Special Operators Take Holistic Health into Account

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In 2015, the top four bipartisan Senate and House congressional leaders gathered in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center to present the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor awarded by Congress, to roughly 40 surviving First Special Service Force veterans.

As the only unit formed during World War II that consisted of troops from both the United States and Canada, the force’s origins were forged from allied leaders’ focus on sabotaging key industrial nodes that supported the Axis powers’ energy lines of communication.

The First Special Service Force was a highly trained joint combat group designed to fight at high altitudes, in rugged terrain and in severe weather.

Its first major battle — the Battle of Monte la Difensa in 1943 — required a nighttime climb in full combat loads up 200-foot cliffs in inclement weather to surprise enemy forces. Monte la Difensa’s importance as a strong defensive position against enemy invasion dates back to the Roman Empire, and the much higher casualty rate suffered by the defenders testifies to the skill and ferocity of the assault.

In the aftermath of the battle, when Gen. Dwight Eisenhower conducted a brief tour, he reportedly marveled at how the force — encumbered with equipment — was able to accomplish a feat that any alpine climber would have thought twice about.

In the modern era of video games and the glamorization of violence, historical accounts of the Battle of Monte la Difensa are hard to read. The brutality of that battle — and the subsequent ones — resulted in high casualty rates for the First Special Service Force.

In addition, when they returned home, family members of these highly trained warriors recounted the complexity of their reintegration, not always successfully, back into civilian life. In hindsight, many family members concluded their service member was likely dealing with post-traumatic stress.

A little more than 80 years later, today’s U.S. and Canadian special forces trace their origins to the First Special Service Force. The Battle of Monte la Difensa informs the key truths and enduring values of today’s U.S. Special Operations Forces.

As the global strategic environment returns to great power competition, special operators in some ways are simply returning to their origins. This is why Special Operations Command’s focus is to recruit men and women who are capable of operating in remote and austere environments, have the professional discipline and acumen to conduct tactical actions that carry strategic and political consequences and can handle the endurance and the operational tempo required for the nation’s most sensitive missions.

It is also why the command prioritizes generational relationships with international special operations forces, and why the first enduring SOF truth — people are more important than hardware — is both strategic and values-based.

At the same time, the ongoing emphasis to optimize the holistic health of special operators is informed by their expected future operating environment.

As technological advances inform the rapidly evolving character of future battles, personnel expect to be attacked from every operational domain and to receive no respite from enemy observation. Special operators therefore expect they will be required to successfully accomplish their assigned missions in denied, disrupted, intermittent and limited impact environments, in which the resilience of their cognitive health will be a decisive factor.

In this year’s congressional oversight season, SOCOM highlighted the work to enhance the readiness, resilience and well-being of its service members and their families, with its written and oral testimony covering the ongoing importance of the command’s Preservation of the Force and Family program. As the program has evolved over time, the physical domain — with an emphasis on human performance — has expanded to include other domains, including psychological, cognitive, social/family and spiritual. By design, the command is focused on ensuring key stakeholders understand that the program has expanded to focus on holistic engagement to identify and address chronic issues before they impact performance.

In prepared testimony, leaders highlighted work done with healthcare professionals to publish a comprehensive study to focus on monitoring brain health and cognitive performance, optimizing cognitive capacity, advancing brain health science and connecting wounded, ill and injured service members seeking treatment with resources.

In addition, during oral testimony, it was noted the command is actively seeking partnership with organizations that work with professional athletes that could have similar human performance experiences.

This is a serious field of study that includes leading-edge research and data on the holistic welfare of service members and athletes that goes beyond physical conditioning to include psychological, nutritional and sleep hygiene support. SOCOM is actively supporting cooperative research-and-development agreements with universities and research institutions that can legally and ethically share information from diverse sets of data pools.

This research is important and requires ongoing strategic discipline by both SOCOM and Congress to maintain a consistent level of funding to ensure universities and research institutions successfully protect their own budgets to support the ongoing work.

This deeper and longer-term work is essential to validate requirements to inform better human-centric performance technologies, such as wearables.

The partnership the Defense Department — including Special Operations Command — has with industry, academia and research institutions is at its best when it leads to break-out advancements in providing the technology and support U.S. service members deserve.

Supporting the holistic and optimized health of special operators is one of those virtuous undertakings. ND

Jennifer Stewart is NDIA’s executive vice president for strategy and policy.

Topics: Defense Department