The military frequently is accused of preparing for the last war; often, the critics are right. To avoid this trap, we must achieve a common understanding of what the next war is likely to be and develop new ways of waging war to maximize our advantage.
This is particularly important today because the next major conflict could come much sooner than most people think. All of our potential enemies have similar access to advanced technology, and even an unsophisticated enemy could exploit our vulnerabilities to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or terrorism. Moreover, it is dangerous to believe we will never have a peer competitor again. Russia is down but not out, and who knows where its formidable weapon technology is going? Tremendous wealth and a rapidly-growing military are available to China.
We are at a critical crossroads. We are well established to preserve our superiority, but we cannot afford to rest on our post-Cold War laurels. We can maintain our edge only by learning to use the advantages of all the armed services more quickly and efficiently. Superior technology will be of little avail if we fail to apply it in a superior fashion.
Network centric warfare (NCW), the way we should fight in the future, brings all warfighters and their databases on-line so they can communicate quickly, share services and knowledge, and achieve a common view of the battle space. But NCW will not present itself fully formed. We must develop it. The challenge is great, as was the Soviet challenge, but there is no need to reinvent the wheel; we just need to improve it as we continue to roll along.
Ideally, it would be best to make a clean break from commercial off-the-shelf technology and resurrect a military partnership with industry to ensure that technology advances to meet NCW demands. Until we determine what command-and-control structures should characterize NCW, systems designers will build software capabilities without any idea of the best way to support NCW-specific requirements, wasting scarce resources. Fleet participation in the process will help combine technologies into a coordinated systems development strategy. Our strong military research, development, test, and evaluation infrastructure, including assets that range from test facilities to war games, can be adapted to this effort by making it more of a training ground for immediate transfer of lessons learned to operational forces in one direction, and to industry in the other. The idea is that the fleet will train to new standards as it identifies them.
This is the best way to achieve the rapid prototyping required to maintain our edge over potential enemies. The novel approach fosters speedy incorporation by the fleet of new techniques and technologies. Effective rapid prototyping features realistic simulation of the live future environment with performance measurement and analysis for real-time feedback.
One venerable Cold War institution, the Naval War College's Global War Game, serves as an outstanding example of how we can adapt an existing vehicle to develop NCW. The President of the Naval War College has been designated the primary Navy overseer of NCW, with his Navy Warfare Doctrine Command (NWDC)/Maritime Battle Center as executive agent; using the war game to develop NCW followed naturally.
During last year's war game, the Navy for the first time set out to simulate a live future battle space to explore NCW at the operational level of war. This departed from the old, start-and-stop, seminar approach, which, although effective in its own way, could not create network centric warfare's continuous flow. Game designers hooked up and tuned in players via a web-based information grid presided over by military knowledge managers. With more than 800 participants playing nearly a fully two-sided game, the challenge to orchestrate their efforts was tremendous.
The Naval War College partnered with commands such as the Third Fleet and Carrier Group One to recruit large numbers of personnel from all the services who could immediately take lessons learned back to their units. The enterprise also linked the War College, the NWDC (for the first time), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and operational commands.
It was the 21st annual war game, but the first in the new state-of-the-art game center in the War College's McCarty Little Hall. The central question explored was whether the combination of new organizations, processes, and tools could improve mission accomplishment. Game designers sought to advance simultaneously on all fronts, developing Information Technology for the 21st Century (IT-21), testing new NCW-enabled processes, such as effects-based operations, and trying out new organizations, such as ONR's adaptive architectures for command and control. The adaptive architecture in this case was a non-traditional joint task force with subordinate joint task forces. The subordinate units were divided into three joint forces: current operations, future operations, and effects coordination board. This new formula was designed to deliver a flexible, effective way of achieving multiple intertwined objectives, increasing the speed and agility of command.
The overall focus of the adaptive architecture was on human factors, such as organization, techniques, rules, procedures, and man-machine interface. The project became deeply engaged in the continuing struggle to find appropriate realistic command-and-control models. The big challenge was to find the blend between independence and total control, to encourage initiative while avoiding chaos.
Effects-based operations drove the command-and-control processes at Global '99-marking a fundamental shift in the warfighter's focus from attacking targets to achieving desired effects. The concept adds the subtlety and sophistication of information operations, which can defeat an enemy by controlling his perception of the battle space by denying or feeding him false knowledge. Direct action or destruction still play their part, but effect-based operations may achieve victory by convincing an adversary to adopt a losing strategy, give up outright, or making him incapable of fighting.
The first method requires intimate knowledge of the enemy's psychological make-up, and is achieved most often by creating such shock and awe that the enemy's will to fight is shattered. The second and more familiar approach is attrition warfare, achieved by destroying an enemy's war-fighting capability and infrastructure. The concept of effects-based operations is attractive not only because it features a wide array of options to achieve victory, but because NCW's knowledge superiority offers safer, less destructive, and less expensive ways to dominate.
The effects coordination board provided a means to restate the commander's intent in the form of a joint prioritized effects list. The list, a set of desired effects, was to be available to all subordinate task forces to process and execute. It was thought that the list's universal avail ability would aid coordination and help them determine specific tasks that would accomplish the desired effects. A commander would monitor the subordinate task forces and provide rudder orders when required.
The major enabler of effects-based operations, and NCW in general, is the universal availability of accurate knowledge—not just lots of information, which becomes knowledge only when the human mind assesses its place and importance within the context of what is occurring and the desired outcome. The technological means for this at the war game was to be IT-21 tools, such as e-mail, video-teleconferencing, chat rooms, web pages, and electronic whiteboards. Information managers would be there to help players become proficient at manipulating these tools. Knowledge managers would then ensure players could prioritize, analyze, display, and disseminate only that information that satisfied the commander's critical information requirements, i.e., the knowledge needed to wage the battle. Without knowledge managers, players could easily become saturated with irrelevant information and paralyzed.
Participants in Global War Game '99 made significant progress toward realizing NCW. A few players had a hard time coping with the inevitable confusion and were unproductive. Others resorted to old, slow methods of communication, such as paper products and face-to-face meetings- inefficiency approaches that once again illustrated the advantages of Network-Centric Warfare. Many players never progressed from information management to knowledge management, but the ones who did received a rewarding glimpse of the fast-paced, self-synchronization that characterizes network-centric operations. These believers, who have experienced the elegance of its massive power, can spread this awareness.
Most participants were experienced email users, but lacked experience in technologies such as chat nets and electronic white boards. As the game progressed and players became more conversant with the tools, the information flow shifted away from the individual-to-individual contact of e-mail to the more dynamic group orientation of chat. As participants gained knowledge about how the web site was organized, and where to find the information they wanted, they used it more and more, and drove ad hoc improvements to the site. Over the course of the game, players increased skill with multimedia techniques, like combining chat rooms and electronic whiteboards. Overall, players experienced a steep learning curve. Knowledge of the capability of the tools and skill and comfort in their use increased significantly.
The war game shed light on requirements for further network-centric refinements. Hardware and networks are only tools for waging network-centric warfare, which is really still "people-centric" warfare. People are the only possible knowledge managers. Team building—distributed, virtual, and collocated—is essential to achieve overwhelming knowledge superiority. Pick-up teams do not work. Recruitment, individual training, and team practice are as fundamental to success in NCW as they are in the fleet today. People need to know what the mission is and what the objectives are. The mission calls for people with certain skills, such a technologists, regional analysts, sensor-fusion experts, effects-based operators (to include information operations specialists), and individuals with multiple skills. These people then need to practice to become a cohesive team.
Situational awareness must be universal for NCW to exist. The drive toward achieving a common understanding of what is happening must underlie all intelligence preparation of the battle space. Who is the enemy, where is he, and what is he likely to do? Situational awareness depends heavily upon effective sensor coordination. Equally important are a well-developed mission description, well-defined objectives, a detailed campaign plan, effective rules of engagement, thorough knowledge of friendly and neutral forces, and well-defined ways of communicating.
Dynamic adaptation can be a positive factor in effective organizations, but too much change undermines an individual's knowledge of the organization and puts him at a disadvantage. Organizational knowledge facilitates synchronization by providing each individual an understanding of who knows what, and what they are likely to be doing at any time. Throughout the game, participants struggled with the question, "What is an effect?" Few players were prepared to define effects that were specific enough to be understood as tasks. Significant preparation is required for a true NCW game that creates an environment in which concepts can be explored realistically.
Game designers are making this year's pre-game preparations much more rigorous, in part to reduce the intimidation factor of new concepts. The War College is adopting familiar fleet conventions to demystify concepts and convince more game participants that they actually can play tomorrow's network-centric warfare. For example, game designers are demonstrating to players the continuum between the methods of today and tomorrow, and promulgating campaign plans and organizations well before the game. Extensive training is on tap for individual skills and team building before the game starts.
Planners also are striving to minimize confusion for players by keeping the approach simple. Command and control will reflect more traditional organizations, and there is great effort to standardize business practices and protocols. Emphasis still will remain on flexibility and agility in mission execution, while keeping the focus on satisfying human needs in NCW. Effective knowledge displays and dissemination methods that help players sort the wheat from the chaff have high priority. Finally, a far greater proportion of umpires and assessors to players will ensure events run much more smoothly as a fully two-sided game.
Network-centric warfare is our future, but developers need full fleet acceptance and participation to ensure maximum speed and efficiency. We need live simulations and performance measurements to gauge progress. Any new concept takes time to emerge, but we have no time to waste. Direct fleet involvement preserves all necessary steps in the developmental cycle while delivering results at an accelerated pace. Technology will not deliver NCW-enlightened, courageous, and hard-working military professionals will.
Commander Ash is serving as the Intelligence Officer on the staff of Commander Carrier Group One, San Diego, California.