Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine has an ‘algorithm’ for US ‘winning’
In his first public remarks since being confirmed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine told a room full of special operations officials and industry they “must deliver.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine visits Joint Task Force Southern Border in Sierra Vista, Az. April 19, 2025. (DOD photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist James Mullen)
SOF WEEK — In his first public address since becoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine closed out the SOF Week expo in Tampa, Fla., calling on special operations forces (SOF) to be “more effective and more efficient than ever.”
Caine, a former senior member of Joint Special Operations Command, praised the SOF “tribe” for its creativity, entrepreneurship and commitment to solving the most difficult problems. But he also warned, “Our forces in the US, along with our allies and partners must deliver.”
Portraying the contemporary operating environment as “dynamic and dangerous,” Caine identified three critical areas of interest for his tenure: integration with partners and allies, capability, and readiness.
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On the first point Caine offered thanks to allies and partners from 63 countries at SOF Week. “We never fight alone,” he said, “and this is especially true in our SOF community. Together, we win, and I think that not only applies to our allies and partners, but it also applies to our interagency teammates.”
Still, he said American special operators and their allies need to be integrated “in a new and different way.”
“We have to find every ounce of combat capability, every ounce of cognitive effect that we can both inside our forces with our allies and partners and the interagency, just given some of the things that we’re facing out there,” he said. “I think today’s algorithm of winning for us and our allies is the actions of the SOF forces, plus the actions of the rest of the joint force, plus the actions of the interagency, plus the actions of our allies and partners, plus the actions of the private sector all together to create exponential return on time and exponential return on capital.”
By adding those together, Cavoli later said, “We create dilemmas in a few people’s minds out there, the Chinese minds and others.”
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In the meantime, Caine called upon industry to “create” the combat capability required by SOF, demanding every echelon of the force should be properly armed. Caine especially highlighted the proliferation of first-person view attack drones being employed across domains.
“I ask you to go faster, and I want you to know that we’re also trying to be better buyers, and that’s something that I’m going to spend some time working on in Washington. Being an integrator is ultimately what the chairman does,” he said. “We don’t command anybody, but what we do is we integrate combat capability in new and unique ways.”
Getting those capabilities into the hands of warfighters quickly won’t matter, however, unless the special operations forces themselves – and those around them — are primed to execute missions.
“We gotta have our forces ready. We gotta have our policy makers ready. We gotta have our families ready to go,” he said.
“I think we need to keep preparedness in mind as well. And when our adversaries know that we’re ready and we’re prepared for that fight, they are dissuaded,” he said. “Because when you face SOF nation, you face America’s joint force, you face the western allies and partners, it’s a terrifying thing to do on the other side.”
