The Currency of Competition

By: Marine Corps Forces Pacific Command Foreign Disclosure Officer
Posted on September 15,2026
Article Date 01/10/2026

The Defining Paradox of the Indo-Pacific

In the vast and increasingly complex waters of the Indo-Pacific, the Marine Corps Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Enterprise faces a defining paradox. As the United States continues its strategic pivot toward great-power competition, the Pentagon’s official rhetoric consistently highlights a single, absolute truth—we will not fight alone. We herald our unmatched network of allies and partners as our greatest asymmetric advantage against rising regional adversaries. Yet, the real-world lethality of these alliances hinges entirely on a capability we too often treat as an administrative afterthought rather than an operational weapon, namely foreign disclosure.

To put it bluntly, military professionals rarely view foreign disclosure, the legal and technical apparatus for sharing classified military information with foreign partners, as attractive or exciting in the wardroom or the planning cell. People widely perceive it as a swamp of paperwork, a domain of cautious lawyers and bureaucratic delay. However, in the unforgiving reality of day-to-day competition and potential conflict, this often-overlooked and often-misunderstood requirement is critically significant.

In the gray-zone skirmishes and contested waters of the South China Sea, competition is not a theoretical construct but a daily, grueling reality. As Beijing deploys its massive maritime militia, coast guard, and People’s Liberation Army Navy to unilaterally redraw maritime borders, the Marine Corps responded by reshaping its operational posture. Under the banner of Force Design, we have moved away from heavy-footprint legacy structures toward agile, highly lethal stand-in forces. These small, low-signature units operate persistently inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone, serving as an effective deterrent to China’s actions.

Yet, these advanced tactical concepts suffer from a systemic vulnerability because they operationally depend on host-nation access, support, and combined action. If our tactical networks cannot instantly share what our forward-deployed sensors see, we hold a lightning bolt we cannot throw.

As the Marine Forces Pacific (MARFORPAC) command foreign disclosure officer, I have watched this dynamic play out across successive operations, exercises, engagement activities, and other military investments. Our partners and allies are hungry for actionable, releasable intelligence products, particularly targeting data. The difference between a cohesive, integrated coalition operation and a pair of disconnected, parallel efforts, which essentially represents the difference between a go and a no-go, often hinges entirely on our ability to share information in a timely, meaningful way.

The Foreign Disclosure Problem from the Pacific Perspective

Over the past year, MARFORPAC’s intensive operations schedule and other military investments yielded critical lessons regarding our information-sharing architecture. The most successful interoperability efforts occurred when we did not treat foreign disclosure as a checklist item to be considered only during the mission but instead integrated it into the operational planning cycle from the very beginning.

Modern military concepts require American forces to maintain warm-start readiness, allowing them to transition from peacetime competition to active crisis at a moment’s notice. This readiness, however, is a dangerous illusion if our information-sharing pipelines remain completely cold until the shooting starts. Recent operations demonstrate that maintaining a baseline flow of releasable threat intelligence during routine periods builds the technical and procedural pathways required for crisis operations. To make this readiness real, the military must actively push for standing, pre-authorized disclosure frameworks that allow operators to bypass administrative friction and push critical data to partner forces in real time.

To understand the high stakes of this digital bottleneck, one must look at the day-to-day coordination required in places like the Bashi Channel or the waters surrounding Scarborough Shoal. Consider a scenario where a Marine Littoral Regiment deployed to Northern Luzon utilizes advanced organic sensors to track an adversary surface combatant moving aggressively through sovereign territorial waters. The tactical sensor-to-shooter loop is primed. The Marine units have the coordinates, but the firing platforms that sit in the immediate vicinity belong to our Philippine allies.

In a peer conflict, we will measure the margin of victory in seconds. Yet, under our current architecture, that critical targeting data must ascend through a labyrinth of classification authorities, passing from theater commands to national agencies, before authorities can make a release determination. By the time operators electronically apply the “releasable” stamp, the target has moved, the tactical window has slammed shut, and we leave a sovereign ally vulnerable. This is not a failure of technology or courage, but a failure of disclosure policy.

This is especially critical when it comes to joint targeting. As the Marine Corps fields advanced, long-range, multi-domain sensing capabilities, commanders must remember that collecting data is only half the battle. If we identify an adversary threat but cannot legally or technically share that targeting data with the host-nation forces sitting in the same weapons engagement zone, we fail to leverage the full weight of our alliances. Our partners consistently ask for releasable targeting products. Providing this data builds immediate trust, enhances combined coalition lethality, and drastically complicates adversary decision-making by presenting a unified front.

Redefining Multilateral Operations at BALIKATAN

These dynamics were clearly visible in BALIKATAN, one of the largest, longest-running, and most consequential military training events in the Indo-Pacific. Derived from the Tagalog word meaning “shoulder-to-shoulder,” BALIKATAN is an annual exercise that serves as the cornerstone of the U.S.-Philippine military alliance. As the organization conducting the event, MARFORPAC bears direct responsibility for the planning, integration, and execution of this annual event and for ensuring that future iterations of the event remain operationally relevant.

The rapid evolution of BALIKATAN perfectly mirrors the shifting security demands of the theater. What began as a strictly bilateral, unclassified training event between the United States and the Philippines has transformed into a highly sophisticated, multilateral engagement where forces actively share classified military information and coordinate complex operational maneuvers.

During the 41st iteration of BALIKATAN, more than 17,000 personnel from the United States, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, France, and New Zealand integrated operations across land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace. The event culminated in a high-end maritime strike where allied forces successfully sensed, targeted, and sank a decommissioned target vessel in the West Philippine Sea. It was a stunning display of combined fires. Yet, the true breakthrough of the event occurred not in the live-fire zones, but at the negotiating table. On the sidelines of the event, U.S. and Philippine defense leaders signed a historic new fifteen-year Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement. This landmark agreement provides the critical technical and legal framework to secure our shared networks and streamline the flow of sensitive data. It represents a massive step forward, but a signed memorandum is merely a permit to build. Operational forces must still execute the difficult work of constructing, maintaining, and normalizing those information pipelines daily.

Executing at this level of complexity requires any U.S.-Philippine coalition to fully operationalize under the auspices of the bilateral Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board, which remains the cornerstone of U.S.-Philippine military coordination. It demands that we actively share information under established bilateral frameworks like the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) and the newly updated Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement.

Crucially, as the United States scales this multilateral environment, it must also support the Philippines as it builds similar bilateral security agreements with mutual partners, ensuring they can operate under equivalent security standards. If coalition forces cannot seamlessly navigate these disclosure pathways during the planning phases, they cannot expect to execute jointly when conflict begins. BALIKATAN is no longer just a training event; it is the real-world crucible where we test, refine, and prove combined information-sharing systems.

Overcoming Institutional and Workforce Gaps

Despite these hard-won operational successes, the military continues to contend with institutional friction. An inherent, systemic hesitation remains within the national security apparatus to share tactical and operational intelligence. While we must protect sensitive sources and methods, excessive over-classification and administrative inertia represent severe operational risks.

This structural friction is deeply rooted in an institutional psychology that treats classification as a shield against personal and professional risk. While policy strictly limits the NOFORN (No Foreign Nationals) caveat to protected intelligence sources and methods, a risk-averse culture within the Pentagon and theater headquarters often defaults to restrictive markings as the path of least resistance. Opting not to write for release avoids additional administrative burdens or legal reviews and carries zero career risk. Conversely, navigating the complex foreign disclosure process imposes heavy administrative overhead, and a single procedural oversight resulting in an unauthorized disclosure constitutes a major security violation with career-ending consequences. Thus, the current system penalizes the effort to share intelligence while incentivizing the bureaucratic safety of isolation. The strategic cost of this asymmetry is staggering. While information sharing must always align with mutual operational objectives, defaulting to over-classification simply to avoid administrative risk degrades the shared battlespace. When we hoard data, we blind the partner forces operating alongside us. Ultimately, choosing bureaucratic safety over information sharing cripples the combined lethality required for operational success.

To overcome this cultural hesitation, the Marine Corps must transition from treating foreign disclosure as an additional duty or a temporary collateral assignment and instead invest in and professionalize it as a core warfighting enabler. This transition requires a fundamental shift in how the Service manages its disclosure workforce.

First and foremost, the Service must prioritize the creation, funding, and rapid filling of dedicated civilian disclosure billets. Relying on transient military personnel or dual-role intelligence officers to navigate the incredibly complex legal and policy landscape of international disclosure rules creates massive friction. Civilian foreign disclosure officers provide the continuity, expertise, and long-term institutional relationships that rapid military rotations simply cannot match. Civilian leaders also can engage and coordinate over time with peers in our sister Services and in the Departments of War, State, and other intelligence community member organizations to shift national disclosure policy in ways that recognize the evolving threat landscape, enable warfighters to partner effectively and rapidly, and still minimize operational risk.

The consequences of our current workforce vacancies are stark. At Headquarters Marine Corps, the Plans, Policies, and Operations foreign disclosure program manager billet has sat completely unfilled for over a year. When critical, strategic-level leadership vacancies persist at our Service headquarters, the resulting policy and guidance backlog paralyzes execution at the theater level. We cannot champion concepts like integrated deterrence and coalition warfare in our public relations campaigns while leaving our primary information-sharing management positions vacant behind closed doors.

A Way Forward for the Joint Fight

To remain both a vital enabler for the future fight, Marine Corps intelligence must adopt a proactive, professional framework for information sharing. This path forward requires immediate, synchronized action, beginning with fully funding and filling civilian disclosure billets at all major commands, with immediate priority given to the critical vacancy at Headquarters Marine Corps. Simultaneously, the Service must reform its training pipeline to institutionalize write-for-release principles among intelligence analysts. Ultimately, an intelligence product that cannot be shared with the coalition partners fighting alongside us loses its tactical value the moment it is drafted.

Operationalizing this shift demands a fundamental overhaul of formal instruction and tactical deployment models. At the Marine Corps Intelligence Schools and during MAGTF training, analysts must master the physical mechanics of writing for release. They must learn to structurally divide their products, segregating sensitive, U.S.-only sources and methods into restricted annexes while preserving the actionable, tactical core in a highly releasable main body. Beyond the schoolhouse, the Service can no longer confine foreign disclosure officers to the air-conditioned headquarters of theater commands. The Marine Corps must embed qualified disclosure professionals directly within the MEUs and Marine Littoral Regiments operating at the tactical edge of the first island chain. When a regiment deploys to Northern Luzon, the local commander should not have to rely on a reach-back request to MARFORPAC in Hawaii to share critical maritime domain awareness data. The authority and the expertise to disclose tactical information must sit at the forward edge, where commanders make decisions and forces bear the risk.

To fully operationalize this capability, the Marine Corps must dismantle the institutional silo that treats foreign disclosure as strictly an intelligence-centric function. Foreign disclosure is inherently an operational requirement, and sequestering it as a mere intelligence support task is a strategic mistake. The Service must embed foreign disclosure officers directly into core operational and future planning efforts, specifically within the Operations, Future Operations, and Plans and Policy divisions. Positioning these experts alongside targeting and collection management cells from day one is essential. When disclosure professionals actively participate in drafting operational concepts, rather than serving as reviewers called in at the eleventh hour, they proactively align international agreements with operational intent. This ensures campaign plans are shareable by design. Finally, commanders must leverage major exercises and events like Balikatan to continuously stress-test technical and legal pipelines under existing security agreements. This rigorous rehearsal guarantees that the flow of data is fast, reliable, and battle-tested long before a crisis occurs.

In the Indo-Pacific, U.S. forces and regional partnerships operate in a constant, aggressive environment. Controlling the narrative and maintaining a competitive edge requires empowering allies with actionable, timely intelligence. Foreign disclosure operations are not administrative red tape; they represent the critical mechanism that translates raw intelligence and operational concepts into coalition lethality. Ultimately, the Joint Force must view information sharing not as a policy compliance task, but as a vital warfighting enabler that directly supports all operations and a weapon we must employ to win.

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