StratCom commander emphasizes need for advanced information, intelligence

Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command (StratCom), recently spoke at the 2018 Department of Defense Intelligence Information System Worldwide Conference on integrated command relationships and the role of information and intelligence to combatant commands.

Without intelligence information, both commands’ capabilities are useless, Hyten said, and Strategic Command’s capabilities are useless without the right information in the right place at the right time. Without this information potential adversaries could take a misstep, but it would be missed, he said.

“Success in the future is going to be when we apply capabilities through whatever domain we have to, through whatever means we have to, and we don’t care where it comes from or where it goes to as long as it dominates the adversary,” Hyten said. “That will be the next step of greatness for the next great military in the world, and I believe that will be the United States of America. But in order for that to happen, we have to achieve that vision because we have adversaries who have stated similar things.”

Strategic Command has changed the way it fights a war and thinks about deterrence, Hyten said, in response to the speed of technological advances and adversarial gains.

Gen. Raymond Thomas, III, commander of Special Operations Command, echoed many of Hyten’s sentiments, stating that advancements in the role of data in warfighting are essential to maintaining dominance on the battlefield.

“The time has come to flip the current model on its head,” Thomas said. “The time has come to develop and field tools and tradecraft in analysis that will allow us to begin our effort by understanding what we can from data that is readily and cheaply available. Then we will take our findings and enrich it with information from our classified sensors, sources, and methods to provide timely, accurate and actionable intelligence to our warfighters and decision makers.”