SOF Week 2023: USSOCOM to consolidate Program Executive Offices into single entity

The US Special Operations Command has announced it will consolidate a pair of Program Executive Offices (PEOs) into a single entity to support the National Defense Strategy (NDS), according to acquisition executive Jim Smith.

In his keynote address at SOF Week on 9 May, Smith announced the Tampa-based command would be combining PEO C4 (Command, Control, Computers, Communications) and PEO (SR) Special Reconnaissance into PEO ‘Tactical Information Systems’ (TIS).

According to Smith, the move is being made to ‘scale up and make sure [our] capability is moving in the right direction’.

The change is set to be implemented over the course of the current financial year as funding and management issues are resolved, Smith confirmed.

When the new organisation does go live, PEO-TIS will be responsible for Technical collection and communication; Integrated sensor systems; Sensitive site exploitation; Remote Capabilities; and Tactical Communications.

However, Enterprise Networks and Transport Systems previously organised under PEO C4 will not be included in PEO-TIS and instead will fall under the orbit of a Director for Enterprise Information Systems, Smith added.

‘[The] reorganisation, I think, is really important to the future of special operations and how we approach the National Defence strategy,’ Smith continued before suggesting the consolidation would support USSOCOM’s drive for ‘collaborative autonomy’ which networks together uncrewed systems on land, in the air and at sea.

Smith also described how PEO-TIS will support communications in contested environments - critical to meshing sensors across multiple domains allowing them to talk to each other and trade in shared data.

‘And so all those boxes out there in the air, whether they're flying boxes, or communications boxes, or unattended ground boxes, they got to be able to communicate. So we're crunching all that together with one PEO to get synergies of scale, and making sure we get that capability moving in the right direction,’ Smith concluded.