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.
The Space Development Agency says it’s on track to issue its next batch of missile warning and tracking satellite contracts this month after those awards were delayed by the Pentagon’s decision to divert funds from the agency to pay troops during this fall’s prolonged government shutdown.
