PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii –
Are you a hard-charging Reserve Sailor looking for your next duty assignment? Do you have space qualifications or education, training, and/or experience in cyber, intelligence, information technology, information operations, electromagnetic spectrum operations, or targeting support? If so, the Navy’s recently created Fleet Information Warfare Command Pacific (FIWCPAC) might be the opportunity you have been looking for.
Established in 2022 as an Echelon III command, FIWCPAC’s mission is to plan, coordinate, and direct information-related capabilities and effects within the Indo-Pacific region that support tactical and operational actions across the joint force. Its purpose is to combat non-kinetic aggression and false narratives from malign actors in the information domain.
“While the information age has been net positive, it has also provided malign actors numerous new outlets and mediums to spread disinformation, propaganda, and lies,” said Rear Adm. Michael Vernazza, commander of FIWCPAC, at a conference earlier this year. “Our ability to influence is critical across the spectrum of conflict, competition, and crisis … because malign actor nations in the information space rely on deniability and they seek to remain below the response threshold and achieve cumulative effects through seemingly minor actions.”
He added that the aim of FIWCPAC is to alter an adversary’s thought-process and deter those seemingly minor actions.
“Information warfare, and specifically information operations, is designed to influence and affect cognitive states and reinforce the perception and belief that the cost of imposition of aggressive expansionism, coercion, and military actions will exceed any benefits that can be gained through aggression,” said Vernazza. “Competing in the information environment is about ensuring that we, as free and sovereign nations, ensure our competitors’ behaviors are held to account and that we illuminate the true nature of their activities and illustrate the cumulative effects of their actions. More importantly, that our competitor’s actions do not disrupt the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific region or the international rules-based order and international system that has resulted in decades of shared prosperity.”
While FIWCPAC’s objectives are clear, the command’s active component cannot achieve them alone. They require qualified Navy Reserve support, along with the civilian skills and perspectives they bring forth.
“The Reserve Force is absolutely critical to what FIWCPAC is trying to accomplish, and the team needs our support,” said Rear Adm. Ingrid Rader, Reserve commander of FIWCPAC, charged with providing that support. “We are integrated with our active-duty counterparts and training our folks to a level of skill and knowledge that I have not seen before in the Reserves.”
“We have reviewed all of our billets, looked at the associated job qualification requirements and made sure every billet has the appropriate training required to support the active component.”
With hundreds of Reserve billets, her information warfare team requires expertise in a variety of different areas – some of which can be learned through schooling while a great deal must be inherited through experience. This offers the Reserve Sailors filling those billets an opportunity to train and operate at the tip of the spear.
“The things we are asking of our folks are intense and continuous,” said Rader. “We are using advanced capabilities and there is a continuous pressure to meet an evolving demand signal. The pace is very fast.”
Rader is looking to field her team with a balance of new accessions, lateral transfers and experienced operators who have spent time in theater. The command is offering extended billet assignments for enlisted and officers, allowing time for members to apply their skills once fully qualified.
To those who fit the bill: Rader is calling on you to join her team.
“The critically important PACFLT region accounts for 60 percent of world trade and more than half of the world’s population in 36 countries,” said Rader. “This is where things are happening, especially in IW, and our Sailors are excited and motivated. If you are looking to really have an impact, you want to be here. You are going to get the best training and opportunity to employ your skills in a potential high-end, real-world fight and the experience is going to be great for you, professionally and personally.”
For more information about joining a PACFLT reserve information warfare unit, contact the Reserve Program Director at 808-808-471-5267 or larry.m.pineda.mil@us.navy.mil.