It’s A War Down There In The Pits Marines Take A Recon Mission To The New York Mercantile Exchange

Call it “the pit” or call it “the command center.” Either way it’s a war room.

About 22 high-ranking Marine officers learned that last week when they dug into the trenches of the New York Mercantile Exchange to pick up tips on handling the digital information bombardment the battlefield of the future will bring.

Many found the chaos of the trading floor reminiscent of a wartime command post.

“They’re traders. They exchange commodities for money,” said Bing West, a war gaming and simulations consultant who was undersecretary of defense in the early 1980s. “The Marines are traders, too - they exchange fire for lives.”

Digital technology will change the face of the battlefield over the next decade, he said. Cellular phones and satellite-linked Global Positioning System navigators will enable commanders to receive information from a much larger area.

Battlefield commanders will have to absorb huge amounts of information and make life-and-death decisions in an instant.

The trip to the exchange, first done a year ago, was designed to explore the dynamics and techniques of traders’ intuitive decision-making, a skill commanders will need to handle the information onslaught.

“If they wait to ensure accuracy, the deal will go by,” said Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, commander general of the Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., whose fighting lab organized the undertaking. “And if we wait, an opportunity in a particular battle would go by.”

The exchange is the world’s largest physical commodities futures exchange for energy, precious metals and in North America, copper.

Gary Lapaover, vice president of the exchange, introduced the Marines to techniques and principles of commodities trading.

Each officer was given a stack of slips representing transactions to be made on behalf of fictional clients.

Then major generals and brigadier generals were paired with traders and led to the pit - a room with a low circular cavity in the center, banks of TVs hanging from the ceiling and an electronic ticker-tape running on one wall.

After some last-minute tutelage in natural gas trading, the starting bell went off. Chaos broke out instantly, with traders yelling, jumping up and down and waving their arms to indicate buy or sell.

A trader in cowboy boots, his salt-and-pepper hair curling over his ears, jumped up and down, screaming. A three-star general with a buzz cut and a military-issue olive sweater hollered “Sell! Sell!” Other officers looked confused at first, then made tentative bids as they began warming up. Scraps of paper flew like bullet casings.

“This is a pretty stimulating way to see where we’re going in the future,” Brig. Gen. Gary Newbold said during a break. “It’s more than just a novelty. It’s a crisis drill for us.”

Trader Ken Carter noted a key difference between his colleagues and the Marines.

“You’re going to lose money here,” he said. “Nothing else. It’s only money. It’s not your life.”