To be ready for conflict, army chief calls for focusing on information space in ‘competition’

To be effective in future conflicts, the military must be alert and present in the information domain before a crisis occurs, known as the “competition phase,” according to a senior commander.

As new forces and organizations begin to take shape, the service determines how it can apply military power across the spectrum of hostilities.

“The information dimension is an area where we’re in constant conflict right now… It’s going to be critical for us to think about how we apply military power across the spectrum of conflict,” Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commander of the Army’s Cyber ​​Command, said in a presentation at an Association of the U.S. Army event Tuesday. “We could reserve this discussion as whether it’s just for conflict or crisis. But really, the competition space is where it’s happening right now. If you think you’re going to provide options to a commander, information to a commander on the information dimension, and you don’t consider it in the competition phase, anything you provide in a crisis or conflict is probably not going to measure up. You have to be prepared to operate across that spectrum.”

One reason it’s important to stay engaged is that the barrier to entry in the information space is very low, Barrett noted. Technologies and media such as social media allow less sophisticated actors or tactics to have an impact. However, these tactics can be enhanced by ever more advanced capabilities that are becoming more prevalent.

“What happens when a very capable adversary is able to invest in artificial intelligence, and what effect does that have on the information dimension?” she said. “I think these are serious considerations for all of us and the fact that this particular dimension, again, the activities will be across the spectrum of conflict, below the threshold of war, it’s important for us to think about our role.”

For several years, U.S. military officials, and not just Army officials, have been talking about the need to be present in this phase of competition, outside of armed conflict. While the Pentagon has always taken a binary approach of war or peace, adversaries have viewed conflict as a fluid continuum. In recent years, they have sought to exploit the information space to achieve their objectives without using traditional military capabilities.

Officials said some of these things are not so unheard of and come down to being able to map the environment with commercially available information in advance while maintaining protections for American citizens.

“Commercially available and publicly available information is one area where you can start to get a sense of the information environment, how the adversary is using it, what kind of tools they’re using. That’s actually something you can start to map,” Barrett told reporters after the event. “One of the tasks that we actually have is to map the networks. I think that’s something that’s going to be easier for us to do in terms of mapping the data.”

This includes the ability to understand target audiences, the languages ​​they speak, how they communicate, the social media platforms they use, and whether they are for or against the United States or support or oppose certain actors or other nations.

Officials also explained that if the forces want to submit a concept or operation for approval, work must be done up front to determine how it will be conducted based on intelligence and what is known.

“If you go to a geographic combatant commander and say, ‘I want to do information operations,’ you’re going to walk away from headquarters having accomplished nothing,” Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, commander of the Cyber ​​Center of Excellence, said at the AUSA event. “On the other hand, if you’ve done your planning, you’ve done your homework, and you come in and say, ‘Here’s the very specific objective that I’m trying to achieve, here’s how it fits into my campaign plan that supports your campaign plan as a geographic combatant commander,’ that’s a fundamentally different conversation.”

New forces

The planning and expertise to enable these operations comes from the Army’s Theater Information Detachments, 65-person teams focused on synchronizing information capabilities at the theater level.

The Army recently approved force structures for three such organizations: one in the Pacific, one in Europe and one transregional with Army Cyber ​​Command.

Officials explained that they will handle the day-to-day tasks of setting conditions and briefing commanders on the information environment.

“This is all about allowing commanders to visualize, decide and re-synchronize those effects that they might have in this dimension much better than they can today,” Barrett said.

These TIADs will transform what might be abstract into something concrete.

“TIAD has to do all the detailed planning, it has to do the data collection, it has to get the approvals necessary to execute the mission, and then it has to do the appropriate evaluation of effectiveness after the fact,” Stanton told reporters.

He noted that while not yet the case, the detachments are likely moving toward increased collaboration with international partners in their regions to share information on potential threats.

One of the main reasons why this type of training needs to exist at the theater level is because that is where a lot of the authority is located and where coordination between other nations’ militaries and diplomats takes place at the theater level.

“We have to develop a very detailed plan and run it through intergovernmental agencies and other government organizations to get the necessary approval and say, ‘OK, in this particular case, based on the details that you’ve outlined, we should establish an information sharing agreement with the host nation because of the dependencies of our mission execution on their operating environment.’ I absolutely believe there is room for that discussion (but) we’re not doing it right now,” Stanton said.