Irregular Warfare Podcast - War Transformed: How Emerging Technologies are Changing Human Conflict

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Be sure to visit the Irregular Warfare Initiative's new website, www.irregularwarfare.org, to see all of the new articles, podcast episodes, and other content the IWI team is producing! As the character of warfare changes, emerging technologies are influencing the direction—and the magnitude—of that change. But what can past technological revolutions teach us as we prepare for the new challenges combat leaders will face on the modern battlefield? In what specific ways will new technologies, from artificial intelligence to advanced cyber capabilities, affect militaries’ ability to mass combat power? And at the strategic and policy levels, what must leaders do to prepare forces for future, large-scale combat operations? Ben Jebb and Adam Darnley-Stuart are joined on this episode by two guests who help explore these important questions. Lieutenant General Xavier T. Brunson is the commanding general of the US Army’s I Corps who has led US soldiers in multiple theaters around the globe. And Mick Ryan is a retired Australian Army major general who commanded soldiers at the platoon, regiment, task force, and brigade levels and is the author of the book War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First Century Great Power Competition and Conflict. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Hey, everybody. This is Kyle Atwell, IWI Chairman, and I'm joined by the IWI Executive Director, Jen Walters. We're about to get to today's really interesting conversation with Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson and Mick Ryan, but before doing so, Jen and I wanted to share some exciting news. Today, IWI launched our new website, which serves as the rallying point for the irregular warfare community of practitioners, researchers, and policymakers. Over the past three years, demand for IWI's content has continued to grow. To keep pace with this demand, IWI embarked on a growth plan,

and the website is a key component of this effort to best serve the IW community. On the new site, you will find all IWI back content to include podcasts, articles, and video from panels. Plus, we're excited to announce the launch of four special projects which explore irregular warfare through the following lenses, maritime, cyber, Europe, and the Gray Zone. The website also makes it easier than ever to subscribe to the IWI newsletter and provides information on how you can support IWI's continued growth as a resource for the community. The new website and all the content found at IWI is only possible due to the immense effort and passion of a team consisting of over 50 volunteers who come from across the joint force, interagency, and research institutions from all around the world.

No one on the team is paid for their work. volunteers dedicate their time, skills, and energy to IWI because we believe in the mission of bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. You can visit the new IWI website at www.irregularwarfare.org, and you can also find the link in the show notes. Thank you for taking the time to listen and for being part of this community. Without further ado, here is today's episode with Lieutenant General Brunson and Mick Ryan. Here to four, we thought of massing as, we've got more tanks than you have. We've got more planes than you have. But what happens when we mass intellectual might what

if that becomes part of our mass in the future where we get our best and brightest who understand that in a world that's contiguous at least along information highways we are contiguous when we apply that power that mental power to war fighting we are seeing this closing detection to destruction time. I mean, when I was a brigade commander, we used to plan off five to ten minutes from detection to destruction. Now that's 90 seconds or 60 seconds. And that has some pretty profound implications,

particularly for ground forces about their mobility. And frankly, there may be some capabilities that are just not viable anymore. Welcome to Episode 74 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jebb, and I'll be joined by my co-host, Adam Darnley-Stewart. Today's episode examines the effect of emerging technologies on warfare and addresses the issues that today's combat leaders will likely face on modern-day battlefields. Our guests begin by considering what past technological revolutions

can teach us about changes in warfare today. They then examine the effects that new technologies like artificial intelligence and cyber weapons will have on our military's abilities to mass combat power on contemporary battlefields. Finally, the show concludes with a discussion about how combat leaders and policymakers can prepare for future large-scale combat operations. Lieutenant General Xavier T. Brunson is the Commanding General of First Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State. Lieutenant General Brunson is a seasoned combat leader who

has led U.S. soldiers in multiple theaters around the globe. He is a graduate of Hampton University and holds advanced degrees from Webster University and the Army War College. Mick Ryan is a retired Major General in the Australian Army. Over his 35 years of service, Mick Ryan commanded soldiers at the platoon, regiment, task force and brigade levels and holds an MA from John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Mick Ryan is a prolific author and passionate advocate of professional education and lifelong learning, and his book, War Transformed, serves as the anchor for today's conversation. conversation. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Lieutenant General Xavier

Brunson and Major General Mick Ryan. Lieutenant General Brunson, Major General Ryan, it's a pleasure to have you on the show, and thanks for joining us for Episode 74 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. Thanks. It's great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity, Ben and Adam. Appreciate it. So our first question is for Mick, and more specifically, I want to know what inspired you to write War Transformed, and how did you come to identify technology, new era strategic competition, demography, and climate change, among others, as some of the principal drivers of change in 21st century warfare? Well, the original inspiration was just wanting to contribute

to the debate on the development of military organisations for some of the challenges we were seeing. I wasn't convinced when I started this that we were really focusing on China and what it was capable of, not just in the military sense, but in a more holistic sense, in the unrestricted warfare sense of those two Chinese colonels. So that was a driver. But also, you know, I knew I was closer to the end than the beginning of my career. And as someone said to me, you know, at some point, why don't you just put up a red paraflare as a book? And I decided to do that. Looking at the trends, I mean,

there was a lot of research. And basically, if you have a look across about 20 years worth of documents from various military and academic institutions, other government institutions in Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, and other European places. I mean, you can audit all of those and there's dozens of them. They're the key trends that keep coming out. There's lots of subsidiary trends, but they're the mega trends that societies and national security institutions are going to have to deal with for the entirety of this century. So they were the ones that made a lot of sense for me to focus on in the book as a start point for both the continuity and change of military institutions for the 21st century. Xavier, if I could throw to you now, from your vantage point as the leader of an army corps regionally aligned against the Pacific, what macro trends do you think about regarding the evolving nature of conflict?

In other words, what keeps you up at night when you think about warfare in the 21st century? Two things, first of all. One is mentioned before. I think that we are going to be fighting in a transparent battlefield. And by that, I mean that we'll be in contact from home station forward. I don't think that despite oceans on both coasts of my nation, we're no longer in sanctuary. I think that we'll be in contact from our gates outward in the future. And that keeps me awake at night. Along with that is protection. We have to protect across all domains now. We can't cede any domain to our pacing challenge. And I'm speaking specifically about China. We can't cede domains anymore. There was a time when it was a foregone conclusion that we'd be the preeminent force in the air and on the land. But these other more ephemeral domains, if you will, also keep me awake at night and thinking about how we protect all these things. And then finally, I would say that technology and the advance and pace at which technology is moving forward is also of a primary concern to me as a senior leader in my army, as I look at several of the programs that will be born here

soon. You know, this year we're talking about 24 new programs in the year of 2023 that will be birthed. And as those things come forward, technology is still advancing. And the things that we're bringing have the timelines that are longer than the continued improvements in technology. So those things, making sure that the things that we are bringing to bear for the fight are going to be of value to our service. Before we continue to look forward to the future, I do want to take a step back and just look at what we can learn from past revolutions in military affairs, right? Because they're nothing new. The U.S. military, for example, experienced a sea

change after Vietnam by becoming an all-volunteer force, adopting game-changing advances in GPS, precision-guided munitions, stealth aircraft, all things that were put on display with great effect during the Persian Gulf War. So from your vantage point, what lessons can we take away from previous military revolutions, whether it be U.S or allies? And how do you think we should apply the lessons from those past experiences today? Open-ended question, but I'll direct it to Mick first. You know, it's an interesting area of study. I mean, I think as Wick Murray does, he talks about military revolutions, which are larger scale societal shifts that have come about since the Industrial Revolution and RMAs, which are military specific things, which are larger scale societal shifts that have come about since the Industrial Revolution,

and RMAs, which are military specific things, which were probably more of what you were talking about then with technologies, precision, those kind of things. I start at the societal level. Most of these RMAs begin because society shifts its aspirations. Society develops and adopts new technologies, and society changes what it expects from its military institutions. I mean, the 1991 Gulf War, which was kind of the crowning achievement of the late 20th century United States military, there were allies involved, but it was US military victory, really was a result of not just changes in technology, but it was a change in how the US people changed how it saw its military in the wake of Vietnam, which led to changes in how the

services recruited and trained and treated their people. So, you know, there's a lot in that we can learn. There's a lot of similarities to the situation post-Vietnam and the situation post-World War II to what we're seeing now. And of course, we're seeing a range of different threats come into play now that we either haven't had to deal with for a long time or haven't had to deal with at all. It's going to take new thinking, new warfighting concepts and new ways of organising and leading our people. What that brings to mind for me is Huntington and this notion of civil-military relations and civilian control of the military.

And what that's going to put on the military is a requirement to still fight and win the nation's wars. And again, I will go back to technology and what it might offer us. Smart weapon systems that were the crown jewel of us moving forward, even to shock and awe at the campaigns for OIF. Those weapons systems, those smart weapons systems would be considered dumb in comparison when you look at the opportunities that exist with both artificial intelligence and machine learning and what that can offer us. Every revolution in military affairs that's occurred really comes down to the last hundred yards. How can we best get our forces to that last hundred meters from us to an objective, that extension of politics that runs

from the highest seats in government all the way down to the riflemen at the line? How do we get them there? And I think when we turn these things forward for targeting and understanding more about our environment by being able to pull in more from the standpoint of information and information dominance, I think that's where the next RMA is going to come from, is our ability to not only mass and understand. And massing even, I think, is going to be different in the future, right? It's massing across domains. Heretofore, we thought of massing as we've got more tanks than you have. We've got more planes than you have. We may have more boats than you have. But what happens when we mass intellectual might and put that toward an enemy? What if that becomes part of our mass in the future where we

get our best and brightest who understand that in a world that's contiguous, at least along information highways, we are contiguous. When we apply that power, that mental power to war fighting, since SLA Marshall, there have been people that have sat and thought about war. But what about the prosecution of the same by folks that don't have true proximity to the battlefield? I think that's where we're going in the future when you start to recognize that you can still have effects and not be in that last 100 meters. Xavier, that was a fascinating point about how the goals of innovation and RMAs were all about getting soldiers to within the 100-yard line of their target in the most efficient way possible, and then moving from the 100-yard line to the limits of exploitation. Based on that, from a modern-day perspective,

what technologies do you see having the greatest impact on new-age warfare and how will the US, Australia and its allies around the world have to adopt to accommodate the proliferation of these new technologies? And, Mick, I'll throw that question to you first. I think one of the issues I talked about in the book is this battle of signatures. I mean, as a brigade commander, being able to understand our own signatures across a brigade, you know, whether it was tanks or logistic organisations, was very important because we had to be able to manage it, we had to reduce it and we had to be able to report it to engage in deception of an adversary. It's very difficult

to do that now, not just because military and government senses and their links to analytical and targeting capability is better, more secure and shorter, but you're seeing particularly in Ukraine it came to an explosion of civil collection analysis and dissemination capabilities that we've never seen to the same degree. And the next step is going to have to be the meshing of those with military and government institutions. We're already seeing the detection to destruction time brought right down in Ukraine sometimes to 90 seconds. So this meshing of open and closed intelligence systems, I think, will be a really important technological but also social link that will make life difficult for an adversary, remembering that the adversary

is probably doing exactly the same with its civil-military fusion approach that the PLA and the Chinese government have. So I think, you know, that is both evidence from Ukraine. It's been a long term trend, but I think there's been a real explosion of this capability in the last year. I don't know that we're fully across it and I don't know if we fully evolved our warfighting concepts and our organization and leadership models to best exploit it and protect against it. And Xavier, same question to you. What technologies are you thinking about in particular

that will have the greatest effect on militaries and warfare in the coming decades? I think along with Mick, signals is something that I'm tremendously concerned about. How can you potentially make a division, which is the tactical unit of action now, in accordance with the new field manual 3.0? How do you make that division look like a platoon or how do you mask those across a joint, combined, interagency, intergovernmental, multinational coalition that's attempting to obtain the same objective? How do we clean that up?

And I think that that's going to be the problem of the new age. How do you hide in plain sight and still conduct the activities, the operations that need be done? and still conduct the activities, the operations that need be done. And I think one of the biggest impediments to that is going to be interoperability. So the human and the procedural interoperability are very, very easy. Those are easy to come by. They happen daily in the interaction amongst militaries in the region in particular. But it's the technological interoperability that I think is going to be a challenge in the future. Again, the way that technology is moving across the

nations and across our societies is such that there's almost this need to protect the investments that every nation's making in technology. And that'll become an impediment in the future. Again, there's no NATO in the Pacific. There's nothing like that. I think right now, Japan, the U.S., the Philippines, and Australia are working on things to do in partnership together. But there is no prevailing alliance, which everyone falls into and says, this is NATO standard, and this is the way we do business. So Xavier, if I could just pull on that thread a little, I'm really interested to know, or at least to think about how our militaries are going to absorb these changes and these technologies. And I just don't have much of a framework for thinking through it. So from your seat, when you think about integrating new technologies, are you thinking about institutional changes that the military needs to adopt, new operational concepts, or maybe it's

as simple as just getting the right technologically savvy people in the right seat? But how do leaders, I guess, integrate new technologies effectively? It's all those things. You really answered your own question there, Ben. It's all those things. For example, where the institution can't change quick enough, we've got to find those talented people within our ranks that understand the technology, can apply the technology to solve problems. So that's a piece of it. It's the personnel piece of it. Because every new technology is going to require technology wranglers, if you will, that can do the things necessary so that we can meet the objectives of the United States Army, which is to fight and win our nation's wars. So for our part here in a practical way, we've established a data warfare team and we're finding the talent within

our formation in ways as simple as who's got a data-leaning degree who we can pull in. And we're finding the talent within our formation in ways as simple as who's got a data-leaning degree who we can pull in. And we bring those people in, and you may have started out as a logistician, but now you're a data scientist or you're a programmer. We've got young E4s who can program that will pull in. Institutionally, we've got to take on almost, I believe, an open architecture feel about our hardware and our software. And we have to fight against the industry trying to push vaporware on us that doesn't accomplish the things that we need. A graphic user interface does not make a good program. It just doesn't. It looks pretty, but it doesn't work in the end of the day.

It looks pretty, but it doesn't work in the end of the day. So we've got to press on industry that as things change and we're trying to make systems talk to one another to recognize that there will be changes in stride. And then finally, I think that greater partnering amongst nations to talk freely. If we wait until something bad happens to say, well, this is an intelligence sharing agreement that we have with your nation, and this is a technological sharing agreement that we have with your nation, it'll be very ham-fisted. That seems like a really good transition point now to talk about tech reducing the speed of decision, the speed of execution, and the speed of transition between battlefield effects that we apply, not just in the Indo-Pacific, but the rest of the world. Mick, you discuss several emerging trends in warfare, I mean, including some in your appreciation of time, new forms of mass, the risks associated with supply chains, battle signatures that you've already unpacked for us. Could you explain what some of these trends are and why they're important to contemplate and probably specifically around the concept of time you unpack in book? So I mean time is fascinating it's something that government

agencies generally are pretty poor at using and understanding we don't put a cost on it. Military institutions do at the coalface but generally at the higher levels we don't always other than using it all but in the 21 21st century, I think, gives us different tools and different challenges to rethink time. On one end of the spectrum, you have algorithmic technologies or autonomous systems, hypersonic weapons that are going to change how humans are able to comprehend tactical-level combat in some circumstances, not in all of them, but it will change that.

And we're going to have to think through what does that mean and what do we allow machines to do without humans intervening when we're fighting in microseconds. So I think that's important to understand. You know, at the next level, not in microseconds, but in seconds and minutes, we are seeing this closing detection to destruction time. I mean, when I was a brigade commander, we used to plan on five to 10 minutes from detection to destruction, whether it was for a headquarters or an artillery regiment.

Now that's 90 seconds or 60 seconds. And that has some pretty profound implications, particularly for ground forces about their mobility, about their ability to understand that they've been detected, about their ability to intercept weapons that they might be targeted with. And frankly, there may be some capabilities that are just not viable anymore. I mean, if you are putting your logistics on the ground, taking off trucks,

that's probably not viable in a lot of scenarios. Towed artillery will not be viable in a lot of situations. And large headquarters that can't move within a minute are not going to be viable. And then I think to, you know, at the longer term, when it comes to time, we are in a strategic competition with a powerful, well-resourced, rich adversary that is going to probably go for decades. Politicians and other government organisations need to nurture support from their populations over that time. I mean, you can't compete without the support of your people.

So how do we engender the strategic patience that will be required from the polities and the populations across the West over the next few decades? So, you know, time was the first trend I looked at, and it has these implications from microseconds to decades that we really need to think about and that we can exploit if we're clever. I might pull on one of the threads you mentioned there, Mick, regarding the human-to-human and the will to fight and making sure the population's either on your side or in another adversary's

nation on your side through like an unconventional warfare mechanism. How do you see, and again, I might throw this to both you and Xavier to answer, the human-to-human interface moving forward in such a technically heavy environment and the role humans will play in that sort of highly congested and congested space? I might throw to you quickly, Xavier, before I throw back to Mick. Thanks, mate. One of the things that Mick talks about in War Transformed is this increased reliance on human-machine team. And when I noodle on that a little bit, I start

thinking about all the advances that we saw with manned-unmanned teaming amongst our aviation. Now we're thinking to the land domain, to the ground. And that reliance on that manned, unmanned teaming, the human-machine interface is going to provide the things that we need. They're going to be absolutely necessary. I mean, imagine, if you will, a time where we might have pilotless boats that would bring supplies forward. We've got these mules now that our ground forces in the United States Army are using, which are, think about a radio-controlled car that's carrying hundreds and hundreds of pounds of material, moving it quickly. Think about the ability to target through UAS and have that partnered with a force on the ground. I think that all these things, they come together.

They, again, get us to the point where we need to be on the ground, but more importantly, they help us to achieve our objectives with less exposure. Less exposure equals less loss of life. Less loss of life, I believe, leads to a greater will of the people to see a thing through. It's always the loss, the signature losses of life that cause the popular will to evaporate quickly. And I think that in terms of time as well, one of the things that Mick alluded to is the clocks. We talk about the clock in D.C. being different from anywhere you're deployed. Time just runs differently.

And time to decision makers is absolutely crucial depending on the time of the year that you're in. You could find yourself in an election and news cycle that does not benefit this long view that's going to absolutely be necessary for the coming fight. If you look at the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, that is a long-term plan. They are discussing out to 2050 where they see their place in the world militarily, economically, politically. And I don't know, and I'm just speaking as Xavier Q. Public here, I don't know if the citizen to my left and my right has that same long view. And that's going to be increasingly dangerous as we look to how do we compete long term. So, Mick, earlier you talked about the concept of time,

but I'd also like to discuss the concept of mass and combat power, which you talked about the concept of time, but I'd also like to discuss the concept of mass and combat power, which you talked about in your book. You know, the general idea being you want to get as much material and soldiers at the right time and at the right place. And it's all about bringing your assets to bear at the point of attack when you need it most. And the image that immediately comes to mind is, you know, during the Cold War, NATO forces being able to get postured along the Folded Gap to meet Soviet tanks when and where they needed to. But I don't know if that's the right paradigm to think about anymore. So could you just elaborate what you mean by when you talk about mass and combat power? Yeah, I actually think it is the right paradigm to think about because mass

always gives you an advantage. It may not be your grandfather's mass, and I think Xavier's talked about that quite eloquently. It's about how do you mass across agencies and across coalitions? How do you mass your intellectual capacity to come up with the broadest range of options to tackle national security challenges and military challenges? I mean, at the end of the day, the great advantage of democracies is that they can consider every single possible option as a solution to problems. Authoritarian regimes never can do that. I mean, there are certain ideas that will never be allowed in China, for example, that we could consider tomorrow. So, you know, I think that kind of mass is important. But I think to autonomous systems and bespoke algorithms will give us a different kind of mass in the 21st century that I think that we need to ensure that our leaders and planners are more literate in and are better at using.

So, you know, mass is still relevant. We're seeing in Ukraine, it's extraordinarily still relevant. I mean, we should remember that most wars are an aggregation of everything that's come before them, plus a couple of new things. That's just what wars are. The only thing I'd also say on mass is we are back into warfare in an era of industrial scale war. Now, that might be mass production of physical things, but it might also be mass production of algorithms. It might be mass production of influence operations. And indeed, you know, they're the kind of things we're seeing scale up pretty significant over the last decade.

So, you know, mass is relevant. It's just a different kind of mass than what we've seen in previous eras. And Xavier, same question to you. How are you thinking about mass? Well, first, I was taking notes and you just interrupted me taking notes from what McRyan just said. And, you know, as I'm sitting here and I listen to that, I think about the ability to mask things that maybe are just a little bit more ephemeral. How do we get the political apparatus to come in wholly? How do we make sure that our partners, friends and allies are masked building a coalition?

make sure that our partners, friends, and allies are masked, building a coalition? How do we ensure that we're able to converge across multiple domains at the right time and place? That's the power. That's always been the power of mass. If you think about a penetration in the Hurtgen Forest, or you think about a penetration during the Battle of the Bulge, that was masked at the point of attack at the right time and the right place. And this notion of convergence that we talk about right now is trying to get that across domains, across domains. And I don't know that we've ever had to, in line with Mick's comment that every war is a compilation of things that happened before it, we've never had the opportunity to mass. Here to four, we've always waited. And I'll go

back to a point I made earlier about shock and awe. It was shock and awe, then the ground campaign begins. I think in the future, it's going to have to be shock and awe with the ground campaign combined to achieve an effect. The air domain and the land domain brought together along with the maritime and EW, control of the spectrum, it's going to be cyber effects occurring at the same time. That level of mass, I don't know quite yet that it's fully understood what's going to be required in space and time. And so when I think about mass, I think about a concept I talk about with the division commanders here. I think about a concept I talk about with the division commanders here.

I want them to be able to fight free, which means that at my echelon, the core, I need to have figured that out. I've got to have understood or gathered the right resources that we might converge, that they might achieve a limited objective. And I don't think that we've ever thought about that in terms of campaigning before now, because we have to start thinking this way. more technologically savvy and relying more on foreign partners than ever before, that's got some serious implications for leaders at every echelon, down from junior NCOs at the squad level, all the way up to two-star generals who command divisions. So Xavier, what risks and opportunities do you see future combat leaders having to overcome to communicate on the battlefield? One of the things that I think is going to be a challenge is how do you achieve shared understanding when you don't have a mission partner environment, when you don't have a mission partner network to operate off of,

when you don't have a NATO in the Pacific? And I'll keep pointing back to what I'm dealing with now as sort of a practitioner. And even if you had information sharing, if those things haven't been ironed out or practiced fully, I don't know that you'll be able to bring to bear all that you should to achieve a nation or nations, plural, aims in a future conflict. The next risk that I would mention, so the first being the classification of information. The second, I would say, would be falling prey to legacy constructs with new equipment and new technologies. And I think in the Bible, they talk about putting new wine and old wine skins. differently about how we might need to be dispersed and where those locations might be and what we might be able to expect there, I think that that's going to be a problem. So in our core, what we've looked at is how do we stay collective and connected, but not necessarily co-located. In terms of scale, you're not going to be able to get things to the

point and place of need in time for any conflict that might arise in the region. And because of that, we're going to have to be smaller and we're going to have to be more tailored and we're going to have to be scalable and survivable. And all these things are going to be absolutely necessary. But if you fall back to the old concept, sort of the two up, one back, or the TAC and the main, the Tactical Operations Center and the Tactical Operations Center and the main command post, if you fall into those, what we're seeing both in Nagano-Karabakh and what we're seeing in Ukraine right now, to do those things, to organize yourself improperly, is to risk not achieving what you

set out to do. And in short, it's to die. And so we've got to organize ourselves differently. And I think that an opportunity that we have in the future, because we will be distributed, we will be dispersed, intentionally so, is this reliance on the human in the interface, that human being, that decider, that leader, that decision maker, that soldier that will be able to operate with full autonomy because he's been resourced properly. He understands the decisions in time and space that need to be made. And he's placed in a position where they can fight free, where they can just achieve the aims. This is what mission command is. This is what it is at its heart, at its core,

is the ability to understand the mission, the purpose of the mission, and then go achieve those aims. But it will require things around that from the next echelon up. And I think two of the keys are going to be protection and sustainment. And we have opportunities right now

to best understand and employ right now the things that we do best and the things that our partners do best in order to set those conditions for a great opportunity, which is soldiers fighting free, soldiers operating with autonomy, and commanders providing intent and their guidance in helping their soldiers to solve problems. commanders providing intent and their guidance in helping their soldiers to solve problems. Thanks, Mick. Thanks, Xavier. Might change tact a little bit now. In your book, Mick, you summarize one major point saying you assert the new technologies alone will not prove decisive in 21st century warfare. This got me thinking a little bit of a classic idea of either targeting the competitor's will or ability to fight in two generalized terms, noting the majority of military concepts and capability development cycles

focused on the technical ability to strike at the adversary's ability to fight. Could you expand on how in the future we can target the adversary's will to fight through the integration of irregular and conventional methods? Thanks, mate. Yeah, I think most conventional doctrine and warfighting concepts do get to the point of targeting the enemy's will, breaking down their cohesion. I think for a long time, particularly since Clausewitz worked about it, the idea of not just physically attacking the enemy, but attacking their cohesion, attacking their will. I mean, that's an old idea. There's nothing new there. Really, what is new is our means to do it through very precise, discriminant influence operations. But at the end of the day, you don't need new technologies to target the will of the enemy to fight. I mean, the Ukrainians just got into the rear lines of the Russians and killed a lot

of logisticians, and that had a major impact on morale and indeed their ability to continue. So this is not a new idea. It is something that military institutions at all levels focus on all the time. Yeah, I would just add to Mick's excellent points there that if we think about the continuum, there's competition, there's conflict, and then crisis. I think the things that you do within competition demonstrate your own will. They're not strategically ambiguous. They are pointed. They are purposeful. Because I think the goal in the Pacific even is to have no war. That's the overall purpose. If you remember, President Obama called for a pivot to the Pacific years ago during his second term. And we are now actually moving that direction well with things like Operation Pathways, with continued engagement in the region by Ben's old unit and others.

We're starting to prove true that we're actually committed, absolutely committed. I'll be, for example, in Australia this summer for three months, our summer, not their summer, but we'll be there. And I think that these things are signposts, and signposts are important in that they point a direction for you to go. But if you don't continue to move down that route, that signpost is of no use to anyone. So it's important that we back the things that we're saying with our

presence. I think presence counts for more than most people give it credit for. So when we start talking about integrated deterrence, I think that my job at the operational level is integrated assurance. I'm here not just for the exercise. I'm here to partner with you. I'm here to develop deep interoperability. And even if that interoperability is only to what I would call surface pieces, because they don't require any technology at all, the human and the procedural, if I can drive that deep into my partners in the region, I think that matters. Because again, everything is seen. It's all seen right now. So I know we're all paying attention to the events in Eastern Europe, and there are a lot

of lessons to be learned from the war in Ukraine, but mix a retired general officer from a Pacific nation. Xavier, you lead a corps regionally aligned to the Indo-Pacific, and Asia has definitely got its own unique geography and systems in place. So when you think about large scale combat in the future, is there anything unique about the Western Pacific that will make military operations either more difficult, or maybe just really different from what we're seeing in Eastern Europe right now? Well, I think one of the things that's going to be different is this network that exists within NATO, which allows certain things to occur. The looming threat of Article 5 that exists across NATO nations,

that one misstep by Russia in that region could cause other nations to come to Ukraine's aid. We don't have that in the Pacific. Because we don't have that, I think that it's incredibly important for us to start having discussions on things like access and basing and overflight. If we don't have these things set, much like our intel sharing agreements, it could lead to some pretty severe challenges and hard learning in the early stages of any conflict that might occur in the region. I also think that two warfighting functions that are going to be incredibly important in any conflict in the region will be protection and sustainment. We've never had to deal with the logistics lines that we would have to deal with in the Western Pacific, and it will call for joint solutions. The Army is responsible by joint doctrine for setting the theater, but the Army in setting the theater will require both maritime and air assets in order to achieve that aim. And I think that's markedly different from things that exist in the European theater right now. So Xavier, based on our conversation today,

what are the implications for the academic, policymaker, and practitioner communities who are interested in modern warfare and the effect that new technologies will have on the battlefield? Well, two things. Let me just go with two things here. The first is this notion of sanctuary that's existed within our nation for years and years and years no longer exists. And we have to accept that fact. And in regard to policy, policy must be enacted that

supports that thought, that from the gate to the port, we're under observation. We could be hampered. It might be one of many domains. It might even be a cyber attack, which doesn't allow us to talk to the folks who are at the port. And if the port can't communicate with the ship, then the ship doesn't know to be in the dry dock so that we might load it to move to the Pacific. We've never thought this way before. And so we've got to have this revolution between our ears that says, you know what? How do we start the fight from the barracks to the battlefield? How do we get to that point? Because that's going to take different thinking because heretofore, that's a military problem. The military will figure it out. They'll

do it. But it's going to require more than just the military to get to the next fight. And then the final thought I would have for you and your listeners would be simply this, to think about where technology is going and will the things that we're doing now carry us through to 2050. And if they won't, then they need to be changed, because if you don't have a vision that goes as far as the adversary, then you're going to come up short and we're going to leave it to someone else to have to decide. And Mick, in terms of implications, earlier we discussed the importance of mission command, communicating on the battlefield and civil-military relations. They all seem sort of interrelated, so I'll be curious to hear

from what your recommendations are regarding mission command and civil military considerations. So I think that everything that JV has said is right on the money. But at the end of the day, mission command is a really important cultural approach for military institutions to use with experienced soldiers. And I emphasise that you can't use mission command with inexperienced people. You've got to prepare them, you've got to lead them, you've got to mentor them in that construct. But it is vital when you're in an environment where it's very likely the enemy is going to periodically deny you your communications. I think the experience from Ukraine shows it's not permanent, it's periodic, but you do need people that can work in a disconnected command environment at multiple levels. And military institutions generally are

pretty good at this. The problem comes in the civil-military interface. Politicians don't do mission command, they do directive command. And I think as Xavier raised earlier, that is an issue for exploration in 21st century civil-military relations, which I think is something we're still all working through, you know, particularly in the wake of what we've seen in the last couple of years. But I do think it's probably time for an update on Huntington and Moskovitz and Janowitz, because the world's changed. It moves at a different pace. How democracies see their military institution has changed. So if I was thinking about command and control, for me, the real work is about the civil military relations in the 21st century and how politicians are going to trust militaries to

work in an environment where they may not be able to talk to them all the time. Well, gentlemen, that was a truly fascinating conversation on how war is transforming. Thank you so much for your time today. Adam, thank you. Ben, thank you. And I look forward to listening to this when it gets posted. Thank you again for joining us for Episode 74 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Ben Jebb and Ben Works

discuss the US strategy and irregular warfare with respect to Taiwan with Professor Larry Diamond and Michael Brown. Following that, Jeff and I will discuss the how and why terrorists organize themselves for success with Chris Costa and Jake Shapiro. warfare professionals. You can follow and engage with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter for access to our content and upcoming community events. The newsletter signup is found at irregularwarfare.org. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a comment and positive rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the regular Warfare podcast. It really helps expose to show you new listeners. And one last note, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of Princeton, West Point or any

agency of the US government. Thanks again and we'll see you next time. Thank you.