Morlocks: Adversaries Go Underground

We also must think in terms of submerged lairs. Our enemies need not be so advanced as to have sub pens or submarines. During World War II, the frogmen of Italy's Decima Flotiglia Mas used the Olterra , an interned freighter under Spanish guard, as a clandestine base for attacking ships in Gibraltar. 3 From a flooded compartment below the Olterra 's waterline, through a hole cut in her hull, the Italian Navy launched teams of frogmen who attached limpet mines to British vessels. They remained undetected throughout the course of the war. In this instance, the merchant crew of the Olterra knew what their naval cousins were about. With the advent of containerized cargo, merchant ships and their crews easily could become unwitting hosts to Morlocks.

Hiding in a Sea of People

Science may help with the physical identification of lairs and caches, but distinguishing between noncombatants and Morlocks will be a far greater and more complex challenge. Despite the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, it appears that fewer and fewer of our enemies will bear weapons openly or wear identifying uniforms in the future. If this is the case, we will have to find ways of assigning them invisible uniforms.

Pressure to prosecute wars with fewer civilian casualties and less collateral damage, coupled with adversaries more inclined to defy the Geneva Conventions, will make field identification a problem of growing importance. We will have to develop a means of "marking" friends and foes in a contested area using intelligence data, gunpowder or explosives residue sensors, DNA and stress analyzers, and perhaps even remotely fired invisible paintball markers.

The future may see a Morlock marker that would be usable at great distance to indelibly mark persons who might become the equivalents of Osama Bin Laden, Mulla Omar, or their confederates. Or as an alternative, it may see some form of detecting goggles linked to a database and sensors to distinguish threatening from nonthreatening individuals in the field. Why only mark or identify those whom you might as easily dispatch? Similar to the techniques of effective pest control, it is first necessary to follow Morlocks to identify their points of concentration.

The advent of remote-sensing satellites is making it increasingly difficult to hide information. The trend toward transparency must be must be harnessed to distinguish civilians from enemy combatants. 4 Technology cannot be a substitute for human intelligence work, but it can be a valuable supplement.

Hunters Who Cross Cultural Borders

Our Morlock adversaries are going to use the transnational movement, i.e., criss-crossing borders as a tactic, against us. They are going to hide in as many countries and among as many backward and unsophisticated cultures as they can, thereby "playing the borders of the map." They may not always dive vertically out of the light; they may dive horizontally, across a geopolitical or cultural border to safety. We can train competent warriors, but can we develop transcultural hunters? Perhaps we can, if we give them the correct tools.

Americans are known for (1) technical gimmickry and (2) not learning foreign languages. Both have been impediments to prosecution of asymmetric war. However, items such as the Phraselator™, a palm-held "robot" that provides quick translations in the field, will help our Morlock hunters overcome our national failings. 5 We must seek other ways of allowing our hunters to track Morlocks across several cultures and seek other ways to minimize our "foreignness."

Perfect and Adapt

We have engaged an enemy that scurries from the light and seeks to control the surface of the world. We must perfect our night vision and adapt our intelligence, special operations, and engineer forces to hunt down our Morlocks wherever they hide, in caves, crowds, or cultures.

Seth Mydans, "Visit the Vietcong's World: Americans Welcome," The New York Times , 7 July 1999; and Tom Mangold and John Penycate, The Tunnels of Cu Chi (New York: Random House, 1985). back to article
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Report, "Weapons Smuggling in Rafah—Operation Rainbow," 17 May 2003. back to article
J. Valerio Borghese, The Sea Devils: Italian Naval Commandos in World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, MD), 1995. back to article
Ann M. Florini and Yahya Dehaqnzada, "Commercial Satellite Imagery Comes of Age," Issues in Science and Technology , p. 46. back to article
The Phraselator, built by VoxTec, translates spoken English into other tongues. "Elevate Your Hands or I Ignite," The Economist , 26 August 2004. back to article

Captain Crossland served as a SEAL officer in Vietnam and was mobilized as a reserve officer for duty with Naval Special Warfare Group One in Southwest and Central Asia as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2002. In civilian life he is a trial lawyer.

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