Introduction
Successful technology companies ruthlessly focus on how customers will use their products. Likewise, the best tool for senior leaders to determine where to invest constrained research and development (R&D) budgets is their soldiers. Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) soldiers at all levels are learning from the evolving pace and technology of modern warfare, as seen in recent conflicts from the clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan to the war in Ukraine. Our formation is struggling to visualize how this evolution will change future conflicts. A significant challenge is the potential disconnect between leaders who make critical technology acquisition decisions and the tactical teams who will ultimately employ the new tools. To correct this imbalance, ARSOF leaders should involve soldiers at the tactical level in wargaming the potential employment of new and emerging technologies, thereby ensuring our formations receive the right tools and have a well-thought-out plan for integrating them appropriately.
Innovation at the Tactical Edge
Innovation is in soldiers’ DNA. In Normandy in 1944, the Army spent weeks pushing through hedgerows. The hedgerows were huge mounds of dirt dating back to Roman times, topped with dense, impassable foliage. German defenders fortified these natural obstacles, laying in heavy weapons and target reference points on channelized crossing points. Neither Army senior leaders, Pentagon planning teams, nor procurement offices were able to solve the problem. Sergeant Curtis Grubb Culin III, a tanker from the New Jersey National Guard, designed a “Rhino” attachment that senior leaders immediately adopted, enabling their forces to break out of Normandy and continue through western Europe.
As improvised explosive devices (IEDs) proliferated in Iraq, individual soldiers modified their vehicles with armor plating before the military developed up-armored kits. When insurgents adopted passive infrared triggers, soldiers at the tactical level developed the first systems that evolved into the Rhino passive infrared Defeat System. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group soldiers constantly experimented with tactics and equipment, adapting everything from cutting-edge chemicals to bows and arrows for their unique mission. Son Tay Raiders used the first reflex sights in combat, ordering them from a commercial hunting catalog when none of the Army’s specialized R&D programs proved adequate. However, current procurement processes and resource constraints prevent ARSOF soldiers at the tactical level from independently acquiring the drones, machine learning models, and robotics necessary to drive similar bottom-up innovation. Instead, ARSOF leaders should harness the natural innovation and inquisitiveness of their tactical units of action to focus and inform R&D prioritization.
Mechanisms to Generate Bottom-Up Feedback
There are three general ways ARSOF leaders can do this. They should employ both lessons learned and acquisition specialists to capture insights from exercises, new technological prototypes, and narrative-form wargaming.
Designated lessons learned personnel should record after action reviews (AARs) with tactical units of action within two days of exercises lasting a week or longer involving a company or higher headquarters. These exercises use robust scenarios with complex planning factors leading to impactful insights. Formal AARs focus on near-term impacts over long-term R&D. Lessons-learned specialists will capture ideas that may not be included in formal reviews. Verbal AARs will be easier for units with other recovery and reporting requirements. Conducting AARs with each unit separately, without its headquarters, when the exercise is still fresh, will yield candid and raw insights. Lesson-learned specialists would quickly develop standardized agendas for efficient AARs, in person or virtually, to capture relevant data. An AAR after every exercise would be impractical, but as soldiers realize the value, the most motivated contributors would create a demand signal to aid prioritization.
Acquisitions specialists should also expand their efforts to facilitate widespread interaction with emerging technologies and the companies developing them. R&D planners should prioritize “customer feedback” above all, ensuring that at least 20 representatives from diverse ARSOF units—including Special Forces operational detachments, Civil Affairs teams, Psychological Operations detachments, aircraft crews, and Ranger platoons—engage with the physical design or planned application of new technologies at every stage from initiation to adoption or termination. ARSOF leaders should provide a clear purpose for the project, and both lessons learned and acquisition specialists should focus discussions/testing on that purpose to glean applicable insights. Detailed tactical customer feedback at every stage will limit time and money spent on projects that units will not use and will provide our soldiers with a tangible sense of where senior leaders are driving development.
Wargaming, the Army’s primary tool for imagining future operations, can be adapted to drive innovation. Rather than a top-down simulation, acquisition personnel should facilitate these as structured brainstorming sessions for the tactical soldiers who will actually use the technology. In these thought experiments, a facilitator would present a realistic future problem to a group of operators—such as an ODA, Ranger platoon, or Psychological Operations team. Unconstrained by existing technology, the soldiers would then use their real-world experience to define the practical requirements for new tools, such as the need for a drone to be modular, disposable, or capable of operating in swarms. The output is a concise narrative that captures these user-defined requirements. This narrative provides a clear demand signal for senior leaders and industry partners, ensuring that R&D investments focus on solving clearly identified tactical problems.
Conclusion
We are at an unusual inflection point, where our formations contain some of the most knowledgeable experts in the cutting-edge technologies that will shape future conflicts. However, the tactical units that employ them have limited access to those technologies or the time to experiment with them. The high cost of R&D necessitates a top-down approach to future conflict technologies; however, the bottom of our formations often has the most creative ideas. To optimize resource allocation and maximize returns on our investments, we must ruthlessly prioritize “customer feedback” and leverage our tactical experts to drive our strategic technological investments. If we fail to harness the power at both ends of our formation, we risk being stuck in the hedgerows for weeks.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 ‘Jonathan Scharnhorst’ is a pseudonym for an active-duty Special Forces warrant officer who has served over 20 years in Special Forces. The view, opinions, and analysis expressed do not represent the position of the U.S. Army or the Department of War.