This original and accessible book is a comprehensive, authoritative analysis of U.S. Special Operations.

U.S. Special Operations Command trains and equips units to undertake select military activities, frequently high-risk missions, often for the purposes of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Since 9/11, impelled by an attack on U.S. soil, these forces have been a central instrument of America’s military campaign-operating in about one hundred countries on any given day. This fight-neither hot war nor cold peace-was launched and executed as a new type of global war in 2001 and has since splintered into a spectrum of regional conflicts. The result are our nation’s grey wars: hazy and lethal.

This contemporary history, incorporating extensive interviews and archival research by security studies expert N. W. Collins, delves deeply into the transformation of these forces since 9/11.