Advanced Ranks Marine Corps Policy Changes: Digital Era Enhancements Coming to Recruitment Strategies?

There are some changes in the USMC and I believe them to be designed to retain strong talent and bring in fresh new talent. We are in a different world when compared to 30 years ago. The Marines are a highly trained force with core values that tie them together throughout the ages. It is a system of honor as much as a fighting system. Some changes are occurring and the skills will likely adjust somewhat to encourage new adaptive traits.

(Remember that we are moving beyond the physical now. The Digital Era brings with it new ways of doing things and its is highly science oriented)

Read Marines See Early Successes in Retention Push—and Ways to Do Better

We are in an increasingly complex world and while the same physical abilities will be needed they will also be augmented by technology that will require new skills. Where one may have done well on one kind fighting platform (physical) they must now be able to incorporate real time data streaming technology into a complex battlefield that integrates two platforms (augmented reality). 

Not all brains are ready to deal with the complexity of multiple activities going on in different planes of existence/sensory 'reality' (physical and digital) at the same time. Throw into that the complexity of a bird's eye theoretical strategic view and you will likely see mental filters start popping up to reduce information overload. Working memory and capacity is limited.

Thus, some of the criteria are changing for the world of advanced tech fighting and there will be an addition to the required skills of a unit that might include certain cognitive abilities that are rare from an evolutionary standpoint. When you are dealing with the general population certain cognitive creative abilities that often come with high IQ and dense neural networks are often neurotypical (Meaning they are outside the bell curve.)

As technology advances, I would suspect they will look for increasingly a subset of the population that has certain physical and neural characteristics. Age ranges may get wider for certain positions. Since they are rare, one could foresee integrating them into units based on certain duties designed specifically for them beyond the physical capacity (Maybe not. Let us see how advanced technology implementation unfolds.). 

I'm not so much going to discuss the individual policy but more along the lines of general recruitment of advanced modern fighters that have unique developmental potential. See AI and the Navy and Human Robot Connection. These models are likely to teach us much about how human's process stimulation and react to their environment. The deeper neural densities of decision making is becoming increasingly important. 

Staying on top of game will require new methods of recruitment, deeper educational/training models, and an industry that advances and applies innovative technology quickly to maintain leading battlefield edge (i.e. short lead time). The nature of success here seems to be proper military and non-military advanced strategic management techniques that will likely require new industry-government partnerships.