In June, Dr Sarah Hitchen represented Security Lancaster at the International Society for Military Ethics, North American Chapter Annual Conference in Florida, USA. The International Society for Military Ethics is an organisation composed of military, national security, and academic practitioners who meet to discuss key contemporary ethical challenges in military practice, with the goal of informing real-world decision-making and practice. The theme for this year’s event was ‘Irregular Warfare Ethics’.

Dr Hitchen participated in the Grey Zone Ethics Panel, speaking on agency, expertise and insight in irregular and ambiguous conflict, as part of the larger Epistemic Grey Zone project based in Security Lancaster. The traditional fog of war is well known, and its impacts on strategic thinking and planning are well explored. Irregular and ambiguous conflicts are likewise generally examined through the lens of political and military decision-making at the highest levels. This work shifts the focus towards the soldier as an individual decision-maker, operating in contemporary combat environments where information is often incomplete, uncertain, or contested.

The concept of the “epistemic grey zone” refers to the uncertainty surrounding knowledge, judgement and responsibility in such contexts. It captures tensions between expertise and uncertainty, acting under conditions of risk, novel security concerns requiring novel responses, and the need for competent agency when responsibility and knowledge are unclear. These challenges are characteristic of grey zone conflict and are also evident in the desire to use emergent technologies effectively while maintaining robust moral and legal standards in contemporary military operations.

Existing in this grey zone has the potential to create a damaging impact on the soldier’s own epistemic agency. The idea of moral injury is now well explored in the literature on the ethics of war and soldiering. This project asks whether soldiers may also suffer distinct forms of “epistemic injury” as a result of contemporary military service, that is harms connected to their capacity to know, judge, interpret and act responsibly in complex operational environments. It also considers what might be done in response, with the aim of improving martial lives as political, legal and social lives.

A base Community Day held by the 7th Special Forces Group Airborne opened Red Empire Week at Camp Bull Simons, Eglin Air Force Base, following the conference. Featuring a capabilities exercise demonstrating the elite technical skills used by the unit in deployments, a Combatives tournament showcasing hand-to-hand combat skills, and a briefing on the role of the unit in the current security environment, the event provided an excellent opportunity to learn more about the unit’s history, current operations, and engagement with veteran and local communities.