Andrew Pankow’s Post

Col John D. Rosenberger (Ret Army) emphasizes the importance of establishing a Standing Combined Joint Task Force (SCJTF) within U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) to address strategic challenges in the region. Given the possibility of unforeseen contingencies involving Taiwan, having an SCJTF would ensure INDOPACOM is prepared to rapidly deploy combat power as needed. USINDOPACOM is tasked with deterring potential threats in the priority theater while being ready to act decisively using peacetime funding, command and control, and authorities. Establishing an SCJTF is a long-overdue first step in setting the theater for rapid transition to operational plans during a crisis. Despite congressional directives to create this force, progress has been gradual, and the current practice of forming temporary Joint Task Forces for exercises may not provide the necessary readiness. The complexity and urgency of the situation call for a dedicated, trained, and ready SCJTF to ensure coordinated and effective responses to any regional challenges. https://lnkd.in/esHYjD49

Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) swiftly unifies data from various sensors and effectors across services. Like the integration with LTAMDS and the U.S Navy’s Standard Missile-6 during Valiant Shield, this rapid, efficient integration allowed for successful intercepts, which optimizes the use of munitions in a multi-layered defense strategy. The ready-now #IBCS capabilities are an integral component for the Defense of Guam. Learn more: http://ms.spr.ly/6044WvpFI #DefiningPossible

Senior defense officials are putting the final touches on the first official Security Classification Guidance to direct what can and cannot be disclosed publicly about the Pentagon’s high-stakes Replicator initiative, DefenseScoop has learned. Since Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks launched Replicator in August 2023 — as the U.S.’s broad plan to rapidly counter China’s intensifying military buildup by fielding thousands of autonomous systems across conflict domains in two years or less via a process that can be “replicated” — she and other Defense Department leadership have been unapologetically tight-lipped about the programs, capabilities, people and elements that are and will be involved, citing security sensitivities. https://hubs.li/Q02yqqNf0

Whether you're in the US Army or simply interested in how the U.S. views the future landscape in which the Army will operate, the US Army TRADOC G2's newest publication, "Operational Environment 2024-2034," led by Ian Sullivan, is a must-read. BLUF: The operational environment in which the U.S. Army will compete between 2024 and 2034 will be marked by large-scale combat operations (LSCO), a departure from the two prior decades of counterinsurgency. The report identifies twelve features that will inform what LSCO will look like in the next ten years, some of which I highlight below. LSCO will: - Be marked by all-domain competition and warfare, involving multiple interconnected domains and dimensions - Demand the firing and sustaining of massive amounts of munitions, challenging the Army’s magazine depth and range - See the rapid rise in the prevalence of uncrewed systems - Be marked by the democratization and proliferation of advanced technologies and hyperconnected global communications, creating an increasingly transparent battlefield that makes it difficult to hide from the enemy - See an increased lethality due to the intersection of sensor ubiquity, battlefield automation, precision strike, and massed fires - Demand increased homeland defense requirements as adversaries will have conventional, hybrid, and irregular capabilities to conduct operations against the U.S. homeland - See a rise in urban warfare, given the increasingly urban OE - See U.S. adversaries rapidly seeking to influence information and human dimensions of warfare, challenging the Army’s ability to achieve information advantage Read the full (really fascinating!) report here: https://lnkd.in/eXrTwYfa

The Pentagon’s quarterly-run Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE) are now leading up to “a worldwide, joint activity” where U.S. combatant commands will put next-generation command and control capabilities with multiple international military partners to the “ultimate” test, a senior official revealed Tuesday. Early iterations of the GIDE series launched around 2020 — but the pace started really picking up in 2022, when Pentagon leadership pivoted to make it the military’s key mechanism for pushing forward technologies that enable a future warfighting construct known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2. The initiative is now led by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. https://lnkd.in/eDdXAJXa

Senior defense officials are putting the final touches on the first official Security Classification Guidance to direct what can and cannot be disclosed publicly about the Pentagon’s high-stakes Replicator initiative, DefenseScoop has learned. Since Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks launched Replicator in August 2023 — as the U.S.’s broad plan to rapidly counter China’s intensifying military buildup by fielding thousands of autonomous systems across conflict domains in two years or less via a process that can be “replicated” — she and other Defense Department leadership have been unapologetically tight-lipped about the programs, capabilities, people and elements that are and will be involved, citing security sensitivities. https://hubs.li/Q02yqCGC0

Senior defense officials are putting the final touches on the first official Security Classification Guidance to direct what can and cannot be disclosed publicly about the Pentagon’s high-stakes Replicator initiative, DefenseScoop has learned. Since Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks launched Replicator in August 2023 — as the U.S.’s broad plan to rapidly counter China’s intensifying military buildup by fielding thousands of autonomous systems across conflict domains in two years or less via a process that can be “replicated” — she and other Defense Department leadership have been unapologetically tight-lipped about the programs, capabilities, people and elements that are and will be involved, citing security sensitivities. https://hubs.li/Q02yFtt90

The Pentagon is Reaching Out to the Private Sector to Engage in Public Private Partnerships to Support US National Security and Rebuild the Defense Industrial Base. America’s nation-state adversaries, lining up in a coordinated fashion, do not have private sectors that they must activate under their command economy models; we do. Thus it’s incumbent upon US and Allied business leaders to step up and partner with the DOD. A lot depends on us getting this right. In testimony this week before the Senate Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee, William A. LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, pointed to……”the need to send a steady demand signal to the defense industrial base to ensure the right workforce and production capabilities remain in place to meet warfighter needs.” https://lnkd.in/es9aD3Qn

The U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command will be gearing up to demonstrate a prototype of its Joint Fires Network later this year, providing key data for an operational instantiation of the Pentagon’s top priority to better connect its systems and improve decision-making. The Joint Fires Network is a prototyping effort that addresses the immediate needs of combatant commands while serving as a pathfinder for the broader Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJAD2) effort, which envisions how systems across the entire battlespace from all services and key international partners could be more effectively and holistically networked to provide the right data to commanders, faster. https://lnkd.in/dy2DcDRr

In this week's newsletter: the Commission on the National Defense Strategy released its report, arguing that DoD, as well as the larger national security apparatus, is under-resourced and too bureaucratic to meet current threats and multiple potential war theaters. Yesterday the Senate Appropriations Committee passed the FY 2025 defense spending bill, with a topline of $852.2 billion. The DoD Inspector General announced plans to evaluate the #Replicator initiative, particularly "the effectiveness with which the Services and Defense Innovation Unit selected capabilities to meet the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s operational needs.” The Navy is standing up a new maritime industrial base program office focused on construction and sustainment. And in Air Force news, Secretary Frank Kendall announced this week that the NGAD is officially paused. In contrast, momentum continues on the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, with five companies selected to build the autonomy system. This is in addition to the two companies, Anduril and General Atomics, earlier selected to build prototypes of the aircraft itself. Read the full newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/dziFJEE #govcon #procurement #defenseindustry #defenseinnovation #research