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News Flash 
Leadership
Changes in Special Operations
Wed Jun 27, 1:56 PM ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Some leadership changes involving
the military's special operations forces:
• Navy Vice
Adm. Eric Olson will be promoted to admiral and
take over as head of U.S. Special Operations Command.
Olson, a 1973 Naval Academy graduate, will be the
first Navy officer to run the command and the first
Navy SEAL to make four-star rank.
Olson, a Middle East specialist, earned a Silver
Star for combat valor in Somalia in 1993. As the
country's top special operations officer, Olson
will be responsible for training and equipping
the commando units from all the military branches.
• Army Maj.
Gen. Francis Kearney will be promoted to lieutenant general and assigned
as deputy commander. Kearney graduated from West
Point in 1976 and is a veteran of operations in
Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Since March 2005, Kearney has been U.S. Central
Command's special operations chief. It was Kearney
who ordered a Marine special operations company
out of Afghanistan in March after the unit allegedly
fired at civilians on a road in Nangarhar province.
Eight Afghans died and 34 were wounded.
• Army Maj.
Gen. David Fridovich will be promoted to lieutenant general and run
the Center for Special Operations. A Green Beret
officer, Fridovich has political science degrees
from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., and Tulane
University.
• Air Force
Maj. Gen. Donald Wurster will be promoted to lieutenant general
and lead Air Force Special Operations Command.
Wurster is now second-in-command at Hurlburt Field,
Fla.
A 1973 graduate of the Air Force Academy, Wurster
spent three years at Special Operations Command
before his current assignment, serving first as
intelligence chief and later as deputy director
of the Center for Special Operations.
In his new position, Wurster will manage air commandos
and the specially configured equipment they use
for attacking or infiltrating enemy territory.
• Navy Rear
Adm. Joseph Kernan took charge of the Naval Special Warfare Command
in Coronado, Calif., on June 13.
The command trains and
manages SEAL forces and combat crewmen. A 1977
Naval Academy graduate, Kernan is a former commander
of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group,
the formal name for the secret "Seal Team Six" anti-terrorism
unit.
Kernan had been deputy commander to Rear Adm.
Joseph Maguire, who will be promoted to vice admiral
and fill a senior position at the National Counterterrorism
Center in Washington.
• Michael Vickers will be the
assistant secretary of defense for special operations,
low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities.
He will replace Thomas O'Connell, who left the
Pentagon post in April. Vickers has been working
as a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
Vickers is a former
Army Green Beret and CIA operations officer.
His career summary notes that he was "the
principal strategist for the largest and most successful
covert action program in the CIA's history: the
successful effort to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan."
In his new position, Vickers will be the primary
advocate for commando forces during Defense Department
budget and policy deliberations.
• Kalev Sepp, also a former
Green Beret, will be one of Vickers's top deputies.
Sepp is an insurgency expert who teaches at the
Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
He has been to Iraq
several times, serving at various points as an
adviser to Gen. George Casey, who was the senior
commander in Iraq before being named Army chief
of staff. Sepp also served on one of the advisory
panels that supported the work of the Iraq Study
Group.
SOURCE:
Yahoo News
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