Welcome to War Room, the official podcast of the U.S. Army War College online journal, graciously supported by the Army War College Foundation. Please join the conversation at warroom.armywarcollege.edu. We hope you enjoy the program. The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense. Make sure not to miss a single episode and subscribe to A Better Peace, the War Room Podcast at warroom.armywarcollege.edu forward slash subscribe. Welcome to A Better Peace, the War Room Podcast. I'm Dr. Tom Spahr, the Serio Chair of Strategic and Theater Intelligence at the U.S. Army War College and your host for today's conversation. Probably the least recognized, but perhaps most important echelon in the Joint Force are the theater armies serving at each of the Department of War's geographic regions. The theater army is the echelon above the Army Corps that performs the foundational tasks for the Joint Force, enabling the force to fight in its assigned part of the world. We call these Title 10 tasks because they are found in the Title 10 of the Department of Defense Directive 5101.1. In the case of the Army, these Title 10 tasks include command and control of Army units in theater, setting and maintaining the theater, including its operational and support areas, coordinating to consolidate gains at the end of a battle, and when called upon, acting as a joint force headquarters. Most importantly, though, the theater armies are a fighting echelon that will lead corps, potentially subordinate field armies, in joint, multi-domain, and multinational operations in large-scale combat operations. When I was an Army intelligence officer, an S2, a G2, or a J2, preparing to deploy into an unfamiliar region, the first person I always called was the Theater Army G2 and their team who would help my unit quickly learn about the environment, tie us into the intelligence picture and collection plan, and then enable our tactical operations with intelligence. Yet each theater army is unique, and the joke goes that if you've seen one theater army, you have seen exactly one theater army, meaning they are all necessarily a little different depending on the characteristics of the region. So today, I am fortunate to have in the virtual war room studio, the U.S. Army Pacific Command Senior Intelligence Officer, or G2, Colonel Carol Stauffer. Colonel Stauffer is a career intelligence officer who's commanded intelligence units from company to the theater army, including a company command in Korea, battalion command of the 109th Expeditionary Military Intelligence Battalion, and brigade command of the 500th MI Brigade Theater. There is a trend here. First, these are all incredible units. And second, Colonel Stauffer's career has been very focused on the Indo-Pacific before she became the U.S. Army Pacific G2 in June of 2024, making it seem like a perfect fit for that position. So, Colonel Stauffer, Carol, welcome to the War Room. Thanks. I'm excited to be here. Okay, so, Carol, it's been great having you speak to our students the last two years. Students always come away very grateful, so I'm really happy that we got you here in the studio for the podcast. And, you know, I briefly went through your bio. Can you just tell us a little bit more about your journey to becoming a theater army G2? You know, specifically, what were those most important positions that prepared you for this responsibility? Yeah, I've been really fortunate, as you mentioned, to spend a great deal of time in the Indo-Pacific. And really, the moment I can remember as a watershed is when I assumed responsibilities as the EXO or executive officer for 2nd Striker Brigade Combat Team in the 25th Infantry Division. And in that time, we were initiating the Pacific Pathways series of exercises that was a brainchild of, at that time, General Brooks, the theater army commander here in the region. And he elected to string together several what had been discrete theater security cooperation exercises to really train a new generation of army leader and how to campaign in the Pacific to string together those operations. And that really gave me this tactile feel for executing tactical operations here in the region, in the jungles of Thailand to the cold, cold mountains of Korea, but then also how to execute in a combined environment, how to be interoperable with not just joint, but also our partners and allies. I doubled down on that, as you mentioned, commanding the 109th with specific focus on how to execute the intelligence operation in those conditions. And then I got yanked up to the strategic level with the opportunity to work in, at that time, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and later taking it. Mercilessly pulled to the Pentagon, right? Like we all are at some point in our career. Absolutely. And then to double down on that, I had to suffer through a year at Stanford as the Army War Colleges fellow out there. But that opportunity gave me a chance to really reflect on the execution of strategy and how that is a really objective look and a calculated look at the national interests, not only of our countries, but all countries in the region and how that's informing their decision making. and then straight back down into it as the MIBT commander to bridge that tactical and strategic look at the operational level and putting those forces in motion throughout the region. So all of those building blocks, I got to look at the region from every echelon and see it independently and then see how it comes together. And that's really where I sat at the theater army is stitching those requirements and those demands and those opportunities together for the commanding general here. Yeah, thanks for that. A couple quick comments. First of all, you were an XO for a striker brigade. That's a very uncommon position for an intelligence officer, but what a terrific way for the intel officer to truly understand what the needs are of the tactical force. So then when you go up to where you can affect it with intel, you really can. And then I would feel bad about you for getting yanked into the Pentagon if I didn't know that you were sitting in Hawaii right now. But you captured it very, very well. You know, those, that tour up in the Pentagon was important for you to broaden your scope of understanding and really how the, how the force works. So, so that was, that was a super, super rundown. You know, from my perspective, when I teach our students here at the World College, I often describe the theater army, more the army service component command G2, which you are both, right, of those, and the military intelligence Brigade Theater as that unblinking eye on a region, meaning that you are the Army element that is constantly learning and focus on that region so that the rest can plug into you. I'm interested in your opinion on that comparison. Is that true or really what is the intelligence mission there? Yeah, I think that especially when I took over down in the intelligence brigade, there was the refrain that the MIBTs were the anchor for the theater army, and that was your anchor point. And I really fought against that because the intelligence mission, and especially here in the Pacific, but anywhere, is in motion. Our responsibility for the theater is not to set the theater. It is a consistent maintenance and movement towards setting the theater to maintain relative advantage in comparison and contrast to what our adversaries are attempting to do for themselves. My mission as the theater Army G2 is to integrate and synchronize Army intelligence operations across the combatant command's area of responsibility. And I try and frame that for my team within the intelligence cycle. And specifically, the G2 responsibility is heavy in the plan and direct so that we can give, you know, a set of desired conditions to our subordinate commanders to include the intelligence brigade to collect, exploit, assess, and then disseminate that intelligence to drive operations. The MibT's responsibility within that, you know, he's a commander. He does blue intelligence. I, as the G2, have the responsibility for red intel. I have requirements. I need to know and understand the adversary so that I can paint that picture for my commander. His responsibility is to organize, train, and resource intelligence forces to get me the answers that I need. And so he's executing commander activities, understand, visualize, describe, direct, lead, and assess. He serves as INSCOM kind of national to tactical gateway And again I framed it that way as opposed to an anchor point is it is about passing information and resources up and down the chain from that very tactical level to the national level enterprise. It's about enabling tactical formations with national capabilities and making the tactical intelligence formations, the intelligence that they collect relevant and integrated and fed back into the enterprise for the benefit of the entire community. The one thing I would say we have a unique responsibility for, I have a unique responsibility for here in the Pacific that may be slightly different or more exaggerated than other ASCCs is the intelligence partner engagement piece. So we do not have the benefit of a large-scale security framework in the region, you know, the NATOs of the world, we are doing everything in a bilateral or trilateral at most relationship. And so it's incumbent upon me, you know, probably second to only the commander, am I traveling, integrating, working with and planning with partners and allies to secure access, to negotiate basing, specific emphasis on information sharing, both the approvals to do so and then the ability to do so, you know, an architecture that enables that, and then training to do combined operations and expand the amount of collection and analysis capacity available to our entire tapestry of land forces here in the region. Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, we talk about interoperability a lot, and a part of that is the human side of it. And you kind of are that human sometimes, I imagine, out there talking to these different nations that would be important if we went to war in the Pacific and building those relationships, right? We don't want to build those relationships after the war starts. We want to have them in place. And it's great that you do that. You mentioned INSCOM, that intelligence and security command here at Fort Belvoir. And they are really the ones that do that connection to the intelligence community, the CIA, FBI, DA, all those entities down to you. But then you're the one that does it for the theater, right, that tailors it to the theater. So that was really well put. So I want to talk about how you actually do that. And you touched a little bit on it there with your travels. But how does the theater army set, we say set the theater or prepare the theater for combat for the joint forces during the competition phase of the fight? So the first thing we do is identify the requirements that have been codified for us from the strategic down to our operational level. Those strategic documents like the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy. We identify the missions we've been ordered to do in operational and contingency plans at the combatant command level. We consider what the Department of the Army's objectives are with new programs, new force structure developments. And then I specifically have a requirement, of course, to deliver on the theater army commander's priority information requirements. But all of those things, as you mentioned, are oriented on preparing for conflict. And right now in this region, our goal is no war. So the decisions and the investments that we make are aligned with improving our wartime posture, but intended to deliver a deterrent effect right now. And so my requirement is to provide that intelligence support to the campaigning operation. You know, I have commanders that are certainly concerned with a couple of significant threats in the region, but are campaigning day to day in the other 35 nations in the regions. And so it is to understand what our adversary's actions and intentions are. And it's sometimes overwhelming, especially for the young analysts that come to work for me. They have an idea of how they're going to interact with the threat every day. And so when you ask them to open their aperture, they can get overwhelmed and it becomes everything everywhere all at once. But that's not really the case. If you can identify what the adversary's objectives are, then it's about identifying the ways in which they need to set the theater to achieve their own goals and objectives. And then we can identify the points of leverage and vulnerability in that system. And that's what's happening in this competition and campaigning space. It's an HPTL or high priority target list and a high value target list for competition. And as in providing that intel support to campaigning and an intel support to targeting within that, we are driving theater army operations, activities, investments. We're protecting theater army forces and we're helping commanders understand where they should employ forces. It's not just about doing an exercise with a country. It's about doing it at this time in this space with these formations, because that's going to reveal a capability that's going to shape the adversary's decision making. It's going to improve interoperability that delivers a cumulative capability that is of concern or will force the adversary to reconsider their calculus. And it doesn't look like tank on tank on tank. It looks very different. We're focused on identifying, you know, information operations throughout the theater. We're focused on those, you know, different types of capabilities that are brought to bear in this deterrence kind of live edge between us and the adversary. and even things that are of value to the theater army as we work to set the theater are if we identify a target it's not always a defense finish as it were there are lots of different ways to impose cost on the adversary that could be working with treasury to identify a company and impose sanctions for their evasion of international law it could be a law enforcement finish you know there's one example of that out in the Philippines. We identified a recently abandoned resort called Grande Island, which sits at the mouth of Subic Bay just off Luzon. And in that space, that bay is home to several Filipino Navy bases. The Philippine Coast Guard has missions out of that organization, but also the United States and our partners and allies use those port facilities to transition soldiers and goods and do operations throughout the region, right? We're passing through to work with our partners and allies. And what we discovered through our intelligence missions and assessments in the region was that that location had been co-opted by an adversarial entity who had emplaced security cameras, who had emplaced listening devices and some additional surveillance materials. And we're monitoring not only U.S. movement through the region, but giving advance warning and attempting to disrupt Filipino operations. And so, you know, that is an encroachment of Filipino sovereignty. And so what we did was provide that information to our partners and, you know, offered them the opportunity to take action on that, which they promptly did because they were very concerned about what that threat was to their own forces and their own freedom of movement. And so it can look very different than just building a new installation, just emplacing long-range precision fires. Strengthening that tapestry and setting the theater comes in lots of different ways. So I heard a lot there. Just a few things I want to latch on to. Just the Intel driving operations. You're doing that across the theater. And not only multi-domain, Navy, Air Force, space, cyber, but you're doing it across the instruments of national power, right? The diplomatic information, military, right? Small M right now, and then big economic. And that's just a great example. Thank you for providing that. We haven't, as a nation, fought really with theater armies and field armies large scale since World War II, a little bit in the Gulf War. But when we transition out of competition into conflict, how does your role change? What do you see the Theater Army G2 doing during combat? We retain that responsibility for integrating and synchronizing those Army operations It is unique in the Pacific because as the theater Joint Force Land Component Command or TJ Flick we always retain that broad aperture responsibility for understanding the land domain throughout the theater But we're passing combat formations through us. And so it's this really telescoping action of those smaller and smaller tactical or operational formations coming in and taking responsibility where their aperture gets narrower geographically or based on their mission. And then they are receiving responsibility for executing the collection analysis in that very finite piece of the battlefield. But the theater army has to kind of keep those soft eyes still. We are occasionally called upon to serve as a joint task force where we're given a discrete problem from the combatant commander to solve. the one complicating factor I have observed in you know since returning to the theater in 22 is the introduction of long-range precision fires has created a role for the theater army in targeting and I guess not just long-range precision fires but also non-kinetics and space and cyber effects where those authorities and those approvals reside at higher levels and so So the theater army now has a role in executing Intel support to targeting as well as the combat assessments and battle damage assessments on the back end. Yeah. And I can from a guy who served a lot of the tactical level, I can think about the 82nd Airborne Division, right? They're total short notice going to war in the Pacific. They know nothing about the Pacific, right? I mean, a little bit, right? Perhaps they've done some exercises on there, but they just need that expertise of your team and that database of what these units look like. Tell us a little bit about the terrain. You know, how do we get up to speed quickly to flow into theater, right? And what collection assets do we have? How does stuff work here in this theater? Because they are all different. Yeah, I will tell you that the one benefit that we have introduced in the last just two years since 22, we were early adopters for the Army's Intel Data Platform, AIDP, which was a watershed moment internally for us to be able to see the adversary with a depth and breadth and precision that was pretty and remains astonishing. But that being an army-wide solution, we can bring units into that ecosystem much earlier. We're federating across our own forces, So we're really upskilling not just our own MSCs, but also COMPO 2 and 3. So we're introducing them over time to the region. And instead of a cold start on architecture and some of the really burdensome requirements that it used to take for organizations or units to come in and out of the force, it has gotten much simpler for us to do that. But you're right, it is just that analytical expertise that we hope to provide. I'm glad you mentioned AIDP because the other big difference with that is it's cloud-based now, right? And object-based production. So it's a matter of how do you plug into that? Well, you type this internet address into your browser on your secret network and you're able to access the databases and material that your team has already built for them. So, yeah, super capability. You know, I'm biased, obviously, but I think the Army is the most important in setting the theater. Could you talk a little bit about how the Army enables the Joint Force? We talked a lot about the Army, but I believe the Army does more than any of the other entities of the Joint Force and is more important. So could you just describe a little bit of that relationship and how you set the theater for a Joint Force? Yeah, there is a great deal that the Joint Force relies on the theater armies to execute. It is, sustainment is one of the biggest ones, that backbone, being able to set and shape the theater in advance of the conflict. You know, there have been evolution in the agile combat employment on the Air Force, some additional rebasing and fluidity within the Navy's posture. But that all relies on the security of those, you know, ports and forts that the Army provides and an Army logistics backbone that is pushing out all of the classes of supply across the force, in addition to protection that our organizations provide. And then in this campaigning and competition space, people live on land. It's just as simple as that. And so being able to understand what our partners and allies requirements are. Here in the region, the vast majority of chiefs of defense are Army because while many of these countries may not have the finances to have a Navy or an Air Force, they all have armies. They all have borders. They all have internal security issues that they are combating and striving to overcome. And for that, an Army land force partner makes the most sense and helps them to understand what investments and training they need to make to continue developing and performing as a force. Right. So again, you're that face, that human in the interoperability because everybody's got an Army. Absolutely. And that's kind of, again, maybe what the army does, but I didn't speak to your question, I don't think, on what it does for the joint force. And in the theater, maybe differently than elsewhere on the globe, our unique kind of climate and geography demands this approach of archipelagic warfare. And the capabilities that the adversary has introduced as they modernize and transform over the last decade or so have have indeed created concerns of an anti-access area denial or counter intervention capability. And the Army's position forward in the theater on the land creates the capability for the United States to fracture that counter-intervention posture and enable the joint force and our partners and allies to re-access or access the theater to execute operations as necessary. That's great. You mentioned a little bit about multi-domain operations with space and cyber as the new domains that we've introduced. Can you talk about how that is changing your mission in the Pacific? How is warfare changing with the introduction of not only air, land, and maritime, but space and cyber now? It is a consistent investment in considering and bringing those additional domains into the fight. But there are even a couple more foundational changes that we observe here in the region. And I didn't appreciate it enough until I came back and was here full time again in 2022. And then I didn't know the language for it. But in 2023, the Joint Chiefs of Staff produced a document called the Joint Concept for Competing. And that really solidified and gave me the lexicon to talk about what it is that we're doing here in the Pacific and this idea of a strategic competition and this persistent and long term struggle, which is a fundamentally different approach to war than simply preparing for conflict and keeping forces in reserve to train and ready for conflict, playing an away game. and it's a reality of every day you are you know if you're not improving you are degrading you are losing out to space that your enemy is taking and improving and so the one example for that which kind of ties that multi-domain aspect into it is you know we came in with an idea of kill chains you have a sensor you have a shooter how do they connect to we've evolved to a kill web you know of of any sensor should be able to connect to any shooter. But the future and what we're building towards here is that kill mesh where it is every sensor, every shooter, and that idea of a persistent tapestry of collection, you know, capability, whether it's fires, kinetic, cyber, non-kinetic, electronic warfare, all of those things being in play all the time. And what that introduces is is protraction. I think we all thought maybe a few years ago that all of this new technology and the new domains would cause these short sharp battles and we could be in and out and that wasn just a thought process that we had but our adversaries had it as well But we seen play out on the world stage the opposite that a large, you know, large scale combat operations capable force really is going to have those conflicts be protracted and cause this war of attrition. And so it's how do you set conditions to not just succeed once, but continue to endure when there is no sanctuary in any domain at any time to include the homeland. That's the real change that is forcing us to think through deeply how to set the theater and continue to set the theater to succeed in that type of environment. Now, that's really good. We talk about Chris Barroza's book, To Kill Chain, all the time here, And he talks about the Pacific specifically in that book. And you've really related that well and expanded it to the kill mesh with all of the domains. I love that you mentioned the joint concept for competing. It's just it's such a great example that you just gave of how doctrine or a concept in this case can give you that vernacular, that common language, right? That enables us to talk to each other and everybody understand to be on the same playing field, especially for units that perhaps aren't always focused on the Pacific. come in and have those similar words. So I want to transition. You know, AI is all the buzz right now. And can you just talk about the role of big data and AI in the Indo-Pacific? And how is that changing how we do intelligence? Yeah, I was fortunate enough. I listened to Supriya McClendon's interview and certainly General Ashley's interview. And they talked a great deal. And I completely agree with the importance of having, you know, groomed data and with having algorithms that you revisit and you govern all of those models. I think what I would focus on and the way that we've looked at this here in the Pacific is on the potential that comes with AI. We're fortunate in that this artificial intelligence approach is embraced at the top. Kampaparo is an AI native and he demands that his subordinate commanders be the same, that we're integrating this into every single thing that we do and finding ways to apply it across the force. But throughout my formation anyway, the original instinct or that initial instinct is to apply it against your known knowns to try and just break free from some of the, you know, air quotes factory work. but we then took a moment and said this is really about creativity this is about seeing the world and our problem set in a fundamentally different way and so what we did and we being very very smart young people in my formation applied the tools that we had against our known unknowns specifically to use automated target recognition and some of those other efforts in places that we knew we weren't looking. So, and this was, you know, it's kind of the approach of the old World War II example of planes that would return damaged and their original instinct to shore up those damaged places on the aircraft. When in reality, those are the places you least needed to protect because those aircraft had come back in, you know, working or passable condition. So this allowed us to think, are we focused on the right things? Are we focusing on the things that are meaningful? And so we identified these spaces. We applied these AI tools against them. And it turned out to be all upside. We were able to immediately get a reflection of if our own existing knowledge base was complete. We were able to test new models with lower risk because we were retaining a consistent focus on things we knew we needed to know every day. So we were just understanding all of the rest of, you know, spaces and ideas and data that we were missing. And then we were able to rapidly proliferate the things that worked to broaden our overall all data set, deepening our capacity overall. That's a terrific answer. So we are running out of time here, but I do always like to give my guests the opportunity for a parting shot here. What should we know about the Theater Army G2 intel officer and intelligence really across the Pacific that I haven't asked you about, that really the floor is yours, any alibis? I think that you're right. The Theater Army is an interesting place to be. You're neither tactical nor strategic. you're working five and ten years into the future trying to help and assist the army and building formations that are useful but you are responsive day to day to what the combatant commander needs you to do but that's what makes it exciting and that's what allows us to bring the best of each of those echelons to bear not only for our own country but in encouraging our partners and allies to continue to develop, to help them pursue their own sovereign interests in pursuit of free and liberal world order. And so it's very rare, I think, that you can have a Muddy Boots Army experience while also making and having strategic conversations with partners and allies that are going to chart a course for what a whole swath of the globe will look like for decades to come. So I didn't prep at all for this one, but something just occurred to me as we were talking. You mentioned your fellowship, and I remember listening to Supriya, and she talked about her fellowship, right? Can you reflect a little bit on how that fellowship prepared you or affected you or any comments on that for our World College students that are here in a similar experience? It was an incredible opportunity for me to really interact with individuals from a dramatically different way of life. And that didn't just mean other adults that had had come up through different sectors or been in academia, but young people and the way that they were approaching executing their studies and the interests they had and the goals that they had. had for themselves and for their country. And so that really helped me to not only revisit first principles in my own leadership methodologies and in my own studies, but to be able to talk to young soldiers coming into my formation and relate to them. And I had to break out of some very specific army ways of thinking, you know, we do this business, we wear a uniform, you get indoctrinated a little bit in not just the content that you receive, but the processes that you use to think your way through problems. And just having that widespread exposure allowed me to, you know, decalcify some of my ways, especially as an intelligence professional, it was really useful. I think that's great. I mean, it prepared you for some of the civil military interaction that you have, especially as you become more of a senior officer, right? Just understanding what people outside of the Army are thinking. So thank you for that answer. And Carol, this has been a really enlightening conversation. Unfortunately, we are out of time. But I want to thank you, Colonel Carol Stauffer, for joining us on A Better Peace, the War Room podcast. And thanks for what you're doing out there in Hawaii and across the Indo-Pacific for our Army and for the nation. And thanks to all of you for listening. And please send us your comments on this program and any suggestions for future programs. If you've enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to subscribe to A Better Peace, rate the podcast, and most importantly, tell a friend about the program. From The War Room, I am Tom Sparr. And that concludes our program. Thank you for listening. The views expressed in this podcast reflect those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense. Let us know what you think. Provide us your feedback, comments, or suggestions through our webpage at warroom.armywarcollege.edu. And have a great day. Thank you.
