Colonel David S. Maxwell is a US Army Special Forces officer and hails from Madison, Connecticut. He is a 1980 graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio with a BA in Political Science and has Masters Degrees in Military Arts and Science and National Security Studies from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, the School of Advanced Military Studies, and the National War College of the National Defense University. He received his commission from the Officer Candidate School in 1981. His most recent deployed assignment was commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines (JSOTF-P). He joined the faculty at the National War College in August 2010.
Colonel Maxwell has served in various command and staff assignments in the Infantry in Germany and Korea, as well as in Special Forces at Ft. Lewis, Ft. Bragg, Seoul, Korea, Okinawa, Japan and the Philippines with total service in Asia of more than 20 years. He served on the United Nations Command / Combined Forces Command CJ3 staff where he was a planner for UNC/CFC OPLAN 5027-98 and ROK JCS UNC/CFC CONPLAN 5029-99 and later served as the Director of Plans, Policy, and Strategy (J5) and then Chief of
Staff for Special Operations Command Korea (SOCKOR). From 2000 to 2002 he commanded 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Okinawa, Japan which included command of the initial deployment to Basilan Island in the Philippines as part of OEF-P. He has also served as Chief, Special Forces Branch, US Total Army Personnel Command in Alexandria, Virginia and as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations G3 , Chief of Staff, and Chief of the Strategic Initiatives Group of the US Army Special Operations Command. In addition, he is a fellow at the Institute of Corean-American Studies (ICAS) and a member of the Board of Advisors for Small Wars Journal.
