Fallon says lapses in communication were the norm when he was in the infantry. “Do you know how much time I spent saying, ‘I have no idea what’s going on’? We’d get an order to halt, spread out, take up a more hidden position. My buddy next to me would be going, ‘What’s going on?’ And I’m going, ‘Shit, I don’t know what’s going on.’” And you couldn’t yell, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ because the enemy would hear you and know where you were.
Aaron is leading the next exercise, a live-ammo “tactical scenario” out in the wilderness beyond the firing range. Before we head over, he has us push a button on the ear cuffs we’re wearing. This is the point in my notes where it says, “bionic!” As a kid, I used to watch a TV show called The Bionic Woman. Like her male counterpart of an earlier season, she’d been rebuilt by the military with experimental superprosthetics following some variety of hideous maiming. It was the least they could do. One of the implants was for her ear. She’d cock her head, and suddenly we’d be eavesdropping on a pair of underworld kingpins in a Buick Riviera across the street. I have her hearing now. Aaron is fifteen feet away, talking to Craig, but he sounds so close I should be smelling shampoo.
The name for what we’ve got on is TCAPS (say, tea-caps), Tactical Communication and Protective System. Incoming noises are analyzed; the quiet ones are amplified and the loud ones reproduced more quietly. (The system also incorporates radio communications, or “comms.”) So far it’s mainly Special Operations forces who are using TCAPS. Why? Money, of course, but also the fact that it comes out of the radio budget, and the majority of foot soldiers don’t carry radios. Plus some skepticism among leadership. “Senior NCOs,” says Fallon, referring to noncommissioned officers, “will flat-out tell you, ‘Don’t give me more shit that’s supposed to be the next high-tech wonder that’s going to break or the batteries are going to go dead and I’ve got to carry it.’”
The shit we have on happens to be made by Fallon’s employer, 3M. “I hope you don’t think that that’s what this is about,” he said to me at one point. I don’t, entirely, no. Fallon is an evangelist for the product category, not the brand. 3M also supplies earplugs to the military, so either way, they’ve got a tasty piece of defense budget pie.
The hearing professionals and myself are joined for the tactical exercise by twelve men from a Marine Corps Special Operations unit, the name of which I’ve been asked to omit. Aaron briefs the lot of us.
“You are a Special Operations team heading into a village in Afghanistan,” he begins. “The mission is to make a liaison with the village elders. Engage the elders, ask about Taliban activity in the area. Ask them about their quality of life. What their problems are.” Perhaps fit them for hearing aids. “In support of the operation, we have a Predator drone in the overhead, and quick access to an assault weapons team: Cobras or Hueys. If things go kinetic we can call them up for supporting fire.” Going kinetic is military shorthand for people are firing guns at you. In this case, they’re imaginary people, but the Spec Ops guys will be shooting back anyway, because this is an exercise about communicating in the chaos and clamor of combat.
We’re instructed to turn our radios to channel 7 and line up behind one of the Special Ops guys, two of us per guy, as close as possible without hitting his boot heels. “If he runs, you run,” says Aaron. “If he takes a knee, you take a knee.” Myself and a middle-aged audiologist with braids poking down from her helmet get behind a short man who is hard to describe because all distinguishing features except his nose are obscured by gear of some kind. He introduces himself and says hi.
“Hi, I’m Mary,” says the audiologist.
Me too, I say. “I’m also Mary.”
“Well,” says our Special Ops guy, clearly unaccustomed to so much Mary. “That does make it easy for me.”
We set off into the scrub. Camp Pendleton is two hundred square miles, with seventeen miles of California coastline, much of it left wild for practice invasions and amphibious assaults. It’s like a national park reserved for the U.S. Marine Corps and a lot of twitchy wildlife. (The grunts are forbidden to shoot the animals, but I’m guessing it happens. I’m guessing this because I recently visited the Camp Pendleton paintball range and asked to be shot to see what it feels like. Fifteen Marines volunteered. The one who did the deed—from 70 feet, hitting me precisely where he wanted to—can be heard in the background of a researcher’s video going, “That was very satisfying.”)[14]
As we make our way across the terrain, a multiparty conversation unfolds in my ear cuffs. One man is talking with the drone operator, and someone else is communicating with the Cobra pilot and the attack controller. Everyone, including the President of the United States, if he wished to, can switch their comms to channel 7 and listen in. (When Navy SEALs stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound, they were wearing TCAPS, and President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were listening in.)
I don’t know how often our guy has his talk button pressed and how far my voice behind him carries, but it’s possible that the transcript of this mission would be somewhat irregular:
“Approaching village, over.”
“Copy, Liberty. Any update from the target site?”
“You need to put some sunscreen on the back of your neck.”
“This is Hammer in the overhead. We have four military-age[15] males who appear to be orienting themselves to the objective area.”
“Copy that, Hammer.”
“So do the Taliban use hearing protection?”
“This is Hammer. We’ve got an exodus of women and children from the village. Two other military-age males messing with something under a tarp.”
“Start surging assets.”
“Halo, you are approved for rockets and guns, over.”
“All these holes in the ground—are they from mortars or, like—”
“Prepare to attack!”
“—gophers?”
“Attack imminent!”
Simulated kinetics ensues. With Mary right behind me, I scramble to stay as close to our guy’s back as possible without rear-ending him when he stops to shoot. I try to picture what the group of us must look like, but my brain can’t decide between Zero Dark Thirty and the Bunny Hop. I imagine officers walking back from lunch, one nudging the other: “What’s going on out there?”
“Audiologists.”
The mission ends back by the classroom. We turn in our gear and head inside for a Q&A session with the Special Operations men. They sit in mismatched office chairs in a row at the front of the room. “How many of you,” the first question goes, “have hearing loss?” All twelve raise a hand. By one (pre-TCAPS) study, Special Operators, as they are called, had the highest rates of hearing loss in the Army. Both in training and on the job, they spend a greater than average amount of time around explosives and large, noisy artillery. Unless they’re snipers. They’re either very loud or very quiet, these men.
“I don’t understand,” says a voice from the back row. “As an audiologist, I never have people come in to my clinic going, ‘Oh, my god, I can’t hear! I had an incident, and now my hearing is diminished.’”
15
In Afghanistan, this means twelve and up, a designation we in the West innocently reserve for toys and board games.