The USA JFK Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS)
The USA JFK Special Warfare Center and School (SWCS) has served with distinction the training needs
of ARSOF and the Department of Defense under different names and organizational structures in response
to varying security requirements of the Cold War and post-Cold War. If tribal memory and sentiment are
to be relied upon, the Center’s signature period came under its designation as the US Army Special
Warfare Center. Through its Military Advisory and Training Assistance (MATA) Course(s), the school
prepared literally thousands of officers and NCOs from all the Services, other government agencies and
from many allied nations for advisory duty in Viet Nam during the 1960's. After the US withdrawal from
Viet Nam, our military all but erased advisory concepts and doctrine from its operational repertoire,
especially when linked to counter insurgency efforts, and by which its military leadership was so
recently snake bitten. The new USA JFK Special Warfare Center and School, however, and the Special
Forces operational groups, sustained the ‘guerilla POI’ and critical military advisory skills that
ultimately turned the tide against a rebel takeover in El Salvador, and that ultimately pushed the
Taliban out of Afghanistan by, with and through the Northern Alliance. These unconventional operations
represent the majority of the few bright spots in US security operations since the end of World War II.
In light of this infrequently -publicized distinction, and with a clear opportunity and need to nurture
its demonstrated unconventional operations heritage, the USA JFK SWCS must make yet another transition
in its journey to maturity. This time it must become a world-class center of unconventional operations
and advisory education and training, a center of knowledge and innovation to serve the security needs of
America and her allies in the 21st century.
USAJFKSWCS will offer Special Forces and other ARSOF professionals, and selected interagency
counterparts, an educational and training framework that permits professional educational growth
beginning at the entry (tactical) level through the strategic levels of unconventional and advisory
operational art. It will combine academic inquiry with field application. Degree-granting programs,
certifications and occupational specialties, both civilian and military, offered in-house, on-line and
in collaboration with an array of academic institutions (Johns Hopkins, MIT, UCLA, National Defense
University, etc.) will produce well-rounded tactical, operational and strategic thinkers prepared to
conceptualize, plan and apply the elements of national power (diplomacy, information, military,
economic) to achieve country or regional security conditions that will produce the prosperity and
freedoms that characterize stable states. The School will be lead and staffed by distinguished academic,
military and administrative persons, who will engage in conceptual and doctrinal development, experiment
with and examine concepts and force configuration excursions, and who will teach and mentor emerging
leaders as they track through their professional education programs over the course of their
unconventional warfare and operational careers. Additionally, USAJFKSWCS will be the National and
International center for academic and professional excellence for unconventional warfare sponsoring and
hosting seminars, forums, conferences and war games. USAJFKSWCS will be the National integration center
for unconventional operations and the interagency process. The School will offer the regional and
functional commands, as well as other government agencies, a venue for examining lessons learned, for
developing remedial approaches, and to formulating mid-and long-term strategies to achieving national
security objectives in a forum that brings together proven operators from across the interagency. The
School will serve to centrally shape, manage and over-watch the doctrine, organization, training,
material, leadership, personnel and facilities (DOTML-PF) sustainment programs of ARSOF, and of those
forces in support of the Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Command.
VSF
