US Army recruitment: Faceless individuals, fire, and troops are among the eerie visuals in the disturbing movie. The screen pulses cryptic messages extolling the power of words, ideas, and “invisible hands” while the voiceover is a symphony of well-known historical voices.
Recruits are what the U.S. Army needs, and its psychological warfare warriors are bringing in that supply with their unique style of mental fighting.
The film, which was released early on Thursday, is the second inflammatory recruiting advertisement that, by itself, perfectly captures the type of work that psyop soldiers conduct to sway public opinion and fight the war abroad. Released two years after the first film, “Ghosts in the Machine,” was subtly uploaded on the unit’s YouTube account and caused a flurry of internet discussion, it is called “Ghosts in the Machine 2.”
“It’s a recruiting video,” the Army major who produced it told The Associated Press before its debut. “We want someone who watches it and thinks, wow, that was effective, how was it constructed?”
The soldier, who is a member of the 8th Psychological Operations Group based in Fort Liberty, North Carolina, also produced the first movie. He asked that, as is customary for special forces soldiers, his name not be used to conceal his identity.
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Simple leaflet drops to more complex propaganda and messaging intended at misleading the adversary or influencing opinion on foreign land are among the many tasks for which psyop units are employed. U.S. military psychological operations on Americans are forbidden.
Army Special Operations Command officials and recruiters for the special forces are hoping that the movie will start a new conversation that will attract people to a frequently unnoticed and underappreciated career.
“The psyop mission is very difficult to show and tell tactically,” said Special Forces Recruiting Battalion commander Lt. Col. Steve Crowe. And recruiters claim it’s the most difficult position in the Army’s special forces to fill.
The armed services have been having trouble reaching their recruiting targets overall; most have fallen well short of them in recent years. The biggest service, the Army, has struggled most, falling short of its target by almost 15,000 men over the last two years. Still, the majority of the services report that this year is better.
According to VOA News, Special Operations recruiters for the Army, who draw from current troops, report that they are reaching between 3,000 and 4,000 recruits overall. Of that, 650 active-duty soldiers must be brought in this year for psychological operations.
Officials attribute the low unemployment rate in the country to growing competition from corporate companies that can pay more and provide comparable benefits, as well as a slow recovery from several years of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions that kept recruiters from going to schools and other public gatherings.
The difficulties Army Special Operations Command has had recruiting have been similar to those of the Army at large. The recruiters said they are in charge of recruiting a variety of special forces, including the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, popularly known as the Night Stalkers, Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations, and the Green Berets and Delta Force.
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The Army has struggled to fill the ranks, even though it has stated that it plans to reduce the number of police personnel.
The most well-known psyop was probably performed during World War II when the so-called U.S. Ghost Army used costumes, impersonations, radio deception, and inflatable tanks to deceive the Germans. Under Operation Viersen, the soldiers drew German forces away from the Rhine River crossing location where the 9th Army was crossing by using inflatables, sound vehicles, and phoney headquarters. At a Washington ceremony recently, a few of the unit’s final surviving soldiers received the Congressional Gold Medal.
Psychosocial activities are a lot of fun these days. But one of the final American soldiers to die in Afghanistan was a psyop soldier named Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tennessee. During the chaotic evacuation in 2021, a suicide bomber killed him at Abbey Gate. His job that day involved mostly crowd control and influence; he used a bullhorn to speak with the agitated Afghans and correctly steer them.
