Mario Mancuso, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism, told defense reporters Oct. 18 that the classified Irregular Warfare Execution Roadmap lays out 30 tasks over the next year to build Pentagon capabilities to conduct irregular warfare for general forces and special operations forces. Although he could not speak in detail about the classified roadmap, Mancuso explained that it “generally relates to the ability to penetrate into denied areas, ability to provide protracted reconnaissance, expand modularity of our forces so that we can expand operational effects as they relate to irregular warfare.” At a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing in September, Mancuso said that “irregular warfare favors indirect approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other elements of national power, to erode an adversary’s power, influence and will.” At the media breakfast, he called that statement a working definition of irregular warfare.
Clearing jungle and laying asphalt in tropical heat may not sound like fun to most people, but it’s a way of life for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers (RED HORSE) Airmen, who have spent the past year or so restoring World War II-era airfields on the Pacific…