greatest challenges today for retention of quality people and the approach required to maintain their efforts? Does support to resilience and resistance (SRR) undertakings pose unique challenges for sustaining special operations personnel both today and tomorrow? What is the optimal balance for dwell time in support to SRR? Does SRR pose distinctive ethical dilemmas for personnel that need to be addressed? How does the SOE secure its own resilience against external forces and factors? What enhancements in competency, cognition, performance, and total health could enable SOF to better navigate the changing human and technology landscapes within the current operational environment? How does the DOD culture and system affect the individual and the individual’s ability to operate in the strategic environment?
Finally, this strategic environment also complicates personnel assignments. While the service personnel commands may view repetitive assignments in the same combatant command area of responsibility (AOR) negatively as they are not broadening, geographic combatant commands and Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs) may view such repetitive assignments in the same combatant command AOR as beneficial due to increased experience within the operational environment. How can these opposing views be reconciled to achieve the objectives of the services, the combatant commands, and the personal goals of service members? What changes to the personnel system of each service would do the most to improve SOF relations with partners in each combatant command AOR?
- Coffey, Lt. Commander Travis E., "Holistic Care: An Evidence-Based Approach to Suicide Prevention in the Navy," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Coffey addresses this by detailing how enhancing total health requires a comprehensive, holistic approach that integrates the physical, mental, spiritual, and social dimensions of fitness. He explains that optimizing basic life disciplines, such as proper sleep hygiene and nutrition, directly improves cognitive function, emotional resilience, and physical performance. By embedding these mental and physical resilience techniques into daily routines and framing them as essential to operational readiness, leadership can destigmatize help-seeking behavior and ensure service members are holistically equipped to handle the high-stress demands of military service.
- Feldbrugge, Chase M., "Investing in Our Greatest Asset: A Holistic Approach to Healthcare as an Advantage in Great Power Competition," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Questions what specific enhancements in competency, cognition, performance, and total health can enable forces to better navigate the current operational environment. Feldbrugge addresses this by detailing how HPO initiatives systematically optimize warfighter performance across critical domains, including physical, psychological, cognitive, and social fitness. To successfully leverage these total health enhancements, he recommends restructuring the Military Health System to fully integrate transdisciplinary HPO teams with centralized data analytics and standardized return-on-investment (ROI) metrics. He asserts that by prioritizing and investing in the holistic optimization of these human domains rather than just technological hardware, the Department of Defense can enhance warfighter lethality and maintain a critical strategic edge over adversaries.
- Moreno, Maj. Aaron M., "Reprioritizing the Special Operations Force to Face the Global Power of China," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Moreno explains that the current SOF practitioner evolved during the GWOT into a highly specialized "door-kicking" elite warrior focused on countering violent extremist organizations (c-VEO). He argues this paradigm must be reconsidered because traditional SOF direct-action tactics will face severe anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) threats and heavy casualties against a near-peer competitor like China. Consequently, Moreno insists that talent management must foster operators skilled in cyber and information warfare, requiring SOF to embrace a new, lower-profile identity focused on strategic shaping and gray-zone deterrence rather than purely kinetic action.
- Brezil, Febrizia, "Welfare or Warfare? Reassessing MWR Divestments and Military Effectiveness," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- She answers this by demonstrating that Category C Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) programs are critical "building blocks" of force resilience, mental health, and family well-being, rather than mere discretionary amenities. Bresil argues that when installations divest from these programs without adequate replacements—often due to budget constraints—it leads to increased isolation, chronic fatigue, and diminished spousal satisfaction, which act as direct threats to sustainability. To sustain the force effectively, she concludes that the DoD must treat MWR as a core readiness enabler, leveraging a hybrid model of sustainable community programs to mitigate behavioral health risks and support the long-term retention of service members and their families.
- Coffey, Lt. Commander Travis E., "Holistic Care: An Evidence-Based Approach to Suicide Prevention in the Navy," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Coffey answers this by identifying the rising rate of suicides, untreated depression, and the grueling operational tempo of military deployments as severe threats to unit cohesion, morale, and overall readiness. To sustain the force, he argues the Navy must move beyond impersonal, compliance-driven "death by PowerPoint" training and establish proactive, human-centered prevention, intervention, and postvention programs. By training leaders at all levels to foster open dialogue and implement "suicide-safer" environments, the military can transform a culture of isolation and burnout into one of mutual support, ultimately strengthening the resilience and longevity of its personnel.
- Feldbrugge, Chase M., "Investing in Our Greatest Asset: A Holistic Approach to Healthcare as an Advantage in Great Power Competition," AFGC thesis, 2025,
- Asks how the rise of strategic competition has changed the way the military should approach the sustainability of its personnel, specifically referencing the Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) initiative. Feldbrugge answers this by arguing that success in Great Power Competition requires a paradigm shift from a reactive, disease-based military health model to a proactive, holistic approach to healthcare. By embedding Human Performance Optimization (HPO) programs like POTFF and Total Force Fitness directly into units, the military can employ a "left-of-bang" preventative strategy that treats warfighters as a human weapon system. He provides evidence that this holistic health approach directly sustains force readiness over time by significantly decreasing attrition, reducing the incidence of musculoskeletal injuries, and lowering the overall cost of delivering healthcare.
- Kave, Capt. Jacob et al, "Family Readiness," SOS AUAR 2025 slides
- He answers how to improve sustainability and family readiness by identifying that service members face severe emotional barriers—such as the persistent stigma that taking time for self-care or seeking mental health support "ruins your career"—and logistical barriers, like base appointments only being available during normal duty hours. Kave points out that because fully embedding resource teams inside every military unit is militarily infeasible due to manning constraints, the defense enterprise must shift to proactive outreach. He proposes mandating twice-a-year face-to-face sessions with chaplains, Military and Family Life Counselors (MFLCs), or Military & Family Readiness Centers (MFRCs) at the workplace, which would also extend to Geographically Separated Units (GSUs) through biannual visits from Chaplain Religious Support Teams (RSTs) to break down these barriers to care.
- McDaniel, Lt. Col. Michael, "Building the Force: A Historical Look at the Elements of Successful Military Mobilization," AWC Strategic Studies paper, 2020, 28 pgs.
- Miller, Maj. Rachel J., "Families in the Fight: AFFORGEN's Impact on Dual-Career Families," AFGC thesis, 2025, 37 pgs.
- Miller identifies the implementation of the new AFFORGEN deployment construct as a significant challenge to family readiness. While AFFORGEN was intended to provide predictability by replacing the older AEF model with a standard 24-month, four-phase cycle, Miller explains that the unpredictable training and joint exercises during the "Prepare" and "Certify" phases actually create up to 18 months of uncertainty for families. This unpredictability strips dual-career spouses of the flexibility needed to plan their own career deconflictions, forcing many members to separate from the military or accept less impactful jobs to meet family needs. She concludes that without focused support for dual-career families, the model inadvertently harms institutional readiness by driving away quality personnel.
- Ojala, Wayne A., "Air Force Embedded Service Delivery: Reducing High Risk Behavior," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Ojala evaluates the M&FRC Embedded Service Delivery Model as a highly effective, resource-neutral approach to force sustainability. He explains that unresolved personal circumstances—such as relationship conflicts, financial crises, and the loss of family members—drastically erode unit morale, distract from the mission, and degrade overall operational readiness. By providing social services, deployment support, and family readiness resources precisely where Airmen work, the embedded model alleviates these compounding stressors before they escalate into crises. Ojala concludes that when leadership demonstrates a tangible, visible commitment to the well-being of their personnel through embedded support, it fosters a supportive climate that stabilizes high-risk units, protects the Air Force's massive financial investment in human capital, and directly enhances mission readiness.
- Werner, Maj. Philip B., "Keeping Reserve Defenders Ready to Fight," AF Global College thesis, 2024, 35 pgs.