WASHNGTON (Sputnik) — The US military’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has grown by 50 percent in size since 2001 and spending on it has tripled during the same period, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said.
“GAO analysis of the resources devoted to US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) found that the number of authorized Special Operations military positions increased from about 42,800 in fiscal year (FY) 2001 to about 62,800 in FY 2014,” the report, issued on Thursday, said.
During the same 13-year period, funding to SOCOM for special operations more than tripled “from about $3.1 billion in FY 2001 to about $9.8 billion in FY 2014,” the GAO said.
“SOCOM has taken steps to manage the effect of Special Operations forces deployments, but [Defense Department] reported that some portions of the force are still heavily deployed,” it said.
On July 11, 2015, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told troops at Fort Bragg, South Carolina that airborne and Special Operations forces would be the spearhead of America’s restructured military forces for the new strategic era.
Carter said the US armed forces were going to have to develop a new strategy that allowed them to deal with different kinds of threats simultaneously.
The US Government Accountability Office is an independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.