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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.
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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.
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Welcome to the Convergence, the Army's Mad Scientist podcast. I'm your host, Matt Sanispert, Chief of Army madsci. Mad Scientist is a US 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@madssci blog.t 2com army mil or by dropping us a line at armymadscimail.com 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 Geo Geospatial Center. I'll be talking to them about how geospatial data impacted their careers as soldiers on the battlefield, what advances have been made since then, and what future technologies
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will be used to enhance the process.
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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.
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Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
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It's good to be back, Matt. Thank you.
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Thanks for having me, Matt. It's good to be with you and Jason. Jason and I first met each other in 2005 in Mosul, and I've never gotten to work closely with you, Matt, But I appreciate you 1 hosting the podcast, but 2 asking me to join you all today.
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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?
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So geospatial covers a pretty broad specific spectrum of things, everything from maps to data to services. So you might hear it talk about raster 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 are geometries, points, lines, or polygons, and columns describe those points, 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 leng, what is its military load capability would all be described in columns of information. Geospatial services. Anything that you connect to that displays a map or geospatial information, commonly referred to as OGC Compliance 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. 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, if there's other things that I need to expound upon, I'm happy to do that.
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Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you, Jason. It's kind of a. A natural stepping stone here from the. The last podcast we did together. So geospatial data, information and services are critical components of answering 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?
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The most glaring example for me was when actually when Jason and I were working together. Our brigade, we were in a Stryker brigade in the surge in Baghdad, was given a mission to displace from Baghdad up north into Diyala Province. And one of the first areas we were going to look at was referred to as the breadbasket. And that was the first time I had known and worked with Jason by that point, for several years. That was the first time I watched the geospatial team embrace a unique problem set 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 dialogue. Province has significant terrain relief in some portions. It's uniformly flat and open in others. But this particular area, called the breadbasket, 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 breadbasket 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 breadbasket, 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 that 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 when we dismount, how we establish security positions, and then 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 10 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 and have to adjust on the fly.
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I remember how close we had to dive into that, sir. One of the things that we had to keep in mind as we step 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 warrant officer, was that the weapon system in a Stryker brigade isn't the Stryker 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 do the soldiers go when they get out? How do we make sure that we inform the leadership so they can adapt the tactics and doctrine so that when they come out of the back of the striker, they know which way to go. And that was one of the, I remember it was one of our biggest concerns as we looked at maneuvering through that area.
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Yeah, I think this, this is a great example because a lot of times it's difficult to see the impact that, that an analyst has compared to, 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 being deployed. Maven Smart Systems, Vantage aidp. How do you think geospatial data will support this new paradigm?
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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, it 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 and control systems that are coming out, such as Titan, we're 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, 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 coworkers? So where's an important discriminator? And 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 an enterprise scale.
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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. And so this question kind of gets to that point. So, 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?
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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 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 mired, 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 in mud. 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, at a faster speed and they're, they're better informed. You know, there's a phrase I'm not quite comfortable with decision dominance, but ultimately I think 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 agentic 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.
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So who's going to play a role in terms of infrastructure, products and support? Army cto, army cio, Obviously very important. Alex Miller. I know General Eisenhower knows Alex from his time in 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. 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? 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 in my database, we're 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'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. We could 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 General Eisenhower talked about, we have to move the computation to the left. We used to talk about defeating IEDs moving to the left of the bank. I'm looking at how do we move to the left of the customer process 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 division or corps 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 Jim Eisenhower's of the world will have a question that they can ask the system and have confidence that there was a geospatial engineer or geospatial analyst that has processed the data in such a way that can answer the question reliably.
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And I think we're only 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 Jason talked about is what we've 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% 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 judgment 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
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these geospatial teams and the operational context that we learn on the ground. Major Jim Eisenhower, Major Omar 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 a pipe in terms of operations. Major Eisenhower moved me to 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 for the 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.
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The analysis in 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 Devcom event and I came prepared to do a threat brief when here's how the adversary is 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, 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, when you land on the ground there, you're going to be mired in the sand, are you going to be able to, you know, what vehicles can you use? It's, it's something that maybe we don't think about initially, but is going to be maybe make or break to an operation.
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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 hydrography. 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 a ramp. And what we didn't realize was that subsurface hydrography hadn't 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 shoulder shrugging 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. But 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, but be getting to a position where I can employ the capability I'm charged with employing against it.
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Yeah, exactly. So that's, 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. Does 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, Matt?
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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, corps, theater, armies, large organizations, because frankly, we don't have the space and we don't have the monies 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 NextGen constructive is critical to that because we are a 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. And what we can't allow ourselves to do is create an excusable 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. In extremis, 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. So I think it's a necessity. I'm pleased with our pursuits in 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 at every formation is the ability to, and the confidence to know that the systems, the tools they're using in those virtual environments are the very same systems and tools and present the same reality that they're going to use in contact. You know, fine.
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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, he was covering emerging technologies or, or new paradigms within the sports world because we, you know, we kind of look at soldiers and athletes similarly. And what he had found out is some of the, the traditional notions of, of how to practice, especially for baseball players, where they would go on the field and, 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, you want to be training in as realistic an environment as possible, because that is what you're going to encounter when, when you get there in real life. And practicing to something else or something lesser is probably going to be detrimental to you.
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Absolutely. The CTCs, the Combat 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 war fighting functions all the way back through the sustainment requirements. That realistic training, I think is what helped us win so 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, these large formations with staffs 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.
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Absolutely, sir. Agree 100%. Jason, given the scope of the potential operations globally and the objectives that Lt. Gen. Eisenhower identified for next generation Constructive, can you talk about from your perspective what it would take to meet these needs?
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Absolutely. I think the first thing it's going to take is a lot of partnerships. There's a lot of stakeholders within Simulation World. You have STE cft, which is a synthetic training environment, Cross functional team members. You have PEO stri, 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 train as you fight and in your example, train 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 a 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. And bringing these other assets in and t them into the trained 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 combined arm center or any other exercise can execute at scale.
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Jason, you're exactly right. One of the things that we we know is foundational to the next gen constructive effort is that one world terrain WGS84 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 a pitcher at speed in the game, 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 is foundational, why 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, the ground, the terrain in which they might fight.
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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.
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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 that we 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 a Saturday or NFL coaches on a Saturday, Sunday. And they've got their laminated cards, you can't quite read what's on it. They'll hold it over their mouth so you can't hear or read lips in terms of what they're saying in their microphone talking to their coordinators. But ultimately that card is a cheat sheet that presents data analytics. And 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 string 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 arise somewhere for large scale combat operations, we should be running those models 24 7. And it continues to create a data pool so that ultimately when a theater army or a corps commander inputs his composition and disposition and considers the enemy composition and disposition and understands the terrain on which they are likely to fight, they have agentic 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.
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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, the AI tools that we have, their decision support tools, they're not going to 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 had 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, those young soldiers or young analysts?
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Matt, that's a great question. And I think what I would tell them is to do two things, or actually there's two demographics I'd want to 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 the true capacity, you're not going to be informed sufficiently to a point where you're comfortable integrating that expertise into your own decision making. And it increases the risk presented to the operation where you've got to function. And I think it's just to 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 them the right questions and say things like, hey, tell me where I'm, you know, where am I going to run into mobility problems? Or when is the environmental conditions going to challenge me from just a physical standpoint for me and my squad, I think that'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 going to 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 fail to do That I learned this as a young lieutenant watching a slice element come to a company at jrtc. It was an engineer squad, but this engineer squad leader, an 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 prompt the leader and then quickly get them spun up so that they were employed properly. And I think that open communication between both demographics is really important so that the organization can reach its potential and truly present the dilemmas at speed that are going to cause the enemy some trouble.
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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 at multiple scales, it is important for you to understand your leaders, and it's 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 and to 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 a 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 to commanders or the staff will help them understand the scale and scope of the challenge in front of them. This also dovetails into what we were talking about with the information infrastructure, the data infrastructure, the tools that we are making the agentic 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. So cross cutting capability is that the terrain never changes, but how we present information can be tailored in a way that the staff and the commander can understand very, very quickly.
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Great points, and 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 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 an 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.
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Thank you, General Eisenhower, for being here. Having your perspective on this is really important. And thank you for contributing.
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Hey, Matt. And Jason. Thanks. Jason and I ate a lot of dirt together. You bond through some. 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 there. 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 as soldiers, an age group from the newest up to the oldest, I think is 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. 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.
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Roger, sir. Well, 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.
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Thanks James.
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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@madsci.blog.t2.com, Army mil or by dropping us a line at army madscimail.com finally, if you enjoyed this podcast, please consider giving us a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you accessed it. This feedback helps us improve future episodes of the Convergence and allows us to reach a bigger and broader audience.
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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.
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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.
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Welcome to the Convergence, the Army's Mad Scientist podcast. I'm your host, Matt Sanispert, Chief of Army madsci. Mad Scientist is a US 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@madssci blog.t 2com army mil or by dropping us a line at armymadscimail.com 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 Geo Geospatial Center. I'll be talking to them about how geospatial data impacted their careers as soldiers on the battlefield, what advances have been made since then, and what future technologies
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will be used to enhance the process.
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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.
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Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
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It's good to be back, Matt. Thank you.
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Thanks for having me, Matt. It's good to be with you and Jason. Jason and I first met each other in 2005 in Mosul, and I've never gotten to work closely with you, Matt, But I appreciate you 1 hosting the podcast, but 2 asking me to join you all today.
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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?
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So geospatial covers a pretty broad specific spectrum of things, everything from maps to data to services. So you might hear it talk about raster 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 are geometries, points, lines, or polygons, and columns describe those points, 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 leng, what is its military load capability would all be described in columns of information. Geospatial services. Anything that you connect to that displays a map or geospatial information, commonly referred to as OGC Compliance 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. 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, if there's other things that I need to expound upon, I'm happy to do that.
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Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you, Jason. It's kind of a. A natural stepping stone here from the. The last podcast we did together. So geospatial data, information and services are critical components of answering 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?
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The most glaring example for me was when actually when Jason and I were working together. Our brigade, we were in a Stryker brigade in the surge in Baghdad, was given a mission to displace from Baghdad up north into Diyala Province. And one of the first areas we were going to look at was referred to as the breadbasket. And that was the first time I had known and worked with Jason by that point, for several years. That was the first time I watched the geospatial team embrace a unique problem set 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 dialogue. Province has significant terrain relief in some portions. It's uniformly flat and open in others. But this particular area, called the breadbasket, 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 breadbasket 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 breadbasket, 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 that 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 when we dismount, how we establish security positions, and then 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 10 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 and have to adjust on the fly.
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I remember how close we had to dive into that, sir. One of the things that we had to keep in mind as we step 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 warrant officer, was that the weapon system in a Stryker brigade isn't the Stryker 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 do the soldiers go when they get out? How do we make sure that we inform the leadership so they can adapt the tactics and doctrine so that when they come out of the back of the striker, they know which way to go. And that was one of the, I remember it was one of our biggest concerns as we looked at maneuvering through that area.
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Yeah, I think this, this is a great example because a lot of times it's difficult to see the impact that, that an analyst has compared to, 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 being deployed. Maven Smart Systems, Vantage aidp. How do you think geospatial data will support this new paradigm?
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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, it 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 and control systems that are coming out, such as Titan, we're 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, 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 coworkers? So where's an important discriminator? And 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 an enterprise scale.
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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. And so this question kind of gets to that point. So, 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?
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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 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 mired, 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 in mud. 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, at a faster speed and they're, they're better informed. You know, there's a phrase I'm not quite comfortable with decision dominance, but ultimately I think 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 agentic 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.
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So who's going to play a role in terms of infrastructure, products and support? Army cto, army cio, Obviously very important. Alex Miller. I know General Eisenhower knows Alex from his time in 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. 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? 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 in my database, we're 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'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. We could 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 General Eisenhower talked about, we have to move the computation to the left. We used to talk about defeating IEDs moving to the left of the bank. I'm looking at how do we move to the left of the customer process 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 division or corps 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 Jim Eisenhower's of the world will have a question that they can ask the system and have confidence that there was a geospatial engineer or geospatial analyst that has processed the data in such a way that can answer the question reliably.
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And I think we're only 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 Jason talked about is what we've 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% 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 judgment 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
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these geospatial teams and the operational context that we learn on the ground. Major Jim Eisenhower, Major Omar 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 a pipe in terms of operations. Major Eisenhower moved me to 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 for the 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.
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The analysis in 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 Devcom event and I came prepared to do a threat brief when here's how the adversary is 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, 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, when you land on the ground there, you're going to be mired in the sand, are you going to be able to, you know, what vehicles can you use? It's, it's something that maybe we don't think about initially, but is going to be maybe make or break to an operation.
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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 hydrography. 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 a ramp. And what we didn't realize was that subsurface hydrography hadn't 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 shoulder shrugging 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. But 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, but be getting to a position where I can employ the capability I'm charged with employing against it.
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Yeah, exactly. So that's, 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. Does 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, Matt?
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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, corps, theater, armies, large organizations, because frankly, we don't have the space and we don't have the monies 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 NextGen constructive is critical to that because we are a 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. And what we can't allow ourselves to do is create an excusable 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. In extremis, 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. So I think it's a necessity. I'm pleased with our pursuits in 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 at every formation is the ability to, and the confidence to know that the systems, the tools they're using in those virtual environments are the very same systems and tools and present the same reality that they're going to use in contact. You know, fine.
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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, he was covering emerging technologies or, or new paradigms within the sports world because we, you know, we kind of look at soldiers and athletes similarly. And what he had found out is some of the, the traditional notions of, of how to practice, especially for baseball players, where they would go on the field and, 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, you want to be training in as realistic an environment as possible, because that is what you're going to encounter when, when you get there in real life. And practicing to something else or something lesser is probably going to be detrimental to you.
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Absolutely. The CTCs, the Combat 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 war fighting functions all the way back through the sustainment requirements. That realistic training, I think is what helped us win so 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, these large formations with staffs 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.
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Absolutely, sir. Agree 100%. Jason, given the scope of the potential operations globally and the objectives that Lt. Gen. Eisenhower identified for next generation Constructive, can you talk about from your perspective what it would take to meet these needs?
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Absolutely. I think the first thing it's going to take is a lot of partnerships. There's a lot of stakeholders within Simulation World. You have STE cft, which is a synthetic training environment, Cross functional team members. You have PEO stri, 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 train as you fight and in your example, train 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 a 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. And bringing these other assets in and t them into the trained 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 combined arm center or any other exercise can execute at scale.
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Jason, you're exactly right. One of the things that we we know is foundational to the next gen constructive effort is that one world terrain WGS84 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 a pitcher at speed in the game, 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 is foundational, why 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, the ground, the terrain in which they might fight.
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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.
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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 that we 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 a Saturday or NFL coaches on a Saturday, Sunday. And they've got their laminated cards, you can't quite read what's on it. They'll hold it over their mouth so you can't hear or read lips in terms of what they're saying in their microphone talking to their coordinators. But ultimately that card is a cheat sheet that presents data analytics. And 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 string 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 arise somewhere for large scale combat operations, we should be running those models 24 7. And it continues to create a data pool so that ultimately when a theater army or a corps commander inputs his composition and disposition and considers the enemy composition and disposition and understands the terrain on which they are likely to fight, they have agentic 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.
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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, the AI tools that we have, their decision support tools, they're not going to 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 had 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, those young soldiers or young analysts?
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Matt, that's a great question. And I think what I would tell them is to do two things, or actually there's two demographics I'd want to 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 the true capacity, you're not going to be informed sufficiently to a point where you're comfortable integrating that expertise into your own decision making. And it increases the risk presented to the operation where you've got to function. And I think it's just to 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 them the right questions and say things like, hey, tell me where I'm, you know, where am I going to run into mobility problems? Or when is the environmental conditions going to challenge me from just a physical standpoint for me and my squad, I think that'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 going to 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 fail to do That I learned this as a young lieutenant watching a slice element come to a company at jrtc. It was an engineer squad, but this engineer squad leader, an 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 prompt the leader and then quickly get them spun up so that they were employed properly. And I think that open communication between both demographics is really important so that the organization can reach its potential and truly present the dilemmas at speed that are going to cause the enemy some trouble.
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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 at multiple scales, it is important for you to understand your leaders, and it's 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 and to 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 a 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 to commanders or the staff will help them understand the scale and scope of the challenge in front of them. This also dovetails into what we were talking about with the information infrastructure, the data infrastructure, the tools that we are making the agentic 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. So cross cutting capability is that the terrain never changes, but how we present information can be tailored in a way that the staff and the commander can understand very, very quickly.
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Great points, and 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 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 an 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.
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Thank you, General Eisenhower, for being here. Having your perspective on this is really important. And thank you for contributing.
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Hey, Matt. And Jason. Thanks. Jason and I ate a lot of dirt together. You bond through some. 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 there. 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 as soldiers, an age group from the newest up to the oldest, I think is 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. 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.
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Roger, sir. Well, 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.
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Thanks James.
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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@madsci.blog.t2.com, Army mil or by dropping us a line at army madscimail.com finally, if you enjoyed this podcast, please consider giving us a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you accessed it. This feedback helps us improve future episodes of the Convergence and allows us to reach a bigger and broader audience.
