The Army officially inactivated the 8th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) during a Sept. 29 ceremony at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The action placed the unit, known as the Phantom Knights, into an indefinite period of inactivation.

Col. Robert Cusick, the group’s commanding officer, praised both the personnel present at the ceremony and those who served before them. He also pointed to the concepts developed by the organization during its years of service.

“I could not be prouder of the men and women that stand before us today and those that came before us to inactivate the unit,” Cusick said. “8th PSYOP Group introduced new concepts that will remain for years to come.”

The 8th POG was formally activated on Nov. 16, 2013, after spending two years operating provisionally. Its formal service therefore followed an earlier period in which the organization was already carrying out its mission.

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The Phantom Knights were one of four Army psychological operations groups. The others were the active duty 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) and the Army Reserve’s 2nd and 7th Psychological Operations Groups.

Inactivation does not necessarily mean the unit has been deactivated or dissolved. Instead, the designation means the group is being decommissioned for an indeterminate period as part of some form of restructuring and reorganization.

Image Credit: DoW

The 8th POG included the 3rd PSYOP Battalion (Airborne) and the 9th PSYOP Battalion (Airborne). Those battalions carried out different functions within the broader psychological operations mission.

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The 3rd POB influences print, radio and broadcast information operations around the world. The 9th POB is typically involved in missions such as dropping leaflets and cultivating local communities in areas where Special Forces may be operating.

The Information Warfare Center was also under the 8th group’s authority. Organized in 2020, the center combines intelligence operations and information warfare specifically for Army Special Forces.

The group’s inactivation occurred just two months after the Army activated Delta Company, 7th Psychological Operations Battalion. That activation represented another organizational change affecting the Army’s psychological operations forces.

The 7th was previously assigned to the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), but it now falls under the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne). That group concentrates its psychological operations efforts primarily within the purview of U.S. Africa Command.

Image Credit: DoW

Some military officials and analysts have argued that the United States needs to overhaul its approach to psychological operations and information warfare groups. The Delta Company activation and the retirement of the 8th POG came amid those calls for change.

Maj. Ryan Walters, a U.S. Army psychological operations officer on active duty, addressed the challenge in a January article for Small Wars Journal. He focused on the speed and coherence with which adversaries can employ information warfare.

“What is most concerning is not simply that adversaries invest in information warfare, but that they can often employ it faster and more coherently than we can respond,” Walters wrote.

“In practice, adversaries win by compressing the time between sensing, shaping, and exploiting, while U.S. forces remain constrained by approval latency, fragmented execution, and inconsistent assessment.”

“The result is a temporal mismatch in which effects arrive after decisions are already made.”

The inactivation closes the current chapter for a group that operated provisionally for two years before its formal activation in 2013. Still, Cusick said the concepts introduced by the 8th PSYOP Group will remain for years, even as the Army reorganizes its psychological operations structure.

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