Pacific Geography Redefines Army Readiness: McFarlane

WASHINGTON — Military readiness in the Pacific is no longer just about maintaining equipment and training Soldiers; it is about the ability to survive and fight across vast distances and extreme environments. This was the central message delivered by Army leaders at the Association of the United States Army Contemporary Military Forum on Foundational Readiness.

The discussion focused on a fundamental shift in how the military prepares for conflict, emphasizing the transformation of trained Soldiers, effective leadership, usable technology, and disciplined sustainment into combat formations capable of enduring prolonged operations. For America's First Corps, or I Corps, and U.S. Army Pacific, this means adapting to a non-contiguous environment where land formations are highly dispersed and separated by water.

Lieutenant General Matthew McFarlane, the commanding general of I Corps, was joined on stage by Lt. Gen Edmond Brown, the acting commander of Transformation and Training Command, Lt. Gen. Jim Isenhower, commander of the Combined Arms Command, and Brian Weaver, the chief executive officer and chairman of Torch.AI. McFarlane delivered the panel’s strongest theater-specific arguments, demonstrating how Pacific geography actively redefines how forces train, communicate, move, survive, and sustain operations.

Overcoming the Realities of a Non-Contiguous Theater

Addressing the acute difficulties of conducting operations in the Indo-Pacific, McFarlane highlighted the sheer geographic fragmentation that forces must overcome, using the Philippines’ geography as an example of the challenges a land-based force must overcome.

To mitigate the challenges of operating across separate land masses, McFarlane pointed out that I Corps and its regional partners undergo a rigorous tempo of operations to adapt. He specifically noted the multitude of ally and partner nations with which I Corps units train with annually.

Next-Generation C2 and Modernized Fundamentals

A cornerstone of I Corps’ strategy to counter geographic isolation is the deployment of Next-Generation Command and Control, or NGC2. McFarlane highlighted recent institutional success in validating these systems.

“We are now equipping ourselves with next-generation command and control at the corps operational level, as 25th and 4th Infantry Division validated it over the past nine months,” McFarlane explained. “That is significantly proven not only our ability to communicate, but command and control, and to see deeper and provide effects deeper, and to enable our coordination across non-contiguous units because of the tools that the Army is providing.”

While advanced tools like NGC2 are vital, McFarlane paired technological modernization with a strict return to the basic fundamentals of soldiering. He argued that traditional skills, shooting, moving, communicating, and providing medical care, remain decisive and must be mastered to a standard that holds under the duress of persistent surveillance, drone threats, and electronic warfare.

“Fundamentals are the main thing for us,” McFarlane asserted. He defined the target standard as “doing it until you can’t get it wrong in the environment that we have to fight in.”

Hand-in-hand with basic soldiering skills, McFarlane emphasized the critical role of physical fitness and survival in the Pacific. Given the demanding regional environments, which stretch from Arctic cold to tropical jungle heat, physical readiness is non-negotiable.

“We are ready for any environment,” McFarlane noted, “and you have to be fit to operate and thrive in any environment.”

Training at Operational Scale: The Vital Role of Simulations

While individual skills are built on the ground, training a modern staff to coordinate multi-domain operations across a massive theater requires high-end digital environments. McFarlane explained that replicating the immense scale of the Pacific is impossible through live exercises alone, making simulations the primary mechanism for training division and corps commanders.

“If you look at the four operational elements we're talking about and How the Army Fights, convergence, strike, close combat, and endurance, at the division and corps level, simulations are the main thing for us for training,” McFarlane said. “That's how we train our warfighting staffs. That's how we train with our partners, and it's essential for us to make sure we can provide those, especially convergence and strike, and then endurance at scale.”

McFarlane noted that while tactical units conduct smaller validations during actual forward deployments and campaigns, fighting at full theater scale requires a modern, integrated synthetic training environment. He acknowledged that the military must continue evolving these digital platforms to keep pace with modern battlefield realities.

“We got a ways to go on making sure we're up updating our constructive simulation environment to replicate the reality of the fight today, the all domain fight, the importance of the joint team integrated into the fight, especially in the Pacific,” McFarlane said. “So the team's working really hard on that, and I think we're going to see some results here.”

In-Theater Training and "All-Domain" Reality via JPMRC

To bridge the gap between large-scale digital simulations and practical field execution, McFarlane praised the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) as an essential tool for achieving environment-specific mastery. He outlined how upcoming rotations are designed to explicitly simulate the non-contiguous fight.

“We have two locations where we do it once a year,” McFarlane said. “We'll do it in Hawaii, which is next month for the 25th Infantry Division, which they'll (rehearse) across multiple islands. ... Then we also do it in Alaska. I am a huge fan of that because I think the environment has an outsized impact on our ability to fight.”

Beyond environmental realism, McFarlane emphasized that JPMRC directly protects the combat capacity of U.S. Army Pacific by keeping critical assets in theater.

“We aren't losing months with our equipment away from us as we ship it to the continental United States,” he explained. “Now we're keeping the equipment with us, so we have it, saving money and getting a better training experience.”

This logistical shift transforms how Combat Training Centers (CTCs) are utilized, prioritizing leadership development and force-on-force friction over static drills.

“Less live fires at the combat training center, more live fires routinized into our home station training is the key,” he urged, noting that routine home-station live fires and combined arms training help young leaders master the core science of their profession.

McFarlane also emphasized the absolute necessity of integrating electronic warfare, or EW, and defensive survivability directly into everyday training environments.

“These all domain ranges allow us to use electronic warfare, and if we're watching and learning from fights around the world, we know it is going to be part of every battlefield we're on,” McFarlane warned. “So making sure we have the right areas set up on our camps to do all domain exercises in training... so we're dealing with it and applying it offensively and protecting ourselves from some of the EW effects and drones and things like that.”

McFarlane connected this all-domain baseline directly back to survival fundamentals, noting that multi-domain deception, camouflage, and hardening or mobilizing command posts, enabled by NGC2, must become standard practice across the formation.

Agile Procurement: Technology Tested from the Bottom Up

Shifting away from slow, bureaucratic acquisition practices of the past, the panel underscored a new approach to modernization, specifically getting technology quickly into the hands of operational units and using direct soldier feedback to iterate capabilities.

McFarlane highlighted the Infantry Squad Vehicle, or ISV, as a premier success story of this bottom-up methodology, validating how tactical technology should be fielded for theater-specific demands.

“By all accounts, it's the best vehicle I've seen fielded since I've been in the Army,” McFarlane stated. “Not a combat platform; it's a mobility platform. .. I think we're moving the right way (with regards to fielding newer equipment).”

He noted that this deliberate pivot ensures the military can scale modern capabilities rapidly to meet the threats of today rather than waiting decades for theoretical systems.

“So we we are not having Pentagon wars anymore, but we're fielding things that we need with the technology we have today to help us in the fight,” McFarlane concluded.

This collaborative approach perfectly mirrors goals highlighted by industry partners on the panel. Brian Weaver, CEO of Torch.AI, noted that modern industry partners must bake operational Army knowledge into their capabilities upfront to reduce the integration burden on the individual soldier. Weaver also commented on the necessity of clearly defining the human role in the battlespace as autonomous systems and Super Intelligence continue to mature.

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