US Army paratroopers prepare to board a C-130 Hercules during Operation Toy Drop at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, December 8, 2007. (Photo: The US Army)

Some of the conspiracy theories being offered about this summer's eight-week US Special Operations Command (SOCOM)-led "Jade Helm 15" military training exercise seem stranger than fiction. The general suspicion is that the exercise is an Obama administration attempt to invade the state of Texas.

At one point, right-wing conspiracy sites speculated Walmart was "in" on the Obama administration's plan to invade the state, suddenly closing down stores to provide "food distribution centers" to the military and allowing them to use a pre-existing system of secret underground tunnels to launch the takeover attempt in the state.

It's a Tom Clancy novel on steroids, and the typical stuff of Texas' ever-growing right-wing conspiracy culture, which won a boost from Gov. Greg Abbott this month, when he directed the Texas State Guard to watch over the Jade Helm 15 exercises set to take place across several Texas counties this July.

The mainstream media and much of the independent media have been right to publicly call out (and poke fun at) Gov. Abbott and some Republican presidential candidates for giving Texas' conspiracy culture far too much credence. However, the exclusive emphasis on some of the more bizarre theories emerging out of rural Texas counties has overshadowed valid concerns from activists about a much larger ongoing domestic military expansion, of which Jade Helm 15 plays a significant part.

Truthout's Dahr Jamail has reported extensively on the Navy's ongoing use of nearly every US coastal state's land and air for its realistic training exercises and war games. In recent years, these exercises have included electromagnetic warfare training and the testing of sonar devices, despite evidence of the exercises' harmful effects on marine animals and pushback from concerned environmentalists.

"According to the Pentagon, between 1985 and 2012, the US military had completed at least 92 joint land use studies in preparation for expanding its domestic training, which proposed expansions in all but 16 US states," Jamail writes.

Several branches of the US military, including the Air Force, Army and most prominently, the Navy, are encroaching on public and private lands to expand "realistic" warfare-training exercises domestically. Despite some of the more cockeyed theories to emerge about Jade Helm 15 recently, the realistic training exercise fits into this quiet military expansion in an unprecedented way.

Jade Helm 15 is an eight-week, SOCOM-sponsored, joint-military and inter-agency, unconventional warfare training exercise, which will be conducted throughout parts of Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada and Florida running this summer from July 15 to September 15. As part of the training, Special Forces from at least four branches of the military will role-play, conducting imaginary covert missions on territories labeled "hostile" in Texas, Utah and southern California, and travel from state to state in military aircraft. (Texas' designation as "hostile" in the imaginary scenario seems to be a primary catalyst for some conspiracy theories.)

In a recorded presentation given to city council members of Big Spring, Texas, Thomas Mead, an operations planner for the exercise, told city leaders that personnel from every branch of the military will be participating in the exercise, including US Navy SEALS, US Marine Special Operations Command, US Marine Expeditionary Units, the 82nd Airborne Division, SOCOM, and agencies including the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to a SOCOM press release, the training isn't quite like other routine military trainings, due to its unprecedented size and scope. "While multi-state training exercises such as these are not unique to the military, the size and scope of Jade Helm sets this one apart," the SOCOM release states. Jade Helm was originally slated to take place across eight states; however, Colorado is no longer taking part in the training after activities planned there were changed to another military unit. Despite this, Jade Helm 15 will become the largest SOCOM multi-state exercise to be conducted domestically, according to a SOCOM FAQ sheet released to Truthout.

SOCOM states it's conducting the exercise to train US Special Forces to respond to an international crisis and protect the nation from foreign enemies. Military personnel are expected to engage in scenarios focused on "infiltration and exfiltration of personnel and equipment, personnel recovery operations, integration of conventional forces, airborne operations, aerial resupply, long range movements and exercising command and control elements," according to the FAQ sheet.

SOCOM has its own budget within the DoD and has requested a $10.547 billion budget in fiscal year 2016. Part of that budget is going to initiatives like Jade Helm 15, which is designed to test military personnel in an emerging Special Forces doctrine known as the "human domain," which emphasizes studying social, cultural and economic conditions of war zones.

The training will traverse public and private lands, and military bases across the seven states, with the permission from private landowners and state and local authorities, whom SOCOM officials have already begun to approach in several Texas counties, setting up public meetings this month. According to SOCOM, about 1,200 soldiers are expected to participate in Jade Helm 15 war games across 17 locations in Texas this summer, with residents seeing a military presence of approximately 60 soldiers in local towns adjacent to the training locations, some of whom may be dressed in plain clothes and carrying guns with blank ammunition.