Simulating Landpower and Alliances in the Indo-Pacific
How AI, RL, and Generative Agents Are Shaping Strategic Decision-Making for the U.S. Army
With more than half of the world’s population, nearly two-thirds of global GDP, and seven of the world’s largest militaries, the Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region for America’s future prosperity and security. Landpower is vital in the Indo-Pacific because of the sheer scale and strategic importance of the land itself. Though named after oceans, the region includes two continents, Southeast Asia’s archipelagos, and the Pacific Islands—together making up a quarter of the world’s landmass. Every military domain matters, but ultimately people live on land. Armies are built to operate on and defend land. Every joint capability and military domain has a land dependency: ships need ports, planes require airfields, and even cyber operations depend on land-based infrastructure.
Exia Labs is actively helping the DoD simulate American strategic landpower in the Indo-Pacific in three ways. First, we’ve developed the digital version of Pacific Posture, a wargame created by the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) to evaluate strategies that use the instruments of national power to gain regional influence. We built reinforcement learning (RL) AI agents that simulate the complex geopolitical dynamics of the Indo-Pacific. The main goal was to demonstrate the ability to add RL agents into a wargame. The limitation is that RL doesn’t account for human behavior.
Second, we’ve developed a Red Team AI agent that simulates PRC strategy and PLA doctrine, force posture, and decision-making processes. Generative agents can be used to simulate human behavior. Researchers at Stanford published a key paper that shaped our efforts: Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior. We also enlisted the help of Stanford’s Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative to identify key PRC doctrinal documents combined with TRADOC G2’s China Landing Zone documents to be the knowledge base of our agent.
Finally, we’ve integrated our Red Team AI agent into our Blue product. Blue automates labor-intensive, “science of war” decision making inputs, like terrain analysis, mission analysis, decision support templates, so commanders and staff have more time for the art of war and making better informed decisions. Blue is currently optimized for the land domain and is being tested by three Army brigade combat teams.
Power, Partnerships, and Posture: U.S. Strategy in the Indo-Pacific Era
Over the past thirteen years, the United States has cemented its role as a dominant actor in the Indo-Pacific. The rise of China as a peer competitor, coupled with regional conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, has reinforced the importance of maintaining a robust U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific as a bulwark against further conflict. The comprehensive strategic posture of the United States as laid out in the Indo-Pacific Strategy of February 2022, aims to "firmly anchor the United States in the Indo-Pacific and strengthen the region itself, alongside our closest allies and partners" to maintain a "free, open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient" Indo-Pacific.1 This strategy is built on a foundation of strong diplomatic partnerships and deeper integration with regional networks such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Beyond maintaining good relations, the Indo-Pacific Strategy signaled a shift towards deepening engagement with the security affairs of the region and a broader concern with its strategic trajectory. The formation of AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom in 2021, was followed by Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships with Indonesia and Vietnam in 2023, and an expansion of security ties with India, The Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea in the same year. Taken together, the American shift to the Indo-Pacific illustrates renewed commitment to diplomatic partners and a concrete willingness to support their defense by force of arms.
Why Landpower Matters in the Indo-Pacific
Despite a strong outward emphasis on diplomatic and economic initiatives, the Indo-Pacific Strategy relies on multinational military cooperation and the projection of hard power as its core mechanism for deterrence. While the region is often perceived as a maritime theater dominated by air and naval power, it is land, positional advantage, and territorial control that ultimately shape the balance of power. The landmass of the Indo-Pacific covers a quarter of the Earth, containing an outright majority of the world’s population and seven of its ten largest cities.2 The scale of the territory alone demands that landpower play a central role in any coherent security strategy. The region's key geostrategic territories— particularly the First Island Chain, the Korean Peninsula, and Northern Australia—are land assets. Controlling this land, and denying adversaries space to maneuver and time to operate remains the most durable means of deterrence. Furthermore, control over critical maritime routes—such as the Strait of Malacca, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait—are linked to control of their surrounding landmasses. In the event of war, the occupation of these positions will determine control of sea lanes, logistics networks, power projection, and ultimately the entire Indo-Pacific. As a result, strategic considerations in the region are fundamentally land-based rather than purely maritime.
Joint Exercises and Wargaming in the Indo-Pacific
Given the political and geographic complexity of the region, maintaining strong security partnerships is essential at every level of strategic planning. The Indo-Pacific is arguably the most complex operational environment in the world, consisting of archipelagos, dense jungles, high-altitude mountain ranges, and urban megacities, each presenting unique tactical and logistical challenges. The U.S. Army’s primary responsibility in the INDOPACOM theater is to build and sustain relationships with allied forces in order to establish a durable security infrastructure capable of operating in all of them. Joint military exercises and wargaming have become integral for contingency planning and operational readiness. The logistical challenges posed by joint operations in a large-scale Pacific conflict are enormous. Digital wargaming provides critical insights into how forces can be coordinated across vast distances and complex environments. Regularly held U.S. Army exercises simulate scenarios that involve long supply lines, integration of land, air, sea, and cyber forces, and coordination between multiple allied nations. Due to the multinational character of Indo-Pacific security, digital wargames will remain central to logistical and tactical preparation. The use of AI to identify bottlenecks in logistics, resupply, and troop movements, as well as enhance allied coordination, will become increasingly important as relevant technologies become more readily available.
Landpower Integrates Joint Forces and Allies
Interoperability and the integration of joint forces are essential to all strategic deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Every branch of the military relies on land power: ships need ports, planes need runways, and satellites depend on land-based communication terminals. As General Charles Flynn, the former commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific, said it best: “Landpower is the security architecture that binds this region together.”3 This goal is to neutralize China's strategic objectives, which focus on asserting control over the South China Sea and neutralizing the First Island Chain to prevent the United States from maintaining a forward position with force projection capabilities.
Landpower offers the United States a strong positional advantage in a region with limited overland routes for supply and troop movement. It enables effective allied power projection, rapid response, and sustained operations. Control of key land positions is especially important because most regional militaries are primarily ground forces. In fact, ground troops make up 65% of Japan’s military, 70% of the Philippines’, 80% of India’s, and 75% of both Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s armed forces. Ultimately, operational control of strategic land areas will dictate the parameters of any conflict by determining logistical capacity, force projection, and tactical advantage.
https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.-Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Indo-Pacific-Strategy-Second-Anniversary-Fact-Sheet.pdf
https://www.usarpac.army.mil/Our-Story/Our-News/Article-Display/Article/3775247/gen-charles-flynn-opening-remarks-at-lanpac24/