DOD Chief Information Officer Meets With Indo-Pacific Command on Interoperability

Department of Defense Chief Information Officer John Sherman, a speaker at a past Potomac Officers Club event and a 2023 Wash100 winner, toured U.S. military installations in Hawaii earlier in July to coordinate interoperability of cyber, command, control and communication capabilities in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Sherman’s trip included a meeting with the INDOPACOM commander Adm. John Aquilino, who shared the command’s perspectives, objectives and priorities. According to Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Comm. Tim Gorman, the CIO’s Hawaii visit complemented a similar trip by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, DefenseScoop reported.

Delegations from the Japanese Ministry of Defense and the Republic of Korea National Defense also met Sherman at the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Pacific headquarters, Gorman said. The visitors shared information and discussed mutual areas of interest, such as the mission partner environment, he added.

Sherman met with the Japanese and Korean defense officials around the same time that the first U.S. nuclear-armed submarine docked in South Korea in four decades. The Indo-Pacific region is now a priority theater for the Department of Defense, with the United States looking at China as a top military threat.