Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Minor

Designate USSOCOM as lead for irregular warfare in the National Defense Strategy

Not started

122 4. Department of Defense

“Include the designation of USSOCOM as lead for the execution of irregular warfare against hostile state and nonstate actors in the National Defense Strategy.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The designation is not in the document the Quote names. The 2026 National Defense Strategy was read in full on 2026-09-03: **"SOCOM", "USSOCOM" and "Special Operations" each appear zero times** across its complete 34-page text, as do "irregular" and "irregular warfare" — and no component command is named anywhere in the strategy as lead for anything. So the designation is absent, and the class of designation the Quote asks for is absent with it. `src/data/people.json` (322 entries) carries no Current office designating USSOCOM or any officer as lead for irregular warfare, and no allowlisted source records such a designation elsewhere. The FY2026 NDAA moves irregular warfare oversight toward the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (sec. 1204) rather than toward USSOCOM as an executing lead. See the Chapter 4 cluster negative search for pages 121-122.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

An appointment ask, so our roster of the people the Mandate credits was checked first. It has one USSOCOM-adjacent entry, Christopher Miller, and it is a Mandate-author biography rather than a Current office, so nothing there answers the ask.

  • One negative search covered the irregular-warfare asks on pages 121–122; the 2026 NDS was flagged for a full reading, shared with #246 and #248.
  • Read in full, 2026-09-03. The strategy PDF on media.defense.gov can be read, and all 34 pages were. The event was re-dated from the search date to the instrument’s date and now carries the strategy as contrary Evidence on the not started event, as action against an ask is. The negative is stronger than a term count on “USSOCOM” alone: the document designates no lead component for any mission, so there is no place in it where the Quote’s designation could have gone unnoticed.
Action
appoint
Object
USSOCOM as lead for irregular warfare
ID
251