Marine special operators are using fiction to envision the future

May 15, 2024

Marine special operators are using fiction to envision the future

Short stories by Marine Raiders are driving discussions about the evolution of MARSOC through 2040, its commander writes.

BY MAJ. GEN. MATTHEW TROLLINGER
COMMANDER, MARINE FORCES SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
APRIL 28, 2024

Out in the Indian Ocean, the maritime militia’s unmanned craft approached the Marine-led international task force, and a young sergeant deployed his own small submersibles to meet the threat. While the Marines’ new systems used artificial intelligence to synchronize a response to enemy drone swarms, their operator still faced the timeless challenge of the sea. He struggled to control his drones as they spread out under the crashing ocean waves. This cat-and-mouse game of reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance still relied on principles honed since WWII: a combination of technical and human-centric skillsets that would enable a cross-functional team of Marines, Marine Raiders, and allied partners to prevail.

This vignette, although based in the technological advancements of today, is set in the late 2030s. It’s part of our effort at Marine Forces Special Operations Command to use fiction to peer into the future.

Fictional intelligence, or FICINT, stories, as defined by Ghost Fleet and Burn-In authors Peter Singer and August Cole, represent a way to envision future scenarios with operationally-informed fiction writing. Our command worked with both authors—known for galvanizing discussions about change within the Defense Department—to mentor current Marine Raiders in publishing three FICINT stories that have already helped drive discussion on the evolution of MARSOC into 2040.

In this current decade, we have been working to implement the vision and strategy laid out in 2018’s “MARSOF 2030” and its supporting operating concept of 2021, planning for our future capabilities and employment with our colleagues across Special Operations, the Marine Corps, and the Joint Force. These documents laid out the challenges: our nation’s adversaries and their proxies are unceasing in their use of cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, geopolitical incursions, disruption of commercial maritime trade, and financing of malicious actors to gain strategic advantage. Marine Special Operations Command recognized the need to illuminate, contextualize and counter these efforts while creating effects-based dilemmas at a tempo adversaries cannot match. They also defined the capabilities our forces need to prevail, described the environments in which they will operate, and sought to align MARSOC as a connecting file between U.S. SOCOM’s modernization efforts and the Marine Corps’ future operating concepts.

Our conceptual framework is rapidly becoming a reality. Deployed Marine Special Operations Forces gain persistent placement and access to politically sensitive environments and develop enduring relationships with our allies’ and partners’ military leaders. As Marines, we are especially suited to operate in littoral regions—where the majority of the world’s population centers are located, and the preponderance of economic activity occurs. We are providing our Marine Raiders with the advanced training, tactics, and technologies that underpin our operating concept. Raiders are strengthening and enabling allies and partners, illuminating, and deterring malign activities, and enabling the speed and precision of a Joint Force response if we must escalate from competition to crisis and conflict.

But even as we provide solutions for today’s challenges, our Marine Raiders continue to evolve from the strategic vision laid out in MARSOF 2030 towards the ever-increasing strategic and operational challenges anticipated in the following decade. It is for this reason that we turned to FICINT writing. We built upon the operational concepts that globally distributed Marine Raiders execute daily, while challenging ourselves to internalize a future operating environment with the types of multi-functional challenges highlighted by U.S. SOCOM’s 2040 conceptual framework.

Our short stories center around practical applications and lethal and non-lethal effects in strategic competition and crisis, and help us envision the types of people, capabilities, dependencies, and interactions that will be required of future Raider formations. To that end we incorporated several themes that transcended any one vignette: using new digital capabilities to achieve greater effects with our partners and allies; rapidly adapting to changes in environmental conditions and adversary strategic objectives; and finally, staying true to our Marine Corps heritage and the foundation it provides to enable us to achieve decisive effects for our nation.

Raider 40: “Imbedded.” The overarching purpose is to highlight interagency-enabled activities like counter-threat finance operations that hold increasing relevance not only for enduring counter-terrorism missions but also in strategic competition. This story emphasizes the importance of tracing state-sponsored activities to non-state malign influence, underscoring the significance of a robust liaison network and the necessity for a reliable redundant support system. As the digital landscape continues to expand, the narrative contrasts non-lethal and lethal activities.

Raider 40: “Arctic Urgency.” The story focuses on the application of information and non-lethal effects in strategic competition. Arctic Urgency delves into the intricacies of partnered operations, human-machine teaming, spectrum management, and communication within denied environments. It underscores that human adaptation will remain a pivotal element in competition and conflict.

Raider 40: “Uncharted.” Conceptualizing the convergence of MARSOF elements and future Marine Air-Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs), “Uncharted” examines how MARSOC’s operational approach integrates with the Marine Corps Force Design concepts. As the story develops, the employment of uncrewed autonomous systems and use of human cultural nuances with partner forces becomes a focal point.

MARSOF 2030 started our transformation from a needs-based counterterrorism-focused force to one composed of force elements and command-and-control nodes that can sense, fuse, and manipulate data at unprecedented scope, speed, and understanding to gain decisional advantage and provide operational commanders effects-based options inside the adversary’s decision cycle. Our MARSOF 2040 vision will make us stronger by challenging the current force to iteratively analyze, anticipate, and predict what will be needed. FICINT is one useful tool to frame the conversation. As we strive to sustain MARSOC’s high-performing contribution as part of the joint force in 2040, we need our formation to think critically, adapt effectively, and execute boldly to achieve that outcome.

Encouraged by the creativity of our authors, I have published their stories on our website. A wider discussion will occur in May 2024 at Global SOF Week Conference in Tampa, Florida. I look forward to the discussions stemming from our efforts to envision and embrace the future operating environment in which our Marine Raiders will thrive.

Maj. Gen. Matthew Trollinger is the commander of Marine Forces Special Operations Command. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or Special Operations Command.

Source: Defense One

Home

by Patty Nieberg

A day of training with the Carl Gustaf rifle, according to one soldier with significant experience with it, can be like a full-contact football practice.

“I would equate it to getting a concussion in football, where you have headaches, nausea,” a senior non-commissioned officer told Task & Purpose. “I mean, I’ve literally seen people throw up after so many rounds.”

Long-term brain and head injuries have long been a concern for soldiers who absorb repeated shock waves in routine training with powerful weapons. A new Army study will examine how different exposures to firing .50 caliber rifles, the Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle and howitzer cannons impact soldier health. Researchers will also try to determine if factors like the type of job, medical history or sleep patterns put soldiers at higher risk for chronic health issues like those common among football players.

The research differs from previous studies in that it will not consider single, severe head injuries but instead examine the effects of many small ones over time.

“There’s been a lot of research on impacts following moderate to severe TBI and even mild TBI because that’s so common in the military,” Megan Douglas, clinical research psychologist for the Walter Reed Institute of Army Research, told Task & Purpose. “But things like repetitive head injuries, those subclinical groups, I don’t think we’ve looked as much about them.”

TBIs are among the most common injuries for soldiers

More than half a million troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries, TBIs, since 2000, according to Department of Defense estimates. Nearly 82% of those service members have been diagnosed with mild TBIs, which are diagnosed with confused, disoriented states or memory loss lasting less than 24 hours or a loss of consciousness for up to 30 minutes.

The congressionally funded Army studies will help researchers better understand “dose-specific effects of exposure to weapons” and how blast overpressure impacts the risk of long-term health issues. The findings could help add to existing Department of Defense guidelines that lay out safe distances and considerations for troops exposed to blast overpressures and help develop prognostic tools for more serious head and brain injuries, according to Douglas.

“The goals can be across many different potential intervention points, whether we prevent exposure because of risk factors or we mitigate exposure through safety measures,” she said.

One study will examine the effects of chronic repetitive head injuries and mild TBI from ‘tier 1’ weapons, which include shoulder-mounted weapons that launch rockets and grenades, .50 caliber sniper rifles and machine guns, howitzers and mortars, and specific explosive weights for breaching wall and door charges. To do this, researchers will compare soldiers in jobs like special operations, infantry and field artillery, who have more training around tier 1 weapons to others with limited exposure like combat medics.

Understanding blast overpressure

The blast overpressure exposure for infantry, artillery or special operations soldiers can vary widely because of different units’ training frequencies, soldiers told Task & Purpose on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press.

Special operations soldiers overall get more training by the nature of their missions and smaller unit sizes, a senior enlisted soldier in charge of weapons training said.

“There were days that we would get dozens and dozens of Carl Gustaf rounds and then at the end of it, you’re ‘like my head hurts,’” the soldier said.

And with more frequent training comes more blast exposures. A special operations soldier might be required to train on wall and door breaches 21 days every quarter, with five to 10 charges each day. But regular armed forces might train with just 10 charges annually, according to a former special forces engineer who was an instructor at a demolitions range.

Using training rounds versus live ammo can also make a huge difference, an active duty artillery officer said. “For the mortar and artillery rounds, it’s 90% concrete with a small flash so on the shooting end of the mortar and artillery systems, it doesn’t make a difference because it’s the same propelling charge. But on the receiving end, it’s a lot different,” he said. “For the shooting of the shoulder-fired weapons, that’s where you get the best difference because you’re basically shooting a pistol as opposed to shooting an explosive rocket.”

The artillery officer said he’s noticed a cultural shift in considering how all troops experience blast overpressure, including fire supporters or forward observers who are farther away from the weapons or explosions. The artillery officer also noted that training ranges vary and have different layouts, which could also be a factor in blast exposures.

“Although an artillery section will only fire 30 rounds in a batch of training, the people observing the explosions, albeit a mile away, are observing dozens of guns, and so it’s hundreds of rounds that they’re exposed to,” he said.

Drilling down into the individual

Existing research has shown long-term exposure to low-level blasts from breaching and shoulder-fired weapons can lead to higher rates of concussion and post-concussion symptoms. But with these new studies, Douglas said they’re hoping to drill down to the level of individuals and find out if certain people are at higher risk or are predisposed to brain or head injuries.

“In the past, the Army has implemented guidelines based on testing to be like, maybe this is the kind of person we want to keep out of certain roles because they might have a risk or predisposition towards these aspects,” Douglas said. “The goals can be across many different potential intervention points, whether we prevent exposure because of risk factors or we mitigate exposure through safety measures, or maybe even have potential therapeutic targets based on our data.”

Investigators will then take the data and determine if certain individuals are at higher risk for long-term health issues like traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, also known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE — a common degenerative brain disease affecting professional football players.

“It’s similar to what we’ve seen with TBI or sports concussion research where we know that they’re at risk for these neurodegenerative issues later down the road, but they will actually be doing a blinded adjudication where they are looking at these aspects and saying whether they think they would be at risk.”

The artillery officer who spoke with Task & Purpose was previously assigned to special operations and said he noticed a difference in the health outcomes because of the communities’ emphasis on holistic health.

“There were people in special operations with multiple IED hits, severe TBI, multiple Purple Hearts that were in far better mental shape simply because they prioritize sleep for their two-decade career or eating right,” he said. “Whereas you’ll see conventional soldiers say they’re burned out after a short amount of time because they’re not probably as healthy.”

Mental health privacy

Despite ongoing efforts across the military services to combat the stigma, there are existing privacy concerns around troops’ mental health records and its impact on their careers.

Douglas acknowledged that soldiers might be worried about sharing personal information on these subjects but emphasized that the data is coded and kept private to protect research integrity. Soldiers’ mental health information will not be shared with commanders, except in situations with immediate safety concerns.

“What you say is not gonna be shared with others outside of very specific safety issues like if they intend to take their life or something like that. It will not be documented in their medical chart,” she said. “This is not for clinical purposes. It’s not for career decision purposes.”

Link to Article