NASHVILLE–The U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command is working with existing and new helicopter special forces units throughout the world to boost their capabilities and fortify resources for enhancing local and regional security throughout the world, the commands top officer told the Army Aviation Association of America last week.
“One of the things that we are trying to do in the ARSOAC is take the capability that we have and share that with partner forces across the spectrum,” said Brig. Gen. John Evans, Jr., using the Army abbreviation for his command. The idea stems from the Defense Department, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Army. “We’ve got to help others provide collective security in our world.”
Evans spoke April 28 at Quad A’s 2017 Army Aviation Missions Solutions Summit in Nashville.
The reason, he said, is that the Army Special Operations Aviation Command is not big enough or dispersed enough and “we do not have enough equipment or manpower or money to be the police force to the world.”
Still, Evans noted, “many of our allies and partners look to us to take a lead role because they understand that we do have great advantages as far as our technology, our funding, our outstanding human capital. They want us to be very active in our partnership with them.”
The Army has played that role for years with ground forces around the world, Evans said. “We’ve not done it as much with aviation. We’re trying to step out in the ARSOAC to do that.”
During his address, Evans showed a slide depicting where his command is engaged throughout the world today. It showed where the command maintains alert packages of forces designed to respond to contingencies anywhere in the world, areas of committed combat operations or named operations (such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Cameroon and Djibouti) and areas in which the command is working with partner forces to enhance national or regional security. This last category included 21 nations, from traditional allies such as the United Kingdom, France, South Korea and Australia to other notable countries such as Sweden and Tunisia.
“Not only are we trying to partner with forces in parts of the world where they can provide security, either in their countries or regionally,” he said, “we’re also working to try to help other countries in the world take what they’ve learned from us that we’ve developed together and then move that someplace else to try to promote regional security.”
He explained that his command receives a vetted list from the U.S. Special Operations Command that “talks about how combatant commanders would ‘rack and stack’ people in the world where they have nascent rotary-wing capability that they want to continue to develop or they’ve got near-peer rotary-wing capability that we want to partner with and we want to continue to coordinate with to make them better and make us better.” His command’s Special Operations Aviation Advisor works with different countries in the world toward that end.
He cited Sweden and Tunisia as two current examples.
“One of the really fascinating groups of folks that we have worked with over the last few years is the Swedish Special Helicopter Group,” he said, noting that unit is a “very, very small element in contrast to the ARSOAC or Army Aviation, but very committed to the mission. They very much want to take on the role to be trainers themselves and for the world. We’ve partnered with them over the last couple of years, gone out and conducted training with them to normalize and standardize tactics, techniques and procedures.
He further explained that his command has been working with forces Tunisia in North Africa, “an area where we know there’s going to be conflict in the future and where we have conflict now.”
Building on the command’s work with Sweden’s Special Helicopter Group, he said, members of that unit “are going to go to Tunisia and they are going to share tactics techniques and procedures with the Tunisians and make them better.
“That’s the goal: collective security enhancement through building a partner aviation capacity and coordination,” Evans said.