Systems, not silver bullets, are key to victory in the Pacific: SOCPAC chief

Special Operations Command Pacific Commander Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. VanAntwerp spoke to Comprehensive Security Cooperation course Fellows in Honolulu on August 25, 2025. (Department of Defense photo by Luke McCall)

By Jennifer Hlad • Nov 03, 2025

No single technology can win every battle and fix every problem, the leader of Special Operations Command Pacific said this week. Instead, the “ability to integrate multiple systems, disparate systems, with more open architecture—that is eventually going to win. If you have that sort of single, standalone technology…it’s likely to be cracked, hacked, and eventually overcome.”

Remember the Karate Kid movies, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey VanAntwerp urged his audience at the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference here. When Daniel learned a crane kick, Mr. Miyagi told him, “If done right, no can defense,” VanAntwerp said. “And that worked in Karate Kid one, but then in Karate Kid two, he goes to Okinawa, to people who are more familiar with the operational environment, and…the crane kick did not work.…He eventually had to go to the spinning drum.”

For SOCPAC, VanAntwerp said the combination of robotics, autonomy, and resilient networks is “absolutely critical,” because information is useless unless it comes with an ability to make a coherent picture. And whatever combination of systems that might emerge, having “the ability to disrupt our adversaries’ ability to target us, that is the oxygen that we require in this theater.”