Lieutenant Commander Brett P. Jansen, U.S. Navy
For the first time in modern history, the Navy and the joint force have lost their assurance of tactical overmatch in most warfare domains. A heavily contested electromagnetic spectrum, unassured U.S. space control, and adversary antiship weapons that range beyond their own with sufficient magazine depth to sustain fires all threaten the joint force’s ability to dominate in a western Pacific conflict. While the Department of Defense is properly signaling industry to deliver affordable, autonomous, and unmanned kinetic mass through programs such as Replicator, lengthy delivery timelines mean the joint force must find asymmetric advantage elsewhere—perhaps even in new command structures.
Giving U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (IndoPaCom) a unified information warfare (IW) commander could offset kinetic deficiencies in a multidomain conflict with China and enable greater synchronization across the competition continuum. To do so, a joint force information warfare component commander (JFIWCC) should be established as the supported commander for operations in the information environment (OIE), with tactical control of IW forces across service components. Below the threshold of conflict, a JFIWCC would continually shape the information environment to support integrated deterrence. In conflict, a JFIWCC would focus on neutralizing disadvantages the joint force faces across time and space.
A war with China would require significant use of OIE. In some situations, OIE would be the main effort, not the supporting effort. OIE is a new term in joint doctrine; it encompasses all capabilities delivering offensive and defensive nonkinetic fires across the physical, informational, and cognitive dimensions of the information environment. These include, but are not limited to, electronic warfare, cyber, assured command and control, military deception, operational security, some space operations, public affairs, and psychological operations. Immense effort and proper authorities are required to plan, synchronize, and sequence OIE across time, space, and service components, because unlike traditional kinetic capabilities, most OIE are target-specific and timing-dependent. Therefore, to maximize OIE effects requires a higher degree of command and control than current joint force command structures provide. While the many tactical and operational IW capabilities are technical, their collective employment is operational music that requires an authoritative conductor.
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