An overarching theme of DGI 2027 is operationalizing GEOINT at the tactical edge. That raises an important workforce question: What does this mean for the people expected to serve there? But the answer begins with a more basic question: What exactly is the "tactical edge"? Being honest with myself, I only had a rough sense of what the phrase means. As the saying often attributed to Socrates goes, "The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms." I will explore what the somewhat vague phrase "tactical edge" means. My central point, however, is straightforward. GEOINT at the tactical edge is not simply a matter of moving maps, geospatial data, and AI-enabled tools closer to the action. It requires organizational preparation and a workforce educated and trained to exercise geographic judgment under pressure, uncertainty, degraded connectivity, and adversary deception.

Achieving Advantage and Dominance

The phrase "tactical edge" has several related but different meanings. In ordinary use, "to have the tactical edge" meant holding an immediate advantage over a competitor through leverage, position, timing, or skill. It is also sometimes used loosely to describe the front line in combat, the Line of Contact, the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA), or the Zero Line. Those terms describe aspects of a physical location. In recent military, law enforcement, and emergency management use, the phrase has come to describe the place where operations meet immediate action. The tactical edge increasingly connotes not only a place but also a human operating condition.

In this sense, the tactical edge is where plans, data, technology, systems, and human judgment confront the realities of terrain, weather, adversary action, communications limits, and time pressure. This deeper meaning is reflected in the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) definition of the tactical edge:

The platforms, sites, and personnel (U. S. military, allied, coalition partners, first responders) operating at lethal risk in a battle space or crisis environment characterized by 1) a dependence on information systems and connectivity for survival and mission success, 2) high threats to the operational readiness of both information systems and connectivity, and 3) users are fully engaged, highly stressed, and dependent on the availability, integrity, and transparency of their information systems. (National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST], n.d., Definition section)

In sum, the tactical edge for GEOINT is not merely a location on the battlefield. It is distinctly human place where plans and systems confront operational reality.

Reaching the Edge in Hybrid Operations

Modern hybrid warfare stretches this concept even further. The tactical edge may not look like a traditional battlefield front line. It may appear at a border crossing, a port, a power substation, a transoceanic cable site, a logistics hub, a local government office, a social media platform, or even in low Earth orbit. The edge shifts to wherever an adversary is trying to create an immediate political or operational effect through risk, degraded connectivity, or the loss of information integrity. For GEOINT, these shifting contact points require the integration of physical, informational, social, and infrastructural geography. The task is not simply to map where action occurs, but to understand how terrain, networks, infrastructure, behavior, and information combine to create effects on a human population.

Serving the tactical edge is clearly more than putting a map on a mobile device. Tactical-edge GEOINT is the ability to provide trusted, timely, and mission-relevant geographic knowledge where plans, data, technology, systems, and human judgment confront operational reality. This includes GEOINT that supports human-machine teaming, autonomous platforms, machine-readable geographic knowledge, AI-enabled workflows, edge processing, and decision support. A workforce challenge follows directly from this expanding need.

DOTMLPF-P provides a useful way to understand the scale of the challenge (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2010; Kamara, 2023). It stands for Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, Facilities, and Policy. Operationalizing GEOINT at the tactical edge requires coordinated change across all these elements. New technology will not be enough unless the GEOINT community also changes how it defines the mission, organizes workflows, trains and educates analysts, develops leaders, manages personnel, builds realistic testing environments, and sets policy for human-machine decision-making. In this sense, modernization is whole-capability transformation, not isolated technical improvement. This transformation must prepare the workforce and institutions, not just the equipment, to turn geographic information into decision advantage where action is happening.

Educating the Workforce

For GEOINT at the tactical edge, we do not need to turn every GEOINT professional into a data scientist. The tactical edge demands an educated workforce that understands how geography, machines, and decisions interact under pressure. GEOINT professionals need to reason geographically under uncertainty; assess data provenance and information integrity; recognize denial, deception, and manipulated sensor data; supervise human-machine teams and autonomous systems; translate commander's intent, rules, terrain, weather, infrastructure, pattern-of-life information, and risk into forms that machines can use; and communicate uncertainty to decision-makers who may have only seconds to act.

The GEOINT workforce therefore needs to be both educated and trained. Training teaches the user how to operate a tool. Education teaches the professional when the tool is appropriate, when it is wrong, and when the answer is incomplete. Training prepares people to use a system as designed. Education prepares them to recognize when the situation no longer matches the system's assumptions. At the tactical edge, that difference matters. Networks will fail. Sensors will be spoofed. AI will still produce confident-looking but questionable results. The adversary will adapt, and we will need to adjust to that adaptation. GEOINT professionals must be prepared to question, verify, intervene, explain, innovate, and counter adversary adaptation.

In Conclusion

Returning to Socrates, the bottom line is that we need the wisdom to evolve GEOINT across all of the DOTMLPF-P elements to operate at the tactical edge. The place and character of the struggle will continue to rapidly change at the edge, but now more than ever, GEOINT needs an educated, trained, and adaptable workforce that understands the geography, the mission, the technology, and the human consequences of decisions made at the tactical edge.

For more information about how the GEOINT workforce needs to be educated and trained to focus on the tactical advantage, keep visiting the DGI website for more updates.