Imperial Marine Advance Force Operations

Imperial Marine Advance Force Operations (AFO), otherwise known as Imperial Navy Advance Force Operations, was a special operations force of the and the Galactic Empire Special Operations Command that was instigated during the  as a component of Galactic Emperor Roan Fel's reform of the Imperial military.

While the was an acknowledged expert in engagement of enemy warships and fighter craft in deep space, in planetary orbits, or in the atmosphere, during the  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 s 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.