U.S. Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, told Senators on Tuesday that special operators need “more exquisite ranges” to train for the modern fight. (Harris Hillstead/U.S. Air Force)
Navy Adm. Frank Bradley, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, told senators Tuesday that an increased budget would allow him to build better, more specialized training ranges for his operators and, of course, more drones.
Special Operations Command has been increasingly asked to do more in recent years — from conducting drone strikes on alleged narcotics boats in the Western Hemisphere to multiple roles in recent operations in the Middle East, including against Iran — without meaningful budget increases, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.
SOCOM is the MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.-based service-like combatant command responsible for training and employing the nation’s most elite forces from across the military services.
“The funding provided to Special Operations Command has not kept pace with the seemingly insatiable demand for its capabilities,” Wicker said at the outset of an annual hearing to discuss SOCOM’s operations. “The command faces a troubling gap between its mission requirements and available resources, and I do think there is consensus on both sides of the … aisle to correct that as soon as we can.”
In its fiscal 2027 budget request sent to Congress this month, the Pentagon is seeking slight funding increases for Special Operations purposes. The Defense Department requested about $10.9 billion in operations and maintenance funds for SOCOM, an increase from about $9.7 billion in fiscal 2026. DOD also asked for about $2.8 billion in procurement funds to purchase weapons, aircraft and other items next year, an increase from the $2.5 billion it received in 2026.
Wicker said it continued a pattern of “years of flat budgets.”
Bradley pointed out that SOCOM’s budget represents less than 2% of annual military spending — about the same amount the Pentagon spends in a year to build one aircraft carrier.
“Yet [SOCOM] sustains a globally employed force operating daily across multiple theaters in competition, crisis response, and conflict,” Bradley, a longtime SEAL officer with extensive experience in Afghanistan and the Middle East. “This scale, combined with specialized capabilities and persistent demand, places unique pressure on programming, execution, and risk management.”
While past SOCOM commanders have directly pressed Congress for more funding — including Bradley’s predecessor, Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, who retired last year — Bradley stopped short of soliciting additional funds.
Nonetheless, Wicker and others expressed intent to boost SOCOM’s budget. Bradley said he would spend funding increases on the greatest needs his special operators currently face — including more unmanned and autonomous systems, like aerial and waterborne drones, and on specialized training ranges that would better prepare his troops for both high-end conflict and counterterrorism-like operations.
Training for the modern fight, he said, requires “more exquisite ranges” where they can test special operators against the latest battlefield tech adversary forces are employing, like Russia’s use of new electronic warfare capabilities in Ukraine.
“Those are difficult to be able to produce inside the United States, but not undoable,” Bradley said. “It just takes more money.”
The SOCOM commander also said it was critical the United States continued to work hand-in-hand with partner nations across the globe and outfit them with American technology to deter adversaries, namely China and Russia.
He said Special Operations troops continue to work with partner forces in every section of the globe to maintain critical alliances and partnerships. He highlighted recent partner work in Ecuador and the Philippines as proving fruitful in efforts to counter both cartel threats and China’s power ambitions across the Indo-Pacific region.
More than 100 years of partnership with the Philippines, Bradley said, has built a trust between that nation and the United States, including among their special operations forces. He said U.S. special operators’ aide in fighting an Islamic State-aligned group in the Philippines over the last decades has helped cement that relationship even as China has sought to assert more influence in the region.
Continuing to work closely with the Philippines and other partners, he added, improve those nations’ abilities to protect themselves from threats or malign influence.
“That’s given us great ability to stretch across turbulent political and diplomatic times to today, where we are able to use that credibility help [the Philippines], see and share information with them through some new relationship dynamics to understand the threats to their sovereign territory,” Bradley said. “So, that sharing of information is a critical aspect to allow them to take action for their own problems in the information and in the competition space.”
