Our Inaugural Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare Symposium

This blog is about the inaugural Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare Symposium, which took place in Honolulu, HI from 13 – 15 AUG 2024.

Event Photos   |   Event Video

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Convening Nations in a New Region

GSOF has hosted many overseas Symposiums–seven to be specific–but they’ve all occurred in Europe. After ten years of growth and expansion, we decided it was time to take the next leap… to the Indo-Pacific region of the globe.

This region is incredibly important to global security, therefore the goal of the symposium was to increase awareness of Indo-Pacific operational challenges, SOF capability needs, and partnerships with key players in industry, academia, and other government organizations. The symposium also allowed SOF regional and maritime commands to convene, focus on interoperability, build and strengthen international partnerships, and continue to educate industry on current capability gaps.

A critical component of this event’s success was multinational cooperation. For this reason, GSOF sent invitations to fund the participation of SOF representatives from up to 12 Indo-Pacific partner nations. 

With that support, plus the nations who funded their own travel, this inaugural event included official attendance from a whopping 24 nations:

The breadth of attendance from not just the Indo-Pacific region, but across the globe, showcases what a consequential region this is to the special operations community.

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“You finally figured out the perfect venue for an event!” 

It’s not always easy to convince hundreds of busy people to travel half-way around the world to attend a conference. 

But it gets easier when that destination is Hawaii. From the moment we sent out the first “Save the Date” email in 2023, the interest in this event has been HIGH (we like to think it wasn’t just the location, but also the incredibly important region and subject matter). 

As one attendee said upon arrival: “You finally figured out the perfect venue for an event!” We thank you for that, and while we can’t have every event in Hawaii, it’s certainly a good starting note for this one. 

Since it was the inaugural event, we initially planned for 350 attendees. We ended up having to work with our venue and plot and plan for ways to increase that capacity to nearly 600 attendees.

That attendee make-up included an impressive mix of military end-users, government decision-makers, and industry enablers. We feel that we have a good attendee mix when at least one-third represent active duty military or government, so with that number clocking in at 40% we are very happy with the turnout at this inaugural event.

 

We built in a number of opportunities to allow all of our attendee groups to mix and mingle. On day one, we had a Pearl Harbor Tour and a poolside Welcome Reception–which was an “Aloha Shirt”-covered mosaic of senior SOF leaders, defense industry titans, and military representatives from around the globe.

Days two and three both included networking breaks and lunches, and of course the whole event culminated in a Sunset Luau on Thursday evening… but more on that later!

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Star-Studded Speakers & Critical Conversations

The crowning jewel of this Symposium was the level and quality of our speakers. The list below is further validation of just how important this region is and how essential these multinational conversations are.

Ahem…the speaker list included, but was not limited to:

• General Bryan P. Fenton, Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command
• Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr., Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command
• The Honorable Christopher P. Maier, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, U.S. Department of Defense
• Ms. Theresa M. Whelan, Director, Defense Intelligence for Sensitive Activities and Special Programs, U.S. Department of Defense
• Major General Djon Afriandi, Commander General of KOPASSUS, Indonesia
• Vice Admiral Blake L. Converse, Deputy Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet
• Rear Admiral Jeromy B. Williams, Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific
• Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga, Commanding General, U.S. Army Special Operations Command
• Lieutenant General Antonio Fletcher, Commander, Allied Special Operations Forces Command
• Lieutenant General Tannarat Thanongsak, Commanding General, Counter Terrorist Operations Center, Thailand
• Major General Masahiro Asaka, Deputy DG of Operations, Joint Staff, Japan
• Major General Garth Gould, CSC, DSM, Special Operations Commander, Australia
• Major General Steve Hunter, OMM, MSC, MSM, CD, Commander, Special Operations Forces Command, Canada
• Major General Jeffrey A. VanAntwerp, G3, U.S. Army Pacific
• Brigadier General Eliglen F. Villaflor PA, Commander, JSOG, SOCOM AFP
• Colonel Chris Gray, Commander, Special Operations Command, New Zealand
• Command Sergeant Major Shane Shorter, Senior Enlisted Leader, U.S. Special Operations Command
• FLTCM David L. Isom, Senior Enlisted Leader, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command
• Command Sergeant Major Walter J. Zajkowski, Senior Enlisted Leader, Special Operations Command Pacific
• Warrant Officer 1 Dave Alder, Command Sergeant Major, Special Operations Command, Headquarters Joint Forces New Zealand

The speakers all brought their unique experiences and perspectives to each session, but a number of themes recurred throughout the week.

THEME: SOF Convergence is Integral to Regional Security

GEN Fenton shared powerful words about the importance of SOF in the region. “We need an international SOF convergence focused on interoperability…partnering with interagency organizations….and leveraging industry and commercial partners.”

SOCPAC Commander, RADM Jeromy Williams, expounded on the importance of the region, sharing a variety of statistics focused on population, military size, and economic power. He noted that the “number one job for SOCPAC is to keep the peace.” 

ADM Paparo stands ready to support that effort to keep the peace, noting that “INDOPACOM and the SOF enterprise have been underinvested in each other…but changing that is a big focus area” in the near future.

The economic nature of the fight is one reason for that focus. The panel entitled SOF’s Role in Unconventional Warfare in the Indo-Pacific Region: Economic and Strategic Competition in the 21st Century spoke specifically to China’s stated objective of “economic dominance,” highlighting that “economic warfare is important to the SOF practitioner.” 

Ms. Theresa Whelan spoke more generally of the threat–that we face a “daunting set of adversaries that think in decades” in terms of time horizons. She noted that special operations are critical to facing these adversaries, as they have been “pioneers in open source intelligence capabilities and partnerships.”

THEME: Partnerships and Diversity are Indispensable

“SOF is a cognitive space, it’s an idea space…so we need to exchange ideas and information with our partners and exchange geography for access and placement. Allies and partners are indispensable,” said ADM Paparo in his keynote address. 

In the panel entitled Competition, Crisis and Conflict: Situation Reports, regional partners from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Mongolia concurred with that sentiment and spoke to their years of multinational cooperation, including national defense strategies that incorporate that concept. 

In his keynote, GEN Fenton agreed with this viewpoint, stating that the U.S. needs to “increase its support to multilateral exercises.” 

Beyond the value of international collaboration, the “Women in SOF” panel spoke to the long, but often ad hoc, history of women in irregular warfare. However, they noted that “over 100 countries have action plans to improve women’s role in security,” including more formal roles in irregular warfare that amplify the skill sets and enemy biases that female involvement brings to the table.

The recurring sentiment, as stated succinctly in The Critical Role of NCOs and Senior Enlisted Leadership panel, was: “People in the armed forces are the most critical piece of success.” 

THEME: The Indo-Pacific has Unique and Complex Problem Sets

As GEN Fenton pointed out, “This region is hugely important as it contains one-third of the world’s shipping; the land, water, and people are very important.”

A session on Illegal Unreported Unregulated (IUU) Fishing may seem out of place at a SOF conference, but the vast Pacific Ocean enables trafficking of all kinds–and “trafficking models are the same, no matter the items that are trafficked.” Expert speakers LTC (Ret) David Johnson and Ms. Megan Charley noted that public exposure of this ongoing crime is an information operation essential to combatting bad actors.

Other huge challenges in the region were highlighted by a panel focused on Environmental Security, Critical Resources and their Impact on Defense. The region’s high number of natural disasters, increasing industrial pollution, and significant impacts of climate change were noted as major disruptors, specifically to its many small and resource-constrained nations. The vulnerability of these nations to the influence of bad actors in times of stress was a shared concern of the panelists. 

ADM Paparo emphasized the risks associated with this vulnerability. “Enemies try to pick off countries one by one…and then they are then exploited.” 

Even developed and powerful nations in the region are not exempt from this exploitation. Major General Masahiro Asaka said that factors in Japan such as, “increase in foreign workers, increase in foreign investment, increase real estate prices; aging population, declining birthrate, over concentration in Tokyo” have all led to a rise in cyber crime and scams.  

THEME: Growth and Implementation of Industry Capabilities is Essential 

In the senior leader conversation on Future of SOF, Cyber, Space Triad in the Pacific, LTG Jonathan Braga noted that we “can’t ignore the two newest domains of space and cyber,” both of which come with many technological needs. 

RADM Jeromy Williams spoke specifically to the needs of SOCPAC, including tools for deception and a laundry list of reliable unmanned platforms. 

ADM Paparo agreed that he is “most excited about unmanned and autonomous systems…but we must maintain human agency and accountability in the process.”

Most countries in the region, however, do not have massive budgets to expand their defense technology. As a speaker on the panel entitled Strengthening Global Security through SOF Partnerships said: “Industry needs to be aware that new technology needs to be adaptable and affordable so that it can be more widely used among partners.”

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Mahalo to our Industry Supporters

We feel that this event was truly a manifestation of GEN Fenton’s desired “convergence of SOF”–a venue to come together and discuss how to tackle the hard problems in hard places that SOF are uniquely positioned to solve.

We would like to take a moment to thank the many sponsors who helped make this event possible, especially the inaugural Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare Symposium’s Title Sponsor: L3Harris. 

Our SOF Champion sponsors were all also huge players in making this event possible:

• Aim-Lock                  
• Amazon Business          
• Atlantic Signal                
• DRT                                
• Hui Huliau
• Lovelace AI
• Red Cat 
• Shield AI 
• SMX
• Textron
• Viasat
• WWT & Cisco

These sponsors were noted by the eye-catching and functional skimboards located throughout the venue…many of you may have noticed them with a bit of jealousy! 

These companies are enabling the special operations community with a huge variety of capabilities, ranging from secure communications equipment to artificial intelligence services to unmanned platforms. 

As The Honorable Christopher P. Maier said in his keynote address: “We’ll rely on industry more and more in the future.”

We’re honored to be partnered with so many reliable partners who truly care about the SOF community, leading us into the future!

As our final hurrah (and final mahalo) to both sponsors and attendees was an amazing sunset luau, nestled on a rooftop overlooking Waikiki Beach!

It was a great opportunity to network with fellow attendees, enjoy some local cuisine and culture, and of course…to show off your new Global SOF Hawaiian Shirts!

Over 300 Symposium attendees and guests joined the can’t miss finale of the event and were captivated by the stories told via song, dance, and excitingly…twirling flames!

We were truly honored to get this insight into Hawaiian culture, and it was a powerful note on which to end our powerful conference. 

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What’s Next?

Global SOF has a series of events coming down the pipeline, including the next Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare Symposium, which will take place from 19-21 AUG 2025 in Bangkok, Thailand. We will be opening industry opportunities for that event soon, so stay tuned to the website for more information. 

In the near term, we are excited about our upcoming GSOF Symposium Europe, which will be held in Bratislava, Slovak Republic from 1-3 OCT 2024. 

Registration for that event is OPEN, and we do have some finals opportunities for industry participation. Check out the website for more information, and register ASAP to get involved!

GSOF Symposium Europe