The Ultimate High Ground

摘要

No matter what MOS you hold in the Marine Corps, we all either directly or indirectly support the infantry. Until a new main effort is designated, the tip of the spear will continue to be those young hard-charging 0311s, and we must do everything within our power as supporting units to ensure that they are crossing the line of departure with the absolute best support that we can provide. The infantry values simplicity and directness, and has little patience for things that seem outside of the scope of the mission. Unfortunately, many of the new concepts and capabilities coming online for the Marine Corps fall outside the realm of kinetic capabilities and can come across as somewhat irrelevant to someone whose mission is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver.11 To be fair, this can be said for most other MOS's that are not inoculated to working with and through the IE. The other side of this coin is that some of us as information warfare professionals do not know how to effectively communicate-sometimes very technical IE planning considerations-to someone that has been trained to solve problems with ordnance. This language barrier is one of the major obstacles that we must overcome if we are to fully integrate our lethal and non-lethal capabilities and remain relevant in a world where the means by which we conduct warfare is quickly changing. We share a responsibility to try and bridge this gap in understanding. We must think through the lens of the infantryman, decide how our particular skillset can best support them, and develop the language skills necessary to clearly and concisely convey to everyone at the planning table what can seem like new and strange concepts. If and when we finally achieve this planning synergy, we will be ready to fight and win the wars of today and tomorrow. Though the nature of war is unchanging, the character of war is not; thus, it is existential imperative that we adjust to the changing character by which we wage war.