SOF Week 2025, an annual conference for the international Special Operations Forces, met in Tampa on May 5-8 to discuss the theme “Global SOF: The Asymmetric Strategic Option for a Volatile World.” The event attracts almost 20,000 attendees, including active-duty military members and government representatives — not to mention hundreds in the GovCon community, many of which line the exhibit hall to show off their latest and greatest.
Hegseth: ‘Move Faster Than Ever’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provides a keynote speech during the kickoff of Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa Bay, Florida. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Marleah Miller)
A notable keynote speaker this year was Pete Hegseth, who addressed the crowd May 6, one day after marking his 100th day as secretary of the Defense Department. In his speech, he emphasized SOF’s place at the heart of his plan to rebuild the military.
A pillar of his plan is testing, adoption and use of next-gen technology. “You adopt advanced technologies early, you make them better and then you help them spread to the rest of the joint force,” Hegseth said. “You are willing to experiment and fail while learning from each failure and each success. We need you to keep doing that.”
He highlighted the need for speed in tech and innovation. “We need to continue to reward innovation, encourage creative solutions, move faster than ever before,” Hegseth said. “We can’t and we won’t fight today’s opponent at yesterday’s pace. When our opponents know that our military is armed with the most capable weapons systems known to man, wielded by skilled warriors with the will to prevail, they are less likely to challenge us on the battlefield and that is the point.”
Other military leaders echoed him. Colby Jenkins, the official performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, called for the integration of autonomous systems, AI, and cyber and electronic warfare capabilities into tactical formations, but he added that the amount of technology warfighters have is much less important than who has it first.
“Advantage does not go to the side with the most technology but to the side that applies it first, fastest and with the greatest operational effect,” Jenkins said. “Development must be faster and smarter. We are not interested in technology or briefing slides or prototype demonstrations. We are focused on building real capabilities that create real operational options for real-world missions and real-world environments.”
A Vow to Be Better Buyers
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former senior member of Joint Special Operations Command, named integration with partners and allies, capability, and readiness as his top priorities.
“We have to find every ounce of combat capability, every ounce of cognitive effect that we can both inside our forces with our allies and partners,” Caine said. “I think today’s algorithm of winning for us and our allies is the actions of the SOF forces, plus the actions of the rest of the joint force, plus the actions of the interagency, plus the actions of our allies and partners, plus the actions of the private sector all together to create exponential return on time and exponential return on capital.”
Along those lines, he asked GovCon partners to deliver for warfighters: “I ask you to go faster, and I want you to know that we’re also trying to be better buyers, and that’s something that I’m going to spend some time working on in Washington.”
Melissa Johnson, acquisition executive for Special Operations Command, made plain her desire for counter-drone technology and AI-enabled targeting platforms while calling the adoption, development, integration and delivery of advanced capabilities critical.
But to get the most value from today’s tech, SOF has some basic needs, she added. “If we don’t have a way to store all these advanced algorithms, we don’t have a way to pass data quickly in this system of systems to close a kill chain, it’s going to be really hard to win,” Johnson said. “This is an area that we need investment in: power, storage, compute.”
SOF Faces Greater Demands
U.S. Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, provides a keynote speech during the kickoff of Special Operations Forces Week 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Marleah Miller)
Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, said “aviation is incredibly expensive,” so he’s getting creative with ways to adapt existing systems and technology to address new needs. One example is the V-22 and CV-22 Osprey, which were first fielded in 2007.
“I think as we get into theaters where distances are a lot longer, with its advanced avionics system, it can do things that nothing else can right now,” Conley said.
Still, the command is studying small cruise missiles that could be launched from a gunship, uncrewed aerial vehicle or armed reconnaissance aircraft. “If you could palletize all those and drop two or three pallets’ worth of small cruise missiles, I think that provides game-changing capability,” he said.
Ultimately, SOF’s role in global conflicts continues to grow; crisis response mission demand for SOF has increased 200% in the past three and a half years, said U.S. Army Gen. Fenton, commander of Special Operations Command. As a result, warfighters must evolve with those needs.
“Special operations forces are the asymmetric strategic option for this volatile world; it’s the theme of this conference for that very reason,” Fenton said.
With international hot spots continuing to flare, we’ll be watching closely to see how SOF responds at SOF Week 2026!