Many jobs require some form of on-the-job training, working with colleagues so employees can go back to their jobs with more knowledge and confidence than before. However, in the world of special operations, where on-the-job training is constant, insights into how to best use new technology don’t always make it to the frontlines.
In special operations, operators are often deployed covertly in small teams into hostile foreign territory. That can make consistent communication and keeping them well-supplied challenging.
That’s where Building Momentum helps out. It’s a small business that specializes in training operators how to use the tech they have available to them in new ways.
Building Momentum was co-founded by former special operator Brad Halsey. Halsey was in the Navy and served in Iraq before being injured.
“That surgery went bad,” Halsey said. “And so I was a disabled veteran. And so after that, I was like, ‘You know what? I want to use my brain instead of my broken body to make a living.’”
In 2008, Halsey spent a year in Iraq, learning firsthand what soldiers fighting on the edge needed to win. This is where Building Momentum began.
“I had a lab in Baghdad that I made a lot of technology and solutions from, that I pushed out all across the country,” Halsey said.
Building Momentum is now at the forefront of giving special operations forces the unique on-the-job training they need to complete covert missions in the modern world. The group teaches things like how to 3D print a spare part in the field or build aerial drones with sticks.
“So today, we’ve trained almost 10,000 service members across every organization except for Coast Guard,” Halsey said. “Because we haven’t stumbled across that yet. And Ukraine is sort of validating all the stuff that we’ve been doing for almost 10 years now.”
Building Momentum is prototyping new designs on the fly, using what’s available for service members at that moment.
“You know, how do you go out onto the economy and build a drone in Thailand,” Halsey said. “How do you do this stuff with what you have around you? What can you what can you resource and source very fast to make that solution?”
The organization offers a number of Innovation Boot Camps (IBCs) for its clients. The initial weeklong course is an introduction to things like 3D printing, robotics, circuitry and coding. From there, Building Momentum tailors the instruction to the clients.
“So we’ll listen to what they’re saying,” Halsey said. “Recently, we just did autonomous boats out in Japan, because the Marine Corps saw what Ukrainians were doing, they saw how the South China Sea is a really important thing to understand right now. And so we built, we showed them how to build these 12-foot boats that autonomously go out and drop sensors off, and come back to shore all on their own.”
Chris Sargeant, a newly retired Marine spent the last part of his 20 years in service doing a fellowship with Building Momentum.
Sargeant said one of the best things the company does for its clients is challenging not just how they approach a problem, but their entire thought process around it.
“As a Marine, especially in the more complicated [Military Occupational Specialties] is explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), which, I’m an EOD tech by trade, or in the special operations community,” Sargeant said. “MARSI, Rangers, Green Berets, I came from MARSOC [where] failure is looked at very negatively, right? So if you fail, you failed, right … Them enabling you to fail, fail fast, learn from it and view it as a positive thing, in my opinion, is, is huge.”
Sargeant said it’s his hope this way of thinking — of trying new solutions and failing fast — permeates into the ranks of the regular military.
Halsey also said if the concepts Building Momentum teaches could be more ingrained into the institutional knowledge of the military as the whole, it would benefit the entire fighting force.
“Let’s imagine we push everything out to the right, and we’re going into some crazy, you know, a post apocalyptic thing, or whatever,” Halsey said. “It’s still going to be all these clever solutions that people will be doing, because all the big toys will be broken, all the big things will be done, all the satellites will be down or name a thing, you know, name some horrible thing. And now it’s going to be a race to the clever, it’s always going to be a race to the clever and technology has made it so accessible.”
Building Momentum may be a veteran-owned small business, however, it does corporate events too. There are some boot camps coming up this summer and fall where individuals can participate in a class.
Access the full Weapons and Warfare episode here.
Access all Weapons and Warfare podcast episodes here.
