Special ops industry in Tampa to talk shop, show off wares

A little more than two weeks after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the men who run special operations units for the military told a packed audience at the Tampa Convention Center what they need -- in an era of changing tactics and tightening budgets -- to continue bringing the fight to the enemy.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Donald Wuster talked about how the Air Force Special Operations Command "is getting back into the small airplane business," taking small teams of commandoes "to different places they need to go to in a hurry."

For Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, commander of the Army Special Operations Command, one of the big needs going forward is finding a replacement for the venerable Hummer, which he called "an incredible platform for special forces."

Rear Adm. Edward Winters, commander of the Navy Special Warfare Command, said that with more enemy getting more sophisticated equipment for detecting vessels, Navy special ops teams need new boats with signal-reducing capacity.

"It is getting harder and harder to sneak up on an adversary's coast," he said.

Marine Corps Maj Gen. Paul Lefebvre, commander of Marine Special Operations Command, summed up some of his needs in two words – "force protection."

The men with the stars were in the right place. They were speaking at the Special Operations Forces Industry Convention, the annual confab of the National Defense Industry Association that brings together those who plan and fight the wars with those who design and build the tools they use.

One floor above the conference room where the commanders spoke, the convention center's exhibition hall was filled with hundreds of weapons systems, ranging from armored vehicles to drones to unmanned submarines to a combat simulation system that lets war fighters train in a virtual battlefield.

There are more than 340 exhibitors with another 140 or so on a waiting list, according to convention organizers.

Not everything the commanders requested was big and bulky and budget-busting.

Wuster wondered aloud why special operations forces have to rely on the military's Internet system, which is expensive to maintain and operate and can still be breached by the enemy, when encrypted handheld portables equipped with encrypted apps would do the job for far less money.

This year's convention marks the last one in the tenure of outgoing U.S. Special Operations Commander Eric Olson, the first Navy SEAL to helm the command. Later this year, he will almost assuredly be replaced by the second – Vice Admiral William McRaven, the current commander of Joint Special Operations Command, who drew up the plans to capture bin Laden.

The convention runs through Thursday.

haltman@tampatrib.com

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