Coffee and Conversation with John Kirchhofer
November 29, 2022 9:00 AM to 9:45 AM Virtual
On Tuesday, November 28, 2022, John Kirchhofer, Chief of Staff at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) joined INSA’s Executive Vice President, John Doyon for a virtual conversation on the DIA’s mission priorities.
On the mission enabling side, Kirchhofer discussed efforts to improve the DIA’s workforce by evaluating its hiring, training, onboarding, and promoting efforts to ensure greater opportunities for women, minorities, and neurodiverse individuals. Following the pandemic, the DIA is looking to increase remote secure telework opportunities in order to compete for personnel with industry and others whose telework capabilities are not limited by working in a TS/SCI environment.
He went on to outline four priorities as the agency shifts its focus to strategic competition and away from counterterrorism. The first is to develop the China Mission Group to be fully operation capable by the Spring of 2023. The second is to apply lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war, particularly with indications and warning, to China and Taiwan. The third priority is increasing the DIA’s communication efforts and working closely with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region. The fourth priority is to enhance the DIA’s AI and ML capabilities through initiatives like MARS.
To operationalize its shift to strategic competition, Kirchhofer noted that DIA is reallocating its resources invested into DCTC to the China Mission Group and redefining NMECs role to ensure it is hyper focused on China. He stressed the criticality of working with Taiwanese partners to ensure they understand the lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war and what it means for them.
Kirchhofer touched on other priorities such as advancing DIA’s OSINT capabilities and clearly defining the role of Air Force intelligence with the emergence of Space Force to minimize duplication efforts. To close the conversation, he emphasized the value of DIA’s industry partners and their contributions to the mission and supporting the warfighters.
