Granted there is a place for special ops ... BUT .... drawing down conventional forces is a bad idea. If we learned anything in ground warfare from Vietnam is that you only “own” the ground that you control. There are very distinct levels of operations in warfare:
Combat operations - normally you need 3 to 4 times the opposing force to win.
Patrolling operations - normally you need 6 to 8 times the opposition force to succeed.
Controlling or Occupation operations - normally you need 10 to 12 times the opposition force to succeed.
The operational situation can often be determined or enemy estimated by what type of operations your forces are currently able to sustain.
To that end, the force multipliers and lethality of forces is less important as boots on the ground. Conventional forces supply this depth by saturating an area and denying that area as an operational base for the opposing forces. Drawing down our conventional forces impedes our ability to conduct such operations in the future.
I am a firm believer that we need to add 6 to 8 Active duty Army and 3 or 4 Active duty Marine combat brigades ... just to sustain a reasonable rotation schedule against our current deployment commitments. And we should SERIOUSLY consider a greater expansion of ground forces should we think that Iran will be a real threat. Further, building up such units will take time and to be as effective as possible, will require cross loading of combat veteran NCO’s and Officers. Ideally, you would want those new brigades to have a rotation in either Iraq or Afghanistan prior to deployment to gain combat experience.