USSOCOM opens Dagger Hall, new Commando Center

  • Published
  • By Mike Bottoms
  • Special Operations Command Public Affairs
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla --  U.S. Special Operations Command's headquarters has two new additions with the official opening of Dagger Hall and the Commando Center Monday.

Adm. Eric T. Olson, commander of USSOCOM, James Cluck, acquisition executive and senior procurement executive for USSOCOM, and Brig. Gen. Mark Clark, director of operations for USSOCOM, hosted the ceremony opening the new buildings, which will house operations, intelligence and Special Operations Research, Development, & Acquisition Center.

"This morning's event culminates significant planning, cooperation and hard work and serves as an outstanding testament to teamwork," Admiral Olson said. "With any project as large and complex as this, there are hundreds of individuals who play key roles and to those everyday men and women, I offer my sincere appreciation."

Dagger Hall is a 96,000 square-foot building and will house USSOCOM's Global Mission Support Center, a new battle bridge and will consolidate the Interagency Task Force.

"Dagger Hall will enable the headquarters new GMSC to more effectively coordinate operational issues that span the geographic combatant command boundaries," said Admiral Olson. "It will help merge USSOCOM's operational and service-like responsibilities and support the outstanding relationships that the regional working groups have developed with the theater special operations commands."

Commando Center is 110,000 square feet and the new home for the Special Operations Research, Development, & Acquisition Center which is composed of five program executive offices, the Special Operations Forces Integration Laboratory, and the Science and Technology Directorate.

"Commando Center will centrally locate hundreds of USSOCOM's acquisition professionals into the headquarters compound effectively consolidating these experts from various on- and off-base locations," said Admiral Olson. "Dagger Hall and Commando Center not only represent a construction project, but more importantly, they represent USSOCOM's continued focus on tomorrow's challenges."

The admiral then described the knife to be used to cut the ribbon and officially open the buildings.

"I do have a special knife here today and it is a forty-year-old Randall knife, handmade in 1970 by W.D. 'Bo' Randall for a Special Forces operator named 'Dave,'" he said.

The admiral recounted that the knife did a 13-month tour in the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group in 1970. In the late 1970s it was part of a POW recovery effort in Korea. Dave retired in 1993, and the knife was re-sharpened, engraved and given to a SEAL 2001 as a gift. The SEAL took the knife with him in October 2001 to Operation Enduring Freedom. The knife has since gone on five deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. Finally, the knife made it to the headquarters in 2009 and will go out on another deployment to Afghanistan this month.

The storied knife easily cut the ribbon and opened a new era in the headquarters.