FAO News From the Field
"Operation Render Safe" Solomon Islands: A Case for Foreign Area Officers in the Marine Air-Ground Task Force - By Major Joe Phippen, U.S. Marine Corps
The Republic of the Solomon Islands is a small country in Oceania that boasts recently hosting the Pacific Games. Composed of six major islands and over 990 others both with and without names, the country is a beautiful collection of humble villages, breathtaking views, and thick jungles with a storied past of Marine Corps combat action.
As a result of the bitter fighting between the American and allied forces against the Japanese during World War II, there remains a great deal of artifacts about the islands. Local islanders collect many, some placed into museums, and many heavier objects such as the Japanese Type 88 Anti-Aircraft guns simply remain in the jungle as silent monuments to the war. Sadly, other artifacts are not so silent and can claim lives of the unwitting. This year, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is embarking on the largest explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) activity in the littorals on record. Given such unique terrain, the ADF requested USMC support through Marine Rotational Force-Darwin’s (MRF-D) participation in Operation Render Safe; the Australian military operation that conducts continuous removal of explosive remnants of war (ERW) throughout the Pacific.
As part of the Australian-led effort I was the lead U.S. Marine representative during our pre-deployment site survey in June 2024. We visited potential logistics support sites, conducted key leader engagements with locals, coordinated with U.S. and partner nation diplomatic missions, and set conditions for execution of the planned multilateral operation involving nine countries from around the world.
Prior to actual deployment to the Solomon Islands for the Pre-Deployment Site Survey (PDSS), I worked with the Australian Joint Operations Command to fund the travel for U.S. participants and identified what skillsets were required. Upon arrival, we spent one night in an Australian-leased apartment and set off for New Georgia island the next day on a twin-otter aircraft of only twelve passengers. On this trip, I had the excellent support of a Marine aviator and Navy Chief Petty Officer who spoke to subject-matter expertise in aviation and medical fields. I was expected to both manage and answer questions to our multi-national working group across all the functional areas of a Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF), regardless of my own background.
We spent three days in New Georgia, where I walked ground for potential field hospital sites, surveyed roads for overland evacuation, and worked through contingency planning for injuries sustained by diver teams. For medical evacuation I worked through issues of national authorities for what clinicians can work on what patients, where definitive medical care ends for each potential patient based on nationality, and even what the best platform would be depending on where the injury was sustained; whether truck, MV-22 aircraft, or even a banana boat. Logistical considerations -- such as that the MEDEVAC airfield only had drum fuel, and port capacity had no pressurized fueling systems -- all had to be addressed. Accompanied by an MV-22 pilot, we queried the airport authority for crash-fire-rescue, airfield lighting, operating hours, and even payment for airfield services. After returning to Honiara I was brought to the Australian High Commission (the equivalent of an embassy between two commonwealth nations) where I debriefed the Australian Attaché on what the U.S. commitment was to the operation. He related to us the political-military sensitivities, considerations, and restraints while operating under the Australian mission. While I was selected to lead this planning effort due to my assignment as the MAGTF’s Future Operations Officer, this final component spoke to my training as a Foreign Area Officer.
After all the work was completed, we took some much-welcomed time to visit some of the storied battle sights, and the U.S. war memorial situated in Honiara. While in New Georgia, driving though the narrow roads that were constantly under threat of the encroaching jungle, I could not help but think of how difficult moving through the terrain must have been for the brave soldiers and Marines that fought through it while under heavy enemy fire; many of them giving up their lives for the next piece of ground.
Upon return, we all had to report to our various national authorities back in each of our own headquarters. Back-briefing my own commander, I explained that the undertaking in the Solomon Islands is highly complex and the first activity which blends four landward sites and two entirely maritime collection sites. The remoteness of the islands and difficulty of terrain requires deployment of a multinational force that includes underwater explosive divers, land-based EOD reduction, and inter-island movement of live ordnance both modern and legacy. As a precaution for force protection, we designed a package complete with medical teams with on-site capabilities such as surgical intervention, intubation, and medical evacuation teams with care that reaches all the way back to Australia. We also coordinated between Australian and U.S. authorities for the contracting of local food, accommodations, and our split of cost sharing of mutual logistics.
Today’s Marine Corps continues to boast the development of MAGTF officers who are capable of planning for and executing such complicated tasks. Nearly all of these tactical actions and tasks could be accomplished by a single MAGTF and appropriately led by qualified MAGTF officers of any military occupational specialty (MOS). However, the strategic considerations of how the multinational effort is brought together, and integration with local governance, are especially suited to the Foreign Area Officer (FAO). FAOs receive specific training that address integration of foreign partners, and they have developed above average emotional intelligence through academic and in-region training that make them especially attuned for such duty. While the sister services designate FAOs and then keep them in that role, the Marine Corps is unique in having its officers retain their primary MOS even after FAO designation. By design, the MRF-D MAGTF Future Operations Officer is billet-coded for an infantry officer, and it is this primary MOS that drove my assignment to the position. The overlap in this case was highly complementary, but was owing more to happenstance than any concerted effort by manpower structures to align a FAO to this billet.
In a historically appropriate happenstance, the 1st and 5th Marine Regiments currently alternate as the command element for the annual MRF-D deployments. Back in 1942, the blood of Marines from both 1st and 5th Marine Regiments, among other American units, paid for the future of the island of Guadalcanal that now is home to the Solomon Islands’ capital city of Honiara. Now, eight decades later, Honiara is again part of a contested space. This time it is the battle of strategic competition against malign Chinese influence. While I drove the 6.5 mile distance betwixt Henderson Airfield, the international airport terminal named after a U.S. Marine, and the U.S war memorial, which overlooks the Matanikau river and back across all the allied landing sites, we passed a large stadium built by the Chinese “aid” of debt-trap diplomacy. The Solomon Islanders were no doubt happy to have a state-of-the-art facility, and rightly proud of their July 2023 hosting of the Pacific Games; enabled by the very sports park built by the People’s Republic of China. But at what cost? And what are we doing to ensure the U.S. and our allies remain the partner of choice for the Solomon Islands and other nations like it around the world? As we become more fiscally judicious, we must select military operations, activities, and investments (OAIs) that keep our partners away from the attractive temptations of Chinese influence.
FAOs in particular must be aware of the strategic competition in which they conduct MAGTF operations. Moreover, we must ensure that the regional expertise and training invested in us does not go to waste in only the theoretical realm. Duty behind a desk writing position papers and developing policy is indeed important, but these actions are empty if FAOs then fail to get out and engage with partners, or fail to advocate for selecting the right OAIs from within our own Fleet Marine Force units. FAOs must be competent, relevant MAGTF officers and purposefully inject our unique capabilities into the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) when serving in primary MOS billets. Regardless of whether in region or out; in a FAO billet or a primary MOS billet, the FAO can and must be a force multiplier.
About the Author
Major Joe Phippen is a Marine Corps Infantry Officer and an experience-track FAO. His deployments include two tours in Afghanistan, one aboard the USS America in the Western Pacific including training in Singapore, Djibouti, the United Arab Emirates, and he is currently deployed with the Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, Australia. He has spent five years forward stationed in Korea, first at U.S. Marine Corps Forces Korea and later at the United Nations Command’s Military Armistice Commission. He has commanded at platoon and company levels, served as the active duty inspector-instructor of a reserve infantry company, and he is formally trained as a foreign security force advisor and foreign disclosure officer.