| abstract
| - Imperial Marine Advance Force Operations (AFO), otherwise known as the Marine Special Forces or Imperial Navy Advance Force Operations, and colloquially known as the "Advance Force" or "Recces" in Special Forces jargon, was a special operations force of the Imperial Navy and the Galactic Empire Special Operations Command that was instigated during the Legacy Era as a component of Galactic Emperor Roan Fel's reform of the Imperial military. While the Imperial Navy was an acknowledged expert in engagement of enemy warships and fighter craft in deep space, in planetary orbits, or in the atmosphere, during the Legacy Era it would become painstakingly apparent that many Navy task forces were largely ineffective in precise and efficient bombardment of hostile positions on planetary surfaces. Traditionally, the Navy would maintain "targeting officers" aboard its Star Destroyers, who were specially trained in the use of long-range reconnaissance optics and telemetry to identify planetary targets for bombardment with turbolaser batteries. This, however, was a hugely flawed science, with Navy officers in space simply unable to leverage fire missions on short timescales — Navy targeting officers had to collect intelligence on the relative importance of enemy targets, on their defenses against orbital bombardment, and calculate precise fire missions to feed to their gunners. Eventually, the Navy would resort to the usage of TIE Predators to deploy from Navy carriers and to enter the atmospheres of hostile planets, transversing their targets at an altitude of several hundred kilometers, gathering more precise targeting data. Furthermore, reconnaissance Predators had the advantage of being able to sweep a planetary circumference more quickly than cumbersome Star Destroyers, who had to accelerate in high orbit at high speeds in order to provide entire sensor coverage of an entire planet on any reasonable time-scale. However, this would subject Predator fighters to intensive anti-air and anti-orbital fire, leading to high attrition amongst the reconnaissance pilot corps. The solution was obvious: to have infantry observers on the ground, who in preparation of Navy warships appearing in orbit, would gather intelligence on which hostile fortifications were most strategically important, and which ones would be most vulnerable to orbital bombardment. Additionally, on the ground, observers would be able to gather far more detailed coordinates and trajectories for naval orbital fires leveraged from orbit. However, this was long resisted by the Navy Admiralty, who wanted no business with "infantry" units—which was the acknowledged turf of the Imperial Army. Navy Admirals had credit for their fleets of Star Destroyers, and insisted to wage wars with only Navy capital ships and fighters, continually overlooking the poor results of orbital bombardment of surface fortifications. Eventually, the lackluster results of orbital bombardments would force a solution: the Admiralty was able to save face by the fact that the Navy had a small number of traditional infantry units, the Imperial Marines, stationed about their ships to provide security against piracy and enemy boarding parties. The Galactic Empire Special Operations Command, who had extensive experience with Naval Special Warfare, the Navy's counterterrorism commando force, would coordinate with the stalwart Admiralty to specifically train, organize, equip, and command veteran Marines to form the Imperial Marine Advanced Force Operations: a Marine special operations force under the control of the Imperial Navy and the Galactic Empire Special Operations Command who would participate as surface fire observers and controllers for Navy orbital bombardment of surface fortifications. Typically, many Imperial Special Forces detachments are attached with liaisons from Marine Advance Force Operations to act as joint terminal attack controllers for both aerial gunfire (fighters) and orbital gunfire (Star Destroyers).
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)