And that's where I think the introduction of geospatial themes about two decades ago made
such a significant change in reducing risk and informing soldiers.
We're looking to speed up that process by using AI agents inside the database to do those
calculations and some of those transformations and flagging features that just obviously
don't make sense.
Welcome to the Convergence, the Army's Mad Scientist podcast.
I'm your host, Matt Sanispert, Chief of Army Mad Scientist.
Mad Scientist is a U.S. Army initiative that continually explores the future of warfare,
challenges assumptions, and collaborates with academia, industry, and government.
You can connect with us through the Mad Scientist blog at madci-blog.t2com.army.mil,
or by dropping us a line at
[email protected].
On today's episode I'll be talking with Lieutenant General James P. Eisenhower, commanding
general of the combined arms command, and Mr. Jason Fesser, Chief of the Data Generation
and Production Branch at the Army Geospatial Center.
I'll be talking to them about geospatial data impacted their careers as soldiers on the
battlefield.
What advances have been made since then, and what future technologies will be used to enhance
the process?
As always, the views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the Department
of War, the Department of the Army, or the Transformation, and Training, command.
Let's get started.
Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
It's good to be back, Matt, thank you.
Absolutely, sir.
We're very happy to have you both here.
We had had Jason on before, so Jason, if you could start us out here, just give us a quick
primer for the discussion today.
Can you define some of the terms and concepts that our listeners should be aware of with
respect to the topic of geospatial?
Geospatial covers a pretty broad spectrum of things.
Everything from maps to data to services.
You might hear and talk about Graster Data, which is satellite imagery, elevation data,
or vector data, which is points lines and polygons that have attributes.
If you think of an Excel spreadsheet, rows, or are geometries, points lines or polygons,
and columns describe those points and lines and polygons with details that are relevant
for military operations.
So, if you think about a bridge, what is its underpass, what is its width, what is its length,
what is its military load capability, would all be described in columns of information.
Geospatial services, anything that you connect to that displays of map or geospatial information,
commonly referred to as OGC compliant services or open geospatial consortium services.
These are web endpoints like Google Maps or Apple Maps that you can connect to and see
map or geospatial information.
Everyone's familiar with geospatial intelligence?
That's the combination of geospatial data or geospatial information and imagery intelligence,
and what you get from that is the detailed view of what you're looking at from an imagery
standpoint, enhanced by information about the operational environment.
So, those are just some basic terms.
And as we go through the podcast, there's other things that I need to expound upon, I'm
happy to do that.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Thank you, Jason.
It's kind of a natural stepping stone here from the last podcast we did together.
So, geospatial data, information, and services are critical components of answering the,
the quote, "where" and to a certain extent, "when" in the Army.
But more than that, geospatial data helps us understand the characteristics of any given
location and how that terrain can affect operations.
So, Lieutenant General Eisenhower, you have a lot of firsthand experience with this out
in the field.
Can you briefly tell us how you first encountered geospatial as an operational resource?
The most glaring example for me was when, actually, when Jason and I were working together
at our brigade, we were in a striker brigade in the surge in Baghdad, and it was given
a mission to displace from Baghdad up north into Deyala Province, and one of the first
areas we were going to look at was referred to as the bread basket.
And that was the first time I had known and worked with Jason in the back point for several
years.
That was the first time I watched a geospatial team embrace a unique problem said that
didn't confuse them, but it consumed them, because it was such a different geographic environment
from what we were used to in Baghdad.
And frankly, it was different and distinct from the rest of Deyala Province as significant
terrain relief in some portions.
It's uniformly flat and open in others, but this particular area called the bread basket
was characterized by water flow that was distinct and unique to that part of Iraq.
And because of that sustained water flow and irrigation, they called it the bread basket
because there were a lot of palm groves, it was dense and thick with foliage and things
that we weren't used to seeing in a desert environment.
And the analysis was so critical to inform the unit, the squadron that we sent into the
bread basket, because we realized we were going to move from a distinctly urban environment
into one that was rural and isolated, but was characterized by what we knew would be
close contact given the foliage and the limited fields of fire.
The analysis of that geospatial team provided was top notch, but I think that squadron, any
member in that squadron will tell you, if we had stumbled into that, I think it would
have put soldiers at risk.
But what Jason and the team did was create a collective understanding of the distinct
nature of that environment and how it would change how we employ it, when we dismount,
how we establish security positions, and ultimately how we engage to destroy the enemy.
And we had not been used to that and had not been introduced to that environment in what
at that point had probably been a ten-month deployment.
And so that, I think, is a great example of the capacity geospatial experts have to inform
the tactical situation and make sure that our soldiers are better prepared before they
step into something that had to adjust on the fly.
I remember how close we had to dive into that, sir.
One of the things that we had to keep in mind is we stepped through that analysis, something
that you and General Jones and General Brown and a few other leaders in the past had impressed
upon me as a young war officer was that the weapon system in a striker brigade isn't
the striker vehicle.
It's the soldiers in the back of the vehicle, right?
So as they are moving through that terrain, if they're isolated to the roads, they're focused
on the roads, constrained to the roads, where did the soldiers go when they get out?
How do we make sure that we inform the leadership so they can adapt the tactics and doctrines
to that?
When they come out of the back of the striker, they know which way to go.
And I remember it was one of our biggest concerns as we looked at maneuvering through
that area.
Yeah, I think this is a great example because a lot of times it's difficult to see the
impact that an analyst has compared to what the soldiers in the field are doing.
And this, I think, is a great way to bridge that gap.
So Jason, as the Army continues transforming to a more data-centric focus and we've got
a lot of these tools being built right now and been deployed in Maven Smart Systems,
Vantage, JIDP, how do you think geospatial data will support this new paradigm?
I think the important thing to remember or the important thing to focus on is that the
Army is recognizing that data is material and as material has value.
We're building a large ecosystem of resources online in the cloud and investing in technology
and software that can exploit that new logistics architecture for data.
And that's essentially what it is when we look at all the large data sets around the
Army, bringing them together into something like Vantage, exploiting them, something inside
of something like Maven Smart Systems or AIDP or any of the other command control systems
that are coming out such as Titan or recognizing that data is important and has to be in a location
in which we can share and resource that data to decision makers all over the world.
Geospatial data plays a role because location is everything in the Army.
When we talk about how we lead, when we talk about operations, when we talk about intelligence,
when we talk about sustainment logistics or even effects, the most important thing we
have to communicate is where, where is an important context even in your everyday life?
If I were to tell you that there was a major accident on the highway, the first thing
you're going to do is think where along that highway.
For everyone, where is the first discriminator in terms of determining if the information
is important to us?
If I tell you that there's a fire in the city outside, the first thing you're going
to ask me is where is the fire?
From there, you start determining if this is important to you.
Is this significant to your family, to your loved ones, to your co-workers?
Where is an important discriminator?
I think that's where geospatial data is going to have a big role as we look at this new
architecture, these larger architectures where we're storing data, exposing data and sharing
data on a enterprise scale.
Thanks, Jason.
Often, the technology moves so quickly that a large organization like the Army has to
kind of adapt on the fly or lags behind.
This question kind of gets to that point.
Gentlemen, how could this change in the future given the new architecture and capabilities
the Army is acquiring, who plays a role in this future with respect to geospatial
infrastructure standards products and support.
I'm going to answer that question by following up on Jason's previous response here.
But to me as a consumer, a commander, a maneuver commander, that data is really important
because ultimately it addresses risk, where risk exists, but also where we can mitigate
and risk or reduce it for the soldier when employed.
An example, if a geospatial team conducts more traditional analysis of what is go, slow
go or no go terrain.
The very stark reminders and rehearsals and in preparation of, "You can't go into this
area because your vehicle will become mine," or, "You can't go into this area dismounted
because the ground is so soft that you're going to be up to your knees and it's just going
to greatly reduce your mobility and mobility is a form of security."
Those types of things are really important and that's where I think the introduction of
geospatial teams about two decades ago made such a significant change in reducing risk
and informing soldiers.
But ultimately, that risk that the data collected and then is subsequently analyzed, that risk
it informs gets us to a point where commanders can make the right decisions and inform soldiers
before they run into a situation that it allows them to make decisions at a faster speed
and they're better informed.
You know, there's a phrase I'm not quite comfortable with decision dominance, but ultimately
any decision speed is more intuitive.
That's what gets soldiers to a point where they can make a decision quicker because they
have been briefed or they've conducted a visual or even a virtual reconnaissance based
off the analysis provided by these teams.
That gets them to a point where they can anticipate their need to make a decision or take
a specific action to gain positional advantage and ultimately out decide the enemy.
Your point about infrastructure is really good too and I'll pass this over to Jason.
But the more data we collect, the more we can get to a point where we can use algorithms
and when we learn to prompt effectively to get us to where when we're asking the right
questions, it can provide the analysis that it might have taken a staff days to provide
in a matter of seconds.
Again, this also gets the decision speed, but ultimately I think it can get us to a point
where we can use the data and then create the algorithms that help us transition to
a genetic decision making.
Jim Eisenhower always wants a human to make a decision, so I'm not advocating for machines
making decisions that affect soldiers and their survivability.
But I do think that it can help us make decisions much faster and in doing so, we reduce or
lessen the risk we put on soldiers as we employ them.
So, who's going to play a role in terms of infrastructure, products in support, Army
CTO, Army CIO, obviously very important Alex Miller, I know General Eisenhower knows Alex
from his time at the Pentagon, but also the geospatial information officer who's responsible
for establishing standards for geospatial information and then products and services
as we get closer towards a more fused information environment.
And one of the things that we're looking at here in AGC is how can we employ some of
these AI agents to make low-risk calculations or assessments on vector data to fill in some
of the gaps.
And when I talk about low-risk, I'm talking about basic calculations that you would make
with vector data.
What is the length of this road?
What is the area of this polygon or this building?
These are operations that take geospatial analysts a long time to compute when you have billions
of records right now and my database were sitting on 12.6 billion features around the world.
And then only 1.6 billion features have been converted into cartographic quality data
sets.
And that's just within the last year.
We test features against ontology, we could test features against the schema, but ultimately
a go-no-go flag will speed up the processing of this data.
So then who makes the products?
I think as we move into this new reality for data and the speed of decisions as generalizing
how we're talked about, we have to move the computation to the left.
We used to talk about defeating IEDs moving to the left of the bang.
I'm looking at how do we move to the left of the customer.
As for the customer, so that at the point of need, they have the product they need without
necessarily leveraging the network, which may put them at risk on the battlefield.
If they are out of reach of a geospatial team at the brigade or a division or core level,
they have a tool that can give them some basic level analysis.
So I think that's what we'll see more of as we get to production.
The general jmines and howards of the world will have a question that they can ask the
system and have confidence that there is a geospatial engineer or geospatial analyst that
has processed the data in such a way that can answer the question reliably.
I think we're really going to get faster at that and this is where geospatial techs and
their teams are going to play such a critical role.
But the analysis chase and talked about is what we really got to refine given our ability
to collect data and then provide the analyzed data or the analysis that's actually useful
back to the maneuver leaders and the soldiers on the ground.
I think the globe is imaged about 11 times a day, but only 20 percent of that is analyzed.
So there's great opportunity space for our geospatial experts to find ways to use that
data to speed the analysis, get them to a point where you have to put a human's discretion
or judgement into the analysis and then subsequently transmit that down to where it's going to
be implemented in the field and I think that's got the potential to make a real difference.
Again, it's about positional advantage and decision speed and those things are only
going to increase with the analysis that comes from these geospatial teams.
In the operational context that we learned on the ground, major jmines and howards, major
Ombar Jones taught me what was important to the formation, was important to the mission,
and that culture within the brigade informed the analysis, the operational context informed
the analysis that we made more relevant products or could more importantly anticipate the
staff's needs.
So that interaction with the three and the five and the six gave us the ability to anticipate
what was coming down pipe in terms of operations, major Eisenhower moved me to the left to receipt
of mission, the Warno phase of the MDMP process when we were in Baghdad so that I could anticipate
all of the mapping requirements with C2 systems and that we could get after cutting data
faster to put into all of the striker vehicles, all the command and control systems and make
sure we right size the data set.
The analysis and the data is something that I think maybe a lot of people take for granted
and I do too, not being familiar with geospatial as a topic before doing these podcasts and
it's something that I encountered when I was doing some threat support for an FCC dev comm
event and I came prepared to do a threat brief when you know here's how the adversaries
going to challenge you.
And one of the biggest challenges we came away with was we were ultimately defeated initially
by sand, the makeup of the sand, the composition of it is something that at least from a threat
perspective, I wasn't thinking about, but when you get those troops in a littoral setting
and they have to land on a beach and they have to move cargo, do you know what sand that
is?
Is it going to defeat a wheeled vehicle, attract vehicle?
It's something that's super important before you even engage with the enemy.
And so I think sir, you know, I think you kind of brought that up, you know, when you land
on the ground there, you're going to be mired in the sand or you're going to be able to,
you know, what vehicles can you use? It's something that maybe we don't think about initially,
but is going to be maybe make or break to an operation.
Matt, I got a great example of that recently where I learned a phrase, I never thought
I'd have to know in the army, but that was subsurface hydrograph.
When I was conducting operations with the first multi-domain task force out in the first
and second island chains, we were trying to use army watercraft to conduct tactical landings
where you're going to drop around and what we didn't realize was that subsurface hydrograph
had been assessed and analyzed since World War II.
So at that point, we're talking 70, 80 years afterwards.
I'm talking to Coast Guard experts, talking to some naval experts, and they're all kind
of shoulders rugged because we just don't have that data.
And we haven't made an effort to collect it because frankly, we haven't needed it.
That really affects the pilot of a landing surface vessel and then affects your ability
to employ any type of capability that you just assumed you'd be able to get on land.
It's awfully enticing to see an LSV drop ramp and something drive right off of it, but
in the real environment in which we haven't operated routinely, the analysis that Jason
talks about is what becomes decisive when you realize that my primary challenge might
not be the enemy, I'll be getting to a position where I can employ the capability I'm charged
with, employing against them.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's a great example.
The amount of variables that we have to deal with can seem overwhelming.
I'm happy to know that we do have folks like Jason who are trying to figure these out
and get the details for us.
So let's, I want to talk a little bit more about the emerging technology side of it.
So certainly, next generation constructive is one of the army's top priorities.
real-world geospatial data need to
extend into the synthetic training environment or should synthetic environments only approximate
the effects of the real world environments? What's your thoughts on that?
I think it has to integrate into the environment directly. We need to get to a point in our army
where the fighting that we conduct virtually by necessity, divisions, coerced theater armies,
large organizations, because frankly we don't have the space and we don't have the money to
employ formations that large. We have to train virtually. Those virtual training opportunities
are quite realistic. I've been in several of them myself and they can really stretch a staff
and build readiness, putting you through the demands and realities of employing a large
formation. However, at this point we're starting to make the transition. I think next-gen
constructive is critical to that because we are sophisticated enough military force
that the systems and processes and in particular the technology we use to fight
should be the same we use to train. What we can't allow ourselves to do is create an
excuse-all framework where we rely on a bespoke technology to replicate something in a virtual
or constructive environment, but that technology or that process is not what the soldier would use
in contact and extremists. We owe the soldier the same thing because then you build the proficiency
that we know they're going to need later on in contact. I think it's a necessity. I'm pleased
with our pursuits and next-gen constructive. I think it will be a critical update to how we
train these large organizations, echelons, division and above, but it's necessarily virtual.
What we've got to do, what we owe the soldier and every formation is the ability to and the
confidence to know that the systems, the tools they're using and those virtual environments are
the very same systems and tools and present the same reality that they're going to use
in contact in a fight. That concept, and I agree with you, reminds me of we had a guest several
years ago on the podcast who was actually a sports journalist and he was covering emerging technologies
or new paradigms within the sports world because we kind of look at soldiers and athletes
similarly. What he had found out is some of the traditional notions of how to practice,
especially for baseball players where they would go on the field and take batting practice and the
coach would be throwing 70 miles an hour or whatever right over the plate allowing them to hit it.
And from some of the studies that he came up with, it was essentially that it's actually
worse to practice that way for you in the long run because that's not what you're going to be
hitting off in a real game. So you're essentially practicing the wrong thing. So the mantra practice
like you play was big with him and I think it's the same thing here. You want to be training
and as realistic an environment as possible because that is what you're going to encounter when
you get there in real life and then practicing to something else or something lesser is probably
going to be detrimental to you. Absolutely. The CTCs that come at training centers have been
incredible. And frankly, they're the envy of the militaries of the world because of
our ability to replicate in a live environment what combat would be like. And not only that,
but then stretch the other warfighting functions all the way back through the sustainment requirements.
That realistic training I think is what helped us wins a decisively desert storm.
And so we're I think enamored rightly so with the live environment, but the reality is
to really stretch and train to standard these large formations with staff that have to synchronize
capabilities across kilometers and sometimes countries. You've got to have a virtual component.
And that virtual component, we have an obligation to make sure replicates reality. Absolutely,
sir. I agree 100%. Jason, given the scope of the potential operations globally and the objectives
that Lieutenant General Eisenhower identified for next generation constructive, can you talk
about from your perspective what it would take to meet these needs? Absolutely. I think the first
thing that's going to take is a lot of partnerships. There's a lot of stakeholders within simulation
world. We have the STCFP, which is a synthetic training environment cross-functional team members.
You have PEO stride, who's responsible for modeling and simulation. You have the Army Geospatial
Center, who is working on one-world terrain standards in one-world terrain standards and formats.
Correct me if I'm wrong, sir, but I think there's like 34 different simulation systems right now
that are employed within a standard warfighter. Each of those taking a different piece of terrain.
So, one-world terrain gives you a single terrain format for all 34 systems. And when we achieve that
kind of synergy from a system standpoint, we can increase the scale and the scope of the data
that we create to support those systems. So, if you don't have to make NTC 34 times in 34
different ways, then you can do NTC plus California. That kind of efficiency helps us achieve
what General Eisenhower mentioned in his previous comments. This is important that we bridge the gap
between operational and terrain. To your point about training as you fight and in your example,
training as you play. If the terrain data does not force the staff to think about things like
you were mentioning sand, you're referring specifically to sharp sand versus round sand,
which is a thing. Sharp sand allows wheeled vehicles to drive over it very easily, round sand rolls
underneath the tires and you can become mired in the sand, representing that kind of soils information
inside of one-world terrain at scale, challenges, commanders, and the staff to find solutions to
real-world problems before they actually face them. And that's absolutely critical that we work
to synchronize all the data, scale up our production and then not only that tie that into other data
sources that are made available through our new data infrastructure so that we can bring in
outside data, whether it's from NASA, NOAA, any other government organization or host nation
or partner nation or coalition nation that may have data over that same piece of terrain.
Now bringing these other assets in and tying them into the terrain data takes a lot of effort,
a lot of design. And so we have to make sure that we are prepared to receive, integrate,
and display that information in a way that the Combine Arm Center or any other exercise can
execute at scale. Jason, you're exactly right. One of the things that we know is foundational to
the next-gen constructive effort is that one-world terrain WGS-84 specific because if the
parametrics that are presented in the simulation don't represent reality, we're training bad habits.
And Matt, you mentioned this earlier, using the baseball analogy, the difference between
batting practice and then really facing the picture at speed and again. The staff will react
to that over time. And what we don't want is to present a situation where the staff's been
conditioned to expect the movement of vehicles or the employment of indirect fires to be different
than what we know reality presents. We owe that level of detail to them and that's why
the standardization here and that is foundational like one-world terrain is going to be so important.
Not to mention the fact that you're building familiarity because it is so accurate
with the terrain and yet those soldiers don't have to be on it to start to garner an association
of familiarity with the area of the ground, the terrain in which they might fight.
Lieutenant General Eisenhower, question for you here, as you look back through your career and how
data and analysis has helped you as a staff officer, can you forecast into the future what kind of
changes we might see as it pertains to a data-centric force and emerging capabilities kind of,
think broadly here? Yeah, I think the value of data, I referenced this a little bit earlier
in our conversation. I tell people all the time for decades we've left terabytes of usable data
on the floor of the central corridor at the National Training Center or at Fullerton DZ at the
joint readiness training center. We are now working to standardize what we collect with knowing
that it's going to be dynamic. We're going to change it continually as we continue to find
other data to find useful, but we've got to store that data because it can ultimately inform
how we coach decision makers and the information we provide. The analogy I like to use is
I think everybody's familiar with watching football coaches, whether it's college football
on the Saturday or NFL coaches on Sunday, and they've got their laminated cards. You can't
quite read what's on it. They'll hold it over their mouse. You can't read lips in terms of what
they're saying and their microphone talking to their coordinators, but ultimately that card
is a cheat sheet that presents data analytics. Based off the situation they're faced with,
they make data informed decisions that increase the likelihood of success, whether they're
on offense or defense. So it's the fourth quarter, you're down by three, you're in the red zone,
your first drink quarterback's injured, you've got a second string quarterback in there,
and he knows he's got three plays, but one is far more likely to succeed against this particular
defense in this particular weather. And the coach makes that call or the coach follows their instinct.
But what's key there is the coach has a choice. He's got data that's informing that decision,
but he's also got instinct developed over years of ostensibly years of training and coaching.
I think we should be able to give that to our decision-makers in contact.
Now it's not going to be a laminated card, but ultimately the more we collect
force-on-force data that we get from live events like the CTCs, but also the data that we collect
from modeling and simulating task-organized units against plans that we have
across the globe should a requirement
or rise somewhere for large-scale combat operations,
we should be running those models 24/7.
And it continues to create a data pool.
So then ultimately, when a theater army
or a core commander inputs his composition and disposition
and considers the enemy composition and disposition
and understands the terrain on which they're likely to fight,
they have a genetic decision-making tools
that recommend courses of action,
with a high confidence percentile.
And they can use that
or they can rely solely on their instinct
that's developed over years and years
or they can combine the two.
And I think what it does ultimately is it shrinks
the time required with which we're familiar today
for staffs to conduct proper analysis.
And it gets us to a point where we're making decisions faster.
- Sir, I couldn't agree more.
And I think the football analogy is spot on as well.
And ultimately it goes back to what you said before.
The US Army, ultimately the decision makers
are going to be humans, but they should be informed.
The information that's gathered, the analysis,
the AI tools that we have, their decision support tools.
They're not gonna make the decision for us,
but if the decision maker is not considering them,
I think we're doing ourselves a disservice.
Ultimately, it comes down to how they decide
to interpret that information.
Can I throw one more question in there?
If you have the chance to tell a young soldier
or even a young analyst, any piece of advice
when it comes to how geospatial information has helped you,
what advice would you give to those young soldiers
or young analysts?
- Matt, that's a great question.
And I think what I would tell them is to do two things,
or where actually there's two demographics
I'd wanna talk to, for the consumer, for the young soldier,
I'd encourage them to go up and talk
to the geospatial team, ask them what they do,
it won't take long, they'll be thrilled to tell you,
but until you understand the true capacity,
and I only learned this through great coaching
from experts like Jason.
Until you understand true capacity,
you're not going to be informed sufficiently
at the point where you're comfortable integrating
that expertise into your own decision maker.
And it increases the risk presented to the operation,
where you've got to function.
And I think it's just your own benefit
to make sure you fully understand what they can do.
You're not going to be a geospatial expert,
but if you know what they can bring to the table,
and you know the analytical capacity they have,
and the expertise that informs that analytical capacity,
then you have the ability to ask in the right questions,
and say things like, hey, tell me where am I gonna run
into mobility problems?
Or when is the environmental conditions gonna challenge me
from just a physical standpoint for me and my squad?
And I think it's really important.
The other thing that I would tell them is,
make sure you always ask this question of the geospatial text.
What question should I be asking you
that I did not, because they're gonna know that.
The other side of the coin there, though,
is that for the demographic with expertise,
I'll tell geospatial teams this all the time,
is I need you to physically come up to me
and pull my sleeve and tell me, you're not listening,
or I found something critical,
or I need you to take a look at this.
But I think we often feel to do that.
I learned this as a young lieutenant,
watching a slice element come to a company at GRTC.
It was an engineer squad.
But this engineer squad leader and E6,
physically went up to the company commander,
grabbed him by the sleeve and said, hey, sir,
when you have the time, I need 120 seconds,
two minutes to tell you how I think you should employ me.
That E6 was saying that to a captain in command,
was confident enough in his own expertise,
but also knew how to prop the leader,
and then quickly get them spun up,
so that they were employed proper.
And I think that open communication
between both demographics is really important,
so that the organization can reach potential,
and truly present the dilemmas at speed
that are gonna cause the enemy some trouble.
- I couldn't agree more with everything you just said, sir.
From the analyst standpoint, if I could comment,
I would say, as someone who has supported multiple staffs
and multiple scales,
it is important for you to understand your leaders.
It is important for you to engage with your leaders
and understand how they consume information,
where they are from, what kind of hobbies they have,
what did they get their degree in?
And what this gives you is a very clear understanding
of how to present information in a way that is structured
into provide context that is easily and quickly,
quickly consumed and understood by the leadership.
I remember having this conversation
with General Eisenhower talking to him about his master's thesis.
I believe it was on the Monroe doctrine,
if I remember correctly, sir.
I know he's big into military history,
connecting terrain, connecting operations
within the context of military history and terrain,
made it easy for me to communicate with him
in a very short discourse so that he had the information
that he need and the context and the importance
of that information.
So I'd encourage every analyst, did your commander go to Sam's?
Did your staff go to Sam's?
They went to Sam's, that means they consume information,
textual information, very, very quickly.
They could read faster than anyone else on the planet.
So don't be afraid of giving them textual information.
Do they have degree in physics?
Contextualize the dimensions of the operational space
with where they are from.
If you're from Lubbock, Texas,
how big is Lubbock, Texas versus the area
that you are about to assault, defend, maneuver through?
Putting those kinds of contexts, providing those contexts,
two commanders or the staff will help them understand
the scale and scope of the challenge and fundamental.
This also dovetails into what we were talking about
with the information infrastructure, the data infrastructure,
the tools that we are making, the agentech AI tools,
the automation that we are employing
in terms of MSS dashboards and all this information
that is available to us.
We need to be able to contextualize it in a way
that every soldier understands it
the way they consume information.
And I think we will start moving closer towards
understanding information the way we want to see it
on a common map background, on a common piece of terrain.
And so that's what makes geospatial
sort of cross-cutting capability is that the terrain
never changes, but how we present information
can be tailored in a way that the staff of the commander
can understand very, very quickly.
- Great points.
I'm really glad that I got that last question in.
It's always good to hear from folks
who have been doing something for a long time.
I want to thank you guys.
This was an awesome conversation.
Like I said earlier in the podcast,
the types of data that you're looking at, Jason,
are often things that maybe some folks take for granted.
There are so many variables when it comes to planning
and operation or conducting an operation.
And a lot of them we don't realize are significant,
but thankfully you do and your analysts
are taking a look at those.
So first and foremost, I want to thank you for coming on
and talking to us today, General Eisenhower.
Thank you for making the time.
And Jason, thank you for coming back.
- Thank you, General Eisenhower for being here.
Having your perspective on this is really important.
And thank you for contributing.
- Hey Matt, and Jason, thanks.
Jason and I ate a lot of dirt together.
You bond through some pretty difficult events.
And so anytime I get to talk to Jason and see him
is the best part of my week.
But Matt, I challenge you, you'll be humble.
And you may not put this on the podcast,
but I ask you to consider putting it on here.
Thanks for hosting the podcast,
because professional dialogue is a really important part
of how we prepare for the next fight.
And the value of podcasts and the attractiveness
of podcasts that soldiers at age group
from the newest up to the oldest and they are really valuable.
And so I appreciate Matt, your work on this podcast
and investing not only in the army,
but I think our entire joint force
by presenting topics that every one of us can learn from.
That's really important.
And I just ask you to keep doing it, if you ever need help,
please let me know how I can support it.
Because I think it's really valuable to our profession
and the corresponding expertise we must maintain.
- Roger Sherwell, thank you very much for those kind words.
Yeah, that is one of the hopes that these discussions
will help folks out there learn
and hopefully use them as a resource.
So thank you again.
- Thanks, James.
- Thanks for listening to the convergence.
I'd like to thank our guests,
Lieutenant General James P. Eisenhower
and Mr. Jason Fesser.
You can connect with us through the Mad Scientist blog
at madsciblog.t2com.army.mil
or by dropping us a line at
[email protected].
Finally, if you enjoyed this podcast,
please consider giving us a rating or review
on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you access it.
This feedback helps us improve future episodes
of the convergence and allows us to reach
a bigger and broader audience.
PodcastTranscript AI