1st Information Operations Command was created in 2002. It provided red teams and opposing force capabilities against units that were training, and also offered the ability to synchronize information tools and prepare forces to resist adversary information warfare. It was slated for deactivation in the Army Force Structure Transformation (ARSTRUC) plan released in February 2024.

The decision to deactivate the organization was related to the decision to build three so-called Theater Information Advantage Detachments that will be 65-person teams focused on synchronizing information capabilities at the theater level: one in the Pacific, one in Europe and another that Army Cyber is orienting toward transregional threats.

Those organizations will be doing the day-to-day business of setting the conditions and informing commanders of the information environment.

That consolidation of capabilities meant the Army didn’t necessarily need 1st IO Command anymore.

“The inactivation of the command means the Army is turning a page. It doesn’t mean what the command has done is not still relevant, it just means we are going to do it a different way. 1st IO and IO writ large were created because the Army didn’t know how to integrate non-kinetics into the fight,” Col. Willie Rodney, who commanded the organization, said at the inactivation ceremony, according to the Army. “The rise of [multi-domain operations] demands the Army integrate the capabilities that are executed in domains other than air, land, and sea are in incorporated in the scheme of maneuver and the overall operations process. The need for IO is not going away with the command; rather, the Army is forcing it to be integrated throughout the service and its forces. Overall, it’s a step toward where we’ve always wanted/needed to go.”

Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commander of Army Cyber Command, said in an interview last year that the Army needs information operations. The service must understand the information environment and commanders need to integrate information advantage as part of their scheme of maneuver, both in campaigning and in conflict.

Those capabilities must be ready to go and not just be resident in small teams similar to what 1st IO Command was doing. Rather, they have to be bigger and more all-encompassing by complementing information with cyber and electronic warfare, among others.

“As we transition into the next era of Multi-Domain Operations, we carry forward the lessons learned and the expertise honed by 1st IO, ensuring that our cyber forces remain agile, resilient, and ready for the challenges ahead,” Barrett said at the inactivation ceremony.

The move also comes amid a broader cut in information operations forces, as some Defense Department leaders and members of Congress have warned of a void in the information space.

The Army was slated to slash upwards of 3,000 personnel from the special operations community, namely in psychological operations and civil affairs. Officials have previously noted that those cuts will hurt the joint force’s ability to be successful in conducting information ops.

Members of Congress have derided those cuts and have called on the Army to reevaluate its decision.

The Army’s decision “to cut 3,000 billets from Army Special Operations Forces [was] a decision that both the [Special Operations Command] and the [Indo-Pacific Command] commanders advised against. Last year’s National Defense Authorization Act prohibits the special operations forces cuts until the Army secretary completes an additional assessment. Would you agree to taking a closer look at reversing these cuts?” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Michael Obadal, the Trump administration’s nominee to be undersecretary of the Army, at his confirmation hearing on Thursday.

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For years, members of Congress and outside experts have derided the U.S. government’s lack of information prowess, which atrophied after the Cold War. For the military, kinetic action typically takes precedence over non-kinetic information activities. And the interagency process can bog down information campaigns.

“There’s a sense of you may not win a war with information operations like you could with artillery, [but] you can certainly lose it if you’re not a key part of that putting out the messages,” Gen. Bryan Fenton, commander of SOCOM, told lawmakers at a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing Tuesday.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., noted that China spends more than $1 billion on information operations to include disinformation and misinformation activities.

When pressed, Colby Jenkins, who’s performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, told Shaheen that the Pentagon spends significantly less than that on info ops.

“We don’t have anybody in charge of information operations across, as far as I can [tell] … Defense, State and the administration. And the president just fired Gen. [Timothy] Haugh, the head of Cyber Command … We’ve dismantled our Global Engagement Center at the Department of State. We’re dismantling Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, all of the media that we’ve relied on really since the Cold War to get messaging across, to accurately reflect the position of the United States against our adversaries,” Shaheen said. “Help me understand how we’re able to compete in the information arena when we don’t have anybody in charge and when we’ve lost a lot of our people who are doing that work? … Should we be doing more to resource those information operations?”

Fenton, agreeing with other experts, articulated at a conference in February hosted by NDIA that the national security community should receive the grade of “F” strategically when it comes to information operations.

At the same conference, Jonathan Schroden, research program director at CNA, noted that his colleagues at the research organization conducted the information operations posture review required by Congress a few years ago. One of the findings was there’s no shared understanding of what an information-related capability is across the DOD, and there were around 15 different definitions of what constitutes that type of capability.

“If you can’t even speak the same language between the Navy and the Army and Air Force, my god, how do you expect to do anything effectively?” he said.

Others noted small successes but said they need to do more.

“We’ve had a couple of successes where we’ve been able to connect information operations with the kinetic operation, and we’re high five and slap ourselves in the back. But what was noteworthy is, why aren’t we doing that at scale? And there’s just one example amongst 200 strikes that that’s not sufficient,” Lt. Gen. Sean Farrell, deputy commander of SOCOM, said at the NDIA event. “It’s a drop in the bucket. We need to be better in information operations.”

In congressional testimony before Senate and House panels this week, Fenton noted that a void has been created due to the lack of such activities.

“My sense is that there is a void. You mentioned misinformation, disinformation by any adversary — there’s a void out there that’s not being filled by our message,” Fenton told senators Tuesday.

At a House Armed Services Subcommittee on Information and Special Operations hearing Wednesday, speaking specifically on operations in Africa, Fenton said: “That information operation void, in many ways, I think, allowed adversaries to get in there and [with] mistruths, untruth, falsities, put a different narrative based on their view of the world, what they wanted, and mostly the great work we’ve done for years.”

Fenton told lawmakers the U.S. has good narratives and should be using that to its advantage.

“As United States of America, we’ve got a great message to tell … We take it, certainly in Special Operations Command, with our information ops professionals, to really work at that in concert with … our country teams, our embassy country teams, to put those messages out that assure populations or reassure — and also at points in time, deter adversaries,” he explained.

Fenton wants to flip the military’s mentality. Instead of having kinetic activities followed up by information operations, it should be the other way around, he said at the NDIA event in February.

Delegation of authorities has to go lower as well in order to enable greater speed, he suggested.

“If we’re going to do something, we’re usually swinging behind the 8-ball,” he said. “I think that the delegation probably has got to go to a lot lower level. In many cases, not doing it and the decision to say ‘no’ is probably actually accruing more risk than actually doing it, even if it had a modicum of not getting out there just right.”

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In response to questions regarding a contract award unveiled Wednesday, a Defense Department spokesperson shared new details about how and why the Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) is rapidly prototyping BigBear.ai’s Virtual Anticipation Network (VANE) to advance complex information operations across the military. 

“The machine learning tools and datasets within VANE could help identify the relationships between datasets over time, to inform senior leader decisions and provide key strategic context to DOD decisions,” the spokesperson said on Thursday.

The CDAO opted to leverage this platform to improve its internal capacity to identify key trends and topics related to potential foreign adversary areas of interest.

VANE was originally developed in partnership with the DOD’s Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate. In April 2024, the company received “awardable” status to offer the tool on the CDAO Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace. 

“Any federal government entity can view, contact, and negotiate [and] enter into a procurement with the awardable vendors” on Tradewinds, the spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

This new contract for CDAO-led pursuits “marks a successful transition from a research prototype to an operational prototype, providing critical insights to decision-makers,” company officials wrote in BigBear.ai’s press release.

The deal involves a transition plan, which will guide envisioned future deployments on the CDAO’s in-transition Advana environment and enable “a broader audience across the DOD’s Combatant Commands to access the advanced AI capability,” they noted.

Spokespersons from BigBear.ai did not respond to a request for comment.

In a recently published solutions brief, officials from the company wrote that “VANE is on track to provide data-driven assessments across multiple domains and echelons, including grey-zone warfare, operations at the strategic and operational levels, information warfare, and more.”

The DOD spokesperson did not directly respond to DefenseScoop’s questions regarding the price of this procurement or the platform’s functions and capabilities. 

A contracting record on the Federal Procurement Data System shows that in late September the CDAO entered into an other transaction agreement (OTA) with BigBear.ai for a “VANE Prototype.” 

The total contract value — including the base and all options — is listed as more than $1.3 million.

“The current prototyping effort is focused on exploring the utility of VANE in supporting CDAO’s customers,” the DOD spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

Without providing further details, they added that the office harnesses “the VANE platform to support data analytics related to strategic competition and other projects.”

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Charlie Company — also known as Capybara Company — of the 11^th Cyber Battalion (Leviathans) was activated in a ceremony July 11 at Fort Eisenhower, Georgia. The 11^th Cyber Battalion, which sits beneath the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade under Army Cyber Command, provides tactical, on-the-ground cyber operations (mostly through radio-frequency effects), electronic warfare and information ops.

The Army described the event as “momentous” given all subordinate units are now active.

“This signifies the final phases of our efforts to get to full build and achieve full mission capability. As the Army modernizes its capabilities and force structure to meet the threats and challenges of the future battlefield, Alpha, Bravo, and now, Charlie Company, with the support of HHC (Headquarters and Headquarters Company), stand ready to help the Army and the Joint Force win throughout the conflict continuum,” Lt. Col. Luis Etienne, commander of the 11th Cyber Battalion, said at the ceremony, according to a release.

With the activation of Charlie Company, the 11^th Cyber Battalion has four companies with over 300 personnel total and five established expeditionary cyber and electromagnetic activities teams, according to the Army. These ECTs are designed to augment units upon request and are scalable. They’re expected to maneuver with units, plan tactical operations for commanders and conduct operations on the ground.

In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the service sent an ECT forward to Europe to support the Army’s regional theater headquarters, provide subject matter expertise in electronic warfare, information operations, defensive cyber and offensive cyber, and answer questions quickly. They were mostly conducting electronic protection functions, but there were also information ops execution personnel as well as planners.

The vision is to have a total of 12 ECTs by September 2027 — one for each active division in the Army — capable of providing offensive cyber capabilities, EW and information advantage functions.

The 11^th Cyber Battalion was initially built out of the Army’s desire to have cyber support and capabilities at the corps and below level. Historically, cyber capabilities were typically held at higher authorities such as at the theater and joint level.

Following a pilot program to test the concept, the Army created the 915^th Cyber Warfare Battalion, which evolved into the 11^th Cyber Battalion, that was activated in October 2022.

Charlie Company will be unique within the battalion with ECTs providing so-called over-the-horizon, long-range effects and sensing with remote capabilities and infrastructure. The unit will address capability gaps for the Army as well as the joint force, serving as a bridge between the physical battlefield and the cyber mission force that conducts operations on behalf of U.S. Cyber Command, according to the Army.

Such a concept was always envisioned between these more tactically focused units that could provide proximal access for these high-end remote cyber operators and vice versa, especially as doctrine, concepts and authorities have evolved.

Alpha and Bravo companies will continue to focus on filling cyber and electromagnetic capability gaps at corps and below.

“Tactical, operational, or strategic, Leviathans, with the Capybaras now as valued members of the team, stand ready to deliver Cyber and EW combat power to the Army and Joint Force, and enable full-spectrum mission success,” Etienne said. “We are a one-of-a-kind unit in the Army with the best damn Soldiers the Army has to offer. Our Soldiers are smarter. Our Soldiers are faster. Our Soldiers are stronger. And now that we have the Capybaras on our right flank, we are ready to hold the line and enable mission success against any adversary or foe we face.”

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The department had been in a months-long process across the entire service for updating its force structure. And while it announced the intent to create three Theater Information Advantage Detachments (TIAD) within the last two years, the late February Army Force Structure Transformation plan finally approved the growth of three such organizations: one focused on the Pacific, one on Europe and a transregional one for Army Cyber Command.

These entities, with 65 soldiers per detachment, are expected to begin in fiscal 2026 after the most permanent manpower arrives in late fiscal 2025, according to Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick, an Army spokesperson. The supplementary manpower and equipment needed to constitute an initial operational capability will be on hand by mid-fiscal 2026, he added.

Recognizing the importance of information capabilities, U.S. Army Pacific previously redesignated its G39 staff, which is the staff section that deals with information activities, to the TIAD to start working this issue before the Army finalized force structure and funding.

That organization had also participated in exercises helping the Army game out the TIAD concept.

Army Cyber Command’s TIAD will provide commanders increased situational awareness of transregional threat actors’ activities in the information space, according to Lodewick, while also conducting planning and delivery of informational effects against these threats as authorized and directed.

As a transregional entity, this organization will focus on threat actors that originate beyond the Army Pacific and Army Europe-Africa theaters, but seek to make impacts inside those areas.

Despite not having any official force structure in place, in November 2023 Army Cyber Command created an initial core TIAD experimentation capability with a small staff that will conduct exercises and experiments tied to the Army’s Information Advantage campaign of learning throughout fiscal 2024 and 2025, according to Lodewick.

That experimental unit will pilot support to real-world operations where appropriate to further refine concepts of operation and requirements, and will experiment directly in an Army Europe-Africa exercise this fall. Following that event, it will conduct iterative internal exercises and experiments over the next two years.

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“I think that largely, information operations are foundational for every operation that the department will do going forward. We have to be thinking about the information environment component of those activities,” Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also leads the National Security Agency, said at the Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats, hosted by Vanderbilt University, on Wednesday.

In recent years, adversaries have sought to exploit the information environment through disinformation, misinformation, information ops and other activities as a means of undermining U.S. and allied interests without having to confront them in direct military conflict.

The Pentagon has sought to play catch-up of sorts, releasing updates to doctrine and strategy — and the services themselves issuing their own guidance within the information realm.

The DOD has also shifted its mindset in recent years to a stance of perpetual competition. Adversaries have viewed conflict on a continuum while the U.S. has traditionally viewed it as a binary state of either war or peace. The Joint Concept for Competing, released last year, formally recognizes that the department is engaged in a competition on a daily basis below the threshold of all-out conflict.

Additionally, given that much of this information capability will be delivered via cyber means, Cybercom will play a big role in the information environment going forward.

Haugh said the Russia-Ukraine conflict provides some real-world evidence of the importance of the information environment and how certain operations, such as strategic disclosures, can help thwart adversarial efforts.

“The fact that the United States really used sensitive intelligence to be able to demonstrate to the world what we believed Russia was going to do [and] when they were going to do it, too, really set the tone of this is what it means to be for the international dialogue. That was in and of itself a strategic use of information to be able to drive support,” he said regarding the strategic disclosures of intelligence ahead of Russia’s invasion.

Haugh noted that defense officials need to be mindful of how information capabilities will be used against U.S. forces.

“The other aspects, I think, from a military perspective that we need to be thinking about [is] how are we preparing our force for their likely involvement in a conflict and what will the information operations look like targeting our military force?” he said. “How well are we prepared for that? Is that an area that commanders talk about and they’re going to receive messages that are personalized on their own devices? Those are things we need to be thinking about how we prepare.”

During its 2014 incursion into Ukraine, Russia demonstrated the adept ability to target Ukrainian soldiers’ personal devices with tailored messages, something U.S forces took great interest in.

Information operations can also be conducted in the civilian or corporate worlds — something the U.S. government also must be mindful of.

“It’s not just within a military environment. I think we have seen some shifts in the cybercrime world that have already moved to information operations … Not just ransomware holding things at risk, but hacking and extracting information that is now held as a coercive tool for a ransom that is really about the disclosure of information,” Haugh explained. “It’s not just something that is within a military domain or between nations. This can be very personal for any business in the Western society that’s targeted by an actor and coerced based off of a hacking activity that will disclose information, [that] will either to be embarrassing or do some form of competitive advantage. It’s a part of our daily lives and it’s certainly going to be a part of military activities moving forward.”

When it comes to deterring China and being prepared for what Beijing could do, Haugh explained the U.S. must me mindful of how its potential adversary would use information capabilities.

“The area that I think that we have to really be mindful of, is thinking about what the information environment would look like in a crisis with China and how they would use the tools that are available to them in the information environment and what would be the implications of that, both within the region and with our population,” he said.

China’s use of misinformation and disinformation in the Pacific region and across the world to influence various populations, has concerned many.

“The execution of propaganda, misinformation and disinformation is a real concern for me. It should be a real concern for all of the United States. The [People’s Republic of China’s] ability to influence our information environment is concerning,” Adm. John Aquilino, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in March before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

One recent example he provided the committee was the notion being put forth that the West — and particularly, the U.S. — is in decline, while China is rising.

“That is Chinese propaganda. Our economy continues to grow, theirs is in the cellar. So, the actions in the information space, ultimately, it was being reported all over the United States. That’s the expansive ability of mis- and disinformation to influence the United States,” he said. “We ought to understand that it’s occurring and we ought to understand that our free and open media and the truth that we project is a critical value of the United States, it’s one to be protected. But we have to call out the mis- and disinformation to stop that ability to influence.”

Aquilino noted that the best way to combat behavior like this is to “expose the bad and amplify the good.”

“We have to understand how media is used in the People’s Republic of China, oh, by the way, and in Russia, because it’s a similar problem … But it is not what we see in our media. We have to understand what’s occurring in the differences, we have to value it and then we have to expose it,” he said.

The U.S. government has taken the approach of exposing adversary activities — be it by releasing malware samples they use, declassifying videos of their actions, or other methods — as a key way to beat back their malevolent efforts by shaming these actors and revealing their tactics so organizations can develop countermeasures, in addition to declassifying intelligence.

Aquilino’s successor told Congress as part of his confirmation process, that he plans to use information tools and work with other government agencies to maximize information capabilities to beat back and expose malign Chinese behavior.

“We must also employ information-related capabilities to transparently bring attention to malign behavior, such as the United States and our partners publicly releasing video of coercive and risky [People’s Liberation Army] intercepts of our lawfully operating ships and aircraft. If confirmed, I will assess current information-related capabilities and consider all viable options to improve our information operations posture and readiness,” Adm. Samuel Paparo wrote in responses to senators‘ questions. “It is critical that we continue highlighting malign PRC activities in the information environment.”

Paparo also indicated he may be inclined to use the strategic disclosure playbook that officials believed were successful against Russia, in the region against Chinese behavior.

“[W]e learned how the timely sharing of previously classified intelligence with our partners and the public revealed Russia’s imminent plans for an attack and helped spur the international community to act in support of Ukraine. Timely transparency can be an effective tool to counter aggression,” Paparo said. A similar tactic could be used to expose China’s activity towards Taiwan, he added, suggesting he could provide more details to lawmakers in a classified setting.

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With the conclusion of the Global War on Terror and the return to great power competition in 2018 — prioritizing nation-states over non-state actors for the first time since 9/11 — U.S. Special Operations Command has been asked frequently what its role in this new paradigm will be.

Socom was the workhorse during those early 21st century conflicts, pioneering new tactics, perfecting how to hunt down individuals and terror networks, and ultimately, conduct deadly raids.

With the shift to great power competition, outside commentators and lawmakers alike have wondered how these skills and this force will translate in a new geopolitical era.

“We’re looking increasingly to be focused on really shaping the environment so that if there is a fight against a near-peer adversary or an adversary like a China or a Russia, we’re able to shape the conflict before it even occurs, and in many cases, hopefully establish deterrence to ensure it does not occur — or if it does occur, it occurs to our advantage,” Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said Thursday at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

While this shaping effort will still have applicability within the traditional kinetic realm of warfare where bullets fly, Maier empathized that it will mostly be in the non-kinetic space where special operations forces will have a big impact in setting up the joint force for success, namely, in what officials term placement and access.

“Of course, there’s the physical domains, the sea, land and air, but increasingly SOF is a key player in the non-physical domains — be that space, be that cyber, the information space, the electronic warfare space,” he said. “It’s having that placement and access to be able to sense when, at times, things are going in a negative direction, being able to know that and then having the capability to respond if need be.”

Placement and access refers to the unique ability of SOF to be on the ground and close to hard targets given their unique ability to be forward in an undetected manner.

“I think if you take the case of, say, cyber or space — and we spent a lot of time in recent years talking about a nexus between SOF, cyber and space — the effects, the incredible exquisite capabilities that space and cyber in our [combatant commands] bring, is sometimes challenged by the lack of proximity. SOF can really help with that last tactical mile, being in that right place at the right time to really unleash some of this capability,” Maier said. “SOF has ability to close kill chains, i.e. solve problems for the joint force to gain placement and access in areas that maybe isn’t as easy to do from a conventional standpoint either because the platforms and assets they’re bringing or are going to attract a lot of attention or they’re just unable to access certain areas because of the defenses that [an adversary] potentially has.”

The Army has pioneered a vision of what it deems the modern triad — which is much different than the nuclear triad of bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines geared toward strategic deterrence that emerged during the Cold War era — that combines special operations, cyber and space. This new triad aims to also contribute to deterrence by combining these capabilities to be more than the sum of its parts.

Officials have begun talking more about its applicability at the joint level with closer partnership between Socom, U.S. Cyber Command and U.S. Space Command.

“When I talk about SOF helping to fill some of the gaps that the conventional force is really struggling with, I see it in some of these ability to gain closer, more proximate access to targets or to key points of military objectives that we’re going to need to affect and hold at risk,” Maier said.

As part of being able to gain unique accesses to targets, SOF forces will have to invest in new capabilities and tactics to hide from sophisticated nation-state threats that were not needed as much during the counterterrorism fights. The environments in Iraq and Afghanistan were relatively permissive. However, high-tech foes will have sensors and integrated air defenses that will make it easier to detect and thwart SOF action.

“We weren’t dealing with advanced conventional capabilities [in the counterterrorism fight], things like integrated air defense systems. We’re going to have to be able to penetrate those systems, and a lot of that’s going to be low visibility or hard to spot or moving fast enough that it can’t be acted on by the adversary set,” Maier said.

He also noted SOF forces must be able to operate more stealthily in the maritime environment from seafloor to subsurface and low-visibility surface — or else they won’t be filling needs for the joint force.

Officials are looking more and more at SOF-peculiar needs, capabilities separate from the conventional force that apply to special operators and their requirements, with low visibility being a top priority.

In addition to low visibility, SOF forces must be better at operating in a challenging electronic warfare environment, something they got a taste of in Syria operating alongside Russian forces.

A prior commander of Socom in 2018 called Syria the “most aggressive” electronic warfare environment on the planet.

“Some of the things we’ve had to deal with [in Syria], again, in primarily a defeat ISIS and counterterrorism context, have fast forwarded our ability to think about this in a contested environment where access is denied and we’re not able to gain the type of proximity we feel like we need,” Maier said.

The key to shaping and having that placement and access is the partnerships U.S. SOF have around the world. By partnering with other nations, these forces will already be present on the ground in theater where they’re able to shape the environment ahead of time.

“Being in the right place at the right time working through allies and partners, of which we have far more than any of our adversaries, we’re at any given point in 70 to 80 different countries around the world as an enterprise,” Maier said.

A spokesperson from Socom in written responses to DefenseScoop said in the last year there has been an increased demand from combatant commands for SOF capabilities in support of campaigning in the gray zone, or the threshold below armed conflict. This builds upon the relationship U.S. special operators have with partner nations, “which facilitate the placement and access necessary for SOF to prepare the operating environment daily, across the globe, below the threshold of armed conflict.”

“After 20+ years of primarily focusing on counterterrorism, SOF is returning to its roots as a force that prevents and prepares, transregionally, to enable the Joint Force to prevail in the event of conflict. SOFs value in these earlier phases ultimately provide options to our senior leaders with agile and tailored capabilities. SOF continues to deliver the best force possible for the personnel and budget provided,” the spokesperson said.

Information operations

Integrated deterrence is a key pillar of the Department of Defense’s national defense strategy that envisions a layer of policies, partnerships and capabilities to dissuade adversaries’ malign behavior.

Information ops will serve as a key enabler of realizing that type of deterrence, Maier said.

“When you think about integrated deterrence, that’s about the cognitive space and that’s about foreign leaders, our adversaries thinking that they don’t want to go to war with us or the cost will be exorbitant and they shouldn’t do that. Information operations plays a key role in amplifying and accelerating some of that,” he explained.

However, recent cuts to Army SOF, namely in psychological operations and civil affairs, will hurt the joint force’s ability to be successful in conducting information ops.

“Within the joint force, Army Special Operations brings a lot of that capability. We’re talking about psychological operations. They’re the real experts in crafting messages, doing these type of information activities in the information environment for military effects. That’s going to be effective of some of the cuts we will take in Army SOF,” he said.

The Army chose to make cuts — roughly 3,000 SOF personnel — as it is making hard choices about modernizing its force to better posture itself for great power competition and make investments in other capabilities and troops. In the Army’s thinking, these psychological operations and civil affairs personnel aren’t as needed in a great power competition fight as other needs — such as indirect fire protection, counter-small drone batteries and maneuver short-range air defenses.

“The Army overall felt the need for a whole host of reasons to draw down into its force structure. Army Special Operations is the largest component of the joint special operations enterprise. From the SOF perspective, we’re going to have to pay our dues, to some degree. We’re going to have to take some cuts because the bigger Army required it,” Maier said. “My concern as the ASD for SO/LIC is when you lower the overall denominator of what you can bring in, you’re going to have a hard time growing to future challenges. I think we haven’t talked about as much here, but we talk a lot of time in the department about the information environment being so critical. Army psyops, Army, civil affairs are among the best capabilities we have across the joint force.”

Maier also noted that the DOD has been playing catch up in the information operations space, given it was not as necessary in the counterterrorism fight.

“We have not invested as a department nearly as much as probably I would like or compared to some of the other domains like cyber and increasingly in space. I think there’s reasons for that — some has been because it was focused on the counterterrorism fight principally and it was really hard to discourage true believers from coming off their ideology,” he said. “As we reflect forward to an environment where we have adversaries who invest far more than we do and see it as a comparative advantage for themselves and operate by much different rules, we tend to try to be truthful when we do things. They have no compunction to do so.”

While competitors have a higher risk calculous to put out misinformation and disinformation, the U.S. should be more targeted when choosing to apply information capabilities to greater effect, he said, adding that he’d love to see more information capability in the conventional force and other parts of the department.

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The comments come from Adm. Samuel Paparo, who was nominated by President Joe Biden to be the next commander of Indo-Pacific Command. Indo-Pacom will be at the forefront of countering Chinese activities that Washington opposes, including efforts to weaken U.S. influence and coerce other nations.

Paparo currently serves as the commander of Pacific Fleet, giving him requisite experience and knowledge in the region.

In written answers to senators’ questions as part of his confirmation process last week, Paparo vowed to utilize the power of information and integrate it into U.S. military operations.

“Information-related capabilities are critical in combating malign behavior. USINDOPACOM has a broad mix of information-related capabilities, including military information support operations and military deception operations, which are designed to change an adversary’s attitudes and behaviors. When employed effectively and in coordination with other U.S. government stakeholders, these capabilities provide USINDOPACOM opportunities to enhance U.S. national security interests,” he wrote.

“We must also employ information-related capabilities to transparently bring attention to malign behavior, such as the United States and our partners publicly releasing video of coercive and risky [People’s Liberation Army] intercepts of our lawfully operating ships and aircraft. If confirmed, I will assess current information-related capabilities and consider all viable options to improve our information operations posture and readiness,” he added.

In recent years, adversaries have sought to exploit the information environment through disinformation, misinformation, information ops and other activities as a means of undermining U.S. and allied interests without having to confront them in direct military conflict.

The Department of Defense has sought to play catch-up of sorts, releasing updates to doctrine and strategy — and the services themselves issuing their own guidance within the information realm.

The DOD has also shifted its mindset in recent years to a stance of perpetual competition. Adversaries have viewed conflict on a continuum while the U.S. has traditionally viewed it as a binary state of either war or peace. The Joint Concept for Competing, released last year, formally recognizes that the department is engaged in a competition on a daily basis below the threshold of all-out conflict.

Information is an important tool in this realm.

Paparo told senators he plans to use information in a similar vein as other organizations have in the past, disclosing and exposing problematic behavior.

“It is critical that we continue highlighting malign [People’s Republic of China] activities in the information environment,” he said. “The PRC’s militarization in the region and aggressive activities are unlawful and destabilizing. PRC actions threaten the sovereignty of our allies and partners, limit freedom of navigation, and undermine regional stability.”

A few years ago, the U.S. came to the conclusion that exposing adversary activities — be it by releasing malware samples they use, declassifying videos of their actions, or other methods — was a key way to beat back their malevolent efforts. Through public release, the hope was to shame these actors and reveal their tactics so organizations could develop countermeasures.

Relatedly, a playbook used at the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 could also be applied in the Pacific region to help aid Taiwan in the event of Chinese military action against the island. Paparo said the declassification of sensitive intelligence could be an important tool to thwart Beijing.

The U.S. intelligence community declassified and released to the world troves of intelligence to undercut Russia’s narrative that it wasn’t massing troops or planning to invade Ukraine — a tactic many officials believe was successful and something that is likely here to stay.  

“[W]e learned how the timely sharing of previously classified intelligence with our partners and the public revealed Russia’s imminent plans for an attack and helped spur the international community to act in support of Ukraine. Timely transparency can be an effective tool to counter aggression,” Paparo said. A similar tactic could be used to expose China’s activity towards Taiwan, he added, suggesting he could provide more details to lawmakers in a classified setting.

The admiral also recognized that information capabilities — as well as the military — are tools within the broader scope of the government, requiring tight linkages with other departments and organizations.

“Competing with the PRC requires strengthening, aligning, and strategically employing all elements of national power. We must tirelessly and purposefully compete in economic, diplomatic, military, and information spaces to be effective against the PRC,” he wrote. “DoD efforts throughout the information environment cross traditional department and agency lines. I fully recognize the military represents only one tool of national power. We must be fully integrated within the whole of government to maximize our collective information related capabilities.”

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The MCIC, activated in January 2023, is designed to more tightly link the service’s information forces — including cyber, intelligence and space — in theater with the broader joint force.

The organization is still at initial operational capability and is using a variety of exercises to build up its prowess and relationships.

“It grows with every exercise. Our ability to do it globally [is] not there. Trying to get [it] to regional, start with a couple exercises, and then really start to focus on a particular region and get good there and be able to pick up and pivot,” Maj. Gen. Ryan Heritage, commander of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace and Marine Corps Forces Space Command, said in a December interview.

Heritage, who was selected to be the next deputy commandant for information, is also the head of the MCIC.

As the U.S. military gears up for potential conflicts with technologically sophisticated nation-states, it is imperative that capabilities from all domains — including the non-kinetic areas of cyberspace, space and the electromagnetic spectrum — are integrated. The Pentagon refers to this concept as “multi-domain operations.”

The MCIC was necessary, officials have stated, as a means of informing commanders about what types of capabilities — and in some cases, more importantly, authorities — exist for non-kinetic tools.

At the joint level, there are many authorities that have to be coordinated, especially in the non-kinetic and digital realms as it pertains to intelligence collection — which is very heavily regulated under spying authorities known as Title 50 — and operations within cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum meant to disrupt an adversary’s operations, known as Title 10 or general warfighting authorities.

The emphasis for maturing the MCIC has been on working with combatant commanders to understand the authorities and command relationships, starting with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The goal, ideally, is to start at the planning process to work with relevant stakeholders so they know what types of forces to request and what forces must be readied to deploy in support.

Following those planning conferences, they then can talk about who has the authority to deploy. This could be remote support or forces that actually deploy as part of MARFORCYBER or MARFORSPACE.

“This goes to how do we mature as we grow. If we have folks that are working back here at the Fort [Meade in Maryland], they’ll have a different perspective and they’ll know where different expertise resides — as opposed to somebody who’s perhaps at the tactical level,” Heritage said. “How do we leverage, I’ll call them, interior lines that we have here at MARFORCYBER and the MCIC with other different organizations across the [intelligence community], interagency and [Department of Defense] when we deploy as part of a MCIC? Those relationships remain absolutely essential and again, those planners go with all that information into the conference.”

They are still working on what forces and authorities may deploy in practice.

“The intent is, we haven’t codified this in any fashion, but when you talk about multi-domain effects teams as a model which we’re looking at, is can you provide a multi-domain effects team under the various hats that I wear to either the fleet marine force or the joint force commander?” Heritage said. “If you can, what’s part of that multi-domain effects team? Space, [information operations], cyber, defensive cyber? Then whose authorities do they show up with geographic combatant commanders’ [areas of responsibility] and who do they leverage?”

The two main components of the MCIC include the Marine Corps Information Operations Center and the service’s cryptologic component.

Being a service-retained entity, as opposed to the cyber forces that the Marines and the other services provide to U.S. Cyber Command to conduct cyber operations, allows the MCIC to be part of the global force management process to attach certain forces and deploy them in support of a combatant command.

“It is not intuitive yet, which is why we’re trying to work it out one exercise at a time,” Heritage said, acknowledging they’ve “still got a ton of work to go.”

Some of that has manifested in attempting to support the objectives of various combatant commands — such as Indo-Pacom, Cybercom and Space Command — participating in a single exercise, all of which have their own milestones they need to hit.

“It’s small but it’s growing,” Heritage said of support to help each command meet their objectives.

Heritage noted there have been some “quick wins” with the MCIC and experimentation recently.

“We have been able to deploy Marines from all of our hats into exercises, bringing those authorities and walk those through the planning and execution phase in an exercise scenario,” he said.

Additionally, officials have begun working with Training and Education Command to take lessons and observations from exercises to instill at the Marine Air Ground Training Center at Twentynine Palms, California, to enable the all-domain training they provide for the rest of the Marine Corps.

“We’re integrated Training and Education Command’s initiatives on building service-level training events at Twentynine Palms,” Heritage said. “Now, Training and Education Command has another organization which they can reach up to and say, ‘We’re looking for your support from a [signals intelligence] perspective, from information operations, cyber and space. Help come down and enable the training there at Twentynine Palms for … [the forces] that flow through there on a regular basis.’”

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Last year, the service released Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication-8, Information, that aimed to describe the purpose and mechanics of using information as a warfighting tool for the entire force. A follow-on publication, known as Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 8-10, has been in the works.

“MCDP-8 was a cognitive discussion, you know, more of a discussion than educational,” Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy, deputy commandant for information, told DefenseScoop Monday during a Q&A after his keynote at the Association of Old Crows annual symposium. “So, 8-10 gets into the practical application. So, we’re in the final stages — 30 days [until it’s released]. Write it down, 30 days. As you know, all the reviews of publications always take a little longer than expected. But 30 days, there’s your answer.”

Earlier this year, Glavy told DefenseScoop that the new document will help Marine Expeditionary Force commanders, regimental commanders, division commanders, company commanders, squadron commanders and others understand how the Corps can best use information to carry out its missions.

“If we don’t put our hearts and minds to truly understand the power of data, ultimately information, we’re gonna be in an awkward place,” Glavy said during his keynote at the Association of Old Crows event.

Earlier this year, the service officially activated Marine Corps Information Command (MCIC), which was stood up to more tightly link its various information forces — including cyber, intelligence and space — with the broader joint force.

Glavy noted that the command and related elements of the Corps have connections with U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

The push by the Marines to boost their prowess in information-related ops comes as the U.S. military writ large is trying to improve its posture in this realm.

The Air Force has developed a classified information warfare strategy and implementation plan. And the Army recently issued Doctrinal Publication 3-13, Information — it’s first such doctrine for information.

Additionally, a few weeks ago the Pentagon unveiled a new strategy for planning, resourcing and employment of its capabilities and forces.

“DoD must embrace a cultural shift wherein information is a foundational element of all military strategies and [operations, activities, and investments], and where the consistent integration of informational and physical power becomes the norm,” the document states.

The U.S. military defines the information environment as the “aggregate of social, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technical, and physical factors that affect how humans and automated systems derive meaning from, act upon, and are impacted by information.”

Lawmakers are also pushing the department to make improvements and incorporate lessons learned from real-world events.

The compromise version of the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, unveiled last week, would require the Pentagon to study the impact of information ops during Russia’s war with Ukraine. The legislation calls for the department to enter into an agreement with an outside entity for an independent assessment of Moscow’s information operations capabilities prior to, and since the invasion of Ukraine; an assessment of successes and struggles associated with information ops conducted by the U.S., other NATO members and Ukraine prior to, and since the invasion; and recommendations for how the United States can enhance the effectiveness of its information operations.

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