Army closes active information warfare unit, moves to smaller units

The Army is deactivating its last active information operations command as part of the Army’s transition to joint operations and a broader recognition that information warfare is and will be important in future wars.

With that in mind, the Army wants Soldiers to conduct information operations that are closer to the future fight and integrated across geographic regions.

In July, the U.S. Army Cyber ​​​​Command’s 1st Information Operations Command held its final handover ceremony at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The command was the Army’s only active-duty command focused on civil affairs, cyber warfare and psychological operations, also known as a PSYOP, which aims to influence the beliefs and actions of the populations of other countries. An exact date for the unit’s official deactivation was not immediately clear.

“There was a bit of a mismatch between what the functions were in (1st Information Operations Command) which over the years had built up a variety of jobs that weren’t all really related,” said Aaron Pearce, director of information warfare for U.S. Army Cyber ​​Command. “They were a parking lot for cyber red teaming before cyber red teaming really became a mainstream thing within the Army.”

The Army’s cyber red teams imitate adversaries to highlight vulnerabilities in broader U.S. and military networks in order to make improvements. The Army recently established a red team focused on exploiting cybersecurity weaknesses in artificial intelligence systems. The service has also established Expeditionary Cyber-Electromagnetic Activities Teams that have joined National Training Center rotations where they simulate real-world cyber operations in the field.

They’re just one of many new units the military is building as it prepares to enter a theater where information warfare is critical — especially online, where information moves quickly and unchecked. Amid the real-life hand-to-hand fighting in Russia and Ukraine, another information war is playing out online. According to NATO, Russia has used trolls to create posts and comments that imitate real people, bots to automate posts, and fabricated news to push misleading information to push its own narratives.

According to Pearce, this shift is part of the military’s realization that information outside the classified domain, that is, from public sources, “is becoming increasingly central to the battlefield and is important to all types of units, not just specialized units, but also the maneuver commanders themselves.”

Earlier this month, the military held a joint exercise focused on open-source intelligence with Finland, using AI algorithms to sift through data and highlight specific keywords and phrases in specific geographic locations. They also used private-sector satellite data to help soldiers detect infrastructure changes, military asset movements and other data points for strategic assessments.

Previously, the Army viewed information operations as “just a command-level planning coordination function,” Pearce said. But the Army’s new focus is to use data from all the new AI-enabled and sensor technology, along with open-source intelligence, to help commanders be proactive in the fight.

“It’s really about transforming information and making it work, not just reacting to it,” he added.

At a technology conference in August, Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, commander of Army Cyber ​​Command, said the 1st Information Operations Command gave the Army insight into what an information advantage could be when it was first established in 2002.

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“We don’t want the same capabilities,” she said. “We want an evolved capability, and so it starts with, ironically, inactivating the 1st IO Brigade.”

The changes come despite broader recruiting and retention problems plaguing the military, particularly in its psychological operations (PSYOP) units. In March, a report by the Defense Department’s inspector general concluded that the military did not have enough PSYOP soldiers to wage information warfare against China and Russia because it was not recruiting, training or retaining enough personnel to meet the growing demand for PSYOP operations.

The inspector general also said the lack of active-duty PSYOP-trained soldiers has forced the service to rely on reservists to “fill the worldwide, full-time requirements for conventional MISO.” The result of reduced active-duty PSYOP soldiers has led to an increased risk of burnout among the remaining soldiers, according to the watchdog report.

However, the military says the command’s deactivation will not affect existing PSYOP units.

“PSYOP as a function” will be one piece of the puzzle that unit detachments in theater use in their assessments that are passed on to commanders who make the final decisions in battle, Pearce said.

Since 2006, PSYOP soldiers have been assigned to units in the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the Army Reserve Command, which has led to a difference in training between active-duty and Reserve PSYOP soldiers. In April, the commanding general of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, or SWCS, announced that it would standardize the varied PSYOP training for the full-time and part-time soldiers who held these positions.

Closer to the battlefield

During the counterinsurgency battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanders had to request field support teams skilled in information operations to augment the special operations command staff on the ground, Pearce said. Under the new model, the Army is supposed to have information warfare specialists in the various regions where the U.S. military has a foothold.

The Theater Information Advantage Detachments, TIADs, will look at answering the question of “how do we influence the adversary, how do we counter the adversary’s information warfare campaigns against those forces” and will incorporate information from the battlefield and the region into their analysis, he said.

The Army’s new Multi-Domain Task Forces will overlap with the TIADs in terms of Soldier occupational specializations, but they will also include Soldiers with artillery backgrounds. Three will be assigned to the Pacific, one with Army forces in Europe focused on Africa and another in the Middle East. One headquarters is currently in Germany and another is stationed in Hawaii, the Army said.

Multi-domain operations occur “below the threshold of armed conflict,” using space, cyber, air, sea, and land to “accomplish missions at the lowest cost,” according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service. “During conflict, these are the means by which military forces approach and destroy the enemy, defeat enemy formations, seize critical terrain, and control populations and resources to deliver lasting political outcomes.”

As for next steps, Army civilians assigned to the 1st Information Operations Command will remain within Army Cyber ​​Command. Military personnel from the command can take up positions in the new units or move to other areas, as needed.

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