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Explosive multi-scale activity, manifesting at Earth as spectacular auroral displays, is prevalent in planetary magnetospheres, solar flares, and beyond. Over the past two decades, missions such as Geotail, Cluster, THEMIS, and MMS, combined with ground-based auroral imaging, radars and magnetometer arrays, have revealed key aspects of explosive activity in Earth's convection cycle, from the onset and evolution of substorms to the microphysics of magnetic reconnection. However, because of observational limitations, fundamental questions remain about the role of plasmasheet structure and evolution in controlling explosive multi-scale dynamics in the magnetotail. In this paper, we discuss a proposed augmentation to HSO capabilities that would overcome prior limitations and enable a systems understanding of cross-scale magnetotail dynamics from global scales to mesoscales to kinetic scales.