3 days ago
Army shuts down its sole active-duty information operations command
The U.S. Army's 1st Information Operations Command is no more. The active-duty unit shut down in May, after 23 years of operations, citing changing needs in the wider force.
The initial closure was announced last year, as part of the Army Force Structure Transformation plan. 1st Information Operations Command, a part of U.S. Army Cyber Command, focused on cyber warfare and psychological operations. In practice, it worked to help protect other units from information attacks from enemy forces, and served as 'red teams' in cyber attack simulations.
'For more than two decades, the soldiers and leaders of 1st IO have been at the forefront of information warfare, adapting to every challenge and shaping the Army's cyber capabilities,' ' said Lt. Gen. Barrett, the commanding general of U.S. Army Cyber Command, in a May 8 Army news release.'Their contributions have been instrumental in securing our nation's interests in an ever-changing battlefield.'
The Army has said that the closure of the command is not an abandonment of information warfare, but comes out of a need to integrate it into other forces and joint commands. Since that was announced, the Department of Defense has leaned further into the consolidation of the service and restructuring. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a memo in late April calling for major restructuring of the force. 'Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform' directed several changes, including wider usage of drones and a focus on integrating electronic warfare into maneuver units. 1st IO had previously accumulated many of those similar tasks.
Its director of information warfare told Task & Purpose last year that 1st IO took on a variety of jobs that technically fell under its purview but weren't 'truly related.'
1st Information Operations Command was initially set up in 2002 as a way for the Army to coordinate information technology, field red teams — which meant having their soldiers take on the role of an adversary during a simulation — and deal with the growing use of cyberspace by militaries. The unit traced its lineage to the Land Information Warfare Activity, created in the 1990s in the aftermath of the Gulf War. In the post-9/11 conflicts, 1st IO was based out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The unit also deployed field support teams overseas to bases in Qatar and elsewhere.
The command's leader in 2006, now-retired Maj. Gen. John Davis, described modern warfare as 'bullets, bombs, bits and bytes,' per the Army, something that 1st IO helped the force to address.
'Warfare is evolutionary and mutable,' he said. 'Adversaries have spent decades learning from us, exploiting effects under the threshold of armed conflict.'
In place of 1st Information Operations Command, the Army is creating region-specific Theater Information Advantage Detachments. These units are meant to focus on information and cyber warfare, and work closely with the similarly new Multi-Domain Task Forces, which are currently testing the use and integration of drones and other modern technology with current and new battlefield tactics.
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