I've been saying this for years upon years now. (Been meaning to write an article on the idea, too.)
Basically since MTMTE/Lost Light was a thing.
It's like, basically do that, but with GI Joe.
And before anyone says anything, I don't mean literally just doing that, but use it as a template of how to take a war-based franchise past its war-based roots and still keep the conflict and entertaining aspects. Doesn't have to be the same tone or high jinks or whatever.
And hey, as noted by invoking Adventure Team, this is something GI Joe did first, long before MTMTE or even ARAH.
I'd make the lot of them ex-military, brought on by a secret organization to _________. I dunno, fill in the blank with some sort of quest, objective, Macguffin hunt, whatever, all across the globe. But there's the reason for your military-ish namedrop without them being military.
And there are ways to go about the Cobra aspect. One is to make the Joe/Cobra conflict, as we know it, sort of the backstory behind both sides.
Or have many of the major characters sort of be their own faction. Cobra, Destro and MARS, Major Bludd and his guys, Zartan and the Dreadnoks. Lots of room for teaming up and backstabbing. Each with their own goals and reasons for going after whatever they're going after.
