Army officially resources 3 theater information advantage detachments

The Army has approved the official resourcing and team structure for detachments that will synchronize information capabilities at the theater level.

The department had been in a months-long process across the entire service for updating its force structure. And while it announced the intent to create three Theater Information Advantage Detachments (TIAD) within the last two years, the late February Army Force Structure Transformation plan finally approved the growth of three such organizations: one focused on the Pacific, one on Europe and a transregional one for Army Cyber Command.

These entities, with 65 soldiers per detachment, are expected to begin in fiscal 2026 after the most permanent manpower arrives in late fiscal 2025, according to Lt. Col. Rob Lodewick, an Army spokesperson. The supplementary manpower and equipment needed to constitute an initial operational capability will be on hand by mid-fiscal 2026, he added.

Recognizing the importance of information capabilities, U.S. Army Pacific previously redesignated its G39 staff, which is the staff section that deals with information activities, to the TIAD to start working this issue before the Army finalized force structure and funding.

That organization had also participated in exercises helping the Army game out the TIAD concept.

Army Cyber Command’s TIAD will provide commanders increased situational awareness of transregional threat actors’ activities in the information space, according to Lodewick, while also conducting planning and delivery of informational effects against these threats as authorized and directed.

As a transregional entity, this organization will focus on threat actors that originate beyond the Army Pacific and Army Europe-Africa theaters, but seek to make impacts inside those areas.

Despite not having any official force structure in place, in November 2023 Army Cyber Command created an initial core TIAD experimentation capability with a small staff that will conduct exercises and experiments tied to the Army’s Information Advantage campaign of learning throughout fiscal 2024 and 2025, according to Lodewick.

That experimental unit will pilot support to real-world operations where appropriate to further refine concepts of operation and requirements, and will experiment directly in an Army Europe-Africa exercise this fall. Following that event, it will conduct iterative internal exercises and experiments over the next two years.